Comparatism, translation and languages: Commonalities in literary circulation in the Southern Cone

This article aims to provide a concise examination of the commonalities between literary systems in the Southern Cone and other systems, as regards inherent characteristics and intersections/appropriations/transformations related to cultural encounters mediated by intercultural and interlinguistic translations. It will begin by outlining the historical relationship between Comparative Literature and translation, and will then consider the shared aspects of the systems of the Southern Cone and other places, paying particular attention to the issue of languages as a factor of relevance for literary and cultural circulation.


COMPARATISM AND TRANSLATION
Comparatism is very closely related to translation.Since the 19 th century translation has responded to two fundamental demands in western literary systems: 1) to enable the "national" circulation of translated "foreign" works; 2) to enable the "exportation" abroad of translated "national" works.Back in 1877, the first Comparative Literature periodical, Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum, founded by Hugo Meltzl and Samuel Brassai, albeit focused on polyglotism and allowing interested authors to publish articles in any of ten working languages (German, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Icelandic and Hungarian), also considered translation to be an unavoidable element of comparatism.In this periodical two aspects are highlighted that would go on to feature in the history of Comparative Literature for many years: 1) access to the text in its original language; 2) access to the translation of the original in another language.It held that the ideal was to read a work in its original language, also recognising that this was not always possible.However, although translation has always been a central issue in comparatism, what is at stake when a translated text circulates beyond its place of origin has not always been discussed.Today it is true to say that the circulation of a translated text in another literary system takes place within an international context in which the language the text appears in makes a difference (SAPIRO, 2010).This means that a Brazilian author, to circulate internationally via the translation of his/her work from Portuguese into another language, already faces the initial challenge of overcoming the obstacles behind all the statistics highlighted by Sapiro relating to translation from/into different languages, at a global level, as will be discussed below.
Furthermore, as I have already argued ( JOBIM, 2017), there are predominant factors of relevance when a literary work, chiefly in a language different from its original, circulates internationally: 1) the relative importance of the subject matter in the new places where the work is inserted; 2) the proximity or distance -real or imagined -between the place of origin and that of insertion; 3) the prevailing interests in the place where the work is re-appropriated, according to which it will be deemed relevant or not; 4) the obstacles to, or facilitation of, the insertion of "foreign" works by local, regional, national and international literary and cultural systems, with their respective hierarchies and practices, and so on.
The importance of a work's subject matter for its circulation in contexts different from its original one must be emphasised because this can also determine that work's relative success.I have previously argued ( JOBIM, 2020a) that the translation and international circulation of the works of Milton Hatoum cannot be separated from the global interest in the Amazon, the author's home region, which provides the backdrop for the human drama in most of his translated works.As we know, there is keen interest in this region among the international media, governments and NGOs, universities, research institutions and "green" political movements, all of which generates a sizeable potential public for anything relating to it.
Furthermore, Hatoum benefits from the international multiculturalist wave, by exploring the world of Arab immigrants who try to adapt to the "foreign" context, a literary vein also explored consummately by another Brazilian writer, Raduan Nassar, who is also the descendant of Lebanese immigrants and winner of the Camões literary prize, as well as (like Hatoum) a winner of the Jabuti prize.The works of both have been adapted for the screen, but Hatoum has more of a multi-media presence, regularly collaborating with leading Brazilian newspapers, unlike Nassar, who has chosen a more reclusive life.( JOBIM, 2020a, p. 443-444).
When we talk about proximity or distance -real or imagined -between the place of origin and that of reinsertion as being an important factor for the international circulation of a literary work, this implies, among other things, the observation that it is easier to understand a work whose cultural references are close (spatially and/or temporally) to its culture of origin.Of course, spatial proximity is not always a guarantee, but we should remember that the first translation of the Brazilian author Machado de Assis, who has enjoyed major critical and public acclaim at an international level, was published in Uruguay in 19021 .Machado, furthermore, is also an example of an author who at different moments has been appropriated internationally either as a Black writer or as a master of sophisticated writing chosen by high-profile translators enthralled by his work2 .
