Peter Winslow | Translating intertextualities & rhetorical figures in Wittgenstein’s Investigations

Peter Winslow's talk “Daring not to mend: some thoughts on translating intertextualities and rhetorical figures in Wittgenstein’s Investigations”, 7 October 2022.

This presentation was a part of the 7th Symposium of the International Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, "70 Years of Editing Wittgenstein. History, Challenges and Possibilities", co-organised by the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project, hosted by the University of Milan, 7–8 October 2022.

Abstract:

The undertaking of a translation is itself a kind of Wittgensteinian activity: a translation is an object of comparison (PI § 130). Where possible and apt, the resulting text ought to correspond to its source to the greatest extent possible, and its translator must resist the urge to mend apparent faults. Thus conceived, the translator’s task involves the retention of all pertinent constituents of the source text, including, among other things, intertextualities and rhetorical figures. In their revised 2009 translation of Philosophical Investigations, P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte fail to improve upon G.E.M. Anscombe’s original English text on both counts. In a sense, Hacker and Schulte have mended Wittgenstein’s text. A case in point is their rendition of PI § 122.

After introducing two metrics of translation and offering a survey of where and how Hacker and Schulte go wrong, I conclude with a proposed new translation of § 122 that captures the relevant intertextualities and the rhetorical figures used by Wittgenstein. This re-revised translation is synecdochical of translation as a Wittgensteinian activity. As an object of comparison, a translation can be conceived of as a parable; unpacked, each part of a parable corresponds to a part of its teaching. So too with translation: each part of a translation corresponds to a part of its source text. In Wittgensteinian terms, this correspondence is surveyable. One might even go so far as to say that a translation is a kind of surveyable representation of its source. Accordingly, translation, like philosophy, leaves everything as it is, puts everything before us, and, ideally, resists the urge to mend, or otherwise interfere with, the text.

Видео Peter Winslow | Translating intertextualities & rhetorical figures in Wittgenstein’s Investigations канала The Ludwig Wittgenstein Project