Siting translation : history, post-structuralism and the colonial context

Document Type

Book

Publication Date

1-1-1992

Publisher

University of California Press

Abstract

The act of translation, Tejaswini Niranjana maintains, is a political action. Niranjana draws on Benjamin, Derrida, and de Man to show that translation has long been a site for perpetuating the unequal power relations among peoples, races, and languages. The traditional view of translation underwritten by Western philosophy helped colonialism to construct the exotic "other" as unchanging and outside history, and thus easier both to appropriate and control.

Scholars, administrators, and missionaries in colonial India translated the colonized people's literature in order to extend the bounds of empire. Examining translations of Indian texts from the eighteenth century to the present, Niranjana urges post-colonial peoples to reconceive translation as a site for resistance and transformation.

ISBN

9780520911369

Publisher Statement

Copyright © 1992 by The Regents of the University of California

Language

English

Recommended Citation

Niranjana, T. (1992). Siting translation: History, post-structuralism and the colonial context. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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