Urdu hai jis ka naam: A genealogy of Urdu language and literature through translation
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
5:00 pm to 7:00 pm
- Venue
- SOAS, University of London
- Room
- Room B205 (seond Floor, Brunei Building)
About this event
Join us for a talk by Dr Bilal on how translation has profoundly shaped Urdu language and literature.
About the event
In this working paper, Bilal will argue that translation has played an extraordinary role in the birth, development, and definition of Urdu language and literature, far greater than for most other modern languages. He will go beyond the conventional histories of Urdu language and literature to focus on translation as the cause and agent of birth and change for Urdu, while categorizing different kinds of translational projects and impacts on Urdu over its history. He will identify some key moments, authors, translators, sites, and institutions pertaining to translation that have affected the development of Urdu language and literature profoundly and shaped it for posterity. He will also categorise different types of translation as pertinent to Urdu development, elucidating the impact of each. The paper shall explicate the various linguistic, cultural, and political impulses behind this chain of translational causality, to create a genealogical study of translation as discourse in Urdu language and literature.
About the speaker
Dr. Maaz Bin Bilal is a poet, translator, and cultural critic. He has published widely in journals, magazines and newspapers across genres. Maaz is the author of Ghazalnama: Poems from Delhi, Belfast, and Urdu and the translator of Fikr Tausvi’s Urdu diary into English The Sixth River: A Journal from the Partition of India. His work has been widely reviewed in India, the UK and the US. Excerpts from his translation of The Sixth River are also prescribed in the University of Delhi BA English (Hons.) syllabus. His poems have been translated into Irish Gaelic and Bangla.
Maaz earned his PhD for the dissertation on “From Hellenism to Orientalism: Friendship in E. M. Forster, with Reference to Forrest Reid,” which he is now revising into a monograph, Heterodoxies of Friendship in E. M. Forster’s work. He continues to research and write on ideas of the politics of friendship and multiculturalism, particularly in the South Asian context. He is also deeply interested in Urdu-Hindi poetry, and continues to research and translate it. His next book is a translation from Persian of Mirza Ghalib’s long poem on Banaras, Chirag-i-Dair.
Image Credit: Fareej Fateyma via Unsplash.
