topics: |  translation | culture | postcolonial | philosophy

Fascinating premise:

	translation depends on the Western philosophical notions of reality,
	representation, and knowledge. Reality is seen as something
	unproblematic, "out there"; knowledge involves a representation of
	this reality; and representation provides direct, unmediated access
	to a transparent reality.

Tejaswini's goal is
	to explore the place of translation in contemporary Euro-American
	literary theory (using the name of this "discipline" in a broad
	sense) through a set of interrelated readings. I argue that the
	deployment of "translation" in the colonial and post-colonial
	contexts shows us a way of questioning some of the theoretical
	emphases of post-structuralism.

Much of it is of great interest in India: Through English education, which
still legitimizes ruling-class power in formerly colonized countries, the
dominant representations put into circulation by translation come to be seen
as "natural" and "real."
And some of the examples deal with translations from Allama Prabhu (Kannada),
including Ramanujan's Speaking of Siva.