Abstract

Globalization as a process has directly affected the production of language; so much so, that translation into English, from indigenous literatures has become the argument for a new, polyglossic civility. With the virtualization of frontiers, culture is less defined in terms of national interests than a shared set of global ones. In this paper, I will look at the “automation” and the “economic might” (Cronin, 5) of English as the lingua franca of the global village that entails “continuous [global] flow of ideas, information, commitment, values and tastes” (Dash, 53). As an illustration, I will do a close reading of Gayatri Spivak’s translation of Mahasveta Devi’s short story “Draupadi”; and while reading Spivak’s rendition of the text into English from Bangla, I will grapple with discourses on contemporary feminist theory, localization and the global village, translation studies, transimperial and intracolonial. Furthermore, my paper will also look at the aesthetic ideology of postnational English literature dominated by literary figures like Rushdie and Walcott and theorists such as Bhaba and Spivak as I eventually intend to question the apparent Westernizing and homogenizing agenda of literary globalization. <p>Works cited: Dash, Robert. Globalization: For Whom and for What. Latin American Perspectives. Vol. 25. No. 6.(Nov., 1998), pp. 52-54. Cronin, Michael. P. Translation and Globalization. London: Routledge. 2004.</p>