Translationscapes: On the Legibility of Transnational Ideologies in World Literary Systems

Critiques of world literature studies have highlighted power inequalities which privilege or restrict international prominence of literary texts and figures; this article suggests a specific method for gauging and mapping that process: translationscapes. Translation provides visibility to texts that otherwise remain functionally invisible, and the concept of translationscapes designates the sum total of texts of a given literary set made visible in a foreign language. These sets may be nation-based or organized through other criteria (authorial demographics, genre, time periods, etc.). These literary sets vary between languages due to a variety of factors. Analyzing their evolution and the patterns of divergence between them renders visible transcultural ideologies of world literature. To execute this, research must incorporate specific analyses of authors' oeuvres and individual texts, tracing patterns of their “appearance” in various languages. Concluding that ideologies based on Euro-American valuations of aesthetics and politics remain dominant in determining world literary production, this article argues for further research into translationscapes as a way of combining close reading of texts within larger contexts of systems-level research.