A question I often get asked is who my imagined reader is when I translate from Malayalam to English. My answer is that I don’t have an intended or ideal reader, only a reader of English who could be based anywhere in the world, speaking any of the many Englishes (yes, plural). This often generates a discussion about ‘native readers’ and the translator as ‘native speaker/writer’ of English. These are loaded terms, I have come to realise; the idea of the ‘native,’ the custodian of English as a language, often translated as English speakers in the western Anglophone world, especially in the UK and the USA. Rules and customs about how words are used, what words are considered ‘standard’ or ‘exotic’ or ‘alien’ abound. Here, I discuss one such practice, that of italicising words to denote their exoticism or alienness in relation to ‘standard’ English.
Historically, English is a language that has been generous in its accommodation of words from other languages. Indeed, it could even be argued that, taken as a whole, it is a collection of borrowed words. So, why italicise some words? One answer often given is that they are not in the dictionary yet.
The dictionary reflects the interests and concerns of those who are tasked with compiling them. Danica Salazar, World English Editor at OED, points out that its first edition, compiled during the nineteenth century, reflected the interests and concerns of the British then – “the native flora and fauna of their colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean; exotic local terms that British travellers and settlers pick up in these overseas territories; the names of the vast array of products that they import from every corner of the globe.” Since the nineteenth century, the number of English speakers worldwide has grown. The UK, currently, is third in terms of large English-speaking populations (the USA being the first and India the second). ‘Non-native’ speakers vastly outnumber ‘native’ speakers, using English in many different ways as is evident from OED’s pages on World English which lists over thirty Englishes.
So, why are some words, used routinely by English speakers in some parts of the world, italicised as non-normal in texts published in English? Why are some words from other languages, especially those that denote cultural aspects of everyday life, italicised when found in an English text? Consider these sentences:
A: ‘I am really not a fan of spotted dick. I’d rather have payasam for dessert.’
B: ‘I am really not a fan of spotted dick. I’d rather have payasam for dessert.’
Why is ‘A’ accepted practice and not ‘B’ even though both ‘spotted dick’ and ‘payasam’ might be equally familiar or unfamiliar for many readers of English?
Writer and artist Khairani Barokka argues that it is “a form of linguistic gatekeeping; a demarcation between which words are ‘exotic’ or ‘not found in the English language,’ and those that have ‘a rightful place in the text…’” I agree; it is, in my opinion, the imposition of a dominant way of speaking/writing a language on other ways of using that same language.
Arguments have also been made that italicising helps alert a reader to a word that is not in normal circulation. Who is this mindless reader who cannot recognise this without editorial interference, who needs to be alerted to the presence of the rare, exotic other that has insinuated into the pages of the book they are reading? Take these sentences for instance:
‘Amma and Achchan are celebrating their wedding anniversary today.’
‘Amma and Achchan are celebrating their wedding anniversary today.’
By the customs of italicisation, the word ‘Amma’ (mother) is not italicised in the first sentence because it is in the dictionary, but Achchan (father) is because it is not. Neither word is in normal circulation in British or American English. Does the word really need to be italicised to alert the reader of the presence of the exotic?
The issue of exoticizing, othering, is even more significant in translations. The translator’s task is not just to render words and sentences from one language to another, but also to take across the border, as best as they can, the socio-cultural milieu, the aesthetics, the dhwani/resonance, the musicality of the original language and the author’s specific way of writing. Often, we push against the demand to domesticize, finding ways to use language in innovative ways, choosing to retain terms and phrases from the original where necessary, trusting in the intelligence and imagination of our readers. Many of us translate from multi-cultural milieus into English; our normal, everyday Englishes reflect the linguistic and cultural diversity of such milieus.
Colonisation is a process of domination and erasure. In linguistic terms, it is the imposition of English over languages of the colonised, or Hindi over other regional languages, or mainstream languages over languages of Adivasi communities (an issue I discuss in the translator’s introduction to Sheela Tomy’s Valli, which used both mainstream Malayalam and Paniya, the language of the indigenous Adivasi people of Wayanad, Kerala, where the book is set). Translation can help decolonise language. As someone who straddles borders and borderlands both as an immigrant and as a translator, I see this as a political responsibility.
Dr Jayasree Kalathil is the author of a children’s book, The Sackclothman, which has been translated into Malayalam, Telugu and Hindi. Her translations have won the JCB Prize for Literature in 2020 (Moustache by S. Hareesh) and the Crossword Books Jury Award for Indian Language Translation in 2019 (Diary of a Malayali Madman by N. Prabhakaran). Her latest translation, Valli by Sheela Tomi, was shortlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature and the Atta Galatta-BLF Book Prize in 2022. Before becoming a full-time translator, Jayasree worked in anti-racism and human rights in relation to mental health and psycho-social disability for over twenty years. Her works in this area include Recovery and Resilience: African, African- Caribbean and South Asian Women’s Stories of Recovering from Mental Distress, and the co-authored textbook Values and Ethics in Mental Health: An Exploration for Practice. Jayasree hails from Kerala, India, and currently lives in a small village in the New Forest in England.