https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0109-6262
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ABSTRACT
This article examines the role of translation in conversion to Christianity in South Asia to argue that recognizing translation as a culturally constructed and contingent category entails investigating different definitions of translation at work within different religious cultures. This helps challenge the assumption that a focus on translation is primarily a consideration of equivalence. Rather than take equivalence as universal or normative in examining the role of translation in religious conversion, this article draws attention to alternative definitions and metaphors of translation that are not concerned chiefly with equivalence which complicate the construction of categories such as religion and conversion in the South Asian colonial context. If translation serves as a regime of interpretation by which religious converts construe their relationship with past and present religions, this article argues it is important to engage with their diverse characterizations of translation.
Acknowledgements
I thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) for funding the research project on translation and conversion accounts which provided the time and opportunity to focus on this topic. I thank my co-investigators Matthias Frenz, Milind Wakankar and John Zavos for ongoing discussions over the life of the project which helped me develop my arguments. I want to express my immense gratitude to all those who have commented on earlier drafts of this article. Large parts of it were presented at the Nida School of Translation Studies in 2017 since its theme Translation and Cultural Conversions made it an apt venue to present this argument and I greatly appreciate the constructive feedback I received from the audience. I also thank the anonymous peer reviewers whose insightful comments have helped to sharpen the focus of the article. I thank my friends and colleagues, Matthias Frenz, Theo Hermans and Sharada Nair, for having read earlier drafts with interest and for their offer of critical comments. All failings, however, are entirely my own responsibility.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Hephzibah Israel teaches translation studies at the University of Edinburgh. She led an AHRC-funded collaborative research project (2014–2017) under their ‘Translating Cultures’ theme which focused on the role of translation in the movement of religious concepts across languages and the ways in which this impacted autobiographical writing on conversion experiences. She is author of Religious Transactions in Colonial South India: Language, Translation and the Making of Protestant Identity (2011). She has guest edited (2018), along with John Zavos (Manchester), a special section on Indian traditions of life writing focusing on religious conversion for the journal South Asia.
ORCID
Hephzibah Israel http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0109-6262
Notes
1 Lecture given on 21 May 2018 at Nida School of Translation Studies, Misano-Adriotico, Italy.
2 Richman (Citation1991).
3 William Carey, missionary in Serampore from 1793 and William Jones, in his preface to A Grammar of the Persian Language (1771; cited in Niranjana Citation1992) both comment on the non-dependability of Indians in matters of translation.
4 Smith (Citation1963; Jonathan Smith comments on the academic study of religion as a “child of the Enlightenment” (Citation1982, 104).
5 Smith (Citation1963).
6 See Ines Županov (Citation2005) for Jesuit translations in south India, Israel (Citation2011) for a comparison of translation strategies by different Christian missions.
7 Anquetil-Duperron’s Le Zend-Avesta published in 1771; Edwin Arnold’s The Light of Asia (1879); see Herling (Citation2009) for a discussion of eighteenth-century German translations of the Bhagavita Gita.
8 See Chapter 7; Masuzawa Citation2005 and Molendijk Citation2016 for accounts of the multi-volume translation series and its role in the development of comparative religions.
9 See for detailed examination of the term Hinduism Will Sweetman Citation2003; Llewellyn Citation2005.
10 See Numark Citation2011.
11 Lopez Citation2015.
12 Also a term for the merchant caste. There is some ambiguity in Lord’s use of the term ‘banian’ as it could be read either as a reference to caste or religion.
13 Ziegnebalg's German manuscript composed in 1713 was published by Wilhelm Germann in 1867, with an English translation by G. J. Metzger published in Citation1869. Metzger first noted that ‘in the German Original the term “Malabar” is used for “South-Indian,” as was the custom in Ziegnebalg's time.’ (p. 2). A translation rationale that Jeyaraj adopts in his English translation of Citation2003.
14 “In order to explain the Genealogy [of the South Indian Deities] in a better way [than our European predecessors], we sent our questions to the Tamil people [i.e. knowledgeable representatives of professing and practicing adherents of a particular religion in the Tamil country] and requested them to give written replies with all of the relevant details. That is why we have written them many questions, which have answered truthfully and with detailed information. From their letters that have reached us from all sides, large portions are quoted in every chapter [of the Genealogy] partly to prove [particular point] and partly to explain [certain points] further … .In the present work, the letters [of the Tamil people] are quoted extensively to elucidate their opinion on and the meaning of theological matters.” (Preface, 38)
15 In contrast, most branches of Christianity (and some more so than others) would insist that all Christians must undergo a process of conversion and confession of the faith regardless of their circumstances of birth: all must be baptised into the faith and church. In the fierce debate over conversion in nineteenth-century India, ‘baptism’ into Christianity generated contentious debates over the appropriate rituals for purifying returning Hindus, especially Brahmins. For example, see Dandekar (Citation2018, 373–376) for one such controversy amongst many.
16 Jeffrolet (Citation2011), see chapter 7 in particular.
17 High-caste Lakshmibai Tilak’s (1868–1936) conversion account (published between 1934 and 1937) delineates her changing attitude to caste in detail after the conversion of her husband to Christianity. The conversion account of Baba Padmanji, for instance, records a particularly poignant conversation with his father who asks him to follow his “convictions secretly at home” rather than make a public declaration through Christian baptism (Baba Padmanji [Marathi, Citation1888] Citation1890, 102–104).
18 See Peterson Citation1989, 283–301.
19 For detailed descriptions of social and physical moves in religious conversion, see collection of essays in special section entitled Narratives of Transformation: Religious Conversion and Indian Traditions of ‘Life Writing’ in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, eds. Hephzibah Israel and John Zavos, 2018.
20 See Boyd (Citation1969, Citation1974).
21 I am grateful to James Underhill for bringing this aspect to my attention in an earlier draft of the paper.
22 See Israel (Citation2011) chapter 4.
23 Israel Citation2018.
24 For a discussion of the difficulties of working with the languages of the missionary archive see Israel (forthcoming) ‘Translation Traces in the Archive: Unfixing documents, destabilising evidence,’ The Translator.
25 There is likewise a rich body of Islamic literature in Indian languages, presenting Islamic concepts and prophetic traditions in Indian language poetry. For translations into Tamil, see Ricci (Citation2011); for Tamil compositions of biographies of the Prophet Mohammad in the literary mode of the Iramavataram, Kamban’s Tamil Ramayana, see Narayanan (Citation2001).
26 Appasamy uses the term “purna Avatara” in The Gospel and India’s Heritage, London: SPCK, 1942, p. 209.
27 Chakkarai Citation1930.
28 This may seem akin to poststructuralist conceptions of intertextuality and translation but I do not want to draw this analogy here as there are important differences that I cannot describe fully in an article of this length.