Conversion, Translation and the Language of Autobiography: Re-inventing the Self in Transitions to Christianity in India (1700-1947)

该项目解决了翻译如何在地理位置，历史时刻和文化背景之间转换思想的问题。该项目在两个方面具有创新性：首先，它认为，当宗教从一种文化传播到另一种文化时，翻译起着关键的变革作用;其次，它分析了翻译过程和宗教皈依之间的相似之处。这两个问题将在西方的翻译概念和实践如何从根本上改变了南亚人理解宗教信仰和身份的方式的背景下进行研究，从世纪开始。合作者将应用一套新的翻译问题来研究南亚宗教概念和身份的转移：从世纪早期开始，欧洲学者将宗教文献翻译成印度语言，又是如何在南亚引入了新的宗教概念的构建、定义和框架？该项目团队为南亚宗教的研究带来了一种新的方法，认为翻译的概念方面是印度背景下开始看待，比较和分类宗教的方式所固有的：核心概念是否可以或不能被翻译成其他语言通常决定了欧洲学者是否认为一种宗教是一种宗教。该小组将探讨跨语言的价值观和概念的翻译与皈依，特别是宗教皈依的性质之间的概念联系。“翻译”和“转换”在概念上是紧密联系的，因为两者都指变化和转化的过程。虽然变化是两者的一个基本方面，但我们并不总是清楚如何理解转型为什么和如何发生以及它的目的是什么。由于这两种转换所涉及的认知过程只能通过语言来实现，因此对语言术语转换的分析揭示了基本的概念转换。该项目在翻译的概念和语言框架的应用方面具有创新性，以了解如何通过检查语言选择的变化来最好地理解宗教皈依的过程。调查人员将研究有关真实性的平行问题，困扰翻译和宗教转换，其中对转换的诚意的怀疑首次在概念上与成功“携带”的翻译焦虑有关。合作者将研究从18世纪到20世纪初，南亚皈依新教的人用泰米尔语和马拉地语写的20本皈依自传，以及它们的德语和英语译本。自18世纪以来，南亚的社会、政治和知识重新定位意味着个人在许多领域经历了变化，包括精神领域，这往往需要开发新的词汇来描述这些变化。该小组将研究如何在十八，十九和二十世纪初南亚人代表他们的自传，“翻译”或“转换”到文本的生活经验，并表达他们的信仰与新获得的宗教术语的变化变化的宗教身份的转变。他们将调查这些转换帐户被翻译成德语和/或英语时，特定的宗教术语的选择。他们还将研究皈依记录的写作和翻译如何向印度受众推进基督教概念，以及三个世纪以来皈依基督教的表达方式在多大程度上有所不同。通过他们的分析，该团队旨在突出翻译在构建和转化宗教文化方面的独特性质。

The project addresses the question of how translation serves to transform ideas between geographical locations, historical moments and cultural contexts. This project is innovative on two counts: first, it argues that translation plays a key transformative role when religions travel from one culture to another; second, it analyses parallels between translation processes and religious conversion. These two issues will be investigated in the context of how western translation concepts and practices introduced in South Asia from the eighteenth century onwards fundamentally changed the way South Asians understood religious faith and identity.The collaborators will apply a new set of translation questions on the transfer of religious concepts and identities in South Asia: how did translations of sacred texts into and out of Indian languages undertaken by European scholars from the early eighteenth century introduce new ways of constructing, defining and framing religious concepts in South Asia? The project team bring a fresh approach to the study of South Asian religions by arguing that this conceptual aspect of translation is intrinsic to the way religions began to be viewed, compared and categorized in the Indian context: whether core concepts could or could not be translated into other languages often determined whether a religion was considered a religion at all by European scholars. The team will explore conceptual links between the translation of values and concepts across languages and the nature of conversion, in particular religious conversion. 'Translation' and 'conversion' are closely linked conceptually since both refer to processes of change and transformation. Although change is a fundamental aspect of both, it is not always clear how we understand why and how transformation occurs and what purpose it serves. Since the cognitive processes involved in both cases of transformation are available to us only through language, an analysis of shifts in linguistic terms reveal fundamental conceptual shifts. This project is innovative in the application of both conceptual and linguistic frameworks of translation in order to understand how the process of religious conversion can best be understood by an examination of changes in language choice. The investigators will examine parallel concerns regarding authenticity that vexes both translation and religious conversion where doubts regarding the sincerity of conversion are for the first time conceptually linked to translation anxieties regarding successfully "carrying across". The collaborators will examine twenty conversion autobiographies written by South Asian converts to Protestant Christianity from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century in Tamil and Marathi and their translation into German and English. Social, political and intellectual reorientations in South Asia from the eighteenth century onwards meant that individuals experienced changes in many areas including the spiritual, which often required developing new vocabularies with which to describe these changes. The team will study shifts in how eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth-century South Asians represented their changed religious identities in their autobiographies, 'translating' or 'converting' lived experience into text and expressing their change in faith with a newly acquired religious terminology. They will investigate the selection of particular religious terminology when these conversion accounts were translated into German and/or English. They will also examine how the writing and translation of conversion accounts advanced Christian concepts to an Indian audience and to what extent conversion to Christianity was articulated differently across the three centuries. Through their analyses, the team aim to highlight the distinctive nature of translation in its ability to constitute and transform religious cultures.