[Lexicog] When Semantics Doesn't Matter

[Hayim Sheynin]

Dear Fritz,

You are too harsh on yourself.
Kant was very fashionable in Russia before his Russian translations were
published. If the Russians were able to understand Kant, so much so the
Germans. Actually all the great German philosophers were toping
the brains of Russian intelligencia in the 19th and 20th centuries, but Kant and Hegel the most, before everything was ruined by Marx and Engels.

Hayim

Fritz Goerling <Fritz_Goerling at sil.org> wrote:                                          
  Bill,
   
  See my answer to David Frank of today. There I tried to show how you are right
  with your statement that a translation can be superior to the original (when it
  comes to the criterion of comprehension, clarity). Let me to come to my example
  of the translation of Kant, not only into English but into other languages.
  I believe that translation is *possible.* There are hard nuts to crack in translation, but
  as such translation IS possible.
  Now the question is for me rather whether it is necessary. I think it would be possible
  to translate Kant for the Australian aborigines, but is it necessary? And if it were done,
  maybe I, as a German, might finally understand Kant 
 ;-)
   
  Fritz
        I don't see why, in principle, a translation cannot be superior to
 the original text. Not only is it possible that the translator is
 a better writer than the original author, it is also conceivable that
 the language into which he or she translates will be better suited
 to the topic than the language of the original. Although in theory
 anything that can be expressed in one language can be expressed in
 another, it is certainly not the case that it is always possible to
 do so compactly. Some languages have elaborate terminology for certain
 things that other languages lack, or make fine distinctions as a matter
 of routine (or indeed, obligatorily), due, e.g., to their morphology,
 that can only be expressed in another language by means of elaborate
 circumlocution.
  
  

      


     
                       

       
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