Being “in-translation” in a post-colony

This article reflects on the translation of feminism into the local language in Kerala State, India, over the past twenty-five years. Drawing on Tejaswini Niranjana's claim that the feminist translator located in post-colonial societies lives constantly “in-translation”, I argue that she needs not only to straddle different linguistic registers and political languages, but also to engage in multiple “modes of translation”. I seek to view the efforts at translating feminism into the local language within two distinct modes of translation: the “faithful” mode, which aims for stability of terms created, and is typically associated with pedagogy and high intellectual activity, and the “grounded” mode, seemingly derived out of a broadly modern critical possibility, expressed in local idiom and clearly serving local political ends.