[Xmca-l] Re: on translation

[David Kellogg]

Yes, this is in response to that "Editions de Minuit" edition, which
doesn't even get the author correct!

http://www.lambert-lucas.com/marxisme-et-philosophie-du-langage


dk

David Kellogg

Recent Article in *Mind, Culture, and Activity* 24 (4) 'Metaphoric,
Metonymic, Eclectic, or Dialectic? A Commentary on “Neoformation: A
Dialectical Approach to Developmental Change”'

Free e-print available (for a short time only) at

http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YAWPBtmPM8knMCNg6sS6/full


On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 8:35 AM, Wolff-Michael Roth <
wolffmichael.roth@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi David,
>
> thanks for the extended reflections on the issue.
>
> Can you tell us who the publisher is of the Voloshinov text? I have a
> French translation--published as Bakhtine...
>
> And to the whole is more than the parts. I really came to understand
> Heidegger after reading him in English, the different versions ... but this
> better understand also may have to do that in the meantime I did a PhD and
> became an academic.
>
>
> Michael
>
>
> Wolff-Michael Roth, Lansdowne Professor
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> --------------------
> Applied Cognitive Science
> MacLaurin Building A567
> University of Victoria
> Victoria, BC, V8P 5C2
> http://web.uvic.ca/~mroth <http://education2.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth/>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 15, 2018 at 1:21 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > My wife read the Vegetarian and liked it. But I would say that when she
> > reads Korean she inadvertantly mistranslates everything, because Korean
> has
> > a stock of older, pure Korean words which cluster around every day usage
> > and then a much larger stock of words borrowed from Chinese and adapted
> in
> > various ways, rather the way that English has a stock of Germanic words
> > like "table" and a much larger stock of words borrowed from Latin and
> Greek
> > and adapted in various ways for scientific use. To me, Korean words are
> sui
> > generis, and this means I am a lot slower than she is: I don't look at a
> > Korean word and try to discern a historically distant Chinese soul. On
> the
> > other hand, I do use a much more "top down" strategy: so for example
> when I
> > read the Vegetarian I quickly realized it was a kind of rewrite of
> Kafka's
> > "Metamorphosis" but the heroine is turning into a plant rather than an
> > insect: "You are what you eat". So then the details didn't matter, but
> the
> > result was that she finished the book and I didn't.
> >
> > The argument we sometimes hear that this or that text is untranslatable
> is
> > either simply stating the obvious or else it is a claim of linguistic
> > exceptionalism based on national exceptionalism. Obviouisly, all
> languages
> > are ineffable, because all words are; language evolves to fill semantic
> > niches as efficiently as possible. But precisely because this is true,
> > translation from a semantic niche in one language to a semantic niche in
> > another is not only possible, it's an inevitable part of communication
> even
> > within the language. So I think that there isn't really any such thing
> > as "mistranslation," there are only more or less successful types of
> > translation for different purposes. The translator has the right to take
> > all kinds of liberties, so long as the translation is replicable and the
> > liberties are undoable. That's why what Alexander Pope and George Chapman
> > did to the Iliad is perfectly valid, and it's also why what the Soviet
> > editors did to Vygotsky, even though they were actually changing Russian
> to
> > Russian, was not. There is a wonderful French translation of Voloshinov's
> > "Marxism and the Philosophy of Language" which is bilingual--Russian on
> one
> > page and French on the facing one. When I read it, I find it
> non-redundant:
> > the whole is more than the multiplication of the part.
> >
> > When we translated "Thinking and Speech" into Korean we read it in
> French,
> > Italian, two English versions, and Japanese as well as the original
> > Russian. What struck me then--what still strikes me today--is that the
> key
> > problems have absolutely nothing to do with translation, and with all the
> > kerfuffle over mistranslation they remain entirely unaddressed. Chapter
> > Five, for example, says that true concepts emerge in adolescence and not
> > until; Chapter Six has the tension between the everyday and scientific
> > concept right there in elementary school. Why does Vygotsky treat
> > adolescence before elementary school, and complexes like
> > pseudoconcepts after everyday concepts? You might say--well, he changed
> his
> > mind, and in the preface he does say that he changed his mind and had to
> > discard a lot of work. But neither chapter was discarded, ergo they must
> > fit together in some way.
> >
> > One way to resolve it does bring us back to issues of translation by a
> > slightly different route. There are two very different models of concept
> > formation being presented. One is based on binaries, like "tall/short",
> > "narrow/wide", and it is a laboratory abstraction. The other is based on
> > what is usually called "expanding horizons" (the measure of generality),
> > and it's a generalization of everyday life. The binary based model is
> > self-contained and "sui generis", the way that I read Korean texts (and
> it
> > is why I have no trouble with pairs of words like "Gemeinschaft" and
> > "Gesellschaft", "coherence and cohesion", "societal and social"). The
> > "expanding horizons" version is more like the way my wife reads (and it
> is
> > why every word she reads undergoes a slight mistranslation, but she
> always
> > manages to finish the book).
> >
> >
> > David Kellogg
> >
> > Recent Article in *Mind, Culture, and Activity* 24 (4) 'Metaphoric,
> > Metonymic, Eclectic, or Dialectic? A Commentary on “Neoformation: A
> > Dialectical Approach to Developmental Change”'
> >
> > Free e-print available (for a short time only) at
> >
> > http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YAWPBtmPM8knMCNg6sS6/full
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 2:21 AM, Wolff-Michael Roth <
> > wolffmichael.roth@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > For those interested in the translation issues I raised earlier on this
> > > list, you might be interested in this (and David K. might have a lot to
> > say
> > > to this point, too):
> > >
> > > Lost in (mis)translation? English take on Korean novel has critics up
> in
> > > arms
> > > https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2018/jan/15/
> > > lost-in-mistranslation-english-take-on-korean-novel-
> > has-critics-up-in-arms
> > >
> > > Michael
> > >
> > > Wolff-Michael Roth, Lansdowne Professor
> > >
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > --------------------
> > > Applied Cognitive Science
> > > MacLaurin Building A567
> > > University of Victoria
> > > Victoria, BC, V8P 5C2
> > > http://web.uvic.ca/~mroth <http://education2.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth/>
> > >
> > > New book: *The Mathematics of Mathematics
> > > <https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/new-
> > > directions-in-mathematics-and-science-education/the-
> > > mathematics-of-mathematics/>*
> > >
> >
>