Language, translation, and the hegemony of English

Translation has gone under the microscope many times and many theories have been created to explain, systematize and understand it. Some of these theories are linguistic (Jakobson, Nida, etc.) others are cultural (the postcolonial translation theory, etc.) as well as other theories that approached translation from various angles. Some of these theories are philosophical in the sense that they deal with translation from a philosophical point of view. The current paper is to review and classify these theories and identify the reasons behind their inception. In doing so, the relation between philosophy and translation will be examined and determined. It is proposed in this paper that translation in its nature is a philosophical process that involves logic and epistemology.

Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation, 2021

Translation and Philosophy are vast and capacious disciplines, and it is to D. M. Spitzer's credit that the volume Philosophy's Treason (2020) collects contributions from a suitably international range of thinkers, translators, and critics-from Moscow to Rio, Hong Kong to Vienna. Maybe it is too early to say with certainty, but if practitioners of both disciplines are not careful they may come to regret not capitalising on the recent interjections of Barbara Cassin and Emily Apter's work on untranslatability. The recognition of their mutual importance will need to be sustained in pedagogy and syllabi - as much as in recent research - if it is to continue and develop further.

Asian Studies, 2022

The article aims for a critical reflection on the practices and methodology of the so-called comparative philosophy. It starts from an observation that the recent successful developments in comparative philosophy nevertheless have a very limited impact outside the discipline. The article argues that a specific universality-particularity tension is to blame. Because "comparison" as a method also inherently displays this tension, and thus cannot overcome it, the article suggests seeing translation as a method of philosophical thinking. It is argued that this constitutes a postcomparative take on universality-particularity tension and a postcomparative response to the need for a more culturally inclusive academic philosophy. The advantages of looking at translation as a core methodological stance in intercultural postcomparative philosophy are suggested.

You would be hard-pressed to rustle up a philosopher likely to utter the dismissive phrase, 'but that's just semantics!' 'Semantics' means the theory of meaning; and an impressive quantity of philosophical work of impressive quality has been devoted to semantics during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Works of philosophical semantics which deservedly enjoy the status of classics explore such questions as: whence does linguistic meaning originate? How do meanings change? How do sub-sentential items combine syntactically to yield assertions, or ask questions, or issue commands? What rôle might a theory of truth play in the theory of meaning? What grasp must a person have on the semantics of some given language, in order to count as a competent speaker of it? The questions are of formidable complexity; their inter-relations are intricate and often quite opaque. The best answers on offer are brilliant, but, almost without exception, rather contentious. However, despite the remarkable creativity and intensity of the philosophy of language, philosophers more or less entirely neglect the topic of translation. One might object that The Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon, just published in English translation and weighing in at a massive 1344 pages, gives the lie to my accusation. In due course I shall return to this doorstop. That neglect is prima facie surprising. One of the things I should like to establish is that the surprise should not subside: philosophical neglect of translation is an abiding enigma. Here is the game plan: there are going to be four bits. In the first bit, I shall sketch out how it is that plenty of non-philosophical folk -that is, just about everybody -are, on occasion, exercised by translational phenomena -whether rightly or wrongly. In the second bit, I shall contrast that non-philosophical attitude with the exiguous attention philosophy pays translation. In the third bit, I shall speculate about what some distinctively philosophical problems of translation might be. At last, in the fourth bit, I shall get down to business by exemplifying my hunches with some ancient Chinese and ancient Greek documents. § § § § § § Here is the first bit: how it is that non-philosophical folk are exercised by translational phenomena. Monty Python have a sketch dating back to 1970 wherein the villain of the piece is a tourist's phrasebook which rather unhelpfully renders the Hungarian original of 'please direct me to the railway station' as 'please fondle my on the very idea...

This paper discusses an example of ‘Philosophy on the Way between Languages’ in which translation is explicitly used as part of the process of doing philosophy. It shows that, rather than feeling impoverished by being forced to use a foreign language, the multiplicity of languages available can be used to enrich our philosophizing.

Routledge Handbook of Translation and Philosophy, 2018

Early in its development, translation studies quickly abandoned a quest for a general theory. Rather, approaches to translation have evolved toward fragmentary theorisations. There was first the ‘linguistic turn’ about fifty years ago; the ‘cultural turn’ some twenty years later; and, most recently, there has been a ‘sociological turn’. Throughout this evolution, translation as an object of study has increasingly moved from being viewed as a linguistic transfer ‘process’ to being seen as a final ‘product’, sometimes to be compared to its source text, sometimes to other (re)translations. However, the study of translation as a process has continued, and in more recent translation studies scholarship such study typically occurs within sociological investigations that seek to uncover how the social production of translations unfolds. In parallel to these developments in translation studies, translation has been used metaphorically in portraying, for example, genetic decoding (molecular biology), dream interpretation (psychoanalysis), transfer and exchange of knowledge (medical research), and property transfer (law). And translation is used figuratively in conversation, as in, ‘this idea must be translated into concrete action’. But these translational metaphors have only played a marginal role in translational theorising. A ‘philosophy of translation’, I argue, should incorporate not only the various perspectives on translation as an object of study, but also its metaphorical uses. Indeed, translation can be seen as a philosophical paradigm in itself, and can be studied and applied outside the bounds of language, culture, and metaphor. Hermeneutics serves as a starting point, but any philosophy of translation needs to be conceptualised within translation studies, which may require a new epistemological sub-discipline. Once we have a suitably conceptualised philosophy within the frame of translation studies, further issues can then be explored – for instance, could it deepen the understanding of translation as an heuristic tool in not only the humanities, but also in the natural and social sciences?

Yearbook of Translational Hermeneutics, 2021

This article proposes that Steiner’s account of a hermeneutic translation does not square with his deeper linguistic and literary sympathies, that he often puts him­self in contradictory argumentative positions, despite the vigorous clarity of his reasoning, and that he might find a suitable home for those sympathies and some solution to his predicament in the kind of translational model that is offered here. While Steiner takes pleasure in language’s capacity to make room for individual privacies, for the contingencies of idiolect, and to create the imaginative space for ‘alternity’, that is, for the hypothetical, the suppositional, the optative and con­di­tion­al, the kind of hermeneutic translation which he promotes fosters sobriety, bal­ance and durability, and resists the excessive and the proliferative. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that many of the conclusions he draws from translation are negative and tinged with defeatism; we can only regret that he does not use ...

Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 2005