Translating European Continental philosophy: a genre-

based approach

Douglas Andrew Town

Abstract

Continental philosophy often seems obscure to Anglo-Saxon readers used to a more

analytical approach. In the case of Spanish philosophy, the digressive, literary style

of many academic texts and their distinctly ‘foreign’ assumptions about perception,

cognition and values cannot simply be transferred into English without upsetting the

reader’s basic reception strategy.

Taking part of Fernando Castro Flórez’s article, “Escenas de la Desaparició: Luto

teatral en una narración fotográfica” as an anchor for discussion, this paper argues

that SL and TL readers may hold different expectations about what constitutes

‘good’ philosophy and that, consequently, the translator must establish the SL

writer’s authority in the TL rather than simply taking it for granted. Continental

philosophy is best translated by clarifying associations and normalising disruptive

elements arising from the SL genre that would distract the TL reader from the

overall flow of thought.

Introduction

For the translator of European Continental philosophy, the main problem is to bridge

two very different traditions. Not only is Continental philosophy preoccupied with

political, cultural and existential issues that are ‘foreign’ to Anglo-Saxon readers,

but it is also less analytical and more literary than the philosophy taught in Britain

and America. Given these differences and the current disagreement in different

semantic/pragmatic accounts of the underdeterminacy of language (Carson, 2002),

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my basic position in this article is that attempts by translation theorists such as

Newmark to solve the problem of ‘textual equivalence’ in terms of the dominant

language functions of the ST are useful but over-simplified. In particular,

Newmark’s (1981, 1988) distinction between ‘authoritative’ or ‘expressive’ texts,

for which he advocates a more writer-centred, semantic approach, and ‘informative’

texts, for which he allows a more reader-centred, communicative approach, are often

difficult to apply in practice because of SL and TL readers’ different expectations

about what constitutes ‘good’ philosophy.

By grounding this discussion in one fairly long passage and my own rendering of it

from Spanish into English (see Appendix), I hope to clarify some of these wider

issues as well as the problems arising from a particular text without, myself,

becoming too ‘philosophical’. The text that I have chosen is the first paragraph of a

thirteen-page article, “Escenas de la Desaparición”, which explores the work of

Spanish photographer Angel Marcos and, in particular, his photographic narrative of

the same name portraying the Calderón Theatre in Valladolid, Spain, after it closed

for extensive alterations in 1995 (hence the subtitle “Luto teatral en una narración

fotográfica”). The author, Fernando Castro Flórez, who lectures in Aesthetics and

Art Theory at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, is a respected art critic and an

authority in his field. The translation was commissioned for an exhibition of

Marcos’ photographs to mark the re-opening of the Calderón Theatre in April 1999

and was thus intended for readers with a general interest in culture as well as for

specialists.

Form and function: writer –based vs. reader-based prose

A literary genre is a distinctive type of text characterized by a particular form,

function, content and style. At the formal level, the fact that “Escenas de la

Desaparición” belongs to the genre of academic writing is immediately obvious

from the use of references throughout the text. However, a first reading of the text

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also poses two problems for the TL reader accustomed to the conventions of

academic writing in English: firstly, the lack of any introduction stating the purpose

and scope of the article or signposting the sequence of material (instead, the text is

prefaced by a highly metaphorical quotation from Michel Serres, which the reader

must interpret in the light of what follows); and secondly, the lack of topic sentences

in the first paragraph (the part of the text discussed here), to facilitate what is a

distinctly complex approach to the aesthetics of photography and the interpretation

of photographic images. The lack of advanced organisers and topic sentences (and

also of an overall conclusion) suggest a much more writer-based approach than

would be acceptable in an Anglo-Saxon academic article, where the reader expects

form and function to be explicit both at the macro level - e.g. thesis, support and

conclusion - and at the micro level - e.g. situation, problem, response, evaluation

(see Hoey, 1983).

Flower (1979) states: “in its structure, writer-based prose reflects the associative,

narrative path of the writer's own confrontation with his subject. In reader-based

prose, its structure reflects the purpose of the writer's thoughts”.  A closer reading of

Castro Flórez’s text reveals that, despite its situation (“una situación estética de

postpaisaje”), problem (“Esas imágenes demandan, incansablemente, un imposibible”)

and response (“una narración estética …que responde”) structure, the text seems, partly,

to reflect the process of aesthetic exploration itself. Firstly, key concepts are

introduced ‘out of the blue’, so to speak – for example, the writer’s assumption that

art is primarily about form and that it should be prophetic. Secondly, key stages in

arguments are sometimes missing. Why, for example, should planning lead to

instability? (‘La oscilación es constitutiva de la experiencia artística, surgida en un

mundo técnico donde se siente la exigencia de planificación de todas las cosas’).

