Power relations Vs Personal Relations in the Selected Translations of O.Chandu Menon’s Indulekha

Abstract

The novel has three English translations. The first English version was by John Willoughby Francis Dumergue, a friend of O. Chandu Menon. The latest one was by Dr. Anitha Devassia. The novel had several novelties in terms of theme and technique though Chandu Menon was trying to ‘translate’ an alien genre to Malayalam literature. Anitha Devasia’s translation came more than hundred years after the publication of the original and Dumergue’s translation. This paper intends to analyze the two translations to identify the translator more representative of the author using Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. Bourdieu defines habitus as “a general, transposable disposition, which carries out a systematic, universal appreciation - beyond the limits of what has been directly learnt- of the necessity inherent in learning conditions”