Translation and literary criticism: in this coupling, translation studies leads, follows and supports. Indeed, when we consider that even the most erudite or long-lived critics cannot know all the languages they need, we recognize that literary criticism is dependent on translation, which, in turn, gains from the scrutiny of the latter. In tandem, translation and criticism enhance the understanding and appreciation of literature. For the serious study of literature they should be considered an indispensable combination.

Without translation,obviously,literatures could not be experienced outside their usual areas of language use. Without criticism,nearly as obviously, literatures could not build up the traditions that help preserve and disseminate them.When a literature loses the active users of its first language of expression, it is lost in substance as well, unless translations have survived as records. We can cite Etruscans, Amerindians, innumerable pockets of limited dispersion throughout the world: these are languages that failed to recruit a sturdy literate survivor with a good memory and hence are lost to us. There were, for example, once about 500 languages spoken in North America;only 100 were still spoken in 1995. The total went to 99, on 9 January 1996 when Red Thunder Cloud, the last speaker of Catawba,died,leaving only a few recordings for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Smithsonian Institute.

Classical Greek and Latin literatures survive because of translation.The record of some documents would have been lost had it not been for Arabic translations; the Renaissance in the West revived Latin as a language for serious matters, but hardly for serious literature. Even the teaching of classical languages depends on translating to and from a vernacular,and the teaching is limited: in North America, beyond ecclesiastical circles,studying these languages has become a matter for specialists needing are search tool, as is the case of the Classical language requirement insome –not all–comparative literature doctoral programs. The world languages that displaced Greek and Latin are also the mediators which,through translation, have kept them alive. Today, when we witness a resurgence of linguistic nationalism, we need to remember that in fostering languages of lesser dispersion we must likewise keep their link to world languages such as Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Russian and Spanish.

Translators and thus translations are mediators. Of course, in their appropriation of something not theirs to begin with they risk damaging or

 misrepresenting what they have appropriated, even when they are benevolent or unthinking. Mediators may be inherently incapable of complete neutrality. And yet, whether presumptuous or subservient, they are indispensable links. It will be argued here that they not only cross boundaries,they also simultaneously set them and break them. But literary criticism, not cultural imperialism, is the focus here.