Translating Philosophy and the Philosophy of Translation
Conference organised by the Centre interdisciplinaire de recherches en traduction et en interprétation (CIRTI) and the philosophy department at the University of Liège – 4-6 May 2017
Since I moved to Brussels to work as a translation trainee at the Council of the European Union, I felt the need to discover and engage with the translation community beyond my work environment, so I decided to start looking for conferences in the field of interpreting and translation that I could attend. After narrowing down my search, I found an event that I was truly interested in and which I attended at the beginning of this month: a translation conference organised by the University of Liège (Belgium). The conference had several keynote speakers and panels focusing on two main approaches: the philosophy of translating and the translation of philosophy.
The former approach (philosophy of translation) can be studied and analysed from different perspectives. We can ask ourselves if translation can be seen as a tool through which we can discover more about the philosophy of language or sociology, for instance, while it also brings with it ethical considerations about what we are translating, the idea of Otherness and what statement the translation act brings with it. The former field (the translation of philosophy) makes us reflect on the role that translation plays when it comes to translating philosophical texts. Does the translation convey all philosophical concepts from the original texts? Do retranslations of philosophical texts bring new information, and if so, can different translations bring with them different interpretations of the source text? Is the approach of a translator without a background in philosophy different than that of a philosopher-translator?
These were simply some of the questions raised by the presentations and panels, and the individual contributions ranged from papers such as one focusing on the incorrect translation of a passage from Galileo's Il Saggiatore, the rapport d’intraduisibilité between the Western concept of Enlightenment and prabodhan (a concept developed by the Indian philosopher Ambedkar), to a paper focusing on the linguistic dimension in the translation of philosophy and its role in conveying the philosophical meaning.
Although the speakers and their contributions had different perspectives, what really struck me was the emphasis on the importance of the linguistic dimension in the translation of philosophy, in order to faithfully render the philosophical concepts present in the original text. The linguistic focus seems to have fallen out of grace in recent times as far as theoretical studies on translation are concerned, but when it comes to translating philosophy, that does not seem to be the case, as language is an instrument used by philosophers to express their theories. Additionally, it is worth pointing out that one of the speakers suggested an interesting tripartite division of translation into: technical, literary and philosophical. Based on this triade, technical translation would have an informative, descriptive function, whereas literary translation would have an expressive one. The translation of philosophy is a field in its own right, due to its inherent specificities, and it involves conventions and priorities of its own, which need to be understood before being translated.
To conclude, attending this conference exposed me to some extremely informative and interesting ideas and researchers in the field of translation studies and philosophy alike, and it made me understand that after the sociological turn, after the post-colonialist turn, now we are facing a philosophical turn in translation studies.
