Indian Translation Traditions: Perspectives from Sujit Mukherjee

Abstract

This paperrevisits Sujit Mukherjee’s seminal work Translation as Discovery and Other Essays on Indian Literature in English Translation (1981) to analyze his contribution in foregrounding the translation traditions of India. In the book, he uses the term ‘transcreation’ to refer to translation as a practice in the Indian literary scenario and cites examples from the ancient to modern times, to show how we have perceived and practiced translation. He centers this process in contrast to the western practice of the same, which makes translation a postcolonial exercise. He emphasizes the need to focus on the pragmatic analysis of the process of translation and looking at the ‘Indo-English literature’, as ‘a limb of the body, the purusha, that is Indian literature’ which would help in decolonizing literary studies.