Description
Book SynopsisArgues that while bearing witness to the violence that underwrites translation in colonial spaces, we should also remain open to the irresolution of translation, its unfixed nature, and its ability to transform the colonizer as well as the colonized, the translated language and the translator's language.
Trade Review"Imperial Babel brings the exciting field of translation studies to bear on the literature of the British Empire in India during the long nineteenth century, roughly from Sir William Jones and Edmund Burke to Max Muller and Rudyard Kipling. Too often critics of English-language literature about India ignore the enormous fact that all such writing emerged from an imperial world that was profoundly polyglot. Rangarajan's admirable work will thus be of great use and interest to scholars and students of Romantic and Victorian cultures of empire along with readers interested in translation and translation theory." -- -Daniel E. White University of Toronto "A formidable scholarly achievement. The study answers a pronounced need in a number of intersecting fields---Literary Studies, Postcolonial Theory, South Asian Studies, Translation Studies---to understand the complex cross-cultural negotiations taking place between Britain and the Indian colony in the 19th century." -- -Christi A. Merrill University of Michigan
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Preface Chapter One Translation and the "Formidable Art" Radical Difference Translation and the Postcolonial Predicament Translation's Slant Chapter Two Pseudotranslations: Exoticism and the Oriental Tale The Heterotopic Space of Translation Rethinking Exoticism Vathek's Pleasures Southey's Translative Failure Translation's Fragments Chapter Three Romantic Metanoia: Conversion and Cultural Translation in India The Oriental Novel Translating Evangelicalism Linguistic Intermarriage Spiritual Flirtation Translative Impasse Memorials Chapter Four "Paths too long obscure": the Translations of Jones and Muller Segmentary Lineage Sir William Jones and the Hindoo Hymns Max Muller and the Task of the Translator Cultural Re-Gifting and Translative Heresy Chapter Five Translation's Bastards: Mimicry and Linguistic Hybridity Mistranslation and Pollution Showing the Lions Jumble in the Jungle Baboo "Funkiness" Epilogue: Slant Speech Conclusion Works Cited