Thirdly, the topic/comment structure is often unclear: “surgida” could refer to

“oscilación” or to “experiencia”. More disconcerting is the abrupt transition from art

in general to photography in particular (“Tal vez sea Benjamin el pensador que

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mejor ha comprendido la problematicidad de la obra de arte …: la fotografía

mantiene el culto al recuerdo …”), which is only confirmed in the following

sentence (“En la fotografía...”) and a similarly abrupt transition to the topic of technology

(“La técnica...”) two sentences later. Finally, the functional value of some sentences is

unclear: for example, in the first sentence (“Régis Debray ha hablado de …”)

Debray’s statement seems – at least, to an Anglo-Saxon reader – more like a piece of

news than a reference. The mixture of direct quotation (in translation) and

paraphrase from the same work – both in the same sentence - is also unusual in

English.

The first decision that must be taken, then, is to what extent the rhetorical and

syntactic forms of the text should be adapted to the TL reader’s expectations. This

decision will depend on the extent to which the formal features of the text are

mandatory in the SL, or are choices on the author’s part. On the one hand, Spanish

academic writing has tended, until recently, to be much less “reader-based” than its

Anglo-Saxon counterpart, especially in philosophy and the arts. There are several

possible explanations for this. At a general level, Kaplan’s (1966) theory of

contrastive rhetoric argues that argumentative texts are more digressive and less

linear in Spanish and other Romance languages than in English although Kaplan

(1987; 1988) also claims that “rhetorical differences do not necessarily reflect

different patterns of thinking Instead, differences may reflect different writing

conventions that are learned in a culture” (cited in Connor 1996:16). At a more

concrete level, there is less emphasis in Spain on argumentative writing at

undergraduate level and less pressure to publish in academic journals at post-

graduate level. Whatever the explanation, this article is typical both of Castro

Flórez’s published writing and that of many Spanish art critics. On the other hand,

Castro Flórez’s manifest interest in formal innovations (“Y es también en este

momento cuando se precisa de gran energía para reavivar los contornos…”)

suggests that at least some of the formal elements of his text - e.g. the accumulation

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of relative clauses in the final sentence before the colon and the final summary

sentence (“la mirada se apiada de la ruina”) - have a deliberate, aesthetic intention.

In the case of “Escenas de la Desaparición”, I decided to compensate for the

rhetorical underdeterminacy of the text as a whole (in particular, the lack of topic

sentences or definitions and the abrupt transitions) by dividing the paragraph into

two (problem and response), dividing longer sentences (“…at random. When

confronted …”), adding discourse markers (“However, .. On the contrary, …

But….”) and creating parallel structures (Benjamin … Benjamin …; Photography

… Photography…) in order to highlight the argumentation – Kaplan’s “pattern of

thinking” - , which Anglo-Saxon readers tend to perceive as the core of a

philosophical text. However, because of the author’s intention to publish the Spanish

and English versions as parallel texts, and a possible European as well as Anglo-

Saxon readership (the visitors to the Teatro Calderón), I did not normalise the

structure any further.

Content: literary vs. analytical

As Jonathan Ree points out in his essay "Being foreign is different" (Times Literary

Supplement, 6/9/96), philosophers, like their translators, struggle with the

underdeterminacy of natural language:

“Philosophy is obsessed with words; but the words that interest it are not the

fancy aristocrats of language, nor yet its specialized technicians: they are its

swarming universal proletarians - terms like "time" and "unfairness", "good"

and "ugly", "truth" and "lies". And it is these dog-ordinary terms, in their

ordinary elusive precision, that set philosophical translators their hardest

tasks”.

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The reason for this preoccupation with language is that, unlike religious dogmas,

philosophical arguments - at least, in the analytical tradition - ask for rational assent,

not for faith or obedience (Magee, 1998). Consequently, an Anglo-Saxon reader’s

basic reception strategy is likely to be analytical, rather than associative, and the

literary features typical of Continental philosophy, elements such as personification,

symbols or metaphor, may require modification if a semantic translation detracts

from the overall flow of thought. For example, although Castro Flórez writes in the

final line: ‘la mirada se apiada de la ruina’, this personification is illogical in English

and simply makes the writing obscure, so destroying the intended effect. Similarly,

where the introductory quotation from Michel Serres speaks of climbing (Dante’s?)

symbolic stairs to look for a light, the Anglo-Saxon reader might legitimately argue

that light is already visible; otherwise, there would be no shadows. What is needed is

not a light but a new light. Accordingly, my translation of the word “puerta” in this

image (as transparent “gate” rather than opaque “door”) is based on the assumption

that it is the light at the top of the stairs that casts the shadows. The sustained

atmospheric metaphor in the second half of the passage (‘torbellino’,

‘condensación’, ‘nieblas’, ‘temperatura fría’), though less prominent, is also

potentially confusing and needs adapting.

