[np] Found in Translation

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

 > I sympathize with Dabashi's idea of a mind "beyond East and West", 
but each time I'm trying to read Nishida Kitaro I realize that it's 
difficult when you're not able to read Japanese.<

With this I'm not saying that the translations I used made a doubtful 
impression. Actually the contrary was the case. But Nishida's central 
thought of a 'logic of place' (basho no ronri) which eventually leads to 
an 'absolute nothing' (zettai mu) is pretty hard to understand in 
translation. Something crucial is unavoidably lost here. When Polt says 
in his review that "translators of Heidegger's books into English have 
the humbler task of providing a reliable approximation of the German for 
those who cannot read the original on its own", this is in principle 
true for any translation, also - and perhaps especially - of fictional 
literature. Again, I need translations like everybody else and probably 
wouldn't have found my way to Pynchon without the GR translation of 
Jelinek/Pilz. Even today I simply wouldn't get some of Emily Dickinson's 
poems (on the basic level of what's actually said in the text) without 
the translations of Gunhild Kübler. But then again it's clear that the 
true song is heard only in the original. I mean, would you trust 
someone's judgment on Pynchon if it was exclusively based on translations?


On 03.08.2013 12:29, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:
>
> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/28/found-in-translation/?_r=2& 
>
>
> We all need translations, and it's good someone defends them in 
> principle. Hamid Dabashi's first example, however, is not unproblematic:
>
> "Consider Heidegger. Had it not been for his French translators and 
> commentators, German philosophy of his time would have remained an 
> obscure metaphysical thicket. And it was not until Derrida’s own take 
> on Heidegger found an English readership in the United States and 
> Britain that the whole Heidegger-Derridian undermining of metaphysics 
> began to shake the foundations of the Greek philosophical heritage. 
> One can in fact argue that much of contemporary Continental philosophy 
> originates in German with significant French and Italian glosses 
> before it is globalized in the dominant American English and assumes a 
> whole new global readership and reality. This has nothing to do with 
> the philosophical wherewithal of German, French or English. It is 
> entirely a function of the imperial power and reach of one language as 
> opposed to others."
>
> Three points:
>
> Derrida's project was an application of Heidegger, right, and US decon 
> is based on Derrida; the three approaches are nevertheless not one and 
> the same, as Derrida himself did put out several times.
>
> What's left out here is the Asian Heidegger reception: Already in the 
> 1920s students from India and Japan came to Marburg and Freiburg to 
> study under the Black Forest Wizard, and by now there are seven 
> Japanese translations of 'Sein und Zeit' (Being and Time). In China 
> and Korea they read Heidegger too.
>
> What makes Heidegger difficult to translate is neither the grammar nor 
> the length of sentences. It's the vocabulary which consists of old 
> words like 'Sorge', 'Gestell' or 'Gelassenheit' that, though put in a 
> philosophical context, are still radiating traditional meanings which 
> Heidegger unearths by means of etymology. There are also neologisms, 
> words crossed out, or divided (Dasein ---> Da-sein). This seems very 
> hard to translate to me, and in Heidegger's case definitely much more 
> gets lost in translation than in the cases of Nietzsche or Marx. How 
> difficult it is to translate Heidegger into English you can see from 
> the fact that his second opus magnum 'Vom Ereignis (Beiträge zur 
> Philosophie)', written secretly in the late 1930s and posthumously 
> published in 1989, found two translations in just 13 years. Here's a 
> review of the second one which appeared last year:
>
> http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/32043-contributions-to-philosophy-of-the-event/
>
> I sympathize with Dabashi's idea of a mind "beyond East and West", but 
> each time I'm trying to read Nishida Kitaro I realize that it's 
> difficult when you're not able to read Japanese.
>
>
>
>