"The Dictionary of Untranslatables" , Princeton 2004 – a first look

Should I have been alarmed by the title? The authors presuppose there were such a thing we might call "translatable". What is this supposed to be? Where does it come from? How? – Do not ask, start with the title of the book, a negation. 

"Untranslatables" is supposed to be a book about more or less philosophical terms and concepts used by languages other than English. As simple as that: everybody everywhere is studying everything in English, so how can we help the students of this world to understand what thinkers in other languages had said? My suggestion would be: make the students learn the language of the foreign philosopher they are interested in. But, I understand, everybody is in a terrible hurry, these days. Therefore, I try not to shudder as I read the first sentence of the editor's preface: 

"One of the most urgent problems posed by the existence of Europe is that of languages." (p. XVII) 

I am shuddering all the same. Who is speaking here? A politician? About a problem? An urgent one? Existence? Oh. Did it ever occur to the person who is writing here that the variety of languages, written languages, could be the beauty of old Europe, rather than a problem? 

But probably this "urgent problem" speech is the rest of some funding request. This is just the nonsense project talk State agencies want to hear. The editor, luckily not really interested in "resolving an urgent problem", in the following declares her intention to make "clear on every occasion the meaning and the interest of the differences", in order to facilitate "communication between languages and cultures". Whatever that means. More or less: translate the untranslatable. 

In the meantime, the very idea of something being untranslatable denies mediation. 

If no translation existed, say, between German and Italian, we would see both parts of the mediation fall down as entities of their own. Plopp, plopp! Here the German, there the Italian. And indeed, in "Untranslatables" we find essays about "German" and "Italian". The authors seem to promise to give the very essence of something like "national thinking". This could, maybe, be interesting or at least funny, if only the editor would have been more careful in the choice of the authors. 

The author of the article about German seemingly is interested exclusively in one of Hegel's books. Die Phänomenologie des Geistes, the real core of German thinking? 

"Until the end of the eighteenth century", the author of the essay states (p.385), "there was little German philosophy in the German language". As exception he names Thomasius, but he ignores Christian Wolff. Seemingly he does not attribute importance to the author of the "German metaphysics", which included a glossary of translations from Latin philosophical terms into German – to a man who, by the way, had risked his live when, in 1721, he had explained that morality can do without religion. Neither does the author name the mystical women from the eleventh and twelfth century who went far beyond what this French professeur considers the mere "assimilation" of antique philosophy. The reader might get suspicious. What if this professeur just did not know what he is writing about?

Hegel is presented as a "peculiar philosopher", "almost the only accused of unreadability" (p.386). Of course, all the other philosophers, take Hamann, Hölderlin or late Schelling, are famous for their clear and understandable writing. It is not surprising that the person who has written such things does not arrive even at a thorough interpretation of the language of Hegel's Phenomenology. He, and rightly so, comments on the entrance of everyday, down to earth words in Hegel's language. But he simply ignores the obvious intrusion of poetic and metaphoric language into the language of the philosopher. 

A modest proposal could be: if you want to be informed about German philosophical language, ask Germans. But this recipe does not guarantee success. The essay about "the Italian" has been written by an Italian, Remo Bodei, hero of two worlds. 

There is a group of European philosophers who, having moved to the States, where they published more or less correct, facilitated versions of what every European student of philosophy is supposed to know, and had, in the States, great success with their writing, come back to Europe with their replicas of others' ideas, and are celebrated as great thinkers. Selling philosophers, a phenomenon! This is the case of Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Hannah Arendt, and, on far smaller scale, Remo Bodei. 

According to Bodei the "Italian philosophy" is distinguished by "the fact that it does not simply search for logical truth", but rather "the effective truth of all things in all its complexity" (p.516).   Italian philosophers, he states,  "consider all humans not only as animals endowed with reason, but also as animals who nurture desires and formulate projects". Should we not be thankful for the Italian contribution to the world's philosophy? 

Now, many of the articles of this giant book are extremely interesting. Where does the German concept of Beruf come from? From Luther, you think? Well, maybe Max Weber created the meaning we are used to give to the word as typisch deutsch (p.106). If you want to know about Kierkegaard's Pludselghed, open page 800. You will be informed about strange uses of es gibt in Thuringia at page 296, and about Russian Postupok on page 811. This book contains some incredibly stupid articles, but, as a whole, it is like a wonderful adventure park. 

"We began with the many and we remain with the many: we have addressed the question of the untranslatable without aiming at unity" (p.XIX), the editor writes. This is honourable. Most of the authors are French, though. This leads to certain deviations from the way to variety. At times, the authors start their considerations from the language of arrival (French in the first edition from 2004, English in translation from 2014). 

Take the article about the German Wert. Why do the authors discuss it together with Geltung? (p.1225) In German, there is no necessary link between these concepts. In French, there is: valeur and validité. It is the unifying force of the language of arrival that defines the question, and the answer, which, in addition, is somewhat heideggerian. The authors do not consider the historical origin of the term in his modern sense (somewhere between Fries and Lotze), but make arbitrary etymological digressions about the connection between wert, werdan and werden (that is, the ancient and the modern German version of the verb “to become”) which, according to them, placed “Wert in the semantic orbit of the ought-to-be” – but how? – and mix it up with Gültigkeit (validity). But where do these links come from? Ancient German and modern French help for sure, if you are looking for explanations without further research.

What they could have considered is: Kant and Hegel do not use it as we use it today (Kant only talks about Wert as worth in the Fundamentals), Nietzsche and Scheler do. So what happened? Had Lotze introduced it? He has not. Fries did. But the authors of the essay about Wert base their reasoning on Heidegger´s narration of the history of philosophy. 

It is always pleasant to see the proper prejudices confirmed. These French authors take their leave on French language. What they know about German philosophy, rotates around Hegel and Heidegger. 

In this beautiful book, more variety would have been desirable. And less professeurs as authors. 

A Note or rather a Question Mark. Kierkegaard

The book title from 1844 could have been Romantic: “Philosophical Fragments, or a Fragment of Philosophy”. But the English translation is misleading. The Dane is taking up the term so very dear to Schlegel and Novalis, but he does so in an ironic way: Philosophiske Smuler eller En Smule Philosophi, “Philosophical crumbs”. Not fragments, rather pieces of them. That means: being ironic with who is ironic.

This may be considered strange, because Kierkegaard does never refer to the more philosophical writings of our German Romantiker, not to their Fragmente. At least in his doctoral thesis he only writes about Schlegel's Lucinde... not about philosophy, but about literature. 

Jean Paul Richter and incontinence

Jean Paul Richter always writes too much. The texts he publishes are a continuous overflow of images, sensations, ideas. This may be a reason why Jean Paul, very popular until about 1810, was nearly forgotten in Germany after his death in 1825. Not so in the rest of Europe.

Jean Paul deeply influenced Italian modernist Carlo Dossi, whom Italians do not care about, and the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard, of whom Danes think he were a theologist. You do not need to be translated in order to be misunderstood.

Both the Dane and the Italian read Jean Paul, an author hard to understand for a native speaker, in German. Probably these men did not study our language at a German cultural institute.

Nowadays studying German beyond the Bratwurst and Heidi Klums seems to be unzumutbar. That is the reason we have translations even of Jean Paul´s most particular work, the Vorschule der Ästhetik. In English this “preschool” becomes a “school”. I understand, you want to avoid indirect routes. But what if this being indirect was part of Jean Paul´s game? Who cares! Here Jean Paul talks about aesthetics, that is philosophy, a field where only the contents counts. But the publishers add two new elements to the title. “Jean Paul Richter´s School of Aesthetics”, okay, like XY´s tomato soup, and “Horn of Oberon”. The modest “preschool of aesthetics”, transformed into “Horn of Oberon: Jean Paul Richter´s School of Aesthetics”. Find the difference. Or, rather imagine the consequences: “What are you reading?” – “Horn of ...”. 

But in the translation of the text, normalization rules. This is Jean Paul without Jean Paul. 

Unless he writes plain sentences, everything moves smoothly.

Der Verstand und die Objekten-Welt kennen nur Endlichkeit.

"The understanding and the object-world know only finitude”. Ja. 

Hier finden wir nur jenen unendlichen Kontrast zwischen den Ideen (der Vernunft) und der ganzen Endlichkeit selber.

"In the romantic we find only the infinite contrast between the ideas (or reason) and all finitude itself”.

Clearer for the reader, not hurting anybody, “in the romantic” instead of “here”.

Now, Jean Paul soars into the air: 

Wie aber, wenn man eben diese Endlichkeit als subjektiven Kontrast jetzo der Idee (Unendlichkeit) als objektivem unterschöbe und liehe und statt des Erhabenen als eines angewandten Unendlichen jetzo ein auf das Unendliche angewandte Endliche, also bloß Unendlichkeit des Kontrastes gebäre, d.h. eine negative? Dann hätten wir den Humor oder das romantische Komische.

"But suppose just this finitude were imputed as subjective contrast to the idea as objective contrast, and instead of the sublime as an applied infinity, now produced a finitude applied to the infinite, and thus simply infinity of contrast, that is a negative infinity. Then we should have humour or the romantic comic”.