In fact, there is a series of asymmetrically distributed cultural agents and factors that have an influence on international circulation.For example, the circulation of North American cultural products (music, cinema etc.) and literature in Southern Cone countries benefits from widespread dissemination and marketing, supported by the economic and soft power of the country of origin.In contrast, the literature or cultural products of the Southern Cone depend much more on agents from the academic community with links to state apparatus to make an impact beyond national borders.North American literature can dispense with the involvement of university teachers to bring it to the fore in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay, because it has many other forms of support to ensure its circulation; but literature from those countries must rely on those agents so as not to risk becoming even more invisible abroad.
As regards the importance of a work's subject matter, one of the errors made by teachers, critics and researchers of Brazilian literature (which could probably also be extended to other researchers of different Southern Cone literatures) is to assume that what is considered important in Brazil in terms of valorising a literary work is what should also be the parameter for its relative success in circulating internationally.In reality, although the opinion of local specialists is important, particularly for the international university circuit, in the case of a work's circulation far from its place of origin, especially when translated into other languages, its relevance is chiefly measured by the prevailing values in the place where it is being re-appropriated, values that will determine whether it is deemed important or not in its new reception context.This means that it is not enough to just translate a "foreign" work for it to effectively circulate in, and impact on a new reception setting.In the view of Zhang Longxi3 , a priority for scholars and researchers of national literatures, in terms of their contribution to the international circulation of local works, should be to produce and ensure the circulation of arguments that justify the relevance of these works, not only incentivising their introduction into other literary systems, but also explaining the reasons for doing so.Comparatists have an advantage in this respect since they are not restricted by national borders and thus have a deeper knowledge of the source-tradition where the work in question has come from, as well as the target-tradition, where it is heading, enabling them to produce intelligible arguments for both sides.
Recently, a French publisher, in an interview with the Brazilian newspaper O Globo, stated: "-For Europeans, a writer is French, German or Russian.And Brazilians only understand parties and football, not literature (...).-When the winter arrives, I'm asked for Brazilian books because people want sunshine and exoticism (GABRIEL, 2021, p. 1)." I am not going to discuss this view here, but again draw attention to a simple fact, which occurs when literature produced in one place is appropriated in another: the reasons for "importing" this literature are not the same ones that determine its relative importance in its place of origin.It is the "importer's" reasons that will be predominantly used to determine his choices, which will always be made in relation to his context and not to the work's place of origin.
João Cezar de Castro Rocha 4 , in a recent debate about Brazilian literature abroad, quite rightly drew attention to the problem of European and North American readers' "narrow-mindedness", although it is perhaps too much to expect domestic audiences to cease to be "narrow-minded" to at least some degree.During that debate, Rocha recalled the example of José Donoso, the Chilean author who was part of the Latin American literary boom, when his work was being translated into English.The North American editor in question told Donoso that his sophisticated writing style should be "simplified" in translation to cater to the tastes of the English-speaking public.
According to Rocha, certain contextual factors relating to the second half of the twentieth century were also decisive in the "external" circulation of Latin American literature, especially the Cuban Revolution of 1959.Between that year and 1971, Cuba, he argues, represented the image of a potential utopia for the international Left, and a Communist threat in its backyard for the USA.We could add that the Cuban Revolution was also responsible for a soft power movement to bring Latin American nations closer to the USA, which led to a series of career opportunities for Latin American writers, including the dissemination of their works in translation.
Based on the arguments presented above, it can be provisionally concluded that the circulation of a work beyond its place of origin does not depend only on what we could term its "inherent merits", but rather on a series of other considerations, which are common not only to the literary systems of the Southern Cone, which leads us to the following section.

INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN THE LITERARY SYSTEMS OF THE SOUTHERN CONE AND OTHERS
In the literary systems of the Southern Cone, there are many commonalities: 1) "local" works coexist with a large quantity of translated "foreign" works; 2) "local" works are almost exclusively written in the South American variants of Spanish or Portuguese; 3) the publication of "local" works in other countries is used as a (not always explicit) criterion for valorisation; 4) former colonial practices are mimicked, in the sense that greater importance has been given to connections with European models than to those with neighbouring colonies, and ways of evaluating works based on the perspective of former colonial powers are internalised.
This reality makes it more difficult for these systems to begin working together, which would undoubtedly help bolster them all, as has been the case, according to Theo D´Haen (2017), of Scandinavian literature.How did Scandinavian literature circulate internationally via the works of Andersen, Ibsen, Strindberg and Hamsun?Without discussing the individual merits of the work of each of these writers, D´Haen draws attention to the strength derived from the mutual support within regions made up of several geopolitically connected countries, which increases the international circulation of a given author and his/her work.He argues that the same is true for "minor" literatures, like those of the Slavic countries, the Balkans or the Baltic states, which enjoy greater mutual regional support.In the case of the literatures of the Southern Cone, however, such a support mechanism has not been created between Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and Paraguay, yet could be mutually beneficial for everyone.
