Beyond textual acts of translation
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Masood Ashraf Raja
Abstract
Analysing the reception of Muhammad Ibn Abdul-Wahab’s eighteenth-century Arabic text in its Urdu translation, this paper highlights the importance of the cultural context of the original text and the impact of its translation within the discursive framework of Indian Islam. In the process of its production and consumption, this translation took on a mythic value that transformed the text from a monograph to a signifier of a specific Wahabi political subjectivity that has had direct consequences for Indian Islam, both in its colonial and postcolonial phases.
Abstract
Analysing the reception of Muhammad Ibn Abdul-Wahab’s eighteenth-century Arabic text in its Urdu translation, this paper highlights the importance of the cultural context of the original text and the impact of its translation within the discursive framework of Indian Islam. In the process of its production and consumption, this translation took on a mythic value that transformed the text from a monograph to a signifier of a specific Wahabi political subjectivity that has had direct consequences for Indian Islam, both in its colonial and postcolonial phases.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Foreword ix
- Introduction 1
- Caste in and Recasting language 17
- Translation as resistance 29
- Tellings and renderings in medieval Karnataka 43
- Translating tragedy into Kannada 57
- The afterlives of panditry 75
- Beyond textual acts of translation 95
- Reading Gandhi in two tongues 107
- Being-in-translation 119
- (Mis)Representation of sufism through translation 133
- Translating Indian poetry in the Colonial Period in Korea 145
- A. K. Ramanujan 161
- An etymological exploration of ‘translation’ in Japan 175
- Translating against the grain 195
- Index 213
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Foreword ix
- Introduction 1
- Caste in and Recasting language 17
- Translation as resistance 29
- Tellings and renderings in medieval Karnataka 43
- Translating tragedy into Kannada 57
- The afterlives of panditry 75
- Beyond textual acts of translation 95
- Reading Gandhi in two tongues 107
- Being-in-translation 119
- (Mis)Representation of sufism through translation 133
- Translating Indian poetry in the Colonial Period in Korea 145
- A. K. Ramanujan 161
- An etymological exploration of ‘translation’ in Japan 175
- Translating against the grain 195
- Index 213
