[Xmca-l] Re: Translation or Paraphrase?

[David Kellogg]

Andy--

Prout is a little bit too literal for my own taste too. But as I said, I am
a sloppy translator, and I need people like Nikolai to get it right. This
is how I would translate the passage. Notice that it DOES have material
that differs from the Minick translation and which is present but lost in
details in the Vygotsky Reader translation.

"However, this mode of bringing together different concrete objects
into general groupings, the character of the links established within
it, the structure emerging on the basis of such thinking and characterized
by relationships of each separate object as part of the group to the group
as a whole--all of this profoundly differs in type and in mode of activity
to the thinking in concepts that develops in the epoch of sexual
maturation."

I admit that the Minick translation fits better on a PPT slide. But the
Vygotsky original is not designed for bullet points: it is designed to
highlight THREE characteristics (not two as in the Minick): the method of
grouping, the character of links, and the structure as a whole, with
emphasis placed on the last through an elaboration which links it to the
previous two.

But the real problem with the paraphrase is what is left entirely out of
Minick and collapsed to the single, biologizing word 'puberty' in the
Vygotsky Reader: the words "in the epoch of sexual maturation". This
passage is part of a chapter-long argument between Vygotsky and the Buhlers
in Vienna. The Buhlers haver argued that there are no new elementary
functions emerging in adolescence (Freud casts a certain shadow here, since
for all the Viennese sexuality is not a new formation in adolescence at
all). There is no second sight, no second smell, no second hearing, or
taste, or touch, no second thinking arising out of the top-knot of the
child like a second head from the skull of the Buddha. So the wherewithal
of concept formation is present and accounted for in a three year old. Why
don't concepts emerge in three-year-olds? Well, in Vienna, the answer is
simple--they do. The difference between a three-year-old and a
thirteen-year-old is emotion and not intellect; the difference between
complexes of objects and abstract concepts is quantitative and not
qualitative.

I think your own work (the Critical Approach to Concepts) handles this
problem beautifully--it is the novel social projects that adolescents get
involved in (including social projects that include others who are now of
sexual interest) that really account for the novel mode of bringing
together, the novel character of the links, and the novel structure of the
whole that emerges from these. Vygotsky is trying to provide, as always, a
pedological scheme in which that approach to concept formation can make
sense--he's giving us the inner pedology, complete with now-unpopular
periodization, of the process you have described as a novel social project.
The unpopularity of the periodization scheme in our present intellectual
climate is, however, no deterrent; on the contrary, for me it very much
adds to the attractiveness of the argument.

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New Article:
Han Hee Jeung & David Kellogg (2019): A story without SELF: Vygotsky’s
pedology, Bruner’s constructivism and Halliday’s construalism in
understanding narratives by
Korean children, Language and Education, DOI: 10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663

Some e-prints available at:
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/KHRxrQ4n45t9N2ZHZhQK/full?target=10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663



On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 12:55 PM Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:

> Well, I think a "literal" translation is as capable of misrepresenting the
> meaning of the original as what you call a paraphrase. When you read a
> translation, without access to the original, this is a huge act of trust.
> But if the translator is worthy of this trust, I appreciate a "paraphrase"
> which better conveys the meaning than a "literal" translation. At the same
> time, I am on the record as objecting loudly to missing definite and
> indefinite articles in translation from the Russian, or the mixing up of
> "unit" and "unity" which Nikolai Veresov has drawn attention to.
>
> But a good paraphrase I am happy with.
>
> Andy
> ------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> On 12/06/2019 1:27 pm, David Kellogg wrote:
>
> Oh, it's the same issue that Minick himself and others had with the
> Hanfmann and Vakar translation, Andy. It's a paraphrase.
>
> David Kellogg
> Sangmyung University
>
> New Article:
> Han Hee Jeung & David Kellogg (2019): A story without SELF: Vygotsky’s
> pedology, Bruner’s constructivism and Halliday’s construalism in
> understanding narratives by
> Korean children, Language and Education, DOI: 10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663
> To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663
>
> Some e-prints available at:
>
> https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/KHRxrQ4n45t9N2ZHZhQK/full?target=10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 9:34 AM Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:
>
>> Firstly, I have checked the transcription, and it is indeed true to the
>> *LSVCW* version. Originally, the old "Thought and Language" translation
>> had been used here, but a few years ago I replaced it with Minick's.
>>
>> My initial reaction is that Minick's rendering of the sentence is much
>> easier to read and understand. What is the issue for you?
>>
>> Andy
>> ------------------------------
>> Andy Blunden
>> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
>> On 12/06/2019 6:41 am, David Kellogg wrote:
>>
>> Andy:
>>
>> On Vygotsky Internet Archive  version of T&S Chapter Five, Section Five,
>> second paragraph, we've got this.
>>
>> "Nevertheless, this mode of uniting concrete objects in a common group
>> differs from that based on thinking in concepts or conceptual thinking.
>> First, the nature of the connections that are established among the objects
>> in the group differs from that characteristic of concepts. Second, as
>> defined by the relationship of each object in the group to the group as a
>> whole, the structure of the unified group differs profoundly in type and
>> mode of activity from that based on conceptual thinking."
>>
>> The Russian, in both the first 1934 edition and the 1982 Russian CW
>> edition is this:
>>
>>
>> Но способ объединения различных конкретных предметов в общие группы,
>> характер устанавливаемых при этом связей, структура возникающих на основе
>> такого мышления единств, характеризующаяся отношением каждого отдельного
>> предмета, входящего в состав группы, ко всей группе в целом, — все это
>> глубоко отличается по своему типу и по способу деятельности от мышления в
>> понятиях, развивающихся только в эпоху полового созревания.
>>
>>
>>
>> The 1994 Vygotsky Reader, edited by Rene van der Veer and Jaan Valsiner,
>> uses the 1931 "Pedology of the Adolescent" version of this study for its
>> Chapter Nine. On p. 218, it's got this:
>>
>>
>>
>> "But the manner of the unification of different real objects into
>> general groups, the character of the connections which becomes
>> established during th is process, the structure of the affinities which
>> arise on the basis of such thinking, which is characterized by the
>> relationship of each individual object having become part of the composition
>> of the group, to the group as a whole - all th is is fundamentally different
>> by its nature and the manner of its operation from thinking in concepts,
>> which only develops at the time of puberty."
>>
>>
>> This  Vygotsky Reader version is an actual translation, but the version
>> we have for T&S Chapter Five, which I assume is an accurate transcription
>> of Norris Minick's version in the English CW, seems little more than a
>> paraphrase. What gives?
>>
>>
>>
>> David Kellogg
>> Sangmyung University
>>
>> New Article:
>> Han Hee Jeung & David Kellogg (2019): A story without SELF: Vygotsky’s
>> pedology, Bruner’s constructivism and Halliday’s construalism in
>> understanding narratives by
>> Korean children, Language and Education, DOI:
>> 10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663
>> To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663
>>
>> Some e-prints available at:
>>
>> https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/KHRxrQ4n45t9N2ZHZhQK/full?target=10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663
>>
>>
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