Comparative literature and translation history

The aim of my essay is to explore and articulate the relationship between tTranslation Hhistory and cComparative Lliterature. I start with a brief survey of the ways in which comparatists have defined the role of tTranslation Sstudies within their discipline, as well as an exploration of the complexity of this relationship in the most recent ACLA American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) reports. Employing this as a point of departure, I explore the possible results that can be obtained through a study of transnational literary lives (e.g., James Joyce) and texts that transcends their original national systems, paying special attention to their inherent “‘wordliness”’ (Walkowitz). I have, therefore, focused on the role that the history of translation practices can play in the study of transnational literary exchanges as well as on the complications it engenders in our understanding of discrete national literary systems. In particular, I claim that translations and rewritings should be considered part and parcel of national literary histories, thus, emphasiszing the porosity of literary borders. In the final section of the essay, I discuss the margins of translation (e.g., mistranslations, pseudo-translations, untranslatables) as an especially interesting site of inquiry, maintaining and maintains that the study of the role of translation in society cannot do away with the aesthetic discourses on which translation choices are based and with a careful analysis of the encounters between cultures that translated texts foreground.