Untranslatables: A World System

本文在試驗一種方法，一種使用「不可譯」的策略作為比較主義新繪圖術的方法－這些不可譯在其他語言、文化、學門裡無法移轉或者會抗拒現成的對等語。在傳統上，有人主張文學研究以下列來作為其結構：影響、文類的緩慢可譯性、以及反應新殖民地理的文化擴散軌道。在真實時間裡，能鼓勵比較文學的比較模式極為稀少，僅管偶發的理論模式能兔於歐洲中心的指涉，使得「第二世界」的文化互動在下列地－the Stans（以-stan為結尾的國家）、大中東地區、「中印」、美洲地區、歐亞、內亞洲（intra-Asia）、「他亞洲」（other Asias）、或是歐洲地區（Euroland）－能進行流動順暢分析的，也是少之又少。跨國研究雖然出現，跨歷史的或非共時性的分析也已發生，但人文的學術機構仍傾向於將國家斷代的束縛有些束縛來自區域研究又強加於知識領域之上。這一來，文學歷史的地圖使受制於舊有的比較框架。本文把「不可譯」（the Untranslatable）看作一個允許不同文化及語言能更為方便比較的概念來作為研究對象。仰賴一些集體學術成就作品所提供的例子，如《不可譯字典：一種哲學語彙》（芭芭拉卡辛編輯）以及弗蘭可莫瑞帝的《小說》，本文建議以環繞不可譯的文學世界體系為模式，期能對比較東西方或歐洲與非歐洲日守所缺少的典範現象有所回應。

關鍵字

不可譯；世界系統；世界文學；翻譯研究；風險

並列摘要

This essay experiments with an approach that uses ”untranslatables-terms that fail to transfer or resist ready equivalence in other languages, cultures and disciplines-as the basis of new cartographies of comparatism. Literary studies, it is argued, has traditionally been structured according to influence, the slow translatability of genres, the trajectories of cultural diffusion that reflect neo-colonial geographies. There are few models of comparison that encourage a comparative literature in real time; few contingent theoretical models that remain free of Eurocentric reference, or enable fluid analysis of ”Second World” cultural interactions among, say, the ”Stans,” the Greater Middle East, ”Chindia,” the Americas, Eurasia, intra-Asia, ”other Asias,” or Euroland. Though transnational research occurs, as does transhistorical or asynchronous analysis, the academic organization of the humanities tends to re-impose national periodizing strictures on knowledge-fields, some of them inherited from area studies. Literary history’s cartography is thus constrained by old frameworks of comparison. This essay works with the Untranslatable as a concept that permits unlike cultures and languages to be more readily compared. Drawing on the example offered by the collective work of scholarship, the Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon (edited by Barbara Cassin), the essay suggests that modeling literary world systems around Untranslatables responds to the dearth of paradigms of east-west or European and non-European comparison.