Translating contemporary Hindi literature in Italy. Academy, publishers, readers

This paper combines a general survey of the publishing field – viz. the publication of translations of Indian literary texts into Italian from languages other than English - with a particular example, focussing on Hindi. Indian writers in English command a ready market and are published by the most prestigious Italian publishers, even if translators are often ignorant of the cultural background of the works and the translated works may confirm stereotypes about India. By contrast, several eminent Hindi writers have been translated into Italian, but only by academic translators and publishers with little or no distribution. The main exception shows that the editor intervened with a heavy domestication of the text. This prompts a reflection about the power relation between academic translator and editor of a mainstream publisher, in the framework of Bourdieu’s model of literary field.