On Some Aspects of Translating Children’s Literature in Contemporary India

Abstract

For the last two and a half decades, translation research has witnessed a boom. Beginning with the ‘cultural turn’ in the 1990s, translation research is now characterized by an informed cultural and political awareness supplemented by a host of deconstructionist methodologies. As a result, quite a sizeable quantity of insightful and controversial studies on translation is being published regularly. Riding on the back of conceptual advancements in the structure and function of language; aided by theoretical insights such as poststructuralist, feminist, and system theory approaches and so on, translation research today has created a niche for itself in (re)interpreting and (re)directing the prevailing value systems across disciplines. Following this trail, again from the early 1990s onwards, a few scholars began to create a specialized field of inquiry within translation research called translating children’s literature. This article focuses on this evolving field. However, most of the research on translating children’s literature is being undertaken in the west. Translation scholars in South Asia and more particularly in India have not paid the required attention to this growing field. The neglect is startling for the region continues to produce a significantly high quantity of children’s books across different languages. Therefore, the primary aim of this article is to encourage research on translating children’s literature in the Indian context. The article exemplifies and substantiates its call by providing a theoretical account of translating Marathi children’s literature into Hindi. For its material and discussion, the article draws from Kisson Ki Duniya: Marathi Baal Kahaniyon Ka Pratinidhi Sankalan (2019) (The Landscape of Tales: Selections from Marathi Children's Stories), which this author has co-translated and edited.