1.

“The art of translation is, and will remain, one of the most important and attractive tools for
the realization of our high comparative aims. But the means should not be mistaken for the end.
[...] True comparison is possible only when we have before us the objects of our comparison in
their original form. Although translations facilitate the international traffic or distribution of
literary products immensely [...] nobody will dispute Schopenhauer’s opinion that even the best
translation leaves something to be desired and can never replace the original. Therefore the
principle of translation has to be not replaced but accompanied by a considerably more
important comparative tool, the principle of polyglotism. The principle of translation is confined
to the indirect commerce of literature in contrast to the principle of polyglotism which is the
direct commerce itself” (Hugo Meltzl, “Present Tasks of Comparative Literature”, 1877).

2. “How far is accuracy of translation possible? It is clear that both in prose and verse there are
difficulties in the way of the translator sometimes unsurmountable. Even in prose translation
objects such as animals or plants nameless in the translator’s language, or customs and
institutions unknown to his group, or ideas, political, religious, philosophic, similarly nameless,
may present such obstacles. But in verse, besides these difficulties, there is the close connection
between sounds and ideas which in every language is more or less recognisable” (Hutcheson
Macualay Possnett, Comparative Literature, 1886).

3. “However many translations are taken up, it is nevertheless without a doubt that the writers of
the various lands and languages differ widely with respect to the likelihood of acquiring world
renown or just a certain measure of acknowledgement. [...] It is impossible to write anything
artistic in another language than one’s own. On that we are all in agreement. But these
translations! To these we all object. I confess to the heresy that I can only view them as a pitiful
expedient. They eliminate the literary artistry precisely by which the author should validate
himself, and the greater he is in his language, the more he loses. [...] Lyric poetry is translated
with difficulty and in every case loses much in so doing. Usually the effort to translate it to
another language is not undertaken for the simple reason that nothing will be gained from such
an effort. [...] According to the received opinion, prose writing suffers no great loss in
translation. But this is wrong. The loss remains immeasurable, albeit less striking than in poems.
The selection and the sound of the words, the architecture of the sentences and the harmony, the
peculiarity of literary expression; everything vanishes. Translations are not even replicas”
(George Brandes, “World Literature”, 1899).

4. “It is obvious that the study of literature as a whole is impossible without a free use of
translations. Now, there’s a widespread feeling that the reading of translated literature is a
makeshift, and savors of second-hand scholarship. But this idea is itself a product of the
departmental study of literature which has prevailed hitherto, in which language and literature
have been so inextricably intertwined that it has become difficult to think of the two separately.
[...] One who accepts the use of translations where necessary secures all factors of literature
except language. One who refuses translations by that fact cuts himself off from the major part
of the literary field; his literary scholarship, however polished and precise, can never rise above
the provincial. [...] On the other hand, it is noteworthy how classical scholars of front rank have
devoted themselves to translation as the best form of commentary [...], how poets of front rank
have made themselves interpreters between one language and another. [...] Again, men of the
highest literary refinement have made strong pronouncements on the side of translated
literature” (Richard Green Moulton, World Literature and Its Place in General Culture, 1911),

5. “It is possible to define the concept of world literature more precisely: only pertains to world
literature in this more restricted sense what really transcends the borders of the nation, what
really has become known and appreciated by other nations by means of translation, and what
has influenced other literatures; in other words, what participates in the exchange of ideas and in
the world literary traffic between the nations” (Fritz Strich, “Weltliteratur und Vergleichende
Literaturgeschichte”, 1930).
6. “For World Literature to come into existence, the language barrier must be overcome. This
cannot be done except through the acquisition of foreign languages – a formidable task, if by
acquisition we mean thorough mastery. But a mere reading knowledge is far more accessible,
and would bring abundant reward to every high school student. However, not even professional
scholars can know even all the major culture languages, and the indispensable instrument of
World Literature is translation. But translation is still distrusted, and even despised. It is claimed
that art intention and form are inseparable, and that every translation is bound to destroy this
vital unity. [...] Every book, even in our own language and dealing with our own language
requires a translation from the terms of the writer’s experience to those of the reader’s.
Fortunately, man is able to make such an adjustment, and to feel the human element under the
infinite variety of forms. Without such a capacity, there could e no communication between man
and man. It is the extension of such a capacity that makes communication possible between age
and age, nation and nation, language and language, and accounts for the undeniable, existence
of World Literature. In spite of grievous handicaps, translation has been practiced by great
writers in the past, and the tradition is not lost. It is an exacting but ennobling task to cooperate
with a foreign genius, to attune yourself to his thought, and to make his words your words.
Translation offers one advantage over original work: it can more readily be corrected, perfected,
brought up to date, by successive generations. Every age has, and should have, its new
translations of Homer or Dante. (Albert Guérard, Preface to World Literature, 1940).

