IISER MOHALI

Abstract: Translation served as a key tool in promoting colonial structures of power. Postcolonial approaches to translation have mostly been focused on questions of fidelity, power asymmetry and the hegemony of English subjugating vernacular languages. This talk examines translation as an act of recovering embedded knowledges, a process that exposes the multilingual underbelly of seemingly monolithic structures of language. Vernacular in this emerges as a site marked by miscegenation. Drawing on Tejaswini Niranjana, Carolyn Shread, and other theorists of translation, the talk will propose a decolonial approach to translation and vernacularity.

About the Speaker: Professor Nishat Zaidi teaches at the Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She was Honorary Director, Sarojini Naidu Centre for Women’s Studies at JMI. Her areas of research include Indian Writing in English, Indian Literatures, Literatures of the Indian Ocean, Travel Writing, Nineteenth-century literary traditions and cultural configurations in Urdu and Hindi, among others. Her extensive publications can be found here: nzaidi- December- 2025-2