Friedrich Schleiermacher
“On the Different Methods of Translating”
History and Theory of Translation
Academic Year 2021/2022
Lecturer: Zsófia Gombár
by
Diana Mocan and Yaroslava Savka
Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768-1834)
Father of modern hermeneutics
Translation of Plato’s works
Translation of Plato’s works
To this day his translation
“not only dominates sales of paperback editions of Plato in Germany but also remains an authoritative translation for scholars” (Lamm, 2000: 206).
Translation and Hermeneutics
writer-translator-receiver
Translation and Hermeneutics
Exaggerated claim or logical conclusion?
Ideas about “On the Different Methods of Translation”
“ ...every man is in the power of the language he speaks, and all his thinking is a product thereof.”
“...every freely thinking, mentally self-employed human being shapes his own language.”
“...each free and higher speech needs to be understood twice…”
Once out of the spirit of the language of whose elements it is composed.
Once out of the speaker’s emotion.
TRANSLATOR
WRITER
TRANSLATOR
READER
M
E
SS
A
GE
Offers his own language and interpretation of the original text to deliver the message to the reader. However, this makes the border between translation, interpretation and communication hard to define.
( NOT THE BEST OPTION 👎)
(METHODS 👍/ 👎)
PARAPHRASE (literal translation) method more common
in translation of scientific text
IMITATION
(free translation)
more common to works of art
Translator, the imitator, does not want to bring the writer and the reader of the imitation to the same party, it is practically impossible, he just wants to produce on the reader a similar impression present in the original text. “ He tries to communicate to the readers the same image, the same impression he himself has gained - through his knowledge of the original language…”
PROBLEMS
The author is very critical of Imitation. It does not make a pretense to show the spirit of the language as an effective force in its rights. It rather show us the foreignness this spirit has produced.
Paraphrase as well as Imitation, both fail in stricter sense of translation to satisfy someone who, filled with admiration for the excellence of a foreign masterpiece, wishes to enlarge the sphere of its influence to include fellow speakers of his language and has in mind a stricter notion of translation. In fact both procedures show us only boundaries of the art, not the art in its totality.
SOLUTION
Schleiermacher proposes two possibilities to bring writer and his reader closer – without forcing reader to leave bounds of his own native tongue behind him, to acquire as correct and complete an understanding and take as much pleasure in the writer as possible:
1.Either the translator leaves the writer in peace as much as possible moves the reader towards him: Foreignization
2.Or the translator leaves the reader in peace as much as possible and moves the writer towards him. Domestication
He further warns that any attempt to combine, would certainly result in unreliable results and will carry a danger that writer and reader might miss each other.
Foreignization - In foreignization, the translator tries to compensate the reader inability to understand the original language. He seeks to impart to the reader the same impression that he himself received – through his knowledge of language as it was written.
During this process, he advises translator not to indulge in line by line translation as it fails to achieve spirit of the language as well as spirit of the writer himself.
Domestication - The translator tries to provide translation assuming how writer would have spoken with readers of another language. Schleiermacher rejects this method as this would not only move the author from the translator: it would also be unreal to think that the author speaks the language of the reader. He further equates domestication with mongrels by saying, “this undertaking would appear to be the most extraordinary form of humiliation to which a writer of some quality can subject himself”.
Schleiermacher does not clearly point out how to achieve foreignization, but he emphasizes on expansion of language on a massive scale through accepting foreign words and thoughts in German language and proposes a nationwide movement in for promotion of translation activities and aims at making German soil richer and more fertile through cultivation of foreign plant life.
+ = 😊
SOME FINAL CONSIDERATIONS…
Although there is an extraordinary brilliance in the observations made by Schleiermacher, he fails to refer to any actual translation that can be considered as solution to his own identified problems: How to deal with writer and reader approach (two different cultures) and how to present spirit of the language and spirit of the writer…
References
Kahoot time!