Translation is futile?
March 16, 2011 10:29 AM Subscribe
Who was it who said or wrote that translation between languages is ultimately impossible?
I remember reading, in The Closing of the American Mind I think it was, about a philosopher/intellectual/writer, I think 19th nineteenth century but maybe early 20th, almost certainly a European, who believed that translation was impossible, that language so determines what is expressed that we can only at best approximate, badly, that which was written or uttered in other languages. Or something like that. Who was it? And can you provide the quote?
I don't have access to the book right now, and because Allan Bloom was himself a translator, Google yields a ton of unhelpful search results.
Thanks in advance!
I remember reading, in The Closing of the American Mind I think it was, about a philosopher/intellectual/writer, I think 19th nineteenth century but maybe early 20th, almost certainly a European, who believed that translation was impossible, that language so determines what is expressed that we can only at best approximate, badly, that which was written or uttered in other languages. Or something like that. Who was it? And can you provide the quote?
I don't have access to the book right now, and because Allan Bloom was himself a translator, Google yields a ton of unhelpful search results.
Thanks in advance!
Best answer: Amazon's Search Inside This Book feature suggests that it's Heidegger. Page 54:
"Heidegger, who desperately tried to maintain and revitalize this view, thought that "Language is the house of Being," that it is the height of superficiality to suppose that translation is even possible."posted by zamboni at 10:45 AM on March 16, 2011
Are you thinking of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which says that language determines cognition?
(Just so you know, the strong version of this has long since been discredited in linguistic research, although there is certainly evidence for language influencing thought processes in some contexts.)
posted by SymphonyNumberNine at 10:46 AM on March 16, 2011
(Just so you know, the strong version of this has long since been discredited in linguistic research, although there is certainly evidence for language influencing thought processes in some contexts.)
posted by SymphonyNumberNine at 10:46 AM on March 16, 2011
This is a slightly precious contention, insofar as every language only approximates meaning to some incomplete degree or another.
posted by Aquaman at 10:48 AM on March 16, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by Aquaman at 10:48 AM on March 16, 2011 [2 favorites]
Are you possibly thinking of Walter Benjamin's "The Task of the Translator"? Here's Wikipedia's blurb on it:
"He presented his stylistic concerns in The Task of the Translator, wherein he posits that a literary translation, by definition, produces deformations and misunderstandings of the original text. Moreover, in the deformed text, otherwise hidden aspects of the original, source-language text are elucidated, while previously obvious aspects become unreadable. Such translational mortification of the source text is productive; when placed in a specific constellation of works and ideas, newly revealed affinities, between historical objects, appear and are productive of philosophical truth."
posted by Anephim at 10:55 AM on March 16, 2011
"He presented his stylistic concerns in The Task of the Translator, wherein he posits that a literary translation, by definition, produces deformations and misunderstandings of the original text. Moreover, in the deformed text, otherwise hidden aspects of the original, source-language text are elucidated, while previously obvious aspects become unreadable. Such translational mortification of the source text is productive; when placed in a specific constellation of works and ideas, newly revealed affinities, between historical objects, appear and are productive of philosophical truth."
posted by Anephim at 10:55 AM on March 16, 2011
Yeah, I echo that this has been a sentiment among various philosophers/ies for ages, but if I had to pick one think who really flushed the idea out it would be Wittgenstein.
It isn't a precious contention; indeed it is a question at the very core of the theory of mind and our understanding of solipsism, sociolect v. idiolect, and even meaning, thought and truth itself, etc. Nor is the idea that language shapes cognition 'long discredited,' in fact the nuances of the interplay between thought and language are only now, nearly a century since Wittgenstein began promoting the idea, being realized.
Heidegger was also a proponent of this thought, as aforementioned, and famously asserted that German was the finest language for philosophy (a view shared with Hegel). And certainly when it comes to Heidegger's philosophy, there is a certain deep problem with translating it into English and retaining even a modicum of the original 'meaning,' which anyone who has read Heidegger in English will tell you is quite evident (and here we find ourselves in loops of hermeneutic circles and such, etc.)
posted by Lutoslawski at 10:56 AM on March 16, 2011
It isn't a precious contention; indeed it is a question at the very core of the theory of mind and our understanding of solipsism, sociolect v. idiolect, and even meaning, thought and truth itself, etc. Nor is the idea that language shapes cognition 'long discredited,' in fact the nuances of the interplay between thought and language are only now, nearly a century since Wittgenstein began promoting the idea, being realized.
