Abstract

In what follows, I attempt to show that a look at some curious examples of translations from European texts makes us think about issues in translation theory and post-colonial theory from a slightly different angle. The metaphor of translation can very well be employed for understanding the relation between European texts, and some texts and some social and political practices in India in the colonial period, and this in turn helps us look critically at what I shall call our fuzzy post-colonialism. I also argue that Walter Benjamin's metaphor of translation as the after-life of a work can be extended to posit two basic modes of after-life