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41
SEMINAR 726 – February 2020
On Dalit writing and
un/translatability
PRASHANT INGOLE
‘[...]element of transcoding is what
locates the recognisable violence of
the recognisably political within the
general violence of culturing as inces-
sant and shuttling translation, a point
much harder to grasp without famili-
arity with the discourses of the gift.’1
According to Homi Bhabha,
‘Translation is the performative nature
of cultural communication, and [he]
goes on, in another figurative equa-
tion, to speak of the residual cultural
unassimilability of migrant as an
instance of what Benjamin called
“untranslatability”.’2
Language serves a greater pur-
pose than just a means of communica-
tion. For a vast majority of Dalits, who
may not have access to formal educa-
tion or training in language, their abi-
lity to express and interact with the
world in their own language offers a
valuable insight. The lack of a formal
language training gives the freedom to
conceptualize and frame ideas which
the written word may not be able to cap-
ture sufficiently. Dialects and variants
of mainstream languages are more
commonly spoken by the lesser numer-
ous groups, which may also be back-
ward or lower castes in composition.
In an attempt to get these voices out
into the mainstream, many research-
ers and scholars have attempted to
translate literature written by Dalit
authors from their regional language
to other languages. While the idea of
translating a piece of work is noble,
some of the challenges of translation
need close attention. The linguistic
vocabulary of Dalit scholars is located
in their personal experiences and
occupations marked by their caste sta-
tus. The world of the Dalits has never
been a part of mainstream society; they
lived on the periphery, outside of the vil-
lage society. Many times Dalit writers
derive words from the dialects they
speak, thereby in mainstream transla-
1. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Transla-
tion as Culture’, in Paul St-Pierre and Prafulla
C. Kar (eds.), Translation: Reflections,
Refractions, Transformations. John Ben-
jamins Publishing, Philadelphia, 2007,
pp. 265-266.
2. Cited in Harish Trivedi, ‘Translating Cul-
ture vs. Cultural Translation’, in Paul St-Pierre
and Prafulla C. Kar (eds.), John Benjamins
Publishing, Philadelphia, 2007, p. 283.
SEMINAR 726 – February 2020
42
tion one cannot find the analogy bet-
ween the source text and the target text.
This piece will argue against the
case of ‘Translation as Culture’ and
‘Cultural Translation’, in order to enu-
merate why Dalit literary experiences
have not been able to transfer to the
process of ‘doing translation’ in the
current techno-socio culture. In other
words, even after the number of Eng-
lish translations of Dalit texts, the
question remains of why a caste/less
relationship exists between the source
language and target language. In an
English translation one may find the
presence of the Dalit world but on
the other hand, one will also note the
absence of the cultural words of Dalits
in Indian translation studies.
B
efore discussing the process of
culture, translation and untranslatabi-
lity, one needs to dwell on the words and
world of the Dalit (ex-untouchables).
There exists a rupture between the
cultural life of an elite English speak-
ing class and the ‘unimaginable’ cultu-
ral world of Dalits. As a result, English
translation of Dalit writing fails to
express the ‘felt’ experiences of caste
society, and is unable to find words to
narrate their world in the game of know-
ledge production. However, Dalits
became self-conscious about their sta-
tus imposed by the repressive cultu-
ral forces in numerous ways – one way
they challenged Brahmanical hege-
mony was through their literature.
Autobiographies, short stories, poems
have become recent additions in aca-
demic discussion, but their oral tradi-
tions such as Jalsa and Bheem-Geet
also play an important role in their cul-
ture of resistance that remained absent
from academic discussions.
There exists a void in the Eng-
lish speaking academic circles when
exploring the oral literary tradition of
Dalits. However, if we look at the post-
Ambedkar Dalit resistance, their liter-
ary discourse has achieved a milestone.
In the hierarchies of languages, dalit
literary discourse remains at the mar-
gins within mainstream academic dis-
cussion. It has remained at the margins
because Dalit literature is only avail-
able in the vernacular languages.
However, with English translations
of texts written by Dalits, there is now
some scope for debate and discussion
around the humiliating experiences of
the Dalit ‘world’.