At the level of terminology, it is a commonplace that philosophers redefine words or

coin new terms for important concepts, and Newmark (1982:3) has pointed out the

importance of identifying keywords, or theme words, in philosophical texts:

“Theme words denoting the subject and the significant concepts of the SL

text must be identified by the translator, and if they have no precise

equivalents in the TL, they should be componentially analyzed at the first

citation and then identified by a translation label”.

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When translating Continental philosophy, this procedure would seem to be

particularly important since Continental philosophy assumes fewer shared

presuppositions, problems, methods and approaches than analytical philosophy

(Levy, 2003). However, in “Escenas de la Desaparición”, most of the words

italicised in the first paragraph (postpaisaje, oscilación, etc.) do not reappear again

and seem to be italicised for local emphasis only. By contrast, one term that is

repeated throughout the article and which might constitute a theme word, “la

mirada", not only appears embedded within a literary device (see above), making it

difficult to apply a translation label, but suggests an impersonal and disembodied

form of perception that has no equivalent in English. To translate it with Lacan’s

technical term “the Gaze” (see “Translator’s note on p.14) probably makes too great

a demand on an Anglo-Saxon reader visiting an art exhibition. Another possible

keyword is “espectador”, which I translate as “observer” because his (or her?) active

role is implied in the text (“active observer” vs. “passive spectator”). However, the

generalised singular has been replaced by “we” (“we, as observers”). I shall return to

both these problems in the next section.

Style: abstract vs. concrete

If, by now, philosophical translation is beginning to appear more difficult than is

generally recognised, it is, arguably, more complex in the case of aesthetics, a

branch of philosophy that deals with art, art theory and art criticism. Like ethics,

aesthetics is a “value” discipline covering a vast range of topics from landscape

gardening and painting to poetry and music (Duncan, 2004). Because art appeals to

the senses, aesthetics is concerned with cognitive processes like perception,

conceptualisation, kinaesthesia and the interaction of body and space, all of which

are, in part, culturally defined and have become ‘hot topics’ within cognitive

linguistics (Guarddon Anelo, 2004). I have already referred to the problem of the

generalised observer and of finding an intelligible translation label for “la mirada" in

“Escenas de la Desaparición”; the rest of final sentence, which places the emotions

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within the photographs instead of within the observers (‘… una narración estética ...

responde a esa temperatura fría de la ausencia con el calor cordial de la ternura’) and

substitutes the notion of time for space in the word ‘ausencia’, similarly requires

normalisation in terms of how these cognitive processes are conceived in English.

However, the problem of cultural differences in perception and cognition is part of a

more general difference between Romance languages and English, a difference that

is usually analysed within the domain of stylistics. In particular, argumentative

writing in Romance languages tends towards greater abstraction than is acceptable

in English – viz Vinay and Darbelnet’s (1958) distinction between concreteness

(plan du réel) in English vs. abstractness (plan de l’entendement) in French, which is

equally applicable here to English vs. Spanish. In “Escenas de la Desaparición” it is

the writer and his readers (“we”) who are supposed to open the door, etc. (in the

quotation from Michel Serres), assume that the past can be recovered, witness the

photographs, think with the utmost clarity, experience sadness and tenderness, and

gaze at ruins. All these are subjective processes and any attempt to objectify and

universalise them in English, as the ST appears to do, rather than relate them to

ourselves (“we”), would not only make the flow of thought less intelligible, but

would, possibly, lay its author open to charges of euro-centrism and, perhaps,

sexism (can “he” be used in English to refer to “el espectador” later in the article?).

Conclusion

In this article I have assumed that academic writing, philosophy and aesthetics form

a hierarchy and that, in English, lower levels inherit the features of those above. Of

course, Collins and Quillian’s (1969) study of concept hierarchies has shown that

not all members of a hierarchy are equal in typicality. Certainly, many philosophers

regard aesthetics as a marginal field (Deveraux, 2004) and there is still a lot of half-

baked psychological analysis in Anglo-Saxon aesthetics (Duncan, 2004) although,

for the translator, this is unlikely to affect text structure. Similarly, I have assumed

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that the rhetorical underdeterminacy of the ST in comparison to Anglo-Saxon

academic writing is a result either of ‘digressive’ writing conventions or a lack of

emphasis on issue-centred writing within Spanish universities. However, the fact

that the Anglo-Saxon model is gaining ground in Spanish universities - and is all but

mandatory for scientific papers – does not mean that it is ‘superior’ but simply

reflects the predominance of English in the modern world. Many non-Anglo-Saxon

academics are now forced to publish in English or perish.

