A Multilingual Nation : Translation and Language Dynamics in India

Professor Rita Kothari

Ashoka University, India

Rita Kothari is a multilingual scholar and translator, who has made notable contributions to both theory and practice of translation in the Indian context. She has to her credit three seminal monographs Translating India: The Cultural Politics of English (St.Jerome Publishing, 2003); The Burden of Refuge (Orient Blackswan, 2007) and Memories and Movements (Orient Blackswan, 2013). She has edited (with Rupert Snell) Chutnefying English: The Phenomenon of Hinglish (Penguin India, 2011) and (with Judy Wakabayshi) Decentering Translation Studies: India and Beyond (John Benjamin Press, 2009). Her anthologies in translation Modern Gujarati Poetry (Sahitya Akademi, 1998); Speech and Silence (Zubaan Publishing, 2008) and Unbordered Memories (Penguin India, 2009) have been notable and pioneering contributions; so is her translation of the first Gujarati Dalit novel, Anglayat: The Stepchild. Her translation of Ila Mehta's novel Fence (2014) -- a real and metaphoric quest for home in a segregated society and more recently, the historical fiction of Gujarat's well-known writer and nationalist K.M.Munshi (with Abhijit Kothari) has drawn much attention. Kothari's recent publications include A Multilingual Nation : Translation and Language Dynamic in India (Oxford University Press, 2018) and Agnipariksha: An Ordeal Remembered (Orient Blackswan, 2018). Rita Kothari is a Professor of English, Ashoka University, India.