I
llustrating the quotes mentioned
at the start of this piece, that Dalit
writing is part and parcel of under-
standing of culture of caste violence
through which ‘discourses of the
gift’, are presented to the wider pub-
lic. However, when it is translated or
transcoded, it is a ‘violence of cultur-
ing’ because at first, there is an unfa-
miliarity with the Dalit ‘discourses of
the gift’, thereby caste violence remains
unrecognizable. If one takes Homi
Bhabha’s discussion, ‘translation is
the performative nature of cultural
communication.’
Historically there is no ‘cultural
communication’ between caste lines,
mainstream and the margins, and to
maintain the status quo of upper caste
hegemony, there remains a ‘residual
cultural unassimilability’ between the
Savarna and Dalit cultures. As a result
of this ‘cultural’ unassimilability in
post-modern and post-colonial times,
we see that the ‘untranslatability’ of
Dalit words and their world in the
Indian English world has remained.
The paper attempts to elaborate further
to show why Dalit culture has yet to
become a part of the culture of transla-
tion, in other words, translation stu-
dies in India are yet to do justice to
Dalit writing and culture.
If one observes the field of trans-
lation studies closely, it has changed
from translatology to translation stud-
ies and from ‘cultural turn in trans-
lation studies’ from the 1990s to ‘trans-
lation turn in cultural studies’ by 1998.3
In the cultural context of Indian trans-
lation studies, the grammar of Dalit
writing counters the (dominant)
hegemonic cultural knowledge pro-
duction. It is also a rejection of existing
dominant history and literary narra-
tives. Bama suggests, ‘translation has
an identity of its own ...translation
is not only a language event but the
most humanizing moment.’4 In addi-
tion, translation is the practice of
representation5 and adaptation as
well. In globalizing the Dalit discourse,
mainstream Indian translation studies
scholars have adapted it as a mode of
representation and as a result, the Dalit
identity and culture is lost.
T
he emergence of the Dalit literary
movement in Maharashtra, which
started in the 1960s, subsequently
helped to shape the discourse of the
Dalit Panthers movement in the 1970s.
Dalit literature was a revolt against
the ‘mainstream’ Marathi literary and
political canon. As it was mostly writ-
ten in vernacular/regional languages,
it remained absent from mainstream
Indian academia for many years. At
the initial stage, translation of Mara-
thi Dalit literature was not available
for a larger readership. It came into
the English public sphere when Eleanor
Zelliot and Gail Omvedt began resear-
ching and exploring the field of Dalit
literature and culture. Eleanor Zelliot
mentions that ‘The Times Weekly Sup-
3. See details in Harish Trivedi, ibid.,
pp. 277-287.
4. A paper presented by Bama, ‘Dalit Litera-
ture in Translation’, Dalit Literature and / in
Translation: An International Conference, the
British Centre for Literary Translation, Uni-
versity of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, 29-30
June 2015. https://www.uea.ac.uk/documents/
595249 /9042348/ List+of +Abstracts+
May+18.pdf/1ca6f96e-3f0c-4d5d-b7bf-
acfd36110f44 (accessed 24 June 2019).
5. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Translation
as Culture’, 2007, op. cit., p. 264.
43
SEMINAR 726 – February 2020
plement of 25 November 1973, con-
tains the first significant analysis of
Dalit literature in English, together
with the translation of poetry, stories
and essays, and it remains the best
introduction in English to this school
of literature.’6
F
rom the 1990s onwards, Dalit litera-
ture became a pan-Indian phenom-
enon as translations began to appear
in English and other languages. Some
pioneering anthologies of Marathi Dalit
writing translated into English were
Untouchable! Voices of Dalit Lite-
rature by Barbara Joshi (1986), An
Anthology of Dalit Literature edited
by Mulk Raj Anand and Eleanor
Zelliot (1992), and Posioned Bread:
Modern Marathi Dalit Literature
edited by Arjun Dangle (1992). Bama’s
Karukku (Tamil, 1992), Omprakash
Valmiki’s Joothan (Hindi, 1997),
Joseph Macwan’s Angaliyat (Gujarati,
1989), Arvind Malagatti’s Govern-
ment Brahmna (Kannada, 1994),
Urmila Pawar’s Ayadan (Marathi,
2003) are some well known English
translated texts from the different
regional languages.
