CULTURAL UNTRANSLATABILITY AND MISINTERPRETATION IN JHUMPA LAHIRI'S INTERPRETER OF MALADIES

Inspired by Derrida's concept of "untranslatability", Michael Cronin's theory of interpreters' intrinsic duality and Homi Bhabha's "location of culture", this essay takes full consideration of the cultural turn in translation studies for the purpose of literary analysis. The aim is to investigate the failed attempts of achieving successful translation and adaptation to the norms of a new culture by discussing Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies. More specifically, the focus will be on three of the volume's short stories. While "Mrs. Sen's" and "This Blessed House" will be analyzed in terms of untranslatability, "Interpreter of Maladies" will be tackled in relation to the implications, responsibility and inescapable bias of being a mediator between cultures. These short stories transcribe into the literary realm the difficulty of inhabiting an interstitial, third space, of having to mediate between two worlds (in this case India and America), acknowledging the dangers of mistranslation and untranslatability.