The work of translation (i.e. the act or process of translating words and phrases from one language into another, as well as its product, e.g. a published text which presents the translation of a foreign language original into another language) can be conceived as a paradigm of understanding, linguistic creativity, and transcultural communication. Following a hermeneutic approach to the philosophy of translation (as sketched out, in particular, by Paul Ricoeur), I shall endeavour to develop the concept of translation (in German: Übersetzung) as confrontation (Auseinandersetzung), i.e. the thesis that the work of translation essentially involves an engagement with as well as a confrontation between different world views, or “world visions” (Weltansichten) in the sense of Wilhelm von Humboldt. In the first part of my talk, I shall analyse the notion of paradigm, in the triple sense of an example, a (scientific) model of description, and an ideal, i.e. a standard of quality or an ethical norm. In the second part, I shall argue that the work of translation can be conceived as a paradigm, in this triple sense, of understanding, linguistic creativity, and transcultural communication. In this context, I shall discuss Ricoeur’s account of the work of translation, according to which it consists in a “construction of comparables”, drawing on the potential for “semantic innovation” inherent in human language which founds the possibility of a metaphorical transfer of meaning as well. This will lead me to examine, on the one hand, the kinship between “inter-linguistic” and “intra-linguistic translation”, as Roman Jakobson has termed the act of saying something in other words (paraphrase), and on the other hand, the notion of a kind of “pre-linguistic translation,” i.e. the originary articulation or transposition of experience into linguistic expression. Finally, conceiving the work of translating between languages as a descriptive model of transcultural communication as well as a normative ideal, I shall take up Ricoeur’s ethical and political notion of “linguistic hospitality” and connect it with the thesis that “culture is translational”, put forward by Homi K. Bhabha in the context of his critical theory of postcolonial struggles and cultural hybridity.
In the third part of my talk, I shall develop (with reference to the notion of “untranslatables”, as elaborated by Barbara Cassin) some further perspectives for a philosophy of translation. In order to concretise the concept of translation as confrontation, I aim to demonstrate what it can mean to reflect philosophical key concepts, so to speak, in the ‘mirror’ of translation, by methodically examining and comparing the ways in which they are or have been translated between different languages, discourses, and idioms.
