India in Translation through Hindi Literature

What role have translations from Hindi literary works played in shaping and transforming our knowledge about India? In this book, renowned scholars, translators and Hindi writers from India, Europe, and the United States offer their approaches to this question. Their articles deal with the political, cultural, and linguistic criteria germane to the selection and translation of Hindi works, the nature of the enduring links between India and Europe, and the reception of translated texts, particularly through the perspective of book history. More personal essays, both on the writing process itself or on the practice of translation, complete the volume and highlight the plurality of voices that are inherent to any translation. As the outcome of an international symposium held at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, in 2008, India in Translation through Hindi Literature engages in the building of critical histories of the encounter between India and the «West», the use and impact of translations in this context, and Hindi literature and culture in connection to English (post)colonial power, literature and culture.

Maya Burger is professor of Indian Studies and History of Religions at the University of Lausanne. Her research projects are centred on the relation between India and Europe, on medieval and modern Hindi and on the history of yoga.
Nicola Pozza is Senior Lecturer in Modern Indian Studies at the University of Lausanne where he teaches Hindi. His current research deals with modern Hindi literature, and with the intellectual history of the 19th and 20th centuries. He is completing a PhD on the use of the concept of 'freedom' in Ajñeya's narrative works. He has translated various Hindi works into French.

Contents: Maya Burger/Nicola Pozza: Editors' Introduction - Maya Burger: Encountering Translation: Translational Historiography in the Connected History of India and Europe - Sudhir Chandra: Translations and the Making of Colonial Indian Consciousness - Madan Soni: Before the Translation - Thomas de Bruijn: Lost Voices: The Creation of Images of India through Translation - Annie Montaut: Translating a Literary Text as Voicing Its Poetics Without Metalanguage: With Reference to Nirmal Verma and Krishna Baldev Vaid - Nicola Pozza: Translating from India and the Moving Space of Translation (Illustrated by the Works of Ajñeya) - Ulrike Stark: Translation, Book History, and the Afterlife of a Text: Growse's The Rámáyana of Tulsi Dás - Purushottam Agrawal: «Something Will Ring ...» Translating Kabir and His «Life» - Florence Pasche Guignard: Go West, Mira! Translating Medieval Bhakti Poetry - Galina Rousseva-Sokolova: Behind and Beyond the Iron Curtain: Reception of Hindi Literature in Eastern and Central Europe - Susham Bedi: Looking in from the Outside: Writing and Teaching in the Diasporic Setting - Geetanjali Shree: Writing Is Translating Is Writing Is Translating Is - Girdhar Rathi: Compunctions in the Act of Translation - Rainer Kimmig: «... The Savage Silence of Different Languages» or Translating from South Asian Literatures.