Dr Claire Gallien lectures at the English Department of the University Paul Valéry Montpellier 3  and is member of the CNRS . She works on 17th-18th century orientalism, as well as contemporary Arab literatures in English and in translation. Her first book, L’Orient Anglais (Oxford, 2011), deals with the interactions between popular and scholarly cultures of the East in 18th century England.

Claire Gallien, University Paul Valéry Montpellier 3

From one empire to the next: The reconfigurations of “Indian” literatures from Persian to English translations

MULOSIGE is excited to share the work of Dr Claire Gallien, whose article “From one empire to the next: The reconfigurations of “Indian” literatures from Persian to English translations” is now available in the journal Translation Studies. Dr Gallien first presented this research at MULOSIGE’s workshop Multilingual Locals and Significant Geographies Before Colonialism.
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This workshop culminated in a Special Issue of the journal Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East entitled “Multilingual Locals and Textual Circulation before Colonialism”. You can read more about the MULOSIGE Special Issue here.
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Abstract: From one empire to the next: The reconfiguration of “Indian” literatures from Persian to English Translations
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This article focuses on the first translations of Sanskrit literature into English in the late eighteenth century and how they can be contrasted with pre-existing cultures of translation in India, and in particular with Mughal precedents. Following a brief survey of Sanskrit and Persian theories of translation, the article offers a study of British reconfigurations of Indian literatures in translation and highlights British orientalists’ tendencies to either disavow or reject their reliance on Indian literature in Persian.
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This move towards absenting Indo-Persian precedents and presenting English translations as new, essentially distinct, and superior created a symbolic space where English could challenge and replace a Persian culture of translation, projecting British colonial rule as the new dominant force dislodging the Mughals in India.
literature in Persian.
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