These translations have helped
to generate the discourse of Dalit
studies in India and abroad. However,
if one looks at Dalit literary writing, it
incorporates idioms and dialects, gene-
rally known in lower caste localities
and occupational surroundings. This
has created a disconnect with the more
sophisticated vernacular languages;
idioms and words from the dialects of
Dalit writers are not part of the ver-
nacular vocabularies. Hence there is
un/translatability in translating Dalit
writing into English. While there may
be a reciprocal relationship between
the vernacular and English, the vocabu-
lary of the Dalit writer is ‘completely’
antithetical to the vernacular and also
with English. Spivak writes, ‘the word
translation itself loses its literal sense,
it becomes catachresis, a term I use
not for obscurity, but because I find it
indispensable.’7 Similarly, in the poli-
tics of translation, circulation and
reception, because of the un/translat-
ability of the Dalit writing, it loses
its essence in translation and for any
author, ‘essence’ is ‘indispensable’.
T
hese days, translations are commis-
sioned by organizations that create,
as Maya Pandit suggests, ‘project Eng-
lish ...creates a product English that
interlocks with economic/material sys-
tems, institutions and the US empire,
which is supported ideologically in cul-
tural (re)production and consumption
in various educational, political and
economic discourses by a story of the
spread of English through metaphors
of English as “international”, global,
God-given, and rich and thereby ration-
alizes the death of other natural lan-
guages as “legitimate linguicide”.’8
If we look at the mechanisms
of translation, such as the process of
doing sense to sense translation,
machine translation, cultural transla-
tion, none of the methods can grasp the
intensity of the Dalit cultural vocabu-
lary and from where it is drawn. If one
tries to do a cultural translation, the
translator who has not experienced
that culture (generally belonging to
the upper caste, English speaking
class), cannot do a meaningful reading
of the text. Eleanor Zelliot cites Vijay
Tendulkar’s introduction to Namdeo
Dhasal’s Gol-pitha – ‘Dhasal’s poetry
is far too complex for me to even start
to translate (Tendulkar himself lists
twenty-six words and phrases he could
not understand).’9
I
f we look at Arun Prabha Mukhe-
rjee’s English translation of Joothan,
it is changed to Joothan: Dalit’s Life,
published by Samya Press in Kolkata
and it was published as Joothan:
An Untouchable’s Life by Columbia
University Press, it looks like a delibe-
rate attempt by the publisher to attract
an Indian and American readership.
Although, ‘The word “untouchable”
has had global currency… while Dalit
is still unfamiliar in the western world
despite the fact that the “untouchables”
decided to define themselves as Dalits
more than 50 years ago. This shift in
self-identity from the pejorative and
humiliating, externally-imposed word
“untouchable”, to a self-chosen identity,
cannot be captured by a literal transla-
tion …[as] ground down…’, writes
Christi Merrill.10 In this relation, one
will also need to understand how glo-
balization and market oriented projects
of translation can have an impact in
translating the text because of which
the sense of ‘translation itself loses its
literal sense’.
According to Namita Gokhale,
‘the genre of the novel (which by defi-
nition is always new) became available
via translation to the Indian reader.’11
Unlike novels, Dalit poetry, short sto-
ries, autobiographies and memoirs
have also became accessible through
the process of translation. Unlike the
‘colonial project’ that was successful
in creating an Indian literary canon,
6. For more see Eleanor Zelliot, From
Untoucable to Dalit: Essays on the Ambedkar
Movement. Manohar, New Delhi, 2001,
pp. 269-290.
7. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Translation
as Culture’, 2007, op. cit., p. 264.
8. Quoted in Maya Pandit, ‘Global vs. Local:
Problematising the Cultural Politics of Eng-
lish’, in Alladi Uma, K. Suneetha Rani and
D. Murali Manohar (eds.), English in the
Dalit Context. Orient Blackswan, Hyderabad,
2014, p. 115.
9. Eleanor Zelliot, 2001, op. cit., p. 277.
10. Christi A. Merrill, ‘Human Rights Singu-
lar-Plural: Translating Dalit Autobiography
From Hindi’, Biography 33(1), Winter, 2010,
p. 130.