More generally, I am aware that my distinction between form, function, content and

style and my mapping of these onto a hierarchy of genres (academic writing –

philosophy – aesthetics) is a convenience. In particular, my decision to consider the

problems posed by literary devices and perception/cognition as problems of content

and style, respectively, might be very different if I were translating a novel or a

newspaper article. However, I believe that this approach is valid for most forms of

academic writing and, in particular, philosophy where – in the Anglo-Saxon world –

an author’s authority derives from the quality of his or her analysis rather than from

peculiarities of style. Flórez and other European Continental philosophers have

much to say; TL readers should not have to work harder to understand them than SL

readers. Attempts to polarise SL texts into “authoritative/expressive” vs.

“informative” need to be balanced against a more fundamental distinction between

the cultural assumptions of the ST and those of the TL reader. Editors’ constraints

(e.g. the demand for a “parallel” text) and the fact that, nowadays, TL readers are

not necessarily native speakers of the TL do not fundamentally invalidate this

approach.

Douglas Andrew Town

Universidad de Belgrano

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References

Carson, R. (2002) ‘Truth conditional content and conversational implicature’. http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/robyn/pdf/woc.pdf

Castro Flórez, F. (1999) ‘Escenas de la Desaparición: Luto teatral en una narración fotográfica’. (Catálogo del Teatro Calderón de abril de 1999)

Collins A.M. and Quillian M.R. (1969) ‘Retrieval Time From SemanticMemory’, Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour, 8, 240-248.

Connor, U. (1996). Contrastive Rhetoric: Cross-Cultural Aspects of Second-Language Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Deveraux, M (2004). ‘The Philosophical Status of Aesthetics’. American Society for Aesthetics. http://www.aesthetics-online.org/ideas/devereaux.html

Duncan, E. (2004). ‘The Lack of Historical Perspective in Aesthetics’. American Society for Aesthetics. http://www.aesthetics-online.org/ideas/duncan.html

Flower, L (1979). ‘Writer-Based Prose: A Cognitive Basis for Problems in Writing’,

College English, 41 (1) 19-37, September, 1979

Guarddon Anelo, C. (2004). ‘Philosophy, Anthropology, and Linguistics in Translation’ Translation Journal Volume 8, No. 1. January 2004

Hoey, M. (1983). On the surface of discourse. London: Allen and Unwin.

Kaplan, R. B. (1966). ‘Cultural Thought Patterns in Inter-Cultural Education’, Language Learning, 16, 1-20.

Lacan, J. (1977). The Four Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis, Harmondsworth, Penguin.

Kaplan, Robert B. (1967). ‘Contrastive Rhetoric and the Teaching of Composition.’ TESOL Quarterly, 1.3 10-16.

Levy, N. (2003). Analytic and Continental Philosophy: Explaining the Differences. Volume 34, Issue 3, Page 284 - April 2003

Magee, B. (1998). The Story of Philosophy. New York: Dorling Kindersley

Newmark, P. (1982). ‘The Translation of Authoritative Statements: a discussion’. Langage du droit et traduction / The Language of the Law and Translation: Essais de jurilinguistique / Essays on Jurilinguistics. Québec: Linguatech/ Conseil de la langue française. http://www.cslf.gouv.qc.ca/Publications/PubF104/F104P2ch3.html#3

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Newmark, P. (1988). A Textbook of Translation. London: Prentice Hall.

Ree, J. (1996). ‘Being foreign is different’. Times Literary Supplement, 6/9/96.

Vinay, J.-P. and Darbelnet, J. (1958). Stylistique comparée du français et de l’anglais. París: Didier.

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Appendix 1

ESCENAS DE LA DESAPARICIÓN.

Luto teatral en una narración fotográfica.

