Translating Kerala- The Cultural Turn in Translation Studies

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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.

This book comprises some of my early thoughts and work on translation, spanning nearly two decades. The current framework offers a shift in focus by putting those scattered pieces into a perspective that seeks to forge links between translation studies and cultural studies. Once again, I owe a debt of gratitude to the most professional of editors I have worked with, Sreenath Sreedharan, Managing Editor, Orient Blackswan, who literally shaped the book and put it into its current format. I thank Mahalakshmi Jayaram for the meticulous proofs. I am deeply indebted to the Vice Chancellor and Syndicate of the University of Kerala for their generous grant to the Centre for Cultural Studies that helped me contribute another book to the field of Kerala Studies. My thanks to my brilliant scholars at the Centre for Cultural Studies, University of Kerala, Sucheta Sankar, Meera C., Maalavika Ajayakumar, Jobson Joshwa, Sidharth M. Joy, Arya K., Arya A., Benita Acca Benjamin, Maria Viju and Abhirami S. R., for helping me with the proofs, and continuing to question my premises at every turn, making me turn a critical eye on my own work. This book comes at a rather trying juncture in my life, when I was beset with multiple personal crises. I thank all my friends and colleagues, Vishnu, Appu, Lakshmi Priya, Lakshmi Sukumar, Kalyani, Babitha and Gigy, who stood staunchly by my side in support. My love to Tara, Amrit and Ajish, for helping me dare to dream amidst adversities.

Translating Kerala: The Cultural Turn in Translation Studies attempts to look at translation as a social and cultural act that transcribes, articulates, interprets and makes visible received structures of power as well as essentialised meanings inscribed within the ideational patterns and material realities of the everyday. This book, located at the interdisciplinary spaces of Kerala's cultural histories and the praxis of translation, is an academic endeavour that problematises/ pushes the boundaries of the text and its contexts while also identifying the politico-economic structures that spill out into the silences and utterances of the text. The chapters in this book delve into seminal issues, ranging from the politics that constitutes various linguistic variables to the interpretative paradigms that render legible the experiences of the gendered and subaltern subject in Kerala, inaugurating new sites of critical dialogues between historical and cultural attitudes that traverse spatiotemporal differences. Hence, this project aims to unveil the polyphonic possibilities of the texts, destabilising the hierarchies between texts and their 'afterlives', texts and their contexts, texts and their actors/subjects.

The book attempts to puncture uncritical literary and popular discourses of development and progress attributed to Kerala by accentuating the politics that mediate articulations around 'translatedness' in numerous kinds of literary discourses that make and unmake the region. By positioning the text as a protean entity that always already leaps outside its material contours, the book looks at translation as an act of 'rewriting' (Lefevere and Bassnett 1990, 10), whereby the binding cultural tenets and ideological premises that constitute the translated (con)texts are unwound, reconfigured and exposed to scrutiny. To this end, the book looks at works of translation as a palimpsest that archives the region's evolving cultural tendencies, epistemic systems, transcultural engagements and linguistic mediations. Nevertheless, the book also acknowledges that the fraught encounters that translation makes possible in Kerala are too vast in scope and implication to be written down within the theoretical and methodological constraints of a single book.