Untitled Document
About the Book:
This book shows how translation served a significant step towards greater interaction
and understanding between the people of Tamil country, Sri Lanka and Europe.
It dwells upon a wide range of translations of the printed books from Portugal,
Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, Germany, England and France to Tamil including
Bible in Hebrew, Greek, German, Portuguese and Latin. It exhibits how translation
became an important and integral part of the missionary work, a policy that
encouraged close contacts to reach out the people. Translation from Tamil to
Portuguese, Latin, German, Danish, French and English had also been executed
without any impediments.
The author outlines the patterns of production, circulation and consumption
of the printed works and their translations in the early modern age by giving
translators their rightful place in the complex networks of authors, patrons,
printers, book-sellers, and readers that shaped the market. The introduction
of print media constituted an effective and a meaningful step towards Tamil
prose development and translation growth.
The volume in innumerable ways very subtly explains how the missionaries came
to understand Tamil language to have had links with other classical languages
like Hebrew, Greek and Latin in the course of Bible translation. Tamil evolved
through translations and gained fresh vocabulary and gradually built its own
rules for translation. The study also reports the steps made in the translation
from Sanskrit, Marathi, Bengali and Telugu into Tamil and expresses the significance.
Contents:
Preface
List of Illustrations
Abbreviations
1. Introduction
2. Importing Books from Portugal to India: Making Translations from Latin, Portuguese,
Italian and English
into Tamil by the Catholic Missionaries, 1543-1865
3. Shipping Books from the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany and England to India
and Sri Lanka: Making Translations from Dutch, German and Portuguese into Tamil
by the Protestant Missionaries, 1661-1825
4. Translations from English, Sanskrit, Marathi, Bengali and Telugu into Tamil
by the Protestant Missionaries
and the Tamils, 1714-1857
5. Translation from Tamil to Portuguese, Latin, Danish, English, German and French,
1661-1887
6. The Conception, Production, and Circulation of the Bible Translation from Latin
to Tamil by the Catholic
Missionaries, 1554-1857
7. The Bible Translation and Transmission from Hebrew, Greek, German, Portuguese
and English into Tamil by
the Protestant Missionaries, 1708-1850
8. The Development of Tamil Prose, its Style and the Impact of Print in the Age
of Translation, 1554-1857
9. Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.
About the Author:
S. Jeyaseela Stephen is Directeur, Institut pour études Indo-Européennes.
He was Professor of Maritime History (2001-2013) at Visva-Bharati University,
Santiniketan. He is the author of numerous books including ‘Oceanscapes:
Tamil Textiles in the Early Modern World’ (2014), ‘A Meeting of
the Minds: European and Tamil Encounters in Modern Sciences, 1507-1857’
(2016), ‘Pondicherry under the French: Illuminating the Urban Landscape,
1674-1793’ (2018), ‘Towns of the Tamil Coast and Hinterland: The
Changing Form and Function, 1506-1801’ (2019), ‘Natural History
Knowledge, Tamil Coast and the Atlantic Within Reach, 1639-1857’ (2019)
and ‘Tamil History: The Spread of the Publishing Industry and Technology
(1578-1873)’ (2020). He received the best book prize of the year 1999
from the Government of Tamil Nadu. His books have been translated into Chinese
and Tamil.
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