ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a brief overview of existing translations of Premchand's works into German. Basic questions time and again coming up in the discourse on literary translation are the need of glossaries or glosses in the translated text, the right amount of local colour to be maintained in the translation and a matching register of language. A doctoral dissertation in English using Premchand's fiction as source material for tracing the image of Hinduism in his writing was submitted to the German University of Münster. It contained some interesting points on the relation between literature and religion, fictional and factual world and so on, but it probably did not at all contribute to the propagation of Premchand's works in German-speaking countries. The chapter discusses an analysis of selected passages from translations by different translators which serves as the basis for a discussion of translation techniques.
