Translating the oral tradition of community literature

Abstract

Abstract Community literature, here, refers to a body of oral literatures by the diverse ethnic groups of India that speak thousands of indigenous languages. Many less explored indigenous groups with living oral traditions are found in India but their orality is not yet documented. In our attempts to find such cultural groups, we came across many cultural groups that are being ignored because of their small population, lack of political backup, lack of governmental upliftment policies, socio-economic conditions, or lifestyle. The cultural groups that are being referred to here are not the communities that live in tribal or forest areas but they are groups of people that live among us in our cities or villages. These groups mainly consist of migrating populations whose members wander here and there to earn their livelihood. These are the cursed communities in the sense that they have been ignored by all – by the government itself and also by the dominant cultural groups. In this paper, we try to record our own experiences and the difficulties that we faced while translating the oral tradition of such a cultural group – the Gādaliyā Luhār community. This paper also tries to show how translation is a two-tier (or a three-tier) process in countries such as India where the majority of marginalised cultural groups speak indigenous languages or dialects.