The prioritisation of connections with the former colonial powers and the internalisation of Europeanised perspectives has led João Cezar de Castro Rocha5 , former president of the Brazilian Comparative Literature Association, to state that defining cultural identity via sharp contrasts with the image of an Other, defining one's own Self through the gaze and the centrality of alterity, is a key element in Latin American cultural traditions.I would add that what we are dealing with here is not exactly the gaze of another "reality", on which Latin America bases its identity.Rather, this supposed gaze of an Other is created in Latin America itself, where a self-identifying image is elaborated but its creation is attributed to the Other.In other words, this image of Latin America, supposedly generated by the Other, this Other that is said to legitimise Latin American identity is, itself, a Latin American social construct.
Since it seems a little radical to attribute to an imagined Other (European or North American, for example) something that was somehow created in Latin America, the following question poses itself: Does this mean that I am ignoring the explicit citations of European and North American scholars about a supposed Latin American identity, or about the meaning of Latin American literary and cultural traditions?No, they are there, materially present to be used by whoever is interested in them.The question is a different one, and it is frequently overlooked: the proactive position of acts of appropriation, like the transformative critical evaluation of "imported" citations.In fact, the incorporation of these citations in Latin America integrates them into another literary and cultural system, transforming them, so to speak, into something else.
Even so, there is a series of questions that are not frequently asked, but which could further enlighten comparatists about how ideas circulate: -What interest led to the appropriation of a particular citation?What reception context explains the citation of a particular work, a particular opinion, a particular author, rather than others?Why not bear in mind that the supposed gaze of the Other, despite having the appearance of external judgment, is somehow connected to meanings that were previously present in some way, serves "local" purposes and interests, and confirms or alters perspectives that were already circulating?
When pondering what is at stake in literary and cultural circulation among the countries of the Southern Cone, therefore, it is inevitable to conclude that the answer is: "Many things that can also be found in other parts of the world".To begin with, as far as Brazilian literature is concerned, discounting Portuguese-speaking countries, what circulates outside Brazil is not exactly the "original" work, but a translation of it, with all the problems that stem from that.For example: was it a good or bad translation?What language or languages was it translated into?
The researcher Giselle Sapiro (2010, p. 423) has previously stated that, globally, 50% of translations are done in only 6 languages (French, German, Spanish, English, Japanese and Portuguese).However, texts translated from other languages represent different percentages: from other languages into English, only between 2% and 3%, 6% into German, 9% into Spanish and 15% into French.Furthermore, the language most translated from is English, representing 60% of the total number of titles, followed by French, German, Russian, Italian and Spanish, that together amount to 25%.All the other languages of the world represent 15%.In some places these percentages may vary: in a report recently published in the Brazilian newspaper O Globo, the German literary agent Nicole Witt (a specialist in Ibero-American writers) claimed that 70% of "foreign" literature published in continental Europe is translated from English (Gabriel, 2021, p.1).
If 60% of all translations are from the English language, publications in that language acquire a relative advantage when competing for international circulation, since it is much more likely that they will be translated than a work in Portuguese or Spanish, for example.Following the same line of reasoning, we could also add that, if an Argentinian, Uruguayan or Brazilian work is translated into English, this also creates a greater probability that it will be translated into other languages, based on the English translation, and not on the Spanish or Portuguese original.The following opinion, recently expressed regarding the problem of publishing in Portuguese, thus comes as no surprise: ...the Portuguese language itself is still the main obstacle to the internationalisation of Brazilian literature.[...]There are few foreign publishers who read Portuguese.To evaluate a Brazilian book, they are obliged to commission an external report or trust the material received from the literary agents, which contains a sample of the book translated into English.However, there are publishers who resist buying a book that they couldn't read in its entirety.(Gabriel, 2021, p.1).