7. “The goal of teaching the great masters of World Literature is by no means easy to achieve.
Your group is constantly being doubted and heckled on two fronts: on the left by nationalists
and isolationists who garb their own intellectual inability of ever being able to look beyond the
frontiers of their own chosen literature [...]. And on the other hand, there are the most high-
minded comparatists among us who attack your group because they insist that World Literature
in English translation is not Comparative Literature and that it must always be restricted to
undergraduate instruction (and I agree with these two assertions) – and therefore they look down
upon World Literature courses and perhaps deny their legitimacy (and with this attitude I do not
agree). At this meeting, I am sure, we all quite lustily attack the nationalists in the Humanities,
and so they deserve to be overwhelmed with criticism from all sides. But, after this attack on the
left flank, there should be an opening towards the right, a never-tiring attempt to establish a
modus vivendi, a constructive and profitable relationship between World Literature courses and
Comparative Literature. [...] Foreign Literature in English Translation is a much needed field for
undergraduate instruction, while Comparative Literature should be distinctly for graduate
students only”. (Werner P. Friederich, “On the Integrity of Our Planning”, 1959).

8. “It is an exceptional undergraduate who can be expected to read Works from more than one
or two foreign languages in the original, albeit we should do as much as we can to cultivate
these exceptions. Yet it is too much to expect that the teacher of literature, while not professing
to be an expert in everything he teaches, should have some access to all the original languages
involved? We need not be too much concerned with the problem of foreign literature in
translation, if we distinguish between such courses [in World Literature, at undergraduate level]
and courses in Comparative Literature; and, if the latter courses include a substantial proportion
of work with the originals, it would be unduly puristic to exclude some reading from more
remote languages in translation. [...] Whenever possible, majors in Comparative Literature
should be separated for instructional purposes from students who read exclusively in translation.
When such separation is not possible, measures should be taken to insure reading in original
texts by majors in Comparative Literature. It is particularly important for the instructor to make
special provisions so that the presence of majors and of students without any foreign linguistic
ability in the same classroom will not affect standards of instruction” (Harry Levin, “Report on
Professional Standards”, 1965)

9. “Dada la ignorancia de las lenguas extranjeras, en que por lo general se halla el gran público,
las traducciones fueron, y aun son, el medio más fácil y más frecuente de acceder al goce alas
obra maestras de la literatura universal. Las traducciones directas, es decir, las realizadas
directamente del original, son las que presentan mayores garantías, pero no pueden rivalizar con
él. No obstante, hay excepciones: […] ciertas traducciones, sin que dispensen el que se recurra
al original, obras maestras en su propia lengua, han pasado a ser obras maestras en otra lengua y
otro registro; no una obra maestra, sino dos” (Claude Pichois y André M. Rousseau, La
Literatura Comparada, 1967).

10. “At the undergraduate level, the most disturbing recent trend is the association of
Comparative Literature with literature in translations. Many courses taught today under the
rubric of Comparative Literature are not in fact properly labelled. The college lecturer who is
truly a Comparatist should at the very least have read the text he is teaching in the original, and
should use this experience to advantage in the classroom. He should also draw on the insights of
those members of the class who are able to dispense with translations. Indeed, by his frequent
references to the original, he should make the remaining students aware of the incompleteness
of their own reading experience” (The Greene Report, 1975. A Report on Standards).

11. “Translation, the study of translation, has been relegated to a small corner within the wider
field of the amorphous quasi-discipline known as Comparative Literature. But with the
development of Translation Studies as a discipline in its own right, with a methodology that
draws on comparatistics and cultural history, the time has come to think again about that
marginalization. Translation has been a major shaping force in the development of world
culture, and no study of comparative literature can take place without regard to translation”, (A.
Lefevere & S. Bassnett, “Introduction: Proust’s Grandmother and the Thousand and One
Nights: The ‘Cultural Turn’ in Translation Studies”, 1990).