Heidegger was also a proponent of this thought, as aforementioned, and famously asserted that German was the finest language for philosophy (a view shared with Hegel). And certainly when it comes to Heidegger's philosophy, there is a certain deep problem with translating it into English and retaining even a modicum of the original 'meaning,' which anyone who has read Heidegger in English will tell you is quite evident (and here we find ourselves in loops of hermeneutic circles and such, etc.)
posted by Lutoslawski at 10:56 AM on March 16, 2011
Response by poster: Heidegger, yes. And Search Inside, of course. My bad. Thank you.
posted by fugitivefromchaingang at 10:56 AM on March 16, 2011
posted by fugitivefromchaingang at 10:56 AM on March 16, 2011
Sorry, I meant that the idea that a "perfect" translation is possible is a precious contention. My bad.
/semiotics major away!
posted by Aquaman at 11:00 AM on March 16, 2011 [1 favorite]
/semiotics major away!
posted by Aquaman at 11:00 AM on March 16, 2011 [1 favorite]
The same problem would, presumably, exist between people who nominally speak the same language, because none of us speak exactly the same version of English, Spanish, Chinese, whatever.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 11:15 AM on March 16, 2011
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 11:15 AM on March 16, 2011
Heidegger said that in German. Maybe he meant something else.
posted by codswallop at 11:22 AM on March 16, 2011 [7 favorites]
posted by codswallop at 11:22 AM on March 16, 2011 [7 favorites]
From a scientific linguistic point of view, all human languages are dialects of one language, and the claim is absurd if it is limited to the referential dimension of semantic function. Languages can add words and concepts and grammatical categories and do so constantly. A concept that may be directly expressible in one language is always indirectly expressible in any other language, whether or not the categories exist for direct translation. Therefore, there is no basis for saying a concept "cannot" be translated between languages. Shades of meaning, nuance, poetics, expressive emphasis, efficiency -- all these can vary. But there is no absolute boundary beyond which meaning cannot be translated between any two human beings speaking any two versions of human language.
Philosophers (most of whom are not linguists, many of whom are not particularly multilingual, and very few of whom have ever studied languages outside their own, usually Indo-European, language family) are too hung up on categorical abstraction and a very narrow notion of reference, and most of them (Heidegger and Wittgenstein included) have fundamentally misinterpreted the point of the scientific theory of linguistic relativity. Languages cut different grooves through reality, but they access the same reality, whether that is emotional or environmental or imaginary.
My favorite book on this subject is the great linguistic anthropologist Paul Friedrich's 1984 classic *The Language Parallax.* Fluent in English, German, Russian, and the indigenous Mexican language Tarascan, Prof. Friedrich really has something to add here. Also highly recommended is John Lucy's book on linguistic relativity (1992 Language Diversity and Thought: A Reformulation of the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis).
I say this as a committed Sapirian who actually works on an Inuit language, supposedly the extreme test case for the relativity hypothesis from the point of view of English-language sociolinguistics (pace Geoff Pullum). Take that for what it's worth, but my Eskimo friends have no problem translating between their ancestral language and English, certainly not those who are natively bilingual. It takes effort and reformulation and circumlocution and dialogic clarification, but it is never impossible.
The notion of an absolute boundary of understanding is not only scientifically wrong, but detrimental to intercultural communication. Your poetry may be my science, but we can figure out how to split the difference.
posted by fourcheesemac at 11:56 AM on March 16, 2011 [8 favorites]
Philosophers (most of whom are not linguists, many of whom are not particularly multilingual, and very few of whom have ever studied languages outside their own, usually Indo-European, language family) are too hung up on categorical abstraction and a very narrow notion of reference, and most of them (Heidegger and Wittgenstein included) have fundamentally misinterpreted the point of the scientific theory of linguistic relativity. Languages cut different grooves through reality, but they access the same reality, whether that is emotional or environmental or imaginary.
My favorite book on this subject is the great linguistic anthropologist Paul Friedrich's 1984 classic *The Language Parallax.* Fluent in English, German, Russian, and the indigenous Mexican language Tarascan, Prof. Friedrich really has something to add here. Also highly recommended is John Lucy's book on linguistic relativity (1992 Language Diversity and Thought: A Reformulation of the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis).
I say this as a committed Sapirian who actually works on an Inuit language, supposedly the extreme test case for the relativity hypothesis from the point of view of English-language sociolinguistics (pace Geoff Pullum). Take that for what it's worth, but my Eskimo friends have no problem translating between their ancestral language and English, certainly not those who are natively bilingual. It takes effort and reformulation and circumlocution and dialogic clarification, but it is never impossible.
