Topics Philosophy

Question Is the translation of philosophical texts from one language to another a cause of problems? Can one really know unless one is bilingual except by being told by others who are? I found Heiddeger and Sartre very difficult in translation - is it me or them or the translation that is the problem? (Jokes welcome!) Also, what about philosophers who wrote in now dead languages like Plato, etc? Nuances and tone must be lost, even to classical scholars. At best do you get a rendering, or does this apply more to classical literature than philosophy? New translations of Homer are popping up all the time. Is the same true of Aristotle, for example, and can we ever say there are definitive texts by him in English?

Accepted:
February 8, 2007

Comments

It is often claimed that to understand anyone you need to read him or her in the original language, but I doubt whether that is true. To have a detailed understanding of the particular views of a thinker it is necessary to know the language, but to grasp the argument in general this is not required. After all, arguments can be expressed in a range of language or even just formally in symbols. It very much depends what you see philosophy as. If you take the history of philosophy seriously and see philosophy as exploring in detail particular individuals' ideas, then the relevant languages have to be learned and used. If on the other hand you see the ideas as coming first and who has them as secondary, you can look at those ideas in any language.

Some thinkers like Heidegger use language in such a complex way that it is difficult to distinguish between his language and the argument, and that is often taken to be an objection to his way of doing philosophy!