Topics Philosophers

Question how big a factor is the translation when trying to understand philosophical works written in another language which we do not understand? For example, in the translation I read of Das Kapital, Marx talked about "the means of production" which seemed like an awkward and confusing term. Then one day the "aha" light bulb went off, and i realized that this term meant "technology" and suddenly his whole theory of dialectical materialism made great sense to me.

Accepted:
November 12, 2011

Comments

Good question -- and the answer (clearly) is "very big"! .... Or at least it can be ... It's hard enough to interpret a philosopher (get clear on just what his/her claims and arguments are) when you share a language, and when you're in the same time period -- and at least with our contemporaries we can always just call them up and ask 'what the heck did you mean with this sentence?' ... But every translation is definitely itself an interpretation, so when you read important texts in translation you are, at best, getting the translator's interpretation of the original text, which may or may not be very close to the original in meaning and in connotation -- and this problem only gets more severe as the temporal distance grows (eg translating ancient greek into 21st century english) and is made worse between certain pairs of languages (eg greek to english is more distant than, say, french to english) ..... So the best thing you can do, for any texts that truly matter to you philosophically, is learn the original!

best,