12. “While the necessity and unique benefits of a deep knowledge of foreign languages must
continue to be stressed, the old hostilities toward translation should be mitigated. In fact,
translation can well be seen as a paradigm for larger problems of understanding and
interpretation across different discursive traditions. Comparative literature, it could be said,
aims to explain both what is lost and what is gained in translation between the distinct value
system of different cultures, media, disciplines, and institutions. [...] It may be better, for
instance, to teach a work in translation, even if you don’t have access to the original language,
than to neglect marginal voices because of their mediated transmission. [...] We would even
condone certain courses on minority languages in which the majority of the works were read in
translation” (Charles Bernheimer, The Bernheimer Report, 1993 [Comparative Literature at the
Turn of the Century]).

13. “Comparative literature is an art of understanding centred in the eventuality and defeats of
translation. [...] Every facet of translation [...] is absolutely pivotal to the comparatist. The
commerce between tongues, between texts of different historical periods or literary forms, the
complex interactions between a new translation and those that have gone before, the ancient but
always vivid contest of ideas as between the ‘letter’ and the ‘spirit’, is that of comparative
literature itself. [...] This primacy of the matter of translation in comparative literature relates
directly to what I take to be a second focus. It is that of the dissemination and reception of
literary works across time and space. [...] No comparative literature scholar or teacher knows
enough languages. [...] But it is just because much of his work will draw on translations [...] that
the comparatist will, at every stage, be intensely responsive to those very matters of translation
and dissemination which I have pointed to” (George Steiner, What Is Comparative Literature?,
2003)

14. “In the act of wholesale translation into English there can be a betrayal of the democratic
ideal into the law of the strongest. [...] This happens when all the literature of the Third World
gets translated into a sort of with-it translates, so that the literature by a woman in Palestine
begins to resemble, in the feel of its prose, something by a man in Taiwan” (Gayatri Spivak,
“The Politics of Translation”, 2000).
15. “Literary language is thus language that either gains or loses in translation, in contrast to
nonliterary language, which typically does neither. The balance of credit and loss remains a
distinguishing mark of national versus world literature: literature stays within its national or
regional tradition when it usually loses in translation, whereas works become world literature
whey the gain on balance in translation, stylistic losses offset by an expansion in depth as they
increase their range. [...] In an excellent translation, the result is not the loss of an unmediated
original vision but instead a heightening of the naturally creative interaction of reader and text.
[...] To use translations means to accept the reality that texts come to us mediated by existing
frameworks of reception and interpretation. We necessarily work in collaboration with others
who have shaped what we read and how we read it. (David Damrosch, What Is World
Literature?, 2003)

16. “In 1993 I published a book on comparative literature in which I argued that the subject was
in its death throes. The basis of my case was that debates about a so-called crisis in comparative
literature stemmed from a legacy of nineteenth-century positivism and a failure to consider the
political implications of intercultural transfer processes. This had led, in the West, to a sense of
the subject being in decline, though elsewhere in the world comparative literature, albeit under
other labels, was flourishing. I argued that perhaps the time had come for a more self-confident
discipline, the emergent discipline of translation studies to take centre stage: ‘Comparative
literature as a discipline has had its day. Cross-cultural work in women’s studies, in post-
colonial theory, in cultural studies has changed the face of literary studies generally. We should
look upon translation studies as the principle discipline from now own, with comparative
literature as a valued but subsidiary subject area’. This was a deliberately provocative statement,
and was as much about trying to raise the profile of translation studies as it was about declaring
comparative literature to be defunct. Today, looking back at that proposition, it appears
fundamentally flawed: translation studies has not developed very far at all over three decades
and comparison remains at the heart of much translation studies scholarship. What I would say
were I writing the book today is that neither comparative literature nor translation studies should
be seen as a discipline: rather both are methods of approaching literature, ways of reading that
are mutually beneficial. The crisis in comparative literature derived from excessive
prescriptivism combined with distinctive culturally specific methodologies that could not be
universally applicable or relevant”. (Susan Bassnett, “Reflections on Comparative Literature in
the Twenty-First Century”, 2006).

17. “Translation has remained central to comparative philology as well as to the European and
North American models of world literature since the early nineteenth century. Yet the centrality
of translation within literary studies is at odds with the fact that it often remains under-analyzed
and under-theorized. [...] The work of translation is often dismissed within literary production as
a second-order representation, with the translator accordingly invisible as an extension – faithful
or unfaithful – of the original work attributed to the author” (Steven Ungar, “Writing in
Tongues: Thoughts on the Work of Translation” [A Response to Haun Saussy’s ACLA Report],
2006).

