Abstract
Following the advice of Vermeer and Snell-Hornby about giving more attention to Schleiermacher’s views on language and interpretation when approaching his classical lecture on the two methods of translating, I shall here argue that his text is multilayered, with his National Translation Project above his epistemic insights into language and understanding. I propose that we invert the hierarchy, looking at hermeneutics in a way informed by the philosophy of language from the later Wittgenstein, as well as taking into consideration some major positions in contemporary translation theory. Ultimately, the paper deals with different conditions of possibility: that of the interpreter for translation and that of the conception of language for translation theory.
One keeps forgetting to go down to the foundations. One doesn’t put the question marks deep enough down.
(Wittgenstein)
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Notes
- 1.
“On this double scale, then, the translator rises ever higher above the interpreter until he reaches the true realm of translation: where all work revolves around the cultural products of art and scholarship” (Schleiermacher Methoden 41). In setting up this hierarchy, there is a repeated use of gradation in expressions like “the less/more” followed by “the more” (je weniger/mehr… desto mehr…; 40–41). The dichotomy, here, relies explicitly on an abstraction from the recognized gradations. I shall explore elsewhere the difference between process (e.g., Übersetzen) and product (e.g., Übersetzung). In this article, translation and interpretation are used as general terms. Unless acknowledged in the references, translations are of my own final responsibility and reflect the strategic decision of publishing in English instead of Portuguese or German, respectively, my native and main working language. Some degree of “foreignness” will then be constitutive of the text, a feature that is not alien to the arguments it poses.
- 2.
To some extent, one could claim that Schleiermacher mobilizes an instrumental (or referential) conception of language when talking about this domain. It is as if everything is known and one has simply changed labels from one language to the other, since “the participants know well these [commercial and legal] relations,” which are also referred to as “universals.” In other words, here, the “irrationality of languages ” would play no relevant role, as communication would take place under the sign of the “object”—and not under the “spirit of the language(s).”
- 3.
There is indeed some discussion about the level of proficiency in the source language and culture, which can be understood as a polemic against translators who are insufficiently educated for their task (e.g., 44-45): “Of course, whoever has acquired this art of understanding , through the most diligent treatment of language, through exact knowledge of the whole historical life of a nation, and through the most rigorous interpretation of individual works and their authors —he, of course, but only he— can desire to open up to his compatriots and contemporaries that same understanding of the masterpieces of art and scholarship” (emphasis added). But then this educated, scholarly reader /translator is seen as if she/he had direct access to the source culture /text, as if she/he were immersed in that culture, emerging from his/her own frame of reference, or his/her world-picture to speak with Wittgenstein (cf. note 10).
- 4.
Lefevere is not alone in this dissection of things. Venuti’s famous texts about the lecture (e.g., Genealogies) also discuss the two aspects at very different moments, and one could easily infer that this amounts to a general tendency. It is then no coincidence that various speakers at the 2013 Lisbon Conference return to the same passage to recuperate Schleiermacher’s conception of language and interpreting.
- 5.
As usual in the specialized literature, references to Wittgenstein’s work are made here using acronyms and section numbers, when possible, to facilitate the use of different editions and render the text more economical. Kopetzki (19-43) gives a valuable account of other forerunners to the linguistic turn in her discussion of relativistic vs. universalistic positions about language and translation, with special emphasis on the German romantics: “This end result of a futile search for the original unit was formulated by Schleiermacher early as 1822: ‘The oldest given is the separateness of people through the diversity of languages’. Because ‘languages are mutually irrational and their difference is a difference in thinking’ [Hermeneutik und Kritik 420, 461]. If this sentence and Humboldt’s famous remark —‘The difference of languages is a difference of worldviews itself’— are compared with the statement Wittgenstein uses to explain that the agreement of people ‘in language’ is ‘not in opinions, but rather in form of life’ [PI § 421], one can clearly see the extent to which the romantic departure from the philosophy of consciousness, led by the formative influence of language on perception [Erkennen] and thinking [Denken], has paved the way for the much later linguistic turn” (38–39).