Fernando

Castro

Flórez

“Un día habrá que abrir la puerta de las sombras, subir los últimos escalones, buscar una luz

para reconocerse en sombras tan antiguas que la carne humillada ya está acostumbrada a

ellas” (Michel Serres)

Régis Debray ha hablado de una situación estética de postpaisaje, cuando el malestar se ha

desplegado en la naturaleza y en la representación. No es, ciertamente, que la voluntad de

arte y de paisaje hayan capitulado, “por el contrario, es más fuerte que nunca, a la medida

de las nostalgias”1. Y es también en este momento cuando se precisa de gran energía para

reavivar los contornos, para restaurar los presagios, cuando la prosa de lo cotidiano es

sinónimo de banalidad. La oscilación es constitutiva de la experiencia artística, surgida en

un mundo técnico donde se siente la exigencia de planificación de todas las cosas. Tal vez

sea Benjamin el pensador que mejor ha comprendido la problematicidad de la obra de arte

en el tiempo de su reproducción y mediación generalizada; para él había un último refugio

para el valor cultual que se desmorona por la acción continuada de la estética de la sorpresa

y la novedad: la fotografía mantiene el culto al recuerdo de los seres queridos, lejanos o

desaparecidos. En la fotografía se encuentra el resto de una experiencia que, rodeada de

silencio, reclama un nombre. Esas imágenes demandan, incansablemente, un imposibible:

la vida del que estuvo aquí y sólo puede recobrarse si se asume que su lugar es ahora éste.

La técnica no conduce únicamente, en una perspectiva lineal, hacia un dominio de absoluta

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racionalización sino que parece rodear a algunos de sus productos de valor mágico. La

reproducción da testimonio del tiempo con una intensidad desconocida para la imagen

tradicional. La interrupción que arrastraba la intención en un torbellino irresistible, se

transforma en una condensación azarosa; el espectador se siente irresistiblemente forzado a

buscar en la fotografía la chispita minúscula de azar, de aquí y ahora, “con que la realidad

ha chamuscado, por así decirlo, su carácter de imagen, a encontrar el lugar inaparente en el

cual, en una determinada manera de ser de ese minuto que pasó ya hace tiempo, anida hoy

el futuro y tan elocuentemente que, mirando hacia atrás, podremos descubrirlo”2. Esas

nieblas que surgen en el origen de la fotografía se encarnan en una lucidez limítrofe, una

narración estética que da cuenta de la tristeza más aún, que responde a esa temperatura fría

de la ausencia con el calor cordial de la ternura: la mirada se apiada de la ruina.

(Página 1 de 13)

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SCENES OF DISAPPEARANCE

Theatrical Mourning in a Photographic Narrative

Fernando

Castro

Flórez

“One day we shall have to cross the gateway of shadows, climb the last few steps, and try

to see our own flesh, so long mortified by these shadows, in a new light.” (Michel Serres)

According to Régis Debray, we are now, aesthetically speaking, in a post-landscape era in

which nature and naturalistic representation are met with a certain unease. However, this

does not mean that interest in art or landscape has in any way declined. On the contrary, it

is stronger than ever and is a sign that, in general, nostalgia is on the increase1. But in an era

in which the prosaic and the everyday are synonymous with banality, an enormous effort is

required to make forms stand out and to give art a sense of the prophetic. Artistic

experience has become one of continual instability as a result of technology, which requires

that everything should be planned. Perhaps Benjamin is the thinker who has best come to

grips with the problems posed by a work of art in an era of mass production and

distribution. Benjamin argues that the last refuge of art’s cult value, which is being eroded

by a constant striving for novelty and surprise, is photography. Photography keeps alive the

cult of remembering our loved ones, both far away and deceased. Photography preserves

the remains of our experiences and these wait in silence for us to put a name to them. Time

and time again these images make impossible demands on us: a life that was once

elsewhere can only be recovered if we assume that it exists here and now.

Technology, however, does not simply move in straight lines towards totally rational

control. It also seems to bestow a magical quality on some of its products. Indeed, mass

reproduction bears testimony to the passing of time in a way that traditional image-making

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never could. The frozen images that once had an overwhelming sense of purpose are now

thrown at us at random. When confronted with a photograph we, as witnesses*, feel driven

to search for that tiny spark of the here and now, captured by chance, “with which reality

has, so to speak, left its brand on the picture, and to identify those parts of the picture where

the future lies hidden so eloquently and which can only be discovered in retrospect”2. Those

photographs, rising out of the mists of time, force us to think with the utmost clarity, to

create an aesthetic narrative with which to explain the sadness we feel, the warmth in our

hearts, when faced with cold images of what has ceased to be: we are gazing in pity at our

own ruins 1.

(Page 1 of 13)

1 Translator’s note: The author seems to be referring to Lacan’s concept of “le regard” (the Gaze). Lacan claims that subject ("we") is "illuminated by the light emitted by the object of its own look, and thereby [we are] registered simultaneously as object of representation" (Four Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis, 191). The translation alludes more “clearly” to the introductory citation from Michel Serres (“see our own flesh...in a new light”)

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