The notion of an absolute boundary of understanding is not only scientifically wrong, but detrimental to intercultural communication. Your poetry may be my science, but we can figure out how to split the difference.
posted by fourcheesemac at 11:56 AM on March 16, 2011 [8 favorites]
I was taught that Quine said something similar although that link is a bit simplistic. Quine also spoke about the idea that words won't directly translate e.g something said in Spanish may have a slightly different meaning than its English equivalent but will be close enough to be understood - the english speaker just won't get the full meaning.
posted by Laura_J at 1:04 PM on March 16, 2011
posted by Laura_J at 1:04 PM on March 16, 2011
The same problem would, presumably, exist between people who nominally speak the same language, because none of us speak exactly the same version of English, Spanish, Chinese, whatever.
Precisely. For Wittgenstein (and presumably for Heidegger also), words lost their meaning when taken out of their context (for W. this was their context of use in some language 'game'). Yes, the logical conclusion of 'no language is really translatable' is indeed a sort of solipsism, and it is a dark philosophical corner many of us find, and many philosophers have found, themselves stuck in.
But there is no absolute boundary beyond which meaning cannot be translated between any two human beings speaking any two versions of human language.
I suppose what is missing in this whole conversation is a very good working definition of what we mean by 'meaning.' Depending on that definition, I would argue that one could cast a very broad view of the possibility and efficacy of translation, or a very, very narrow one.
posted by Lutoslawski at 1:12 PM on March 16, 2011
Precisely. For Wittgenstein (and presumably for Heidegger also), words lost their meaning when taken out of their context (for W. this was their context of use in some language 'game'). Yes, the logical conclusion of 'no language is really translatable' is indeed a sort of solipsism, and it is a dark philosophical corner many of us find, and many philosophers have found, themselves stuck in.
But there is no absolute boundary beyond which meaning cannot be translated between any two human beings speaking any two versions of human language.
I suppose what is missing in this whole conversation is a very good working definition of what we mean by 'meaning.' Depending on that definition, I would argue that one could cast a very broad view of the possibility and efficacy of translation, or a very, very narrow one.
posted by Lutoslawski at 1:12 PM on March 16, 2011
I first thought of Quine, but his view is best expressed as "indeterminacy" than impossibility.
posted by Lifeson at 2:19 PM on March 16, 2011
posted by Lifeson at 2:19 PM on March 16, 2011
Wow that massline Quine page is useless at best. For a less misleading (but denser) introduction to Quine on translation try the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's article here.
posted by tractorfeed at 3:05 PM on March 16, 2011
posted by tractorfeed at 3:05 PM on March 16, 2011
Wittgenstein was deeply influenced by Schopenhauer, who, reflecting what I gather in his time was already a pretty common sentiment said:
In learning a language, the chief difficulty consists in making acquaintance with every idea which it expresses, even though it should use words for which there in no exact equivalent in the mother tongue; and this often happens. In learning a new language a man has, as it were, to mark out in his mind the boundaries of quite new spheres of ideas, with the result that spheres of ideas arise where none were before. Thus he not only learns words, he gains ideas too.
This is nowhere so much the case as in learning ancient languages, for the differences they present in their mode of expression as compared with modern languages is greater than can be found amongst modern languages as compared with one another. This is shown by the fact that in translating into Latin, recourse must be had to quite other turns of phrase than are used in the original. The thought that is to be translated has to be melted down and recast; in other words, it must be analyzed and then recomposed. It is just this process which makes the study of the ancient languages contribute so much to the education of the mind.
- On Language
In the same essay he depicts the meaning of near-cognates as a series of near-concentric circles, imho likely stimulating the discussion of "family resemblances" among words in LW's Philosophical Investigations.
posted by phrontist at 5:25 PM on March 16, 2011 [2 favorites]
In learning a language, the chief difficulty consists in making acquaintance with every idea which it expresses, even though it should use words for which there in no exact equivalent in the mother tongue; and this often happens. In learning a new language a man has, as it were, to mark out in his mind the boundaries of quite new spheres of ideas, with the result that spheres of ideas arise where none were before. Thus he not only learns words, he gains ideas too.
This is nowhere so much the case as in learning ancient languages, for the differences they present in their mode of expression as compared with modern languages is greater than can be found amongst modern languages as compared with one another. This is shown by the fact that in translating into Latin, recourse must be had to quite other turns of phrase than are used in the original. The thought that is to be translated has to be melted down and recast; in other words, it must be analyzed and then recomposed. It is just this process which makes the study of the ancient languages contribute so much to the education of the mind.
- On Language
In the same essay he depicts the meaning of near-cognates as a series of near-concentric circles, imho likely stimulating the discussion of "family resemblances" among words in LW's Philosophical Investigations.
posted by phrontist at 5:25 PM on March 16, 2011 [2 favorites]
That essay is part of Parerga und Paralipomena, by the way.
posted by phrontist at 5:26 PM on March 16, 2011
posted by phrontist at 5:26 PM on March 16, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by grizzled at 10:40 AM on March 16, 2011