11. Namita Gokhale, ‘Negotiating Multilin-
gual Literary Spaces’, 2009. https://www.
india-seminar.com/2009/600/600_ namita_
gokhale.htm (accessed 12 June 2019).
SEMINAR 726 – February 2020
44
English translation studies remain
unsuccessful in doing justice to Dalit
literary texts even after much change
in post-colonial times. Translation is a
way of globalizing the local. But in stand-
ard English, the localness of the lan-
guage is lost, and when it is specifically
about Dalit writing, translation is unable
to capture the sense of caste hierarchies
as it is illustrated in texts written by Dalit
authors.
E
nglish translations of Dalit writing
provide meaning to caste in a casteless
language. The English language comes
with ‘white supremacy’, which might
be a casteless language for the elite
English speaking class. Having kept
‘Brahmanical supremacy’ intact with
the English tongue, the vocabulary of
Dalits was excluded from the English
dictionary. In the process of translation
Dalit writing, the English language has
not been able to produce a vocabulary
to understand untouchability and caste
discourse. There is an unfamiliarity
with the source language, culture and
the target language.
With Dalit authors who choose
to first write in their own tongue, their
ideas and thoughts remain intact
as long as they are interacting with
others who speak the same language.
Once the thought transcends the boun-
daries of language and narrow socio-
cultural circles, the challenge emerges.
A translator might use her creative
freedom to interpret the meaning of
the original thought to make it under-
standable, or to retain the true mean-
ing as far as possible. However, the
translator’s own inputs at processing
one language into another might hinder
the authenticity of the original work
being reproduced.
Take the case of Marathi spoken
in the Vidarbha region in Maharashtra.
It is well known that this variant of
Marathi is different from that spoken
in the Marathwada region, and the
more economically prosperous regions
of the Pune-Mumbai corridor. A trans-
lation of the term ‘ghosalunghe’ or
‘pusunkha’ (‘do not leave anything
on your plate’) may be difficult into
another language because it is intrin-
sically colloquial to the style of Marathi
spoken by the Mahars, especially in
the Vidarbha region. The term means
an act of taking the remaining portion
of food (usually curries) in a vessel and
completely cleaning it by mixing it
with rice. A non-native speaker or
translator might be delighted by the
interesting colloquial expression with
food, but translating it to another lan-
guage while retaining its authentic
meaning might be complicated. While
translations are often criticized for
their inability to retain the true mean-
ing of the original text, the challenge
of translation is that much harder for
the kind of languages used by Dalits.
A
nother related aspect is verna-
cular humour, and how it shapes the
conversation and expression among
marginalized communities. Humou-
rous exchange among Dalits is char-
acterized by the use of very specific
colloquial phrases and terms, created
within the framework of the language,
with local sensibilities. Translating
these might not help in conveying the
exact same flavour as the original. A
poor translation of a humorous phrase
may not even appear funny to the rea-
der, and this then defeats the purpose
of translation. Dalit writing works
through the theory of negation and the
expression of the ‘lived experiences’
of caste. But how do these narratives
lose the sense when translated into the
target language, especially English?
Below is a short account of Jerry
Pinto’s English translation of Baluta
(2015), a translation of arguably the
first Marathi Dalit autobiography writ-
ten in Marathi by Daya Pawar (1978),
and When I Hid My Caste (2018), a
short story collection Jeva Mi Jaat
Chorli Hoti by Baburao Bagul (1963).
‘This stone
Which was removed from the struc-
ture of a building
is therefore rendered useless.’12
– Jack London
‘Dagdu Maruti Pawar
Who carries as his portion, or share
[vatyala]
This Baluta of Pain
Tied up in the folds of his dhoti
– Because of the structure of Indian
society
I am only the beast of burden [bhar-
vahak]
– Who manifests his words [shabdat
shabdankan kelela],
His desire was that.
No one should be told,
I also feel
That we should not reveal this to any-
one.’13
– Daya Pawar
T
he above poems are not available
in Jerry Pinto’s English translation
of Baluta (2015).14 In addition, when
Anupama Rao translated these poems
in her work, maybe she was unable to
find suitable words in English, there-
fore, along with the English transla-
tion, Marathi texts are also scripted
in English letters in italicized form.
