Cover not available
Part of
Border Crossings: Translation Studies and other disciplines
Edited by Yves Gambier and Luc van Doorslaer
[Benjamins Translation Library 126] 2016
► pp. 287–308

Comparative literature and translation

A cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspective

| Tsinghua University
ORCID logo | University of Santiago de Compostela

Translation has largely been dismissed by the field of comparative literature as being considered a mere mediator and an unnecessary tool for the true comparatist. But it is the comparatist who should master the languages in which the works to be compared are written. In recent decades, following the “cultural turn”, scholars have come to study translation from a cultural and comparative perspective in increasing numbers. This chapter further develops this orientation by addressing the issue of reflexivity as essential to comparative literature qua multilingual research. Furthermore, comparative literature is here considered from the perspective of translation, with a special focus on the fact that comparative literature in the age of globalization is increasingly characterized by world literature.

Keywords: cultural turn, multilingual research, reflexivity, second language, world literature
Published online: 14 September 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.126.14nin
References
Apter, Emily
2006 The Translation Zone. A New Comparative Literature. Princeton: Princeton UP.Google Scholar
Auerbach, Erich
1956 Mimesis. Il realismo nella letteratura occidentale. Trans. Alberto Romagnoli and Hans Hinterhäuser. 2 vols. Turin: Einaudi.Google Scholar
1959 Mimesis. Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der abendländischen Literatur. Bern: Francke.Google Scholar
1968 Mimésis. La Représentation de la réalité dans la littérature occidentale. Trans. Cornélius Heim. [Paris]: Gallimard.Google Scholar
1988 Mimesis. La representación de la realidad en la literatura occidental. Trans. I. Villanueva and E. Ímaz. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica.Google Scholar
1991 Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Trans. Willard R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton UP.Google Scholar
Bassnett, Susan
1993 Comparative Literature. A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bassnett, Susan and André Lefevere
2000.Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter
1968 “The Task of the Translator.” In Illuminations, Harry Zohn (trans), Hannah Arendt (ed), 69–82. New York: Schocken Books.Google Scholar
Bermann, Sandra
2009 “Working in the And Zone: Comparative Literature and Translation.” Comparative Literature 61.4: 433–46. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bernheimer, Charles
1995 “Introduction. The Anxieties of Comparison.” In Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism, Charles Bernheimer (ed), 1–17. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP.Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi K
1994 The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Borchgrevink, Axel
2003 “Silencing Language: Of Anthropologists and Interpreters.” Ethnography 4.1: 95–121. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chevrel, Yves
1995 La Littérature comparée. 3rd ed. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
D’hulst, Lieven
2007 “Comparative Literature versus Translation Studies: Close Encounters of the Third Kind?” European Review 15.1: 95–104. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Man, Paul
1986 “‘Conclusions’: Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Task of the Translator’. ”The Resistance to Theory, 73–105. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques
2001 “What Is a ‘Relevant’ Translation?” Critical Inquiry 27.2: 174–200. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Détrie, Muriel
2000 “Connaissons-nous Étiemble (né en 1909)?” Revue de Littérature comparée 295 ( Relire les comparatistes ): 413–25.Google Scholar
Ellis, N.C
2006 “Selective Attention and Transfer Phenomena in SLA: Contingency, Cue Competition, Salience, Interference, Shadowing, Blocking, and Perceptual Learning.” Applied Linguistics 27: 1–31. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Engdahl, Horace
2008 “Canonization and World Literature: The Nobel Experience.” In World Literature. World Culture, Karen-Margrethe Simonsen and Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen (eds), 195–214. Aarhus: Aarhus UP.Google Scholar
Epstein, Joseph
2014 “An Uncommon Reader: Erich Auerbach and the Understanding of Literature.” Review of James J. Porter (ed), Time, History, and Literature: Selected Essays of Erich Auerbach. The Weekly Standard Book Review 19 (16 June).Google Scholar
Even-Zohar, Itamar
1990a.“The Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystem.” Poetics Today 11.1 ( Polysystem Studies ): 45–51. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1990b “Translation and Transfer.” Poetics Today 11.1 ( Polysystem Studies ): 73–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hervey, Sándor and Ian Higgins
