Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1999 00:27:46 +0000
Subject: Re: Routledge Guidebook to Being and Time (translation)


In message <m103T2H-0003EdC-AT-fwd03.btx.dtag.de>, Michael
Eldred <artefact-AT-t-online.de> writes
>Here is something from Heidegger that can say something to us when thinking 
>about translation. He is talking about the translation of Greek _alaetheia_ with 
>_Unverborgenheit_: 
>
>English:
>"We only come to [translating the Greek word _alaetheia_ ME] when the 
>translating word "Unverborgenheit" [unhiddenness, unencryptedness ME] 
>carries us 
>_over_ in to the realm of experience and the way of experiencing from which 
>the 
>Greeks ... say the word _alaetheia_. (...) People think that 'translating' is 
>the transfer from one language to another, from a foreign language into our 
>native tongue or conversely. We overlook, however, that we are also 
>continually 
>translating our own language, our native tongue, into its own words. Speaking 
>and saying are in themselves a translating whose essence in no way is fully 
>exhausted by the fact that the translating word and the translated word belong 
>to different languages. In any conversation and conversation-with-oneself, an 
>originary translating is at work. By this we do not mean only the process of 
>replacing one phrase by another in the same language and using the 
>'paraphrase'. 
>/ The change in choice of words is already a consequence of the fact that what 
>has to be said has carried us across (transferred) us into another truth and 
>clarity or even questionability. This carrying across (_trans_ferring) can take 
>place without the expression in language changing. The poetry of a poet, the 
>treatise of a thinker each reside in their own, unique, singular language. It 
>compels us to hear this language again and again as if we were hearing it for 
>the first time. These first-born words carry us over each time to the banks of 
>another land. What is called trans_lating_ (carrying _across_) and 
>paraphrasing 
>always only follows the _carrying_ across (_trans_fer) of our entire being into 
>the realm of the transformed truth. Only when we are given over to this 
>_trans_lating are we taking care of language's words." 
(_Parmenides_ GA54 S.16, S.17f)
>

Interesting, Michael!!!!!
To a large extent, Quine (of all people) would agree with that, I think.
Quine agrees that not only is there translation (and interpretation)
whenever we try to make sense (even) of the words of Other fellow
native speakers, but also that there is translation (and interpretation)
whenever we try to make sense of our own previously 'expressed'
words.(This is a critical premise in his so-called 'notorious' doctrine of
the Indeterminacy of Translation).  Of course, Quine's conclusion --
which would, perhaps, be accepted by H -- is that 'meaning', QUA the
kind of item that traditional philosophers and many current philosophers
espouse, can be made NO sense of; e.g., that we can make no sense of
'meaning' AS whatever is expressed by the 'proposition', AS what
correct translation preserves across time, and across languages, AS
what is referred to in the following claim: "Der Schnee ist weiss," "Yuki
ga shiroi desu," and "Snow is white" all have the same meaning
(perhaps, 'meaning' construed 'Vorhandenheitlich' (?)), such an item as
that is philosophical myth of the worse kind.

Today, I said that it was cold. Yesterday, I said that it was cold.
Mysterious thing, language!
Kindest regards, 
jim

PS. Sorry for the deletion of the original.


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