Toward a Polyglot Paradigm of Planetary Translation: Reconsidering the History of Comparative Studies with Acta Comparationis

Abstract: This essay discusses Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum’s program of global comparatism by considering its three programmatic texts, which include Hugo Meltzl’s notes on “decaglottism,” a concept that  undermines the initial polyglot, anti-imperial spirit of the journal. Within the context of nineteenth century Transylvania, which practiced what Anca Parvulescu and Manuela Boatcă call “interglottism,” Acta was geared both against methodological nationalism and the hegemonic perspective of great-powers model in comparative studies. Foreshadowing what David Damrosch calls a true “rebirth of the discipline” of comparative literature in the post-theory age, Acta stimulates fertile, unexpected alliances with contemporary scholars of créolité, translation, and comparative studies, unveiling new paradigms of planetary relationality. In the wake of comparative scholarly work by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Emily Apter, Mary Louise Pratt, and Christian Moraru, this article considers the praxis of “translation as reparation” and “gift,” as a mode of fostering a “planetary” approach to comparatism by favoring translation from cultures which for centuries have existed outside canonical circuits of exchange promoted by dominant cultures.   

Keywords: polyglottism, decaglottism, interglottism, planetary translation, créolité, inter-imperial translingualism, planetary.

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