Translating Contexts, Transforming Cultures:

A Bengali Adaptation of Mahesh Elkunchwar’s Vāḍā Cirebandī

Authors

  • Arti Nirmal
  • Sayan Dey

Keywords:

translation, practicalize, postcolonial, transcontextualization, spatio-temporal

Abstract

The concept of translation is usually limited within the frontiers of languages, often conceived as words and phrases. It restricts the diverse possibilities of going beyond textual translation to analyze contextual translation, or “transcontextualization”. This argument attempts to realize a (normally) unrealizable perspective on translation through Sohag Sen’s Bengali adaptation of Mahesh Elkunchwar’s play Vāḍā Cirebandī (The Old-Stone Mansion, 1985), an adaptation which encompasses both the text and its context(s). The criticism of colonial legacies in postcolonial India, as unraveled through the rural-urban divide in this play, does not portray identical obstacles and grievances in Elkunchwar’s Maharashtra and Sohag Sen’s Bengal. Keeping different contexts in mind, this paper will elaborate the manifold ways in which transcreation/transcontextualization exposes the problem of generalized textual representations. It will also reflect upon the diverse ways through which transcontextualization incorporates geographical and ontological variants within specific spatio-temporal zones. 

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Author Biographies

Arti Nirmal

Arti Nirmal is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Banaras Hindu University, India. She earned her degrees of B.A. (English Hons.), M.A.(English), B.Ed. (Gold Medalist), and Ph.D.(English) from the Banaras Hindu University with distinctions. She has to her credit a book Shifting Homes and Transnational Identities: Women Novelists of the Indian Subcontinental Diaspora and several research papers published in reputed journals. She has presented research papers in various national and international seminars and conferences in India and abroad. Her areas of academic interest include literary theory and criticism, Shakespearean drama, diaspora literature, cultural studies and gender studies.

Sayan Dey

Sayan Dey is a Lecturer in English, Faculty of Humanities, Royal Thimphu College (Affiliated to Royal University of Bhutan) and a PhD scholar in the Department of English, Banaras Hindu University. As a contributor and editor, his publications appear in journals and anthologies from: School of Advanced Social Studies (Slovenia), Lexington Press (US), Theatre/Public (France), Flinders University Press (Australia), Addleton Academic Publishers (US), Cambridge Scholars Publishing (UK) and Heidelberg University Press (Germany). He has been the recipient of several academic awards, such as GAPS Travel Grant, German Research Foundation Travel Grant, Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship and JIWS Fellowship.

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Published

2021-11-18

How to Cite

Nirmal, A. ., & Dey, S. . (2021). Translating Contexts, Transforming Cultures: : A Bengali Adaptation of Mahesh Elkunchwar’s Vāḍā Cirebandī. Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry, 5(1), 51–62. Retrieved from https://sanglap-journal.in/index.php/sanglap/article/view/167