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Does translating philosophy change the philosophy?

Claire Dubois Fellow
· 5 replies · 249 views
Meaning & languageContinental#terminology#translation
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I translate for a living, and philosophical texts are the ones that keep me up at night.

Heidegger's Dasein is left untranslated in English. Sartre's pour-soi becomes "for-itself", which sounds nothing like ordinary English. Hegel's Aufhebung becomes "sublation", a word English speakers learn only from Hegel. Each choice commits the reader to an interpretation before they've read a page.

Barbara Cassin's Dictionary of Untranslatables (French 2004, English 2014) is built on the idea that these words mark points where languages think differently.

So: do untranslatable terms show that language shapes philosophical thought? Or only that translators are cautious and readers are lazy?

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5 answers

  1. Layla Haddad

    Fellow

    Arabic gives a striking example. Wujūd, the standard word for existence, comes from a root meaning "to find". The translators of Greek philosophy into Arabic had to coin terms, and some coinages, like huwiyya (built from the pronoun "he"), carried their own connotations. It's hard to believe that made no difference to how the philosophers thought.

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    1. Claire Dubois

      Fellow

      Layla, the root meaning "to find" is wonderful. It means existence is grasped as something encountered rather than something posited. I wonder if any Arabic philosopher played on that deliberately.

  2. Meera Kulkarni

    Fellow

    Dharma is my favourite untranslatable. Duty, law, righteousness, the nature of a thing, a property in logic, a Buddhist element of existence. Translators pick one and the reader inherits a narrower concept than the text has.

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  3. Kavya Menon

    Fellow

    As a poet I'm biased, but I think it's both. The language opens some paths and makes others longer. A good translator doesn't remove the path, she shows you where the original took a turn.

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  4. Henrike Vogel

    Fellow

    Geist is the German example I struggle with. Mind, spirit, intellect, ghost, wit. English translators of Hegel have to choose, and "spirit" makes him sound more religious than "mind" does. Both are partly right.

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