SOME INTRICACIES IN TRANSLATION OF DALIT TABOOS

The present paper makes one aware about the cultural, linguistic, and social challenges involved in translating Dalit taboos into the target language. ‘Dalit taboos’ refers to social prohibitions, stigmas, and ritualized or institutionalized caste-based slang applied in literary texts. Translating such taboos is not only a linguistic transfer but a cultural negotiation: translator has to maintain strategies of justifying ‘performative’ Dalit taboos into the target language in the best possible way. It supports the target language to carry forward very close fervour from source text because the former often lacks equivalent social frameworks. Thus, through conceptual analysis and close textual study of select excerpts from Baburao Bagul’s Marathi fiction, this paper argues on intricate exercise of translation.