Translation as Strategic Foreignization: A Study of the Politics of Translation in Mother Forest: An Unfinished Autobiography

Abstract

The study draws upon Lawrence Venuti's concept of foreignization as a strategic tool employed in the translation of CK Janu's Mother Forest: An Unfinished Autobiography. The translation works to mould an ethnic autobiography and represent a subaltern subject through explicit signifiers of subalternity, masqueraded as an attempt to “retain the flavour of Janu’s intonation and the sing-song nature of her speech in translation”. As a mode of representation, this study identifies the text as catering to a transnational publishing industry and the global academic marketplace, transforming the cultural value of an ethnic subaltern text into what Graham Huggan describes as "tawdry ethnic goods" in the late capitalist supermarket.