autobiography

Translation as Strategic Foreignization: A Study of the Politics of Translation in Mother Forest: An Unfinished Autobiography

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Dr. Liju Jacob Kuriakose

Assistant Professor, Department of Language and Literature at Alliance University, Bangalore. Email:liju.kuriakose@alliance.edu.in. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7726-0554

 Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.07

Abstract

The study draws upon Lawrence Venuti’s concept of foreignization as a strategic tool employed in the translation of CK Janu’s Mother Forest: An Unfinished Autobiography. The translation works to mould an ethnic autobiography and represent a subaltern subject through explicit signifiers of subalternity, masqueraded as an attempt to “retain the flavour of Janu’s intonation and the sing-song nature of her speech in translation”. As a mode of representation, this study identifies the text as catering to a transnational publishing industry and the global academic marketplace, transforming the cultural value of an ethnic subaltern text into what Graham Huggan describes as “tawdry ethnic goods” in the late capitalist supermarket.

Keywords: Translation, Strategic Foreignization, Autobiography, Ethnic Goods

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Resistances to Autobiography: The Indian Experiment with life-writing

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Sanghamitra Sadhu

PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Cotton University, Guwahati, Assam & Former Fellow at Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. Email: sadhusanghamitra@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.30

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Abstract

The article underlines that the epistemology of the self and the practice of life-writing in India marks a departure from the Western conventions and modes of expression. Although there are resistances to autobiography from the Western theoretical standpoint, the genre meets with a twofold resistance in postcolonial milieu in its negotiation with the Indian metaphysics of self. Autobiography in decolonising India negotiates complex pathways between an ardent adherence to Indian epistemology and a potent resistance to the Western modes of writing the self. In a framework to understand the phenomenon of resistance implicit in autobiography in general and the internal resistances to autobiography manifest in the genre during decolonisation in particular, the article argues that such resistances within the genre have redefined the very idea of the self in writing, generated a nuanced notion of the self in narration, as well as challenged the process of writing the self in decolonisation.

Keywords: autobiography, postcolonial life-writing, hybridity, decentering, decolonisation, India

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“In compliance with the Advice contained in these Letters”: Benjamin Franklin’s correspondence networks and the making of the Autobiography

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Thomas J. Haslam

College of Liberal Arts, Shantou University, China.  Email: haslam@stu.edu.cn

Volume IX, Number 3, 2017 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v9n3.09

Received August 11, 2017; Revised September 15, 2017; Accepted September 18, 2017; Published September 20,  2017.

Abstract

This study offers a quantitative approach to mapping out and examining Benjamin Franklin’s writing of his memoirs. It does so by situating the memoirs in the context of Franklin’s other and indeed primary writing activities: his participation in various correspondence networks. Both drawing upon and differing from previous scholarship, this study ascribes key aspects of the memoirs less to intentional design and literary craft, and more to Franklin’s writing habits and cognitive style as manifested over his career. This study further argues for a reconsideration of how Jane Mecom and William Franklin influenced the memoirs.
Keywords: Correspondence Networks, Benjamin Franklin, Data Analysis, Autobiography.

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Book Review: Mani Bhawmik’s Code Name God

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First published in the U.S.A by The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2005,

ISBN-13: 9780824522810

First published in India by Penguin Books India, 2006

ISBN-13: 9780144001033, 978-0144001033

Review by

Biswaranjan Chattapadhyay, Serampore College Keep Reading

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