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4. A particular translation problem: translating ‘grammatical’
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meaning arise from this misunderstanding? The idea that the misunder-stood use of ‘to mean’ misleads us into developing senseless theories about ‘meaning’ does immediately suggest itself in English. However, this connection is absent in German. Consequently, the fact that the Philosophical Investigations concentrate on the verb ‘meinen’ and emphasize the relevance of this analysis for the theory of meaning betrays the influ-ence of English. In this sense, languages overlap not only in the genesis and evolution of philosophical problems and theories, but also in the way Wittgenstein himself deals with these questions.
Wittgenstein does not assume that these problems are restricted to the natural language(s) his texts happen to be written in. However, philo-sophical problems make their appearance in a single language and must be solved in it; for Wittgenstein, this means conducting a ‘grammatical’
investigation in and of this natural language – mostly German – as in the case of the Philosophical Investigations.
A peculiar difficulty involved in translating this book is related to Wittgenstein’s view of philosophy. In dealing with any classic of philos-ophy (say, with Kant, Hegel or Husserl), one will often come to puzzle about the right translation of the author’s technical terminology. There are many such questions regarding Wittgenstein’s vocabulary.34 Howev-er, there is also a more specific difficulty that stems from the task he sets himself: philosophical problems that are “produced by grammatical illu-sions” (PI, § 110) and arise “through a misinterpretation of our forms of language” (PI, § 111), “are solved through an insight into the workings of our language” (PI, § 109).
This way of solving philosophical problems confronts the translator with a difficult task. She has to move from the misleading surface gram-mar at the root of the misunderstanding to the insights in deep gramgram-mar that solve the problem. She has to translate the philosophical problems, their source in grammar, and the ‘grammatical’ insights that allow these
34 As an example, consider the technical term ‘Familienähnlichkeit’, cf. n. 30 above.
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problems to disappear. Thus, the translator must be able to find plausible replacements for the difficulties of linguistic usage with which the source text is struggling; she must find (or come up with) real ‘grammatical’
difficulties in the target language, the false analogies that need to be cleared up to solve the philosophical problems Wittgenstein struggles with in the original German text. The luring seductions he deals with in the source language must be translated in such a way that, even in the target language, they look like real temptations. “You should like to say...” is a phrase that recurs again and again in the Philosophical Investiga-tions in the most different variaInvestiga-tions. What “You should like to say...”35 must really be something natural for you to say in your own language.
Thus, the translator must make plausible to the reader that everyday usage of the target language can be misunderstood and given the mytho-logical interpretation the Philosophical Investigations deal with. Thus, the translated Wittgenstein must talk the reader out of moves that are a real,
‘spontaneous’ temptation for her in her own language – and not only in German. He must convince the reader to see things differently and bring her around to a new way of thinking. ‘Grammatical’ considerations in and about the source language (German) must be replaced by ‘grammati-cal’ considerations in and about the target language. Thus, the translated Wittgenstein must give a perspicuous representation of the target lan-guage, albeit in a punctual, piecemeal manner. Patterns in which rules of philosophical grammar are expressed (“Sensations are private”) or, on the contrary, contravened (“For a second he felt deep grief”) have to be translated in the target language.36
How difficult is this? In 2010, at a conference in Vienna on ‘Translat-ing Wittgenstein’, I discussed this particular translation problem, show-ing how these difficulties can be mastered quite well in Italian. However, could the same result be achieved in languages that are further away
35 “Where our language suggests a body and there is none: there, we should like to say [möchten wir sagen], is a spirit.” (PI, § 36). Cf. PI, §§ 50, 99, 140, 156, 165, 168 etc.
36 Cf. PI, § 248, PI II, § 3.
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from the source language? As I was dealing with a language relatively close to German, I left this question aside – cf. Brusotti (2012, p. 216). It was taken up, however by another contributor to the same volume, Katalin Neumer, who had translated the Philosophical Investigations into Hungarian. In her paper (2012), she used the Russian translation as an
‘object of comparison’ for her own Hungarian translation. Are there languages in which, she asked, the private language problem, with its particular sources and its distinctive mode of Wittgensteinian therapy, is impossible to translate? And if so, are Russian and Hungarian amongst these languages? Whilst she lends her questions a fairly – perhaps too – radical formulation, she nevertheless ends up dismissing the option of untranslatability.
Neumer tries to answer her question about the adequate translation of the private language problem by using the distinction between ‘super-ficial grammar’ and ‘deep grammar’. She concludes that if the philosoph-ical problem of private language simply arose from false analogies in
‘surface grammar’, Hungarian and Russian speakers would be quite safe;
at least in this specific case, the ‘surface grammar’ of their respective language does not tend to lead them astray (Neumer 2012, p. 267, cf. p.
266). But, in fact, Hungarian and Russian speakers are anything but indif-ferent to the issue of private language. The reason is, she claims, that, even if the respective surface grammars of German and Hungarian are quite different, their depth grammars are more similar; and it is ‘depth grammar’ that is of paramount importance for translation.
According to Neumer, ‘depth grammar’ is more widely shared than surface grammar. She gives two possible, and conflicting, reasons for this assertion: (A) ‘Depth grammar’ is not only ‘linguistic’, but also historic, sociological. Austria (but also Germany) and Hungary share depth grammar because of a common cultural background. This first path leads Neumer to question Wittgenstein’s assumption that the problems of philosophy go back to linguistic misunderstandings. Here, I will leave this subject aside.
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Turning to Neumer’s second thesis: (B) ‘depth grammar’ is universal.
On this explanation, ‘philosophical’ problems are not parochial; and the late Wittgenstein does indeed assume that ‘depth grammar’ has a certain grade of commonality. But must it be universal? In a sense, his rather open-ended considerations about ‘depth grammar’ apply to language in general and not only to determinate languages. We are not able to inter-pret an unknown language (or even to say that it is a language), unless we can recognize in the speakers something like a “shared human way of acting” (PI, § 206).37 To this belongs, for instance, a certain amount of
“regularity” (PI, § 207) in speaking and acting. The way of acting is not only the criterion for justifying the substitution of one expression with another, but the basis of a more general and basic form of understanding (interpretation), namely of the ascription of a determinate kind of speech act or of language at all.38
Thus, these two remarks (PI, §§ 206-207) address a more general is-sue than adequate translation. They have been the object of much con-troversy. I think that this disagreement, like many others, is due to a misunderstanding of Wittgenstein’s approach. Interpreters try to pin down his position by ascribing to him either a relativistic or a universalis-tic standpoint, whereas he in fact tries to avoid committing himself to a theory of either kind. Wittgenstein mentions a “[s]hared human way of acting” (PI, § 206). Who shares it with whom? The people mentioned in PI, § 206 share it among themselves and at least partly with us. There must be such overlaps. But is this “human way of acting” “shared” (PI, § 206) in the sense that it is common to mankind as a whole (in the sense of a closed set of features common to all humans)? Maybe, but I do not think that Wittgenstein wishes to commit himself to any theory about the universality (or particularity) of ‘depth grammar’.
37 I prefer this translation to “[s]hared human behaviour”.
38 “[...] Suppose you came as an explorer to an unknown country with a language quite unknown to you. In what circumstances would you say that the people there gave orders, understood them, obeyed them, rebelled against them, and so on? / Shared human be-haviour is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown lan-guage” (PI, § 206). “[...] Are we to say that these people have a language: orders, reports, and so on? / There is not enough regularity for us to call it ‘language’” (PI, § 207).
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