Thinking in English, Speaking in Hindi: Translation, Creativity, and Indian Media Worlds

FAIN: FEL-281868-22

Tejaswini Ganti
New York University (New York, NY 10012-1019)

Research and writing of a book on the role of translation in global media.

What does it mean to create or “think” in one language while executing that creative vision in another? What are the implications for a globally dominant media industry when a significant proportion of its members are not fluent in the language of its productions? What is the role of mass media in the politics of language and identity in a postcolonial nation-state? These questions are at the center of my book project, which focuses on the centrality of translation in cultural production, specifically in the Hindi film industry, also known as “Bollywood.” Although conventional understandings and discussions of translation often posit it as a realm of loss or inadequacy, what the American poet John Ciardi termed the “art of failure” (Ciardi 1961) our contemporary world could not function without translation. Translation enables the circulation of ideas, images, narratives, goods, people, and capital. In India, I argue that translation makes both old and new media worlds possible.

Associated Products

Language, Place, and Political Economy: Multilingual Mumbai and the Making of its Media Industries. (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Language, Place, and Political Economy: Multilingual Mumbai and the Making of its Media Industries.
Author: Tejaswini Ganti
Abstract: Language plays a critical role in the political economy of media industries, whether via the earmarking of subsidies for filmmaking in specific languages, the promotion of a particular dialect as a normative standard in advertising, the daily translations undertaken by news agencies, or Hollywood studios’ local-language production strategies. Language is also a category of socio-political identity, form of labor, set of commodified skills, and object of market exchange (Irvine 1988). Nowhere is this more apparent than in India, which is perhaps unique among film-producing nations for having at least 8 major film industries, distinguished by language, and for producing films in about 20 different languages every year. This paper examines the critical intersection between language, place, and the political economy of media industries with a focus on Mumbai and the Hindi film industry, and the allied dubbing industry also located in the city. Unlike other major centers of film production around the world, Mumbai is the only city where the language of the film industry’s output does not correspond to the dominant languages of the region or with the official state language. By emerging in a colonial port city like Bombay rather than in the Hindi “heartland” of northern India, the Hindi film industry drew personnel from all over the subcontinent and beyond, and fluency in Hindi has never been a prerequisite for acting, directing, or even screenwriting. With Urdu-speaking writers, German-speaking directors, Bengali-speaking actors, Marathi-speaking singers, and Punjabi-speaking producers, translation was critical for establishing and forging a film industry in the highly multilingual site that was Bombay in the 1930s (Mukherjee 2020).
Date: 04/14/2023
Conference Name: Society for Cinema & Media Studies, Annual Meeting

The Value of Surprise: Reflections on Conducting Ethnography in Media Industries, (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: The Value of Surprise: Reflections on Conducting Ethnography in Media Industries,
Author: Tejaswini Ganti
Abstract: Citing sociologist Paul Willis, cultural studies scholar Ien Ang, in her essay, “On the Politics of Empirical Audience Research,” states that the value of ethnography for researchers is, “a commitment to submit ourselves to the possibility of ‘being surprised,’ of reaching knowledge not prefigured in one’s starting paradigm (Ang 1991: 50).” As an anthropologist whose main methodological approach to the study of media industries is long-term ethnographic fieldwork, in this talk I reflect upon some of the lessons I have learned by being surprised through my research about media industries in India. I have organized them into four broad principles, which I will elaborate upon further during the talk, to guide research. First, it is important to interrogate and expand our ideas of a media industry. Second, we should complicate our understanding of commercial media production. Third, it is necessary to critically examine enumerative discourses and quantitative data generated by media industries. And finally, we should embrace uncertainty or in other words, submit to the possibility of being surprised. By grounding the study of a media industry in a specific time, place, and space, and incorporating questions of subjectivity and social relations, ethnography offers us insights into the processes, possibilities, complexities, and constraints of media production, consumption and circulation that are not apparent from close readings of media texts or analysis of macro-level data about media industries and commercial outcomes.
Date: 06/21/2023
Conference Name: Locating Media Industries -- Cities, Spaces, Places

"Transcreating the Magic" (Article)
Title: "Transcreating the Magic"
Author: Tejaswini Ganti
Abstract: Dubbing professionals in Mumbai serve as key cultural producers, brokers, and mediators in India's contemporary media landscape, making it possible for Hindi-speaking audiences to experience and enjoy a diverse range of content from all over the country and the world. The art of recreating the original requires a great deal of vocal, linguistic, cultural and technical expertise.
Year: 2023
Format: Magazine
Periodical Title: Outlook India
Publisher: Outlook Publishing (India)

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