Cover not available
Article published In:
Translation and Interpreting Studies
Vol. 12:1 (2017) ► pp.116–136

Differential translation

A proposed strategy for translating polysemous language in German philosophy

| University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Translators of German philosophy into English must often choose whether to express concrete or abstract meanings for polysemous German keywords. This article discusses “differential translation,” a widely underestimated strategy for representing polysemous words in translation. Disavowing both untranslatability and the necessity of terminological equivalence, this strategy integrates signs of polysemy into the reading experience by presenting foreign keywords in brackets after their differing, context-dependent meanings. The article discusses how translators have already responded and how they might respond even more constructively to passages where Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Hans Blumenberg, respectively, choose words that link abstractions to images: by presenting existence as both foundational and ground-like (gründlich), time as both fluctuating and fluid (strömend), and common sense as both obvious and nearby (naheliegend). Encountering differentially translated texts would challenge future scholars to evaluate the unity of the concepts behind the words.

Keywords: polysemy, phenomenology, metaphor, untranslatability, Heidegger, Blumenberg
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • 1. Grund, ground or reasons? (Heidegger)
  • 2. Strom, stream or flux? (Husserl)
  • 3. Naheliegend, obvious or lying near? (Blumenberg)
  • 4.How to translate untranslatables
  • Notes
  • References


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 13 April 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.12.1.06haw
References
Appiah, Kwame Anthony
1993 “Thick Translation.” Callaloo 16 (4): 808–19. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barthes, Roland
1982 Le Plaisir du Texte. [The Pleasure of the Text.] Paris: French & European Pubns.Google Scholar
Beals, Kurt
2014 “Alternatives to Impossibility: Translation as Dialogue in the Works of Paul Celan.” Translation Studies 7 (3): 284–99. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Benjamin, Andrew E.
1989 Translation and the Nature of Philosophy: A New Theory of Words. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter
2000 “The Task of the Translator: An Introduction to the Translation of Baudelaire’s Tableaux Parisiens.” In The Translation Studies Reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Berman, Antoine
2000 “Translation and the Trials of the Foreign.” In The Translation Studies Reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti, 284–97. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Blumenberg, Hans
1950 “Die ontologische Distanz: eine Untersuchung über die Krisis der Phänomenologie Husserls.” [The Ontological Distance: An Investigation on the Crisis of Husserl’s Phenomenology.] Habilitationsschrift. Kiel.Google Scholar
1966 Die Legitimität der Neuzeit. [The Legitimacy of the Modern Age.] Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
1983 The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
1987 Das Lachen der Thrakerin: eine Urgeschichte der Theorie. [The Laughter of the Thracian Woman: A Protohistory of Theory.] Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
2010 Theorie der Lebenswelt. Berlin: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
2012 Quellen, Ströme, Eisberge. Edited by Ulrich v. Bülow and Dorit Krusche. Berlin: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
2015 The Laughter of the Thracian Woman: A Protohistory of Theory. Translated by Spencer Hawkins. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
Cassin, Barbara, Steven Rendall, and Emily S. Apter
2014 Dictionary of Untranslatables a Philosophical Lexicon. Princeton: Princeton University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Charlston, David
2012 “Translating Hegel’s Ambiguity: A Culture of Humor and Witz.” In Translation and Philosophy, edited by Lisa Foran. Intercultural Studies and Foreign Language learning, 1663–5809. New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
2014 “Translatorial Hexis.” Radical Philosophy, no. 186 (August). [URL].
Derrida, Jacques
1973 Speech and Phenomena, and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
1991 Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question. Translated by Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby. 1 edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
2001 “What Is a ‘Relevant’ Translation?” Translated by Lawrence Venuti. Critical Inquiry 27 (2): 174–200. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Faber, Pamela
2015 “Frames as Framework for Terminology.” In Handbook of Terminology, edited by Hendrik J. Kockaert and Frieda Steurs, 14–33. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Foran, Lisa
2015 “An Ethics of Discomfort: Supplementing Ricoeur On Translation.” Études Ricoeuriennes / Ricoeur Studies 6 (1): 25–45. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Freud, Sigmund
2003 The Uncanny. Edited by Hugh Haughton. Translated by David McLintock. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Genette, Gérard
1997 Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. U of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Groth, Miles
2004 Translating Heidegger. Humanity Books.Google Scholar
Haverkamp, Anselm, and Dirk Mende
eds. 2009 Metaphorologie: Zur Praxis einer Theorie. [Metaphorology: On the practice of a theory.] 11. Aufl. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Heidegger, Martin
1969 The Essence of Reasons. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
1974 “The Principle of Ground.” Translated by Keith Hoeller. Man and World 7 (3): 207–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1991 Nietzsche, Vol. 1: The Will to Power as Art, Vol. 2: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same. Translated by David Farrell Krell. San Francisco: HarperOne.Google Scholar
1996 The Principle of Reason. Translated by Reginald Lilly. Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
1997 Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Translated by Richard Taft. Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
2008 Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Reprint. Harper Perennial Modern Classics.Google Scholar
Husserl, Edmund
1964 Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness. Edited by Martin Heidegger. Translated by James S. Churchill. 1st edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
1981 Husserl, Shorter Works. Edited by Peter McCormick and Frederick Elliston. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press; Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press.Google Scholar
2001 Logical Investigations. Translated by Dermot Moran. Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Jakobson, Roman
1971 “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.” In Selected Writings: Word and Language, 260–64. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Konersmann, Ralf
2007 Wörterbuch der philosophischen Metaphern. [Dictionary of Philosophical Metaphors.] Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson
1980 “The Metaphorical Structure of the Human Conceptual System.” Cognitive Science 41: 195–208. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Laplanche, Jean., and J. B. Pontalis
1973 The Language of Psycho-Analysis. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. International Psycho-Analytical Library. London: Hogarth Press.Google Scholar
Laplanche, Jean
1993 “The Freud Museum Seminar.” In Jean Laplanche: Seduction, Translation and the Drives : A Dossier, edited by Martin Stanton, First edition, 41–64. London: Ica Editions.Google Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccolò
1977 The Prince: A New Translation, Backgrounds, Interpretations. Translated by Robert M. Adams. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, Maurie
2002 Phenomenology of Perception. New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
1995 Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Translated by Walter Arnold Kaufmann. New York: Modern Library.Google Scholar
Phillips, Adam
2007 “After Strachey: Translating Freud.” London Review of Books, October 4.Google Scholar
Plato
1940 Platon-Brevier, grossenteils in neuen Übersetzungen. [Plato Digest, Largely in New Translations.] Translated by Karl Kindt. Selections. German. [Dessau]: K. Rauch.Google Scholar
1977 Theaetetus, Sophist. Translated by Harold North Fowler. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V.
1960 Word and Object. Studies in Communication. [Cambridge]: Technology Press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Rand, Nicholas
1990 “The Political Truth of Heidegger’s ‘Logos’: Hiding in Translation.” PMLA 105 (3): 436–47. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ricoeur, Paul
1977 The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language. Translated by Robert Czerny. La Métaphore vive. English. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Robinson, Douglas
1991 The Translator’s Turn. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
2001 Who Translates?: Translator Subjectivities Beyond Reason. SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Schalow, F.
ed. 2011 Heidegger, Translation, and the Task of Thinking Essays in Honor of Parvis Emad. Contributions to Phenomenology, 0923–9545; 65. Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media B.V. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stellardi, Giuseppe
2000 Heidegger and Derrida on Philosophy and Metaphor: Imperfect Thought. Philosophy and Literary Theory. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books.Google Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence
1998 The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference. New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar