In those contexts where the symbolic activities of addressing are dominant, i.e., the activities involving meaning, the concept of aspect, conceived as a pragmatic unity, is the result of a set of actions that pro-duce norms and, at the same time, are regulated by them. For example, in elementary symbolic situations, the meaning may result from the choice of a casual gesture, or of a physical body’s expression, but also of any peculiarity of the physical environment that strikes us – like a
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ty, a bright detail or a figure’s shape of an object. In these situations, the meaning may result from assignment of the normative function to these actions in such a way that their repetition may evoke the contents we want to communicate or express – like objects, facts, actions, ideas, sen-sations, etc. In more complex symbolic situations, the processes of norms creation concern the applications of signs to the elements of ex-perience as, for instance, in the linguistic organization of perception through comparisons between objects and between facts, whose names we know and have mastered. We are able to identify or to express a fig-ure X standing out from a background, and the background cropped by the figure, as we are able to identify a sensation by applying a linguistic expression, even without any extra-linguistic criteria to individualize it.
Actually, I identify the sensation I’m now feeling by applying a conven-tional linguistic expression as I learned to do in that kind of situation.
Understood as a pragmatic unity, the concept of aspect focuses on the elementary forms of organization of our experience, especially the linguistic organization, inside the contexts I call situations, that are sys-tems with closure criteria, including virtual ones. The rules of sense are not precisely applied since the rules themselves are not precisely defined.
In those cases, the consequences of the applications of the rules allow us to decide which are to be considered adequate excluding the others as being inadequate. There is always a large space of adequacy for the appli-cations, contrarily to the cases where the criteria are exactly defined prior to the application.
That plasticity power of natural languages enables the rise of imperti-nent questions about the precise points of application of the rules. For example, the cases of concepts that we may call accidentally undeter-mined, as in the famous figure of Sorites, where one may ask from which grain of sand a set of grains starts to form a heap; or inversely, from which grain a heap ceases to be considered a heap. We may add the case of concepts constitutively undetermined where one may ask to which specific points of a series are applicable, for instance, the expressions
“etcetera” and “and so on”. In the first example, the concept of a heap of sand can be determined at any time by means of an arbitrary decision, while in the second case the determination of the expressions leads to the alteration of their meaning. The closing criteria for the meaning,
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inside the situations, are a function of the applications of meanings, and hence their nature is pragmatic – and that shows the limits we are willing to accept, or not accept.
As pragmatic units, the aspects allow us to follow the variations and the passages between the different meanings attributed to the objects and facts – the variations of aspects according to Wittgenstein – but also allow the clarification of the several variations and passages between the meaning of signs – those, for instance, having the same reference and different connotations in the same and in different linguistic systems.
The contexts where a fact is inserted, or the situations where different comparisons between facts are carried out, bring with them the marks of the forms of life in which the objects and the facts are inserted, and those marks suggest the allowed and excluded range fields of variations for the aspects. In other words, they establish the closure virtual criteria of the symbolic system – the fields of variations and passages between the language games.
English Revision by Oscar Kent Mahar References
KRIPKE, S. Wittgenstein – on rules and private language.Cambridge, Mass.:
Harward U.P., l982.
WITTGENSTEIN, L. Tractatus logico-philosophicus. Werkausgabe 1, 11-85.
Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1989. [T]
. Philosophische Untersuchungen = Philosophical Investigations. Malden &
Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. (4th., 1st. revised edition.
Bilingual. Ed.: P. S. M. Hacker; J. Schulte. English Translation: G.
E. M. Anscombe; P. S. M. Hacker; J. Schulte) [PI]
Oliveira, Paulo; Pichler, Alois; Moreno, Arley (guest eds.).
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“You should like to say...”: Wittgenstein and translating temptations
Marco Brusotti
Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, Università del Salento, Lecce, Italy [email protected]
Abstract: If ‘translating’ is ‘replacing’, what are the criteria of correct replacement?
According to Wittgenstein’s Brown Book, translations can be justified in the context of a more general comparison between the two forms of life involved (§ 1). In this sense, natural languages are always comparable. However, philosophers could be tempted to draw skeptical consequences from the insight into the plurality and variety of natural languages (§ 2). The problems they have to deal with resemble
‘composite portraitures’, to which different languages each contribute their own myths, myths which are peculiar to their particular languages and yet related at the same time (§ 3). The question of the comparability of languages also arises in discussions about translating Wittgenstein’s own texts into languages that are remote from the source language. How is this translation possible? Is it because both ‘depth grammar’ and philosophical problems are universal? Wittgenstein may assume that forms of life are somehow comparable and that such a comparison allows us to justify translations. However, he does not commit himself to any theory about the universality (or particularity) of ‘depth grammar’ (§ 4).
Keywords: Philosophy of language, Philosophy of translation, Ethnology, Culture, Malinowski, Wittgenstein.
