Comparative/World Literature and the Problematic of Translation

My paper addresses the paradox of the marginalized position of translation despite serving as a theoretical fulcrum for comparative and world literature(s) since their birth. The scholars from comparative/world literature and translation studies have come up with very different and contradictory answers to the question of translation. While some valorize it as a creative or reading practice, others undermine it due to the linguistic complexities that challenge the fidelity of the translation with the source text. Despite differences, they agree on one point that literary history is written from national perspective and fails to account for the trajectory of a translated work in different cultures and times. The paper will use selected articles of Susan Bassnett from the discipline of Translation Studies as the theoretical framework to address the problematic of translation as well as to propose a literary history written from a translational perspective as a bridge to ford the rifts between comparative and world literature(s).The paper will use dialectical approach to study the problematic of translation starting with Apter’s thesis of “Untranslatability” juxtaposing it with Walkowitz’s anti-thesis of “Born-translated works” to finally postulate a synthesis of comparative and world literature(s) with translation studies. Keywords: Comparative literature, World literature, Translation, Literary theory, English Literatur