This essay is concerned mainly with the issues of the higher order objective or what may be called the presuppositions of translation. This is particularly necessary in the context of translating a philosophical text. Philosophical concepts and terms are, on the one hand, highly abstract and, on the other, they are culture-specific. The abstract nature of philosophical concepts suggests a universality because of which one should be able to translate a philosophical concept from one language to another. What matters in the universality of meaning that the concepts enjoy. But there is also the other side of the coin, namely, philosophical concepts are culture-specific. Now, being culture-specific, meaning of philosophical concepts cannot be same across the culture. In other words, meaning changes as the context change. Closely related to this is the problem of understanding. In view of the double nature of the meaning of philosophical concepts the question that arises is: What constitutes the understanding of the meaning of philosophical concepts? If meanings are culture-specific, understanding of the meaning of philosophical concepts are bound to be culture-specific. Understanding will be then more like interpreting. It will be an interpretation because one perceives a philosophical concept (or, for that matter any concept) through a tradition and will accordingly interpret the meaning. Understanding cannot be thus said to be a mere grasping of meaning defined in terms of rigid essences. This shows how close meaning and understanding are. Infact, they form a conceptual nexus.
This meaning-understanding nexus has a crucial importance for translation. However, its presence may not be as apparent as it should be. The reason is that it forms the part of the presuppositions of translations. As presupposition, the meaning-understanding nexus influence the actual course of translation. The question: "What is it to translate?", cannot be answered without relating it to its presuppositions. The present work is an explication into these presuppositions with a view to show a triadic relationship holding between translation, meaning and understanding. |
The two activities namely, making a translation and offering a theory about how to do a translation are different but closely related activities. The relationship between the two is more like the relationship between theory and practice - a common theory discussed in epistemology. The former activity, i.e. to translate which is basically meant to be a practice necessarily involves an idea of a theory. Making a translation without the support of a theory is quite inconceivable. It is not that a translator before he begins his translation consciously holds a theory of translation. There may be ample number of cases where a translator while making a translation may not be aware of any theory of translation. But the fact remains that an implicit theory of translation is necessarily presupposed in all acts of translation. The theory that is presupposed may not be always well structured and may not be in a well articulated form. A theory is meant here to be a quite guideline regarding how to make a correct translation. There are certain theoretical considerations which influence or guide the translator while he is making a specific translation. These theoretical considerations may be varied in nature. They may differ as the context differs. Translating one English novel into Hindi may assure one set off considerations whereas the same may not be applicable while translating a philosophical text. The point is that there cannot be applicable while translating a philosophical text. The point is that there cannot be any fixed set of considerations which may be claimed to be presupposed in all acts of translation. The issue of context-sensitivity is probably one of the most important issues involved in translation. Context sensitivity is not just a practical problem in translation. True, that it originates in the actual practice but the correct handling of this problem requires stipulation of theoretical principles since it is these principles which will enable the translator to make a correct translation appropriate to the context. |