Introduction
In a well-known remark, Wittgenstein compares translation to a mathematical ‘task’.1 Ultimately, however, the analogy between solving a mathematical ‘problem’ and translating a poem or a joke boils down to
1 “Translating from one language into another is a mathematical task, and the translation of a lyrical poem, for example, into a foreign language is quite analogous to a mathemati-cal problem. For one may well frame the problem ‘how is this joke (e. g.) to be translated (i. e. replaced) by a joke in the other language?’ and this problem may have been solved;
but there was no systematical method of solving it.” (Z, § 698)
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the fact that both tasks are accomplished by replacing expressions with other expressions. ‘Übersetzen’ is ‘Ersetzen’: ‘translating’ is ‘replacing’,
‘substituting’.2 However, Wittgenstein himself hints at a relevant differ-ence between solving a mathematical problem and translating a poem or a joke: mathematical problems are solved by repeatedly replacing expres-sions with equivalent ones, whereas in the case of translation there is no algorithmic method or formal system of substitution. Thus, it may be right to replace a pun with a quite different one: “What is the correct German translation of an English play on words? Maybe a completely different play on words.” (LS 1, § 278) But how might one decide whether or not this “completely different” play on words correctly trans-lates the original one?
‘Translating’ is ‘replacing’, but the concept of translation, though quite open, is actually narrower than the concept of ‘replacement’. It is tempting to say that ‘translation’ is a kind of ‘replacement’ – or, rather: a
‘family’ of ‘substitutions’. In that case, in our actual usage, ‘translation’
designates a ‘family concept’. This openness of the concept partly shows itself in the fact that criteria of translation are sometimes stricter and sometimes more liberal. On the one hand, we cannot simply take for granted that a certain English poem can be translated into German in a way that is to our liking (and, under certain circumstances, we may very well call a poem or a joke ‘untranslatable’); on the other hand, every Eng-lish sentence can somehow be translated into German, even if it is obvi-ously not true that anything goes.3 That translation is in general possible is not due to any magical property of sentences or translations, but rather to a feature of our everyday usage of the word ‘translation’. The re-placement in which translation consists is not a ‘reduplication’ of the original text.4 Whereas the concept of ‘replacement’ is too broad, the
2 Cf. f. i. Kroß 2012, p. 44. On the same remark, cf. also Wilson 2016, f. i. p. 57, 63 ff., 80.
3 “[...] (Wer sagt, daß sich dieses englische Gedicht zu unsrer Zufriedenheit ins Deutsche übersetzen läßt?!) / (Wenn es auch klar ist, daß es zu jedem englischen Satz, in einem Sinne, eine Übersetzung ins Deutsche gibt.)” (MS 117: 251; RFM III, § 85; cf. Wilson 2016: 84 f.)
4 Thus Kroß (2012, p. 44); Wilson (2016, p. 57).
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concept of ‘reduplication’ is, rather than too narrow, fundamentally inad-equate. For this reason, it may be right to replace a pun with a quite dif-ferent one. Yet to come back to our original question: what are the crite-ria of correct replacement here? Can one plausibly speak of ‘critecrite-ria’ and
‘correctness’ at all in this case?
In the Brown Book, Wittgenstein deals with just this issue: translations can be justified in the context of a more general comparison between the two forms of life involved (§ 1). In this sense, natural languages are al-ways comparable. However, Wittgenstein replaces his earlier conception of an essentially unchanging language with the picture of a ‘superposi-tion’ of many different, even if somehow related, languages. From this insight into the plurality and variety of natural languages, philosophers could be tempted to draw sceptical consequences: although these conse-quences may be justified, they do not resolve our misunderstandings (§
2). The problems philosophers have to deal with are like ‘composite portraitures’, to which different languages each contribute their own myths, myths which are peculiar and yet related at the same time (§ 3).
Languages also overlap in the way Wittgenstein deals with philosophical problems. Thus, the same question of the comparability of languages also arises in discussions about translating Wittgenstein’s own texts. His conception of how philosophical problems arise and are solved con-fronts the translator of the Philosophical Investigations with a demanding task. How difficult is it to translate the text into languages that are re-mote from the source language? Katalin Neumer has dealt with just this issue in her investigation of translations of Wittgenstein’s texts in Rus-sian and Hungarian: are there languages into which it is in fact impossi-ble to translate the private language proimpossi-blem, its sources and the distinc-tive kind of Wittgensteinian therapy that (dis)solves it? Is her universalis-tic answer – both ‘depth grammar’ and philosophical problems are uni-versal – really warranted by her investigation? Wittgenstein may assume that forms of life are somehow comparable and that such a comparison allows us to justify translations. However, I do not take him to be com-mitting himself to any theory about the universality (or particularity) of
‘depth grammar’ (§ 4).
Oliveira, Paulo; Pichler, Alois; Moreno, Arley (guest eds.).
Wittgenstein in/on Translation, Coleção CLE, p. 49-76, v. 86, 2019