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Translating Medieval Orissa 1AbstractDebendra K. DashDipti R. PattanaikThis article is predicated on the assumption that the culturalhistory of a society can be constructed by examining thetranslated texts of the culture in question. On the face of it,this seems to be assuming too much, but in the context ofmedieval Orissa, this is probably both necessary and possible.This is necessary because of the paucity, and sometimes, of thecontradictory nature, of historical material available on thesubject to provide any coherent vision of cultural/linguisticevolution in Orissa. Since there is a definite and identifiabletrajectory of translational practice in medieval Orissa, agenealogy of that practice can serve as a supplement to theavailable cultural historiography. Moreover, this is possiblebecause translational practice in medieval Orissa can betranslated as the index of socio-political forces in operation inthe society.While translating translational practice into indices ofculture and political economy, we are aware of the very lateemergence of what Daniel Simeoni (2002) calls the ‘sociologicaleye’ in Translation Studies, an epistemic displacement of attentionthat contextualizes translation activity rather than making anormative analysis of the same. We also hold with Simeoni thattranslations primarily are a fact of social praxis and a majorcomponent of social communication mirroring the ideological,argumentative or rhetorical principles with which the translatorsfunction and the tradition of construction and understanding of theirnations in which they are implicated. In at least two essays on theTranslation Today Vol. 3 Nos. 1 & 2, 2006 © CIIL 2006