Abstract
For a language with a wealth of great literature such as English, globaliza-tion has been a mixed blessing. The International English of Mc World is a poor descendant of the language of Shakespeare and Dickens. On the other hand, English literature has been tremendously enriched by writings from the former colonies of the British Empire, creating their own ‘norms’ of English – ‘a new English’, as Chinua Achebe famously put it, “still in full communion with its ancestral home, but altered to suit its new surroundings ”. In the postcolonial literary scene, such ‘hybrid’ texts – or ‘métissés ’– are now a familiar feature, but a complicated one for translators working into other European languages. This essay concentrates on India, and looking at writings by Sethu (Pandavapuram in English translation) and Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things in English and in German translation), it investigates the striking features of hybrid source texts and the cultural and linguistic problems involved in re-creating them for a European target culture.
Highlights
For a language with a wealth of great literature such as English, globalization has been a mixed blessing
The definition used here is taken from the essay “Translation and the colonial experience” published in 1992 by Sandra Mehrez, who comments on the hybrid text more explicitly as follows: the emergence and continuing growth on the world literary scene of postcolonial anglophone and francophone literatures from the ex-colonies as well as the increasing ethnic minorities in the First World metropoles are bound to change and redefine many accepted notions in translation theory which continue to be debated and elaborated within the longstanding traditions of western ‘humanism’ and ‘universalism’
The Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe described the language suitable to be used by the African writer as a vehicle of expression in postcolonial English literature: “The African should aim at fashioning out an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience
Summary
Littledemons were mudbrown in Airport Fairy frocks with forehead bumps that might turn into horns. The definition used here is taken from the essay “Translation and the colonial experience” published in 1992 by Sandra Mehrez, who comments on the hybrid text more explicitly as follows: the emergence and continuing growth on the world literary scene of postcolonial anglophone and francophone literatures from the ex-colonies as well as the increasing ethnic minorities in the First World metropoles are bound to change and redefine many accepted notions in translation theory which continue to be debated and elaborated within the longstanding traditions of western ‘humanism’ and ‘universalism’ These postcolonial texts, frequently referred to as ‘hybrid’ or ‘métissés’ because of the culturo-linguistic layering which exists within them, have succeeded in forging a new language that defies the very notion of a ‘foreign’ text that can be readily translatable into another language. It is devices such as these that characterize the postcolonial Indian hybrid text
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
