Translating Kerala: The Cultural Turn in Translation Studies
Meena T. Pillai
Price
500
ISBN
9789354427169
Language
English
Pages
200
Format
Paperback
Dimensions
140 x 216 mm
Year of Publishing
2024
Territorial Rights
World
Imprint
Orient BlackSwan

Translating Kerala is an interdisciplinary study that is situated at the interstices of translation studies and cultural studies. It looks at translation as a social and cultural act that transcribes, articulates and interprets structures of power unfolding within asymmetrical fields of cultural politics. The book tries to go beyond traditional approaches that consider translation as a literary and linguistic endeavour, attempting to look at it as a process that transcribes and articulates the region of Kerala, while teasing out the paradoxes, ambiguities and politics that mediate such translational acts. The chapters in this book delve into seminal issues, ranging from the politics that constitutes various linguistic variables of Malayalam to the interpretative paradigms that bring out experiences of the gendered and subaltern subject in Kerala. In the process, it focuses on texts as varied as the Malayalam translation of Les Misérables, the autobiographies of C. K. Janu and Nalini Jameela, and Ramu Kariat's cinematic adaptation of Chemmeen. From detailed discussions on canonical literary texts to non-canonical/popular cultural texts, the volume pitches translation as an academic and political vantage point that interrogates the writing and the rewriting of the region in diverse ways. It destabilises the hierarchies between texts and their 'afterlives', texts and their contexts, and texts and their subjects. Translating Kerala will be of interest to academics and readers interested in translation studies, cultural studies, gender studies and Kerala studies.

Meena T. Pillai is Professor and Director, Centre for Cultural Studies, University of Kerala.

Acknowledgements
Publisher’s Acknowledgements
Preface

1. Introduction: The Cultural Turn in Translation
2. Translation of Les Misérables and the Making of the Modern Malayali
3. Translating Culture: Is Gabriel García Márquez a Malayali?
4. Gender and Translation
5. Translating the Subaltern
6. Autobiography as Translation
7. English and Postcolonial Translations
8. Translating the Popular
9. Translation as Adaptation
Release Date : 25-Sep-2024 Venue : Senate Chamber, University of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram
1. Notice | Published in The New Indian Express, Chennai, 5 September 2024.
2. Book Review | Published in The Times of India, Kochi, 20 July 2024.
3. Book Announcement | Published in Frontline (Fortnightly), Chennai, 28 June 2024.
4. Book Announcement | Published in the Asian Review of Books, 26 May 2024.