Of course, this kind of opinion is frequently formed when comparing the Portuguese language with others that supposedly offer greater potential for international circulation.If we consider that Portuguese is much more internationalised than other languages, like Serbian or Czech, we can also understand that, for authors from the former Portuguese colonies to circulate internationally, writing in this language is more advantageous than writing in Tetum, for example.If the Timorese writer Luís Cardoso had written Crónica de uma travessia (The Crossing: A Story of East Timor) in Tetum, the majority language in East Timor, the circulation of this book beyond its national frontiers would have been greatly reduced, and reflections on how, in that country, the Portuguese language could serve as a bridge between the different cultural and linguistic groups would have had less prominence.
Furthermore, in the case of the Americas in general and the Southern Cone in particular, even after independence from the Iberian colonial powers, writers continued to publish in the language of the respective coloniser, although there were native languages in the Americas.The Cuban poet and essayist Roberto Fernández Retamar expressed the following opinion on this matter: Mientras otros coloniales o excoloniales, en medio de metropolitanos, se ponen a hablar entre sí en sus lenguas, nosotros, los latinoamericanos y caribeños, seguimos con nuestros idiomas de colonizadores.Son las lenguas francas capaces de ir más allá de las fronteras que no logran atravesar las lenguas aborígenes ni los creoles.Ahora mismo, que estoy discutiendo con estos colonizadores, ¿de qué otra manera puedo hacerlo, sino en una de sus lenguas, que es ya también nuestra lengua, y con tantos de sus instrumentos conceptuales, que también son ya nuestros instrumentos conceptuales?(RETAMAR, 2020, p. 52) (Whereas other colonised or formerly colonised people, amidst the colonisers, talk to each other in their own languages, we, Latin Americans and Caribbeans, continue using the languages of our colonisers.They are lingua francas able to go beyond borders that neither aboriginal nor creole languages manage to cross.Just now, as I am in discussion with these colonisers, how else can I do it, if not in one of their languages, which is also our language, and with so many of their conceptual tools, which are now also our conceptual tools?) The issue raised by Retamar, regarding the use of the language and the conceptual tools of the coloniser by the formerly colonised, is not only relevant to Latin America.It was also true in other places.As I have pointed out elsewhere ( JOBIM, 2020), in Africa, when the former English, French and Portuguese colonies declared their independence, there were writers who argued that the languages of European origin, in their African variants, had also been transformed into national languages (and should therefore be used to create African literatures); conversely, there were also writers who claimed that the local literatures ought to be produced in African languages, arguing that only an educated minority of the population of that continent had a command of European languages.For those who believed in the use of (a) native African language(s), like the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong´o, using one's own mother tongue meant not only rejecting colonial linguistic domination that, it was argued, had eradicated African literary manifestations, but also adopting the most appropriate tool to express meanings relevant to the local community.
In Latin America, as Retamar stated, writers chose to continue writing in Spanish and Portuguese, since, among other reasons, these languages were "...lingua franca able to go beyond the borders that not even aboriginal or creole languages manage to cross".However, in addition to this reason put forward by the Cuban essayist, there were arguably others.For example, if in the Americas a vision had predominated that national States should use their native languages as official languages, politically the immediate question would have been: Which of them?
Previously, when discussing Ngugi wa Thiong´o's view that African writers should use their native African language to produce literature, I drew attention to a "national" aspect of the use of Portuguese in the former colonies of Portugal: I do not know if Portuguese-language African writers would agree with Thiong´o, but undoubtedly the position of those writers in relation to Portuguese is not the same as that of writers in places like Brazil or the USA, where European languages took root in such a way that they became "native" languages for the local inhabitants.In Africa, we know that where more than one language is spoken, the "common language" becomes more important, since often it is the only one that can serve as a bridge between all the speakers of different languages.We also know that the characterisation of Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique as an official language, even though the different peoples of those countries continued speaking local languages, was not random.In those countries, the local languages competed (and still compete) with Portuguese which, furthermore, permits the insertion of the elites into an international community of Portuguese speakers.It would have been complicated politically for the governments installed after independence to opt to turn into a "national language" one of the local languages spoken by the populations of those countries, because there would always be the possibility of conflicts based on disputes on the lines of: "Why is yours (and not mine) going to be the national language?"Consequently, for better or for worse, one of the roles of Portuguese in the former African colonies was (and still is) that of being a "common language", even when it is not "common" to everyone.( JOBIM, 2020, p. 91-92).

