A Multilingual Nation Translation and Language Dynamic in India: With a New Foreword by Professor Christi Merrill

by Kothari, Rita; (Ed), Rita Kothari

• ISBN13: 9780143471080
• ISBN10: 0143471082
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2025-09-08
• Publisher: Vintage Books
• More Book Details

Summary

How does India live through the oddity of being both a nation and multilingual? Is multilingualism in India to be understood as a neatly laid set of discrete languages or a criss-crossing of languages that runs through every source language and text? The questions take us to reviewing what is meant by language, multilingualism and translation. Challenging these institutions,
A Multilingual Nation illustrates how the received notions of translation discipline do not apply to India. It provocatively argues that translation is not a ‘solution’ to the allegedly chaotic situation of many languages, rather it is its inherent and inalienable part.

An unusual and unorthodox collection of essays by leading thinkers and writers, new and young researchers, it establishes the all-pervasive nature of translation in every sphere in India and reverses the assumptions of the steady nature of language, its definition and the peculiar fragility that is revealed in the process of translation.

Author Biography

Rita Kothari is Professor of English, Ashoka University, India. She is a multilingual scholar of translation (theory and practice), language politics and identity in India. Her ethnographic work is based out of western India, especially Gujarat and Sindhi-speaking parts of Kutch and Rajasthan. She writes especially on local and marginalized communities. One of her acclaimed works is a seminal book on translation studies, Translating India: The Cultural Politics of English.