18. “La presente es, en fin, una antología no simplemente de poesía sino también de
traducciones de poesía. En tal sentido, a cada poema en una lengua distinta del castellano se
acompaña siempre una de las mejores versiones existentes en nuestro idioma, pero, por otro
lado, para cada poeta se ha recurrido regularmente a varios de sus mejores traductores. […] La
práctica de leer poesía en traducción ha ido haciéndose cada vez más común, no ya al arrimo de
la globalización de la literatura en todos los géneros, sino en particular de una noción de la
poesía que no ha dejado de espesarse del romanticismo para acá. […] La literatura se ha
enriquecido con versiones de textos que, por diferentes que sean los elementos que los
configuran, desempeñan en otras lenguas, es especial de Asia, un papel análogo al de la poesía
en Europa; y esas versiones han propuesto otros modelos de expresión poética. También por
ahí, vuelta cada vez más un espacio y una función propicios a la traducción, la poesía de Europa
y de todas las lenguas vive hoy un espléndido pentecostés” (Francisco Rico, Mil años de poesía
europea, 2009).

19. “[This] book aims to rethink translation studies – a field traditionally defined by problems of
linguistic and textul fidelity to the original – in a broad theoretical framework that emphasizes
the role played by mistranslation in war, the influence of language and literature wars on canon
formation and literary fields, the aesthetic significance of experiments with nonstandard
language, and the status of the humanist tradition of translatio studii in an era of technological
literacy. [...] A new comparative literature, with the revalued labor of the translator and theories
of translation placed center stage, expands centripetally toward a genuinely planetary criticism,
extending emphasis on the transference of texts from one language to another, to criticism of the
processes of linguistic creolization, the multilingual practices of poets and novelists over a vast
range of major and ‘minor’ literatures, and the development of new languages by marginal
groups all over the world. [...] A new comparative literature has prompted me to imagine a field
in which philology is linked to globalization, to Guantánamo Bay, to war and peace, to the
Internet and ‘Netlish’, and to ‘other Englishes’ spoken worldwide, not to mention the
‘languages’ of cloning and computer simulation. Envisaged as the source of an ambitious
mandate for literary and social analysis, translation becomes the name for the ways in which the
humanities negotiates pasta and future technologies of communication, while shifting the
parameters by which language itself is culturally and politically transformed. By insisting, too,
on learning languages wholly distant from one’s own native philology, a new comparative
literature based on translational pedagogies renews the psychic life of diplomacy, even as it
forces an encounter with intractable alterity, with that which will not be subject to translation”
(Emily Apter, The Translation Zone: A New Comparative Literature, 2006).

20. “A primary argument of this book is that many recent efforts to revive World Literature rely
on a translatability assumption. As a result incommensurability and what has been called the
Untranslatable are insufficiently built into the literary heuristic. [...] [My] aim is to activate
untranslatability as a theoretical fulcrum of comparative literature with bearing on approaches to
world literatures, literary world-systems and literary theory, the politics of periodization, the
translation of philosophy and theory, the relation between sovereign and linguistic borders at the
checkpoint, the bounds of non-secular proscription and cultural sanction, free versus privatized
authorial property, the poetics of translational difference, as well as ethical, cosmological and
theological dimensions of worldliness. [...] [This book] is conceived as a long essay in the
interest of the importance of non-translation, mistranslation, incomparability and
untranslatability.
[...]
Both translation studies and World Literature extended the promise of worldly criticism,
politicized cosmopolitanism, comparability aesthetics galvanized by a deprovincialized Europe,
an academically redistributed area studies and a redrawn map of language geopolitics.
Partnered, they could deliver still more: translation theory as Weltliteratur would challenge
flaccid globalisms that paid lip service to alterity while doing little more than to buttress
neoliberal ‘big tent’ syllabi taught in English. Unfortunately though, translation studies and
World Literature, even in their renewed and best-intentioned guises, inevitably fell short of such
objectives. [...] Both fields [...] were unable to rework literary history through planetary
cartographies and temporalities despite their recourse to world-systems theory. [...] In addition
to giving short shrift to temporality and periodization, translation studies and World Literature
ignored problems more internal to their theoretical premises. With translation assumed to be a
good thing en soi – under the assumption that it s a critical praxis enabling communication
across languages, cultures, time periods and disciplines – the right to the Untranslatable was
blindsided. In a parallel way, at its very core World Literature seemed oblivious to the
Untranslatable – as shown by its unqueried inclusion of the word ‘world’” (Emily Apter,
Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability, 2013).