2002 Thinking French Translation. A Course in Translation Method: French to English. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Irvine, Fiona
2008 “The Researcher as Insider versus the Researcher as Outsider: Enhancing Rigour through Language and Cultural Sensitivity.” In Doing Cross-Cultural Research. Ethical and Methodological Perspectives. Pranee Liamputtong (ed), 34–48.[Dordrecht]: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Koda, Keiko
2012 “Development of Second Language Reading Skills. Cross-Linguistic Perspectives.” In The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, Susan M. Gass and Alison Mackey (eds), 303–18. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lefevere, André
1992 Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
1995 “Introduction: Comparative Literature and Translation.” Comparative Literature 47.1 ( On Translation ): 1–10. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liamputtong, Pranee
2008 “Doing Research in a Cross-Cultural Context: Methodological and Ethical Challenges.” In Doing Cross-Cultural Research. Ethical and Methodological Perspectives, Pranee Liamputtong (ed), 3–20. [Dordrecht]: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lu, Xun
1989 Lu Xunquanji (Collected Works of Lu Xun). Vol. 4. Beijing: People’s Literature Press.Google Scholar
Malblanc, Alfred
1965 Stylistique comparée du français et de l’allemand. 3rd ed. Paris: Didier.Google Scholar
Malinowski, Bronisław
2002 Argonauts of the Western Pacific. An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Quinea. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Moretti, Franco
2013 Distant Reading. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Le Mythe d’Étiemble: hommage, études et recherches inédits
. Paris: Didier 1979.Google Scholar
Newman, Jane O
2014 “Translator’s Note.” In Time, History, and Literature: Selected Essays of Erich Auerbach, James I. Porter (ed), Jane O. Newman (trans), xlvii–xlix. Princeton: Princeton UP.Google Scholar
Pageaux, Daniel-Henri
1994 La Littérature générale et comparée. Paris: Armand Colin.Google Scholar
Pichois, Claude and André-M. Rousseau
1969 La Literatura comparada. Trans. Germán Colón Doménech. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar
Said, Edward W
2003.“Introduction to the Fiftieth-Anniversary Edition.” In Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western European Literature, by Erich Auerbach, i–xxiv. Princeton: Princeton UP.Google Scholar
Scavée, Pierre and Pietro Intravaia
1979 Traité de stylistique comparée du français et de l’italien. Paris: Didier.Google Scholar
Shuttleworth, Mark and Moira Cowie
1997 Dictionary of Translation Studies. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakrovorty
1999 A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.Google Scholar
Sun, Yifeng
2008 “Opening the Cultural Mind: Translation and the Modern Chinese Literary Canon.” Modern Language Quarterly 69 (1): 13–27. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tee, Carlos G
2012 “Towards a New and More Constructive Partnership: The Changing Role of Translation in Comparative Literature.” Fu Jen Studies: Literature & Linguistics 45: 1–21.Google Scholar
Vinay, Jean-Paul and Jean Darbelnet
1958 Stylistique comparée du français et de l’anglais. Paris: Didier.Google Scholar
Wang, Ning
2004 Globalization and Cultural Translation. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Academic.Google Scholar
2014.“Cosmopolitanism and the Internationalization of Chinese Literature.” In Mo Yan in Context: Nobel Laureate and Global Storyteller, Angelica Duran and Yuhan Huang (eds), 167–81. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue UP.Google Scholar
2015 “Translation and the Relocation of Global Cultures: Mainly a Chinese Perspective.” Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies 2 (1): 4–14. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wellek, René
1959 “The Crisis of Comparative Literature.” In Comparative Literature. Proceedings of Second Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association, Werner P. Friederich (ed.), 1: 149–59. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina.Google Scholar
Wichter, Sigurd and Gerd Antos
(eds) 2001 Wissenstransfer zwischen Experten und Laien. Umriss einer Transferwissenschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Jünke, Claudia
2023. Transcultural memory and literary translation: Mapping the Field (with a case study on Lydie Salvayre’s Pas pleurer and its Spanish translation). Memory Studies 16:5 ► pp. 1280 ff. DOI logo
KIRCA, Mustafa & Adelheid RUNDHOLZ RUNDHOLZ
2021. Literatures in Translation: Literary Translation and Comparative Literature in the Turkish Context. KARE :12 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Roig-Sanz, Diana
2022. Global translation history. Translation in Society 1:2 ► pp. 131 ff. DOI logo
Sobesto, Joanna
2023. Polityki przekładu „Rocznika Literackiego” w latach 1932–1938 i recepcja literatur obcych dokumentowana w periodyku w świetle literatury światowej. Wielogłos :3 (53) ► pp. 49 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.