CULTURAL RESONANCE: BENGALI LITERATURE IN MALAYALAM TRANSLATION The paper seeks to explore the rich tradition of translations from

other regional languages to Malayalm and highlights the reasons for the greater number of translations from Bengali to Malayalm. On examining the number of translations that came out in

Malayalm between 1772 and 1980, the greatest number were found to be from Bengali . More than three hundred works were translated into Malayalam from Bengali while the next in number was from Hindi which came below two hundred. Among overall

translations appearing in Malayalam during this period, translations from Sanskrit ranked the highest with translations of English works into Malayalam coming second. The reasons for the wide popularity and the prevalence of Malayalam translations of Bengali works are manifold. The spread of English education in both the Bengal and Kerala during the early stages of British colonialism, the socio-political and cultural developments that occurred in these regions during the late nineteenth and early half of the twentieth century, apart from the growth of the communist movements and the subsequent developments are all analyzed in depth in the course of the paper. Alongside with it, the similar turn of events that took place in the theatre and film in the two states are also briefly touched upon.