Well, the rhetorical question is transformed. Fine. But what happened to the verbs unterschöbe und liehe? “were imputed”? Jemandem etwas unterschieben (simple infinitive instead of the hypothetical form used by Jean Paul), for example a murder, means “to pin a murder on somebody”. This is not a simple imputation. We could call it irony, but only in the German version.

carpe diem

"Google translate" works with databases. The quality of the translation depends on the dimension and the kind of the databases used. In Italian, for example, these seem to be quite small. Film titles may interfere with the translation. If you try attimo all alone, you will correctly get "moment", but fuggente ("fleeing") google produces "poets society".  At this point, attimo should be "dead". Attimo fuggente being the Italian title of the American film. 

The same thing does occur with the complete title Paradiso amaro ("The Descendants"), but, unfortunately, not with its parts. For the sake of poetry and mutual misunderstanding, this would have been marvellous. 

It is not the strangeness of word combination (attimo fuggente or mosto selvatico are both uncommon) that determines this differences, but the literate nature of the word fuggente. It usually is part of a translation from Latin. If somebody had not attended a Liceo (a school definitely harder then the German Gymnasium), he will rather not use it.

Just be aware of this inclination towards certain cultural standards.

Reflecting about yourself? Try with Rilke

There have been quite a lot of those who our universities nowadays present in courses as “Great thinkers II” who have produced beautiful writings, at least sentences the reader will remember because of their strange sound. Try young Hegel or Nietzsche or Schopenhauer, try young Adorno or Heidegger. There you will find an unusual attention to the choice of words and to the composition of the whole.

Philosophers take a certain distance to our everyday language, without entering the fenced fields of academic language (Peer reviewed!). They write in their own way. They necessarily do so. “Our language is full of traps” (Max Stirner). The more you believe to speak straight forward, the more you are risking to fall: not to get out of the limits of everyday understanding.

Some of these thought traps have been analyzed by Lakoff and Johnson. In order to express our pure thoughts, we use metaphors, we relate to images. An example: When we talk about ourselves as intelligent beings, as minds, we often use the metaphor of the container. Something is outside but then: “something comes into my mind”. Or viceversa, a common trap for philosophers at work, something (very precious?) is inside, but: “I cannot put my ideas into words”.

If we want to avoid these traps, we need to fight our common tendency of using prefabricated images. Poets often do this, and philosophers have good reasons for joining them. Get poetic, hesitate with each single word. And, read poems. The world and you, both may be rewritten.

Consider a poem from the German writer Rainer Maria Rilke:

Am Rande der Nacht

Meine Stube und diese Weite, / wach über nachbetendem Land, – 
ist Eines. Ich bin eine Saite, / über rauschende breite
Resonanzen gespannt.

Die Dinge sind Geigenleiber / von murrendem Dunkel voll;

In English this is translated:

“On the edge of the night
My room and this vastness, / awake over parroting land, – 
are one. I am a string, / strung over rustling wide
resonances.
The things are violin bodies, / full of grumbling dark”

Yes, the one speaking here presents himself as a string, a chord, and things (not “the outside world”, as there is no “inside”) as violins which wait for the string to move: things desire to be sung. But seemingly there is already some noise around. “The land” the poem says, is “parroting”. “Parroting” what? In German, we read “nachbetendem Land”. It is true, that if you look up the word “nachbeten” (“-ndem” are just endings for present participle and Dative) with one of the internet dictionaries that rule our word (I have tried the first five ones I have found) you get “to repeat”, “to parrot” and even “to regurgitate”. Try to use these translations in this poem: none of them makes sense here.

There are still other means of language exploration. Without knowing anything about German grammar, you could avoid dictionaries and move directly to Google translator. As a translation of “nachbetendem”, there we get “worship”. Obviously, “over worship land” is not an acceptable translation of a poetic text. But the idea is there. At least, we get no parroting, no noise. We get something strange. We might suppose the poet has chosen the word nachbetendem carefully. A poet does not use language, as psychologists use to say, in order to express himself. He is working within language, maybe struggling in order to avoid the traps.

If you know some German, maybe you could try to split the word 

nachbetendem up: nach, beten and the Grammar ending -ndem. Nach gives “after”, beten “pray”, and the Grammar ending is done with “ing”. Construct “after-praying”, and that is what the poem in German says. At night, the land would be after-praying because, for example, the original prayer has been spoken during the day, or maybe the poet refers to earlier music produced by him, the chord. And then he starts singing again.

Nachbeten, originally meant as repeating a prayer, in today's German has become a synonym of “repeat without understanding”. Our Internet dictionaries stick to the most recent, the most common usage. If you stick to them, you will not understand what poets, and philosophers have done when they struggled with language. And struggle it is.

https://sites.google.com/site/rilkefiles/home/am-rande-der-nacht---on-the-edge-of-the-night

About the poem: Peter Fuchs: System als Metapher, Weierswil: Velbrück 2001.