TRANSLATION AFTER WITTGENSTEIN PHILIP WILSON Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Literary Translation University of East Anglia School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing August 2012 © This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. 1 ABSTRACT In this thesis, I examine how a reading of the later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein can be of use to the reflective practitioner of literary translation. Wittgenstein, whilst a key figure in twentieth-century philosophy, remains peripheral to the field of translation studies and I argue that his later work, because it deals with the nature of language and meaning, is potentially of great significance: the story that Wittgenstein tells can change the field. It can rid translators of pictures of translation that are detrimental to literary translation and can also offer tools that will facilitate the task of literary translation, such as: the language-game; the form of life; the surveyable representation. In Chapter 1, I discuss the relation between philosophy and translation studies, presenting the later work of Wittgenstein, in particular the 1953 Philosophical Investigations. In Chapters 2, 3 and 4, I relate Wittgenstein’s work to translation by examining respectively: the reading for translation of the source text; the writing of the target text; the theorising of the target text. In Chapter 5, I draw conclusions. In the central three chapters, I offer case studies of the translation of the poetry of Eduard Mörike and of the New Testament to illustrate my arguments. My aim is that the thesis will form the basis for a greater concern for Wittgenstein in translation studies than has previously been the case. 2 TRANSLATION AFTER WITTGENSTEIN CONTENTS Preface 6 Acknowledgements 7 Abbreviations 8 A note on referencing 9 TRANSLATION AFTER WITTGENSTEIN 10 1 Introduction 11 1.1 Aim 12 1.2 Translation studies and philosophy 17 1.3 Why Wittgenstein? 20 1.4 The later Wittgenstein 24 1.5 Applying Wittgenstein 32 1.5.1 Wittgenstein’s work on medical research 35 1.5.2 Moore’s theological investigations 36 1.5.3 Perloff on poetic translatability 38 1.6 Conclusions 41 2 Reading the source text for translation 42 2.1 On not thinking but looking 43 2.2 Language-games 60 2.3 Forms of life 74 2.4 Philosophical descriptions 82 2.5 Case studies 91 2.5.1 The poetry of Mörike 92 2.5.2 The New Testament 95 2.6 Conclusions 101 3 Writing the target text 103 3.1 The translator and the fly-bottle 104 3.2 The language-game of translation 116 3.3 The forms of life of the literary translator 122 3.4 Translating a play on words 132 3.5 Case study: translating the poetry of Mörike 144 3.6 Conclusions 153 3 4 Theorising the target text 155 4.1 The beetle in the box 155 4.2 Describing the surface 170 4.3 Translated to our satisfaction 181 4.4 Grammatical investigations 197 4.4.1 Investigating the supermemes 198 4.4.