Guest Lecture on Translation Studies

The Department of English and Cultural Studies, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Pune Lavasa Campus, in association with the CHRIST Language and Arts Network (CLAN), organised a guest lecture titled "Untranslating the Familiar: Language, Meaning, and Cultural Context" on 05 October 2026. The session was held in the Council Room, Management Block, from 01:30 PM onwards. The resource person was Dr Mrinmoy Pramanick, Associate Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, whose expertise in translation studies made him an apt speaker for the theme. The lecture was attended by students, research scholars, and faculty members of the department.

The session began with a formal welcome and an introduction of the speaker, which outlined his academic contributions and set the context for the afternoon. Dr Pramanick opened by questioning the common assumption that translation was a simple, neutral transfer of meaning from one language to another. He argued that the words people considered most familiar were often the hardest to carry across languages, because they were layered with history, memory, and cultural association. The idea of "untranslating," he explained, invited the audience to pause before such words and to recognise what was lost, altered, or silenced when they were rendered into another tongue.

Drawing on examples from India's multilingual landscape, the speaker demonstrated how meaning was shaped by context rather than by dictionaries alone. He showed that everyday terms relating to kinship, food, faith, and community resisted easy equivalents in English, and that a translator's choices were therefore always interpretive and never innocent. He further drew attention to the relationship between translation and power, observing that decisions about which languages, texts, and voices were translated reflected wider social hierarchies. In this regard, he highlighted how the experiences of marginalised communities and women were frequently flattened or erased in dominant-language translations, and he urged students to read translated works with greater critical awareness.

The lecture also encouraged participants to regard translation as a creative and ethical practice. Dr Pramanick emphasised that retaining the unfamiliar within a translated text, instead of smoothing it away, could preserve cultural difference and respect the source community. He connected these ideas to literary and cultural studies more broadly, noting that translation remained central to how Indian literatures were read, taught, and circulated across regions and across the world.

The lecture was followed by an interactive question-and-answer session, in which students raised queries on untranslatable words, the role of the translator, machine translation, and the place of regional languages in the classroom. The speaker responded with clarity and patience, making the discussion lively and engaging.

The event aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals of Quality Education (SDG 4), Gender Equality (SDG 5), and Reduced Inequalities (SDG 10), as it promoted inclusive learning and sensitivity towards linguistic and cultural diversity. Overall, the lecture enriched the participants' understanding of translation as a cultural act and deepened their appreciation of the relationship between language, meaning, and context. The session concluded with a vote of thanks to the speaker, the organisers, and the participants.