Even ‘in fold of his dhoti’ is not a suit-
able word for padar; in fact it is diffi-
cult to find the relative word for dhoti
in the English language. The word
bharvahak in the context of the ‘lived
12. Daya Pawar, Baluta (Marathi). Granthali,
Mumbai, 1978, on frontispiece. This is a short
poem translated in English as a note by
Anupama Rao in her book, The Caste Ques-
tion: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India.
Permanent Black, Ranikhet, 2009, p. 351.
13. Anupama Rao, The Caste Question:
Dalits and the Politics of Modern India. Uni-
versity of California Press, London, 2009,
p. 197.
14. Jerry Pinto, Baluta (English Translation),
Speaking Tiger, New Delhi, 2015.
45
SEMINAR 726 – February 2020
experience’ of the Dalits, presents what
Spivak calls ‘discourses of gift’. In the
first story of When I Hid My Caste;
‘Prisoner of Darkness’, one can see in
the first line of the first para, an inter-
polation in the English translation.
If we see the Marathi text of When I
Hid My Caste (Jeva Mi Jaat Chorali
Hoti!) there is no mention of the
word ‘woman’ except bane tula...’!15
(banoo you…!), but if one takes a look
at the English translation, the sen-
tence starts with ‘The evening, a
woman…’16 In the short story called,
‘When I Hid My Caste!’, in the first
para one can feel a loss of the sense
of pain and suffering of the Dalits in
the English translation. Even in the
selection of the words one could ‘feel’
the difference in the English and Marathi
text. If we take an example of the word
cheed, it could be translated in Marathi
as ‘anguish’, but in Pinto’s English
translation the word ‘rage’17 has been
used. In the same para there is also
erasure of a sentence like nagapra-
mane halahal,18 which could be trans-
lated into English as ‘like snake venom’.
I
n addition, ‘This is how it came
about’ is not even giving a sense of the
sentence of ti ghatana ashi ghadali.
Therefore, when one translates a dalit
text one will also have to maintain strin-
gent ethics of translation. Translation
is a critical process and when it is about
the translation of a text written by a
Dalit intellectual, it becomes more dif-
ficult because their culture is always
in conflict with the mainstream.
Untranslatability of texts exist because
the texts written by Dalit intellectuals
remain untouchable19 and untoucha-
bility exists because of the experiences
of not just caste but also intellectual
humiliation which is untranslatable.
This paradoxical analogy has to be dealt
with in translation studies in India.
I
ndian translation studies, and the
debate and discussion around the
translation of Dalit writing, is in a nas-
cent stage. In the hierarchies of ver-
nacular languages there are cultural
variations between the oral and the
literary. Dalit authors fight with both
because their language neither fits into
the oral, nor into the literary. When
there are no words for Dalit expres-
sion in a vernacular language, then
how can it be possible to draw every-
day experiences of caste humiliation
into the English translation, where the
language in the Indian context is domi-
nated by Brahmanical hegemony.
There is a need to develop a dia-
logue between cultures, between the
vernacular and their dialects, and a
need to create a dictionary with collo-
quial keywords that Dalits use in their
everyday lives. This could be the ‘gift’
to avoid the un/translatability of the
Dalit world. Translation of Dalit writ-
ing in the time of globalization may
have been able to generate an interna-
tional debate around Dalit literature
and the movement. However, the Eng-
lish language is not only influenced
by ‘colonial hegemony’ but it is also
exercised by the elite brahmanical
English speaking class and therefore
will not be able to deliver justice to
the Dalit texts. Dalit intellectuals will
have to develop their own vocabulary
of the English language like African-
American intellectuals who have deve-
loped their own idiom and syntax to
express themselves.
15. Baburao Bagul, Jeva Mi Jaat Chorali
Hoti! (14th edition). Akshar Prakashan,
Mumbai, 2016, p. 9.
16. Jerry Pinto, When I Hid My Caste. Speak-
ing Tiger, New Delhi, 2018, p. 1.
17. Ibid., p. 116.
18. Baburao Bagul, 2016, op. cit., p. 78.
19. Sagar, ‘Biting My Tongue: What Hindi
Keeps Hidden’, Caravan Magazine, 27 June
2019. https://carav anmagazine.in/caste/
what-hindi-keeps-hidden (accessed 5 July
2019).