Amita Bhose: Translator, Comparativist, and Cultural Ambassador
Amita Bhose: Translator, Comparativist, and Cultural Ambassador

Author(s): Mrinmoy Pramanick
Subject(s): History, Language and Literature Studies, Literary Texts, Cultural history, Essay|Book Review |Scientific Life, Poetry, Bibliography, General Reference Works, Fiction, Diplomatic history, Cultural Essay, Conference Report, Philology, Translation Studies, Drama, Source Material
Published by: Presa Universitara Clujeana
Keywords: Amita Bhose; Bengali translation; world literature; Romanian literature; cultural ambassador; international literature; comparative literature;
Summary/Abstract: Since the commencement of colonial modernity in India, English, French, and German literature and philosophy have influenced Indian literature. Along with these three major literary spaces, authors also studied new European literature, particularly that of the former USSR republics and small European nations. Translations of literature from Romania, Hungary, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and many more nations have begun to appear frequently in Bengali magazines since the second decade of 20th century. The Bengali literary canon also was being reshaped by such translations and Europe was redefined beyond the established colonial map, as translation appeared as a new cartography. The literary canon of the colonisers was seen as a dominating literary source and the literature of such minor nations was alternative to those. Additionally, Indian minds were attempting to comprehend various European perspectives on World War- I and II at the moment of the shattering of the nations. Amita Bhose, a well-known translator, spent her life translating from Bengali and Sanskrit to Romanian and Romanian into Bengali and created an emotional bond between Romania, her Bengali as well as Indian heritage, and herself. This paper argues Amita Bhose and her works are attached to an emotional bond that causes a translator to find a new home in the world, and a translator may be regarded best as a cultural ambassador. Amita Bhose through her works from and into Bengali and Romanian bridges between two nations and produced a generation of students who essentially become comparatists in various capacities. An international initiative of an individual brought a new dimension in imagining world literature from a particular location and such paradigmatic practices can be argued as an alternative way of doing a non-anglophone, non-canonical literary comparison

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