Schleiermacher and the valorization of the foreign PDF

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riassunto introducing translation studies di Jeremy Munday...

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Schleiermacher and the valorization of the foreign

In the early 19th century, one of the German Romantic’s interest was how translation could be a means of improving German literature and culture; they centered on the issues of translatability and untranslatabilty and the mythical nature of translation. Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics gave a Romantic approach to interpretation based not on absolute truth but on the individual’s inner feeling and understanding. Schleiermacher first distinguishes two different types of translator working on two different types of text:  The “Dolmetscher”, who translates commercial texts;  The “Ubersetzer”, who works on scholarly and artistic texts. In the second type Schleiermacher sees it as being on a higher creative plane. The real problem, according to Schleiermacher, is how to bring the ST writer and the TT reader together; he considers there to be only two paths open for the “true” translator: “Either the translator leaves the writer in peace as much as possible and moves the reader toward him, or he leaves the reader in peace as much as possible and moves the writer towards him.” Schleiermacher preferred strategy is to move the reader towards the writer. This does not entail writing as the author would have done had he written in German (similarly to Dryden’s formula, a “naturalizing” method that brought the foreign text in line with the TL). instead, Schleiermacher’s method is to give the reader, through the translation, the impression he would have received as a German reading the work in the original language. To achieve this, the translator must adopt an “alienating” method of translation: this emphasizes the value of the foreign, by bending TL word-usage to try to ensure faithfulness to the ST....