Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the function of translation as a pedagogical tool in nineteenth-century India in realigning existing linguistic boundaries and forms of knowledge. This ability to translate introduces new measures of competencies capable of launching young men across varied career paths.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the significance of the introduction of translation for pedagogical purposes in early nineteenth-century India. I will focus on two distinct contexts of 'learning' where translation played a significant part: the learning of 'Oriental' languages by British civil servants and missionaries in the Madras Presidency aspiring to a career in colonial administration or mission field and the training of Indian catechists aspiring to church ordination in the Bombay Presidency. Despite a complex multi-lingual cultural history, which entailed translation in various guises, the ability to translate had not yet featured as an important criterion by which to learn languages or to measure competence in any field. The introduction of translation as a formal pedagogical tool, serving to effectively teach and examine candidates in a variety of fields of knowledge—from language acquisition and administration, to training in divinity—I argue, has two consequences. One, translation as pedagogy introduces important new conceptions of what 'translation' is and of how languages function and relate to each other. I suggest that the pursuit of commensurability through academic translation exercises both produces different ways of knowing as well as introduces new measures of competencies in the real world. Two, by serving to separate those who could translate accurately from those who could not, it offers an effective mechanism by which young men, British and Indian, could progress within the structures of powerful colonial institutions: the power to translate accurately translates into successful career paths in either administering the civic body or the soul.