Ronit Ricci

Jan van der Putten

The field of translation studies was largely formed on the basis of modern Western notions of monolingual nations with print-literate societies and monochrome cultures. A significant number of societies in Asia – and their translation traditions – have diverged markedly from this model. With their often multilingual populations, and maintaining a highly oral orientation in the transmission of cultural knowledge, many Asian societies have sustained alternative notions of what ‘text’, ‘original’ and ‘translation’ may mean and have often emphasized ‘performance’ and ‘change’ rather than simple ‘copying’ or ‘transference’. The contributions in Translation in Asia present exciting new windows into South and Southeast Asian translation traditions and their vast array of shared, inter-connected and overlapping ideas about, and practices of translation, transmitted between these two regions over centuries of contact and exchange. Drawing on translation traditions rarely acknowledged within translation studies debates, including Tagalog, Tamil, Kannada, Malay, Hindi, Javanese, Telugu and Malayalam, the essays in this volume engage with myriad interactions of translation and religion, colonialism, and performance, and provide insight into alternative conceptualizations of translation across periods and locales. The understanding gained from these diverse perspectives will contribute to, complicate and expand the conversations unfolding in an emerging ‘international translation studies’.

Theories, Practices, Histories

Translation in Asia

The spread of Islam eastward into South and Southeast Asia was one of the most significant cultural shifts in world history. As it expanded into these regions, Islam was received by cultures vastly different from those in the Middle East, incorporating them into a diverse global community that stretched from India to the Philippines. In Islam Translated, Ronit Ricci uses the Book of One Thousand Questions—from its Arabic original to its adaptations into the Javanese, Malay, and Tamil languages between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries—as a means to consider connections that linked Muslims across divides of distance and culture. Examining the circulation of this Islamic text and its varied literary forms, Ricci explores how processes of literary translation and religious conversion were historically interconnected forms of globalization, mutually dependent, and creatively reformulated within societies making the transition to Islam.

Literature, Conversion, and the Arabic Cosmopolis of South and Southeast Asia

Islam Translated

Lanka, Ceylon, Sarandib: merely three disparate names for a single island? Perhaps. Yet the three diverge in the historical echoes, literary cultures, maps and memories they evoke. Names that have intersected and overlapped - in a treatise, a poem, a document - only to go their own ways. But despite different trajectories, all three are tied to narratives of banishment and exile. Ronit Ricci suggests that the island served as a concrete exilic site as well as a metaphor for imagining exile across religions, languages, space and time: Sarandib, where Adam was banished from Paradise; Lanka, where Sita languished in captivity; and Ceylon, faraway island of exile for Indonesian royalty under colonialism. Utilising Malay manuscripts and documents from Sri Lanka, Javanese chronicles, and Dutch and British sources, Ricci explores histories and imaginings of displacement related to the island through a study of the Sri Lankan Malays and their connections to an exilic past.

Exile and Diaspora in Sarandib, Lanka and Ceylon

Banishment and Belonging

A ground-breaking exploration of exile and diaspora as they relate to place, language, religious tradition, literature and the imagination.

Exile was a potent form of punishment and a catalyst for change in colonial Asia between the seventeenth and early twentieth centuries. Vast networks of forced migration supplied laborers to emerging colonial settlements, while European powers banished rivals to faraway locations. Exile in Colonial Asia explores the phenomenon of exile in ten case studies by way of three categories: “kings,” royals banished as political exiles; “convicts,” the vast majority of those whose lives are explored in this volume, sent halfway across the world with often unexpected consequences; and “commemoration,” referring to the myriad ways in which the experience and its aftermath were remembered by those exiled, relatives left behind, colonial officials, and subsequent generations of descendants, devotees, historians, and politicians. Intended for a broad readership interested in the colonial period in Asia (South and Southeast Asia in particular), the volume encompasses a range of disciplinary perspectives: anthropology, gender studies, literature, history, and Asian, Australian, and Pacific studies. In addition to presenting fascinating, little-known, and varied case studies of exile in colonial Asia and Australia, the chapters collectively offer a sweeping, contextualized, comparative approach that links the narratives of diverse peoples and locales. Rather than confining research to the European colonial archives, whenever possible the authors put special emphasis on the use of indigenous primary sources hitherto little explored. Exile in Colonial Asia invites imaginative methodological innovation in exploring multiple archives and expands our theoretical frontiers in thinking about the interconnected histories of penal deportation, labor migration, political exile, colonial expansion, and individual destinies.

Kings, Convicts, Commemoration

Exile in Colonial Asia

Greg Fealy

Contention has surrounded the status of minorities throughout Indonesian history. Two broad polarities are evident: one inclusive of minorities, regarding them as part of the nation’s rich complexity and a manifestation of its “Unity in Diversity” motto; the other exclusive, viewing with suspicion or disdain those communities or groups that differ from the perceived majority. State and community attitudes towards minorities have fluctuated over time. Some periods have been notable for the acceptance of minorities and protection of their rights, while others have been marked by anti-minority discrimination, marginalisation and sometimes violence. This book explores the complex historical and contemporary dimensions of Indonesia’s religious, ethnic, LGBT and disability minorities from a range of perspectives, including historical, legal, political, cultural, discursive and social. It addresses fundamental questions about Indonesia’s tolerance and acceptance of difference, and examines the extent to which diversity is embraced or suppressed.

Ronit Ricci

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