"WESTERN" TRADITION AND "LOCAL" WRITING
In the case of contemporary Brazil, even the production of an indigenous literature by authors who make a point of asserting their belonging to native ethnic groups takes place in a context in which they express themselves in the Portuguese language in their works, even though these ethnic groups originally spoke other languages.Therefore, although contemporary indigenous literature is basically written in Portuguese, it aims, as Fábio Almeida de Carvalho (2020, p. 76) points out, to make explicit and valorise indigenous knowledge, affirming "the mutual presence of different cultures, in a world in which we can and must recognise multiplicity and diversity".This situation, Carvalho argues, "extends the possibilities both so that history/stories can be told from other angles of understanding and comprehending reality, and so that we can learn to tell stories in other ways".The appropriation of writing by indigenous subjects, adding this to their ancestral oral tradition, "also contributes to the existence of a certain degree of convergence between indigenous traditions and western tradition", in Carvalho's opinion.
The ethnic writers of the Americas today constitute an important presence for, amongst other things, representing the intersection of different cultural traditions, calling into question the view that everyone in the New World is just a transplanted European.
In fact, in contemporary Brazil the descendants of the native populations are, in many cases, bilingual (speakers of both their native language and Portuguese), and currently even in indigenous communities the learning of native languages is being questioned, as Carvalho has highlighted (2020).In this respect, there are some differences if we compare bilingualism in the Americas with other parts of the globe.Bilingual Arab writers, for example, can benefit from a rich Arabic written tradition, which has not been the case for indigenous writers from the Americas.Wail Hassan, a scholar of the Arab presence in Latin America, has underlined, on more than one occasion, 6 the specificities of this presence, including in relation to "orientalisms" 7 : Whereas despite their differences, other Orientalisms have in common a distinction between Orient and Occident, in Latin America, the East/West dichotomy intersects with the South/North distinctionthe "North" being Europe and the United States.Indeed, the North/South distinction is probably more important for Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the Americas as they have strived to define themselves against Spain and Portugal after independence in the nineteenth century, and later against U.S. imperialism.The "Orient" enters into the identity equation in Latin America in at least two ways.Insofar as Latin American writers identify as "Western," by affiliation with Europe and the U.S., their "Orient" becomes a refracted copy of Euro-American Orientalism, with Orientalist ideas being imported to serve local needs.Alternatively, the Orient sometime also serves as a sort of cultural and/or political ally when Latin American writers and politicians seek to resist Euro-American norms.(HASSAN, 2021).
7 The term Orientalism stems from Edward Said's foundational work (Orientalismo.São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1990).It refers to an institutionalised way of producing "knowledge" about "oriental" cultures that was constructed on the coattails of colonialism, and sought to "scientifically" legitimise a series of preconceptions and stereotypes.
Recently, I used the term New Worldism to refer to a particular representation of the New World 8 , developed since the 16 th century from a basically Eurocentric perspective ( JOBIM, 2020).New Worldism has attributed meanings not only to nature, but to a series of other things.Its description of territories, populations, flora, fauna, minerals and other aspects of the land of the Americas has also catered to the interests of those who had or wanted to have power over them, of those who wanted to "get to know them" in an "objective", qualifiable, measurable way that could be passed on as "knowledge".The Amerindians, for example, were described in explicit or implicit comparison with Europeans, generating dichotomies that would have long-lasting social effects (civilised/savage, dressed/naked, Christian/ pagan, rational/irrational etc.), and racial classifications derived from the encounter between whites and Amerindians: in South America, the more "Spanish" or "Portuguese", the higher the position of the individual in the classification scale 9 .In the colonial system, the principles of New Worldism were developed from the gaze of the colonial power, and then passed on as knowledge, being confirmed by more (or less) explicit instruments of imposition, to ensure their reproduction and control their possible alterations.
Nevertheless, as regards literature and culture, today we know that the expansion of European "forms" and "contents" in the Americas was not only a case of reiteration, since a consequence of this was various kinds of alterations as novel features arose from the new contextual conditions.If, in the "contents", the original constituent elements could be derived from the perspectives prevailing in Europe, they also crossed paths with new elements that emerged in the encounter with the reality of the Americas.
Unfortunately, as far as literature and culture in the Southern Cone is concerned, there are still those who consider applying just the parameters of the former and new colonial powers to evaluate the quality (or not) of works and authors, not to mention the historicity built into this parameter.However, there is also a greater awareness today, chiefly in universities, that the results of applying such parameters are highly questionable.