Dalit Literature In / And Translation - Norwich (Part 1)
Channel: Dalit Voice and Vision
Date: 2016-05-13

Dalit Literature In / And Translation
An international conference at the British Centre for Literary Translation
University of East Anglia
29 & 30 June 2015
Local organiser: Duncan Large

This conference was the fourth event hosted by the AHRC-funded Research Network ‘Writing, Analysing, Translating Dalit Literature’. After the first events of the series in Nottingham and Leicester (June 2014) and Montpellier (October 2014), the theme of this two-day conference at UEA was the analysis of the concepts of literary and cultural translation in relation to dalit literature. We invited papers that explored the specific challenges that were involved in the translation of dalit literature from one vernacular language to another, or from one vernacular language to a European language. What were the differences between translating dalit literature into an Indian vernacular language and a European language? We were also interested in exploring the ways in which different readerships were inscribed in dalit texts and how translation responded to, or reacted against, this inscription. To what extent were the translated texts re-encoded for a different audience, pan-Indian, non-dalit or global? The politics of which texts were selected for translation, or not selected, were also examined, as well as the publishing, marketing and reception of dalit literature translations. Participants were encouraged to analyse the ways dalit literature performed a translation of subaltern and often oral art forms, and to explore how this form of cultural translation translated, or not, into different languages. Ultimately, which features of dalit literature resisted translation? What was left out and irredeemably lost? These questions were asked in relation to literary texts and their translations but also in relation to films, videos and other documentaries. The many ways caste and dalitness travelled, or not, from one language to another, through subtitles and their translations, was also considered.

Presenters and their papers' title

Payal AGARWAL (Delhi University)
Translation as Action: Cast(e)ing the Long Shadow of Anger

Laura BRUECK (Northwestern University)
A question of language? The politics of translating Dalit literature for a new Indian audience

Mudnakudu CHINNASWAMY (writer)
Translation of Dalit literature

Kalyan DAS (Presidency University, Kolkata)
(Im)possibility of Translating Identities: Translator, Dalit litterateur  and the ‘Truth’ of Dalit Experience

Joyjit GHOSH (Vidyasagar University, West Bengal)
Problems and Prospects of Translating Bangla Dalit Poetry in English: A Personal Experience

Mohan DHARAVATH (EFL-U, Hyderabad)
Translating the Lambada: Orality, Performance and Experience

Rowena HILL (independent scholar and translator)
Translating Mudnakudu Chinnaswamy, Dalit Poet in Kannada

Stephanie KREINER (Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf, Germany)
The Mystery of the German Silver Kettle: Translating Harish Mangalam’s Short Stories into German

Sharankumar LIMBALE (Y.C.M. Open University, Solapur)
In Conversation with Alok Mukherjee and Arun P. Mukherjee

Alok MUKHERJEE (independent scholar and translator)
Translating Ramnath Chavan’s Shakshipuram, a Thought Play and Dalit Aesthetics

Arun Prabha MUKHERJEE (York University, Toronto)
Traduttore Traditore:  Translating Dalit Writing Responsibly

Sipra MUKHERJEE (West Bengal State University)
The Translator as the Betrayer: the Political Dynamics of the Process of Translation

Maya PANDIT (EFL-U, Hyderabad)
Translating Dalit Literature: Redrawing the Map of Cultural Politics

Urmila PAWAR (writer)
A Walk to Remember

Julia PERCZEL (School of Oriental and African Studies)
The Role of Translation in Mainstreaming Dalit Literature

Mamta G. SAGAR (Bangalore University)
Poetics and Politics of Representations

Jaydeep SARANGI (Jogesh Chandra Chaudhuri College, Calcutta University)
Translation as Commitment with a Purpose:  A close Study of Translation Project Involving Bengali Dalit Autobiography into English

Shoma SEN (RTM Nagpur University, Nagpur)
The Choice of Writing in English: Short Stories of B. Rangrao and Narendra Jadhav’s Outcaste

Shobha Padmakar SHINDE (North Maharashtra University, Jalgaon)

Marathi Dalit Autobiography in English: A Perilous Journey of Cultural Transfer and Meaning

Jayan K. Cherian Born in Kerala, India, graduated with honors from Hunter College, BA in Film and Creative Writing and an MFA from The City College of New York in filmmaking. Papilio Buddha (2013) is his debut feature film and he made several experimental documentaries and narrative shorts such as: Shape of the Shapeless (2010), Love in the Time of Foreclosure (2009), Hidden Things (2009), Soul of Solomon (2008), Capturing the Signs of God (2008), Holy Mass (2007), Tree of Life (2007), Simulacra the Reality of the Unreal (2007), The Inner Silence of the Tumult (2007), Hid-entity (2007), and Tandava the Dance of Dissolution (2006).