Publications

Publication details [#53814]

Publication type
Chapter in book
Publication language
English
Source language
Target language
Place, Publisher
Oxford: Focal Press
Main ISBN
9781315149660

Abstract

Dalit literature in India, articulated in non-canonical literary genres, has been impacted by this activist orientation. Often digressing from the conventional norms of autobiography, Itibritte Chandal Jiban (2012) by Byapari (trans. Interrogating My Chandal Life: The Autobiography of a Dalit by Mukherjee) is more a socio-political testimony than a mere record of ‘lived experience.’ While immersed in socio-political and cultural upheavals and revolutionary political ideologies, this text is engrossed by the micro-social layers of the history of Bengal and Bengali Dalits. This translation takes the form of ‘translaboration’ where the translator becomes a collaborator with the writer in the movement; together they act towards gaining social transformation and power switching. Translation thereby becomes not only a literary and linguistic journey from source to target text, but becomes also a socio-political journey. By comparing and analysing both the original and the translated autobiographies this chapter examines how the writer and the translator transmit the Dalit discourse of Bengal and how translation becomes a significant socio-politico-ideological movement engaged in by marginalised people.
Source : Based on publisher information