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Arjun Appadurai has developed perspectives for the study of the tendency of globalization (Appadurai 1991: 191-210). He has proposed a landmark theory according to which translation must reflect deterritorialization and displacement by the transfer, blending and shifting of local experience towards new multiple ethnic and social identities. He argues that the concept of the nation as the container of world literatures and the source and the target of translations has become increasingly questionable in a world that can now be regarded as post-national because of such phenomena as globalization, migration, exile and diaspora.

Therefore, a text originating in a post-colonial world like India, to be accepted or legitimized has to be in the translated state: Bhabha defines it as

Hybridity = International Culture

in opposition to cultural diversity. Appadurai on the other hand, locates it in the collective post-national psyche of modern migrant population.

Unmasking such rationalizations enables us to understand as to why most of the translations of the narratives of eminent writers like Shivarama Karanth and Vaikum Mohammed Bashir have failed to accomplish legitimacy in terms of not being made into the part of Western canon. Anita Mannur in her article The Changing Face Of Translation in Indian Literature states with full statistical details that during these five decades after India's Independence, 1074 Indian texts from sixteen different languages have been translated into English (Mannur 2000: 229). Of these, perhaps, only a few texts have been given entry into the western canonical establishment. The reason is very clear: translations into the master language get legitimized only if such translated narratives exist in an already translated - post-national - hybrid state. For instance, Tughluq by Girish Karnad or Samskara by U.R. Ananthamurthy have been integrated into the Western canon in view of their representation of post-colonial hybrid experience. Both Tughluq and Praneshacharya, the protagonists of Tughluq and Samskara respectively, speak from dehistoricised locations saturated by Sartrean existentialism. Aren't they our post-national heroes celebrating our hybridity appealing to an international audience? If Girish Karnad's Tughluq is cast in the mould of Camus' Caligula, Praneshacharya, the protagonist of Ananthamurthy's Samskara looks like a Sartrean prototype with incessant bouts of existential turmoil. On the other hand, despite the fact that not less than half a dozen major novels of Shivarama Karanth's have been translated into English, none of them has found a place in the critical canon in the West, precisely because he does not speak from the hybrid location. The fictional world of Karanth brilliantly portrays modern India's arrival as a nation with all her problematic and complex historical and intellectual baggage. Regrettably, such distinct nationalist preoccupations of Third World writers have attracted little critical attention in view of the alien nature of their ideological location.

On the contrary, the works of Ananthamurthy and Karnad are not only legitimized by the Western academic establishment as representing modern Indian experience, but also routinely prescribed as texts in Euro-American universities. Since the location of their intellect and sensibility signifies a translated state, translations of their works appeal immediately to the western psyche, which always operates from within the familiar experiential reality. In other words, these works have been legitimized since they operate within Eurocentric norms.

I have drawn upon Kannada literature mainly because that is my home ground. Even translations from other languages have been subject to the same criteria. For instance, we are told that 61 works of art were translated from Marathi into English after Independence (Mannur 2000: 229). How many of these translations or writers have been accepted or legitimized? Only a few writers like Vijay Tendulkar have been given entry into this elite circle. I believe one needs to look at the intellectual location of such writers to come to understand their acceptability in the West.

How should we negotiate this awkward post-colonial predicament? We are accepted only if we are articulated as translated, hybrid and post-national selves. Perhaps, the solution lies in consciously challenging the hegemonic Western critical discourse by constructing an alternative nationalist discourse, which, through translation between and among different Indian languages, facilitates and strengthens the multi-cultural and multi-ethnic ambience of our nation. One could argue that Sahitya Akademi, the National Body of Letters, has been endeavoring to promote nationalistic discourse through translation all these years. But it has concentrated only on translating the dominant and mainstream writers from one language to the other. The counter-nationalist discourse on the other hand, must accommodate the subaltern and the marginalized voices by introducing and familiarizing them to the readers of literatures in other Indian languages. Making a marginalized voice of Assam to be prominently heard in a remote village of Maharashtra through translation into Marathi for instance is the most desirable way of challenging and resisting the hegemonic post-colonial discourse.

REFERENCES

Appadurai, Arjun (1991) Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a Transnational Anthropology, in Richard. G. Fox (ed.) Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present. New York: Santa.

Ashcroft, Bill et al. (2004) Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies. London: Routledge.

Bhabha, H. J. (1994) The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.

Mannur, Anita (nd). The Changing Face of Translation in Indian Literature in Simon, Sherry (ed.) Changing the Terms: Translating in the Post-Colonial Era Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.

Medick, Doris Bachmann (nd.). Cultural Misunderstanding in Translation: Multicultural Coexistence and Multicultural Conceptions of World Literature. <http//webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/edoc/ia/eese/artic96/bachman/7_96html>

Niranjana, Tejaswini (1992) Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism and the Colonial Context. Berkley: University Of California Press.

Simon, Sherry and St. Piere (eds.) (2000) Changing the Terms: Translation in the Post-Colonial Era. Ottawa: University Of Ottawa Press.

Tervonen, Taina (nd.). Translation, Post-Colonialism and Power. <http./webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/edoc/ia/eese/arti98/tervonen/7_98html>

Wolf, Michaela (2000) The Third Space in Post-Colonial Representation in Simon Sherry (eds.) Changing the Terms: Translation in the Post-Colonial Era. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.

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