A careful examination of these translations suggests a deeper pattern. Translations from foreign languages are dictated by the shifts in literary sensibility. Often a new literary sensibility uses translations as a means of breaching the hegemony of the prevailing orthodoxies. The translation of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables in 1925 marked a breakthrough in fiction as it prepared readers for a representation of lower class life and social conflicts. The larger number of translations from Maupassant, Anatole France, Balzac, Chekhov, Dostoevsky and other European masters of fiction made no concession to the prevailing literary taste. In fact, they could be described as foreignizing translations as they disrupted the cultural codes that prevailed in Malayalam in the 30s and the 40s. The function of these translations was to make available to the society alternate models of thinking and imagining the world. It is significant that very little is translated from Anglo-American literature into Malayalam. English serves as a source language or a medium for translation as it has a large number of translations from other European languages and also from African or Latin-American literature. The literary translations that intervene in culture and project alternative strategies of reading and writing, in effect, function as literary criticism as they force open the very boundaries of what is considered 'literary'.

It may be instructive here to distinguish translation as literary criticism from literary translations that reinforce prevailing literary taste. Novels from Bengali, and to a lesser extent from some other Indian languages, appear regularly in Malayalam translation. The first Bangla novel to appear in Malayalam was Anand Math by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, in 1909. This was followed by Durgeshnandini in 1911. Most of the Bangla authors are available in Malayalam translation: Tagore (50 books), Sharat Chandra Chatterjee (48 books), Divijendralal Roy (40 books), Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (30 books). Several of these novels were serialized in Malayalam periodicals, something not done from other Indian languages. While Hindi serves as a medium or source language for many of these Indian languages including Bangla, Hindi literature has not really attracted the imagination of Malayalam readers. Translations from Sanskrit have increased in recent years, as there is a revival of interest on classical heritage. This kind of translation cannot be described as literary as a large number of texts such as the Upanishads or the Vedas are not chosen for their literary value alone. I would like to submit here that translations from other Indian languages into Malayalam do not function as literary criticism. With the possible exception of Tagore, these translations have not resulted in a revision of taste and model for writing in the literary field. The large number of Bangla novels that appear in Malayalam fulfil the demand for popular reading material for the middle class readers. The reason why these translations read like Malayalam may have something to do with the shared values and commonness of perceptions. Here the Bangla texts are reconstituted in the target language of Malayalam in accordance with 'values, beliefs and representations that pre-exist' in Malayalam (Venuti:1999:18). What they confirm is the world-views that are obtained in the social novels of Malayalam. The Bangla text does not become a means of destabilizing existing literary value systems.

Domesticating translations become ways of reinforcing certain subject positions already available in a speech community. A good example of this is Malayalam translation of Shivaji Savant's Mrityunjaya with the title Karnan in 1995. The context of this translation was the extraordinary popularity of M.T.Vasudevan Nair's Randamoozham (The Second Turn), which revisits the Mahabharat from Bhim's perspective. Mrityunjaya, and this is also true of Khandekar's Yayaati, is not received as a Marathi novel but as one of the possible rewritings of the epic story. The translation was not done from Marathi original but from its Hindi translation. The poetics of Malayalam already constituted by indigenous cultural history, reading habits and works like Bharataparyatanam, Eni Jnanuraangatte, Karnabhooshanam is reactivated and confirmed by these translations. They result in validating an exciting poetics. Since the Mahabharat has already been in circulation in various versions and is a cultural text of great significance any subversive rewriting will be resisted by the existing value systems. In this sense Karnan is not a new text but an endorsement of the canonical status of the Mahabharat as a cultural text. As far as I am aware a play like Andha-Yug by Dharmavir Bharati has not been translated into Malayalam. Its translation is not likely to enjoy wide readership.