Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial ContextThe act of translation, Tejaswini Niranjana maintains, is a political action. Niranjana draws on Benjamin, Derrida, and de Man to show that translation has long been a site for perpetuating the unequal power relations among peoples, races, and languages. The traditional view of translation underwritten by Western philosophy helped colonialism to construct the exotic "other" as unchanging and outside history, and thus easier both to appropriate and control. Scholars, administrators, and missionaries in colonial India translated the colonized people's literature in order to extend the bounds of empire. Examining translations of Indian texts from the eighteenth century to the present, Niranjana urges post-colonial peoples to reconceive translation as a site for resistance and transformation. |
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Aesthetics Alan Bass Allama allegory anthropology Asad Babel Bengal Renaissance Benja Benjamin's text British calls Chicago Press claim colonial discourse concern context critical critique of historicism critique of representation culture deconstruction Delhi Derrida discussion domination Eduard Fuchs emphasis English essay ethnography European figure fragments German grammar guage Hegel hegemonic Hindus historian historical materialist historicism historiography Ibid India interpretation Jacques Derrida Jones's lation Lévi-Strauss linga linguistic literary literature London Man's meaning messianic metaphor metaphysics Mill missionaries narrative native nature neocolonial Nietzsche non-Western notion of translation Oriental Orientalist original past Paul Persian Language Philosophy of History political post-colonial post-structuralism post-structuralist practice of translation present problematic pure language question refers rhetoric says seems sense significant Śiva Social Spivak Steiner structure Subaltern Subaltern Studies suggests symbol task tion traditional trans translation studies translation theory Trevelyan tropes University of Chicago vacana Walter Benjamin Western writing York