- 6.
Zimmermann (90), e.g., reminds us that Wittgenstein’s grammar “doesn’t speak ‘about’ but rather ‘from within’ language,” as “the hermeneutical circle is reinforced (…) by the fact that ‘any kind of making a language understood presupposes a language.” See also Oliveira (Revisitando; Quadro).
- 7.
This being the second step in the process of concealing the mediator, as suggested above. Robinson (51) also perceives this concealment and asks: “Why can’t the translator simply be present at the face-to-face meeting [between author and reader ] and interpret between the two?” The answer I am proposing here is twofold. First, in rhetorical terms, for Schleiermacher, this would lower translation (Übersetzen) to the level of interpretation (Dolmetschen), thus diminishing the importance of the “National Translation Project” (which Robinson [22] himself recognized as the target of the lecture). And, second, on the epistemic level, the author and reader actually cannot meet without this mediation , since the translator is the condition of possibility for the meeting itself and its resolution.
- 8.
Interestingly enough, Schleiermacher himself insists on these implications when it comes to condemning the less favored part of the dichotomy (Methoden 58 ff.), which is then reduced to the favored method, the one suitable for the “National Translation Project.” This makes clear to what extent the lecture is a strongly rhetorical piece of work, technically speaking.
- 9.
One could argue that Schleiermacher (Methoden 48) does take the translator into consideration, when he states that the translator should try to “offer his audience the same [that is: his own] understanding of the work” (Das nämliche Bild, den nämlichen Eindrukk, welchen er selbst… gewonnen, … mitzutheilen; cf. Oliveira, Revisitando 171 and note 3). The problem is exactly this: the dichotomy, as it is articulated in the lecture, obliterates the fact that it is necessarily the translator’s understanding which is offered to the audience, no matter what effect she/he intends to achieve, even at the two poles of the dichotomy. Here lies probably the most important of the alleged inconsistencies of the text. Whether Schleiermacher would have changed the text in this respect, had he had enough time to prepare a more consistent version , remains bare speculation. My guess is that he would probably have maintained the focus on the strategies of translation that allow the enrichment of the German language and culture, in opposition, e.g., to what was done in France at that time, especially when taking into consideration the selected audience he was talking to and the strategies he used to address this audience while trying to hide more effectively those inconsistencies, because his main target at that moment was a political one.
- 10.
Again, it is the concealment of the specific point of view of the translator as reader / interpreter that brings about this shift, with the adequate reading being seen as a matter of knowledge about the language and culture of the source text (cf. note 3). Notice also that when it comes to prizing Schleiermacher’s own preferred strategy, the translator’s stance is put in a positive light: “had the author learned German as well as the translator Latin, he would not have translated his work, originally composed in Latin, any differently than the translator has done” (Methoden 48; emphasis added). The importance and efficacy attributed by Schleiermacher to this kind of philological knowledge might be one of the allusions to the work of August Wolf mentioned in his letter to his wife, since Wolf had written a “founding document of philology” (cf. Robinson 25). But if one takes Schleiermacher’s declared conception of language to its final consequences, one has to admit that such philological work also occurs as a result of “the power of the language [and time] one was born and educated” (Methoden 43; comment and emphasis added). In other words, every understanding is already an application from the point of view of the interpreter, as Gadamer (307-9e/312-14g) correctly argues, as does also Wittgenstein: “Different ‘interpretations’ must correspond to different applications” (Culture and Value [CV] 46e). One might be tempted to blame Schleiermacher for not perceiving, at the time of the lecture, that philological work also relies to a great extent on a set of standards and assumed facts/hypotheses which amounts to a paradigm, a concept made famous in the philosophy of science by Thomas Kuhn and now current currency in the humanities, but which was first tackled on the epistemic level by Wittgenstein (cf. PI § 50; CV 21, 23, 30, 59) and which is also very deep-seated in the latter’s notion of grammar and his discussions on the different normative or descriptive uses in/of language—a distinction that some common “skeptical” or “relativistic” readings of his later work have not grasped, as Wittgenstein’s anti-essentialism cannot be reduced to any of these traditional (dis)positions (cf. PI § 655; OC §§ 97, 152, 211, 341; whereas even the notion of scientific hypothesis is surpassed by the much deeper underlying world-picture, which is not a matter of choice, e.g., in PI § 241–242; OC §§ 93–95, 105, 140–144, 162, 167, 248 inter alia; cf. Rhees 78–92; Moyal-Sharrock). Nevertheless, I prefer to praise Schleiermacher for having already taken steps in this direction with his conception of language (as quoted above), even if he does not take things to their final consequences in his lecture itself, as he was unable to escape the scope of his own time and the much discussed political/ideological pressures.
