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，它认为翻译在宗教从一种文化传播到另一种文化时起着关键的变革作用；其次，分析了翻译过程与宗教皈依之间的相似之处。这两个问题将在18世纪以来引入南亚的西方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调查。合作者将在南亚的宗教概念和身份的转移上应用一套新的翻译问题：从18世纪早期开始，欧洲学者对印度语言的神圣文本的翻译是如何为南亚的宗教概念的构建、定义和框架引入新的方法的？项目团队认为，翻译的概念方面是在印度背景下看待、比较和分类宗教的固有方式，这为南亚宗教研究带来了一种新的方法：核心概念能否被翻译成其他语言，往往决定了欧洲学者是否将一种宗教视为宗教。该小组将探讨跨语言的价值观和概念的翻译与转换的性质之间的概念联系，特别是宗教转换。“翻译”和“转换”在概念上是紧密联系在一起的，因为它们都指的是变化和转换的过程。虽然变化是两者的基本方面，但我们并不总是清楚如何理解为什么和如何发生变化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有通过语言才能实现，因此对语言术语变化的分析揭示了基本的概念变化。这个项目在翻译的概念和语言框架的应用上是创新的，目的是通过对语言选择变化的研究来理解宗教皈依的过程。研究人员将研究困扰翻译和宗教皈依的真实性的平行问题，其中对皈依诚意的怀疑首次在概念上与成功“跨越”的翻译焦虑联系起来。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，以及它们被翻译成德语和英语的自传。十八世纪以来，南亚的社会、政治和知识取向的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，这往往需要发展新的词汇来描述这些变化。该团队将研究十八、十九和二十世纪早期南亚人如何在自传中表达他们改变了的宗教身份，将生活经验“翻译”或“转换”成文本，并用新获得的宗教术语表达他们在信仰上的变化。他们将调查在将这些转换帐目翻译成德语和（或）英语时对特定宗教术语的选择。他们还将研究皈依记录的写作和翻译如何向印度观众推进基督教概念，以及在三个世纪中，皈依基督教的程度有多大不同。通过他们的分析，该团队旨在突出翻译在构成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.