Across Languages, Across Struggles: The Disruptive Dynamics of Mahasweta Devi in Translation

Abstract

The world’s engagement with Mahasweta Devi’s (1926-2016) scholarship has, for the most part, been made possible through translation. A vast and varied body of articles, reviews, essays, memoirs, interviews, and critical writings on Devi’s works has emerged, enabled by the availability of her texts to readers worldwide through translation. For instance, scholars such as Gabrielle Collu, Jennifer Wenzel, Minoli Salgado, Tabish Khair, Lawrence Buell, and Rob Nixon have developed their critical perspectives on Devi solely through her works translated into English from Bengali. It is imperative, therefore, to delve into the chequered experiences of the translators themselves to get a full view of what Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak deems as the “usual ‘translator’s problems’” in her foreword in Breast Stories. During Devi’s lifetime, and even after her passing, numerous translators have produced versions of her works in both the regional languages of the subcontinent and in English. Whether for the readers’ convenience or their safety, they have frequently opted to place useful information in footnotes or endnotes. It is striking that nearly all translators of Devi have remarked on the distinctive linguistic plurality of her writing—a textured collage that blends, in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s words, “literary Bengali, bureaucratic Bengali, tribal Bengali, and the languages of the tribals.” There is a natural celerity to Devi’s prose, with each dialectal leap and jolt sharpening the sense of relentless momentum. As no standard translation method can reproduce this momentum, Radha Chakravarty terms it the “dynamic disruptiveness” of Devi’s writing. This paper investigates how translators—focusing particularly on the translations of Devi’s works—navigate these disruptive dynamics and attempt to address Lawrence Venuti’s enduring question: “Can a translation ever communicate to its readers the understanding of the foreign text that foreign readers have?” (The Translation Studies Reader 473).