Moving through the ACLA Reports, beginning with the Levin Report in 1965, the practice of translation was very much an argued over space. Levin and Greene reports were adamant on the elitism of programs and courses on Comparative Literature. The reports were skeptical of reading literary works in translation without knowing the source language. However, considering humane limitations, the Levin report states that in a comparative literature program if a reasonable amount of literary work is read in original language, then it would be “unduly puristic” to read certain remote languages in translation. This ideology poses a threat to the “marginal” languages and literature systems in the global context. It will obviously result in a Eurocentric bias, which is already seen happening to remote language literary systems. “The Translator’s Invisibility” by Lawrence Venuti clearly states that translations in the English language is significantly higher than any other European languages let alone remote and non-European languages. Bernheimer report provides a positive and accepting view on translations, where it is exclaimed that translation gives us a scope to understand larger contexts and interpret various cultures and traditions. This skepticism for translation is totally wiped out in “Exquisite Cadavers Stitched from Fresh Nightmares”. At this point, translation is given a special role to understand possibilities and limitations of any language. Translations may be a site of cultural clash, language is not merely a delivery system anymore but have its own rules, structure, and resistance.

The history of translation in Comparative Literature is provided to better understand the effect of culture, traditions, language literary system, politics, ethics of a translation practices. It is a complex phenomenon where the translator must evaluate and understand cultural specificities if he/she wants to truly portray the source text in the original manner in the target language, that is by foreignization. In today’s time, with the development of AI, machine translations are widely popular. These technological developments claim that it uses deep learning algorithms, neural networks to interpret and understand the context and structure of both the source language and target language. Despite the bold assertions, how much has AI succeeded in proper and correct translations? Even if I ignore the cultural and traditional contexts of any language literary systems, the machine translations are not even up to the mark is translating a coherent grammatical structure. Examples are all around our devices and social networking sites, where the audience is quite satisfied if they understand the shell of the foreign language as generated by AI.

AI is basing its results on data, algorithms, and patterns but often this information is not helpful in translating a tongue genuinely into another. Any translation should have a personal touch which can only be given by a human and never a machine or technology no matter how advanced. Translation requires not only the correct use of language and grammar but also the understanding of tones, sarcasms, emotional and physical condition of the speaker, which cannot yet be detected by AI.

The politics of translation is intertwined with both the source text and target text and are very complicated. Let me elaborate with some examples, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, when translating Mahashweta Devi’s “Draupadi”, left out an entire passage without translating as that passage contained a tribal song which Devi’s Bengali readers were not supposed to understand without delving deep into the tribal community and language. Spivak respected Devi’s method by not giving the opportunity to the English reading audience to know and understand the story fully without any hassle. Maintaining cultural specificity of the source language the translation turns rough, and readability is lessened. This readability is a result of the made-up hierarchies in language. For instance, colonial language holds a power in contrast to a colonized tongue. Machine translations might work well for industrial translations but in the case of literary translations, AI will not be able to grasp the politics which goes behind any language medium. A machine translation which does not even interpret the correct grammar will surely not understand the asymmetrical power relations and the apparent balance between languages. As Levy considers translations as a series of decision-making process.

AI translation always uses the method of domestication instead of foreignization. This is threat to marginal, non-European, remote cultures, and languages. AI, with domestication, will not take into account any cultural specificity of source text and will break it down to fit into the norm of the target language which will lead to a hierarchy of languages and cultures. Certain Bengali words such as “bhaar”, “anchol”, “payesh” cannot be translated into English without losing the essence of the language, yes, we can domesticate it and easily come up with “cup”, “hanging part of saree”, “rice pudding” but any Bengali speaker will immediately understand that its not the same. AI and machine translations thus will roughly translate a source language ignoring its cultural specificity making it easier to understand by the target readers, but is it worth it? A translation should be done to delve into a foreign language, understand the minds of the foreign tongues, not merely just get a content and structure of a foreign work, and be satisfied with just that.

However, before the contemplation of politics of translation process, machine translations take us back to Roman Jakobson’s idea of translation where he bases his idea on Sassure’s idea of sign, signifier, signified. Jakobson gives a simpler view of translation where circumlocution will give us a signified from a foreign sign. In one language we will never always find a single sign replacing a sign in the source text, so we require the help of various other signs to explain the foreign word in the target language. Machine translations does just that, detecting and interpreting a foreign word and replacing it with the closest possible signifier. Like, thesaurus and synonyms can replace a word but the essence of a sign cannot be captured.

This study examines the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to function as a comparatist by analyzing its ability to interpret and compare diverse poetic and cultural traditions. Focusing on the works of Jibanananda Das and Louise Glück, the research investigates how AI engages with contrasting frameworks, such as Das’s rootedness in Bengali landscapes and mysticism versus Glück’s introspective modernism and stark minimalism. Through case studies of AI-generated analyses of their poetry, the study evaluates AI’s capacity to grasp cultural nuance, aesthetic complexity, and symbolic depth. While AI demonstrates proficiency in pattern recognition and thematic identification, it often struggles with contextual sensitivity and interpretative subtlety. The findings highlight the need for culturally inclusive training datasets and interdisciplinary approaches to enhance AI’s comparative capabilities. This research ultimately argues for AI’s role as a complementary tool to human scholarship in comparative literature.

The contingencies facilitated by Artificial Intelligence in literary analysis, with its diverse applications and evolving definitions, are puzzlingly vast. The anxiety of originality in textual culture is on the rise, but particularly relevant concerning experimental literature, which has many alliances with the digital environment. Technelegy by Sasha Stiles is a book of poetry published in 2021 that was generated by Artificial Intelligence as a response to the prompts she wrote. As a digitally facilitated narrative that amalgamates experimental attributes and Artificial Intelligence, in form and content, it functions as a self-aware digitally enhanced print entity. Apart from the variety in scope, the text in its contemporariness, semiotically exposes the expositions of AI through its algorithmic creativity, as a metaphor to carry and indulge in. The paper primarily focuses on examining the interrogations of agency, authenticity, and the modalities of the representations of anxiety in the acknowledgment of AI. By closely inspecting Technelegy, the paper attempts to reflect upon the shifting cultural and social landscapes surrounding AI and to highlight its existence in the emerging digital ecologies of information. As we navigate the uncharted territory of AI-infused creativity, experimental approaches such as the concerned text offer a path forward, challenging us to redefine the boundaries of what it means to be an author/creator in the age of digitality.