- 11.
Toury’s discussion on the topic of translation problems actually operates with the distinction of different levels, although he does not mobilize, e.g., the term episteme or its variants. But that is exactly where his definition of Problem 1 lies (abstract “[un]translatability ”), whereas Problem 2 and Problem 3 correspond respectively to the product and process dimensions of translation (cf. Toury, Descriptive 35-46). When he states that there is no “Solution 1 ” for Problem 1 , he is admitting that translation cannot amount to an a priori equivalence, although he then accepts practical, established equivalences, which will underlie his crucial concept of translational norms (61-77). Actually, many of Toury’s views on language and translation can be correlated to Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, the most evident being the notion of family resemblance , which Toury explicitly mentions, although he states that he did not develop the topic due to his “shaky background in philosophy” (69; see also 85). A good example of the case of family resemblance is his account of 27 translations of a single Japanese haiku into English over nearly a century (203–211; Oliveira, Forma 219–223 reviews 7 translations of another haiku into Portuguese). See also the discussion of the impact of changing translational norms on Hebrew translations of Hemingway’s short story “The Killers” (Toury, Descriptive 97–98), in contrast to Schleiermacher’s claim that the author himself/herself would not have translated the text “any differently than the translator has done,” as quoted in note 10. Hence, Toury’s target-oriented approach and his adherence to Wittgenstein’s later philosophy of language turn his work into a privileged channel for illustrating some of my points. But the projects are different, since Toury’s ultimate goal is a rationale for Descriptive Studies, while my interests lie more on the epistemic level.
- 12.
Source orientation usually evokes translatio (or “fidelity ”), and “foreignizing” is taken as a sign of being close to the source text , even at the expense of style in the target system. Vermeer’s definition of the “scholarly” type of translation enables the association of “foreignizing” translations with an “ethical” attitude towards the source text, in the sense of Berman. On the other hand, it is problematic to conclude that Lefevere takes a “conservative” stance by advocating translation to be necessarily traductio , as Venuti (Genealogies) does in his scholarly and very influential text. On the epistemic level, a stance is not “conservative” or “progressive,” but rather clarifying or not; in other words, does it help us to understand, or does it create confusion? That is probably the reason why Wittgenstein regards clarity as a goal in itself (cf. CV 9). On the other hand, on the sociopolitical level, one could rather think of “foreignizing” and “domesticating” translations as different aesthetical approaches, with the former being akin to auto-referential poetics such as from Shakespeare, Brecht, or Godard, the latter akin to illusionist poetics in the Aristotelian tradition , as in mainstream movies. Cf. Szymanska on illusion and Robinson (17–18) on simulation.
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Oliveira, P. (2016). Language Conception and Translation: From the Classic Dichotomy to a Continuum Within the Same Framework. In: Seruya, T., Justo, J. (eds) Rereading Schleiermacher: Translation, Cognition and Culture. New Frontiers in Translation Studies. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-47949-0_9
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