Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History: Language, Translation, and the Making of Protestant Identity

Israel, H.

Religious Transactions in Colonial South India locates the "making" of Protestant identities in South India within several contesting discourses. It examines evolving attitudes to translation and translation practices in the Tamil literary and sacred landscapes initiated by early missionary translations of the Bible in Tamil. Situating the Tamil Bible firmly within intersecting religious, literary, and social contexts, Hephzibah Israel offers a fresh perspective on the translated Bible as an object of cultural transfer. She focuses on conflicts in three key areas of translation - locating a sacred lexicon, the politics of language registers and "standard versions," and competing generic categories - as discursive sites within which Protestant identities have been articulated by Tamils. By widening the cultural and historical framework of the Tamil Bible, this book is the first to analyze the links connecting language use, translation practices, and caste affiliations in the articulation of Protestant identities in India.

Details

Published by: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date: 2011-08-03

Format: Paperback

ISBN-13: 9781349290048

DOI: 10.1057/9780230120129

Dimensions: 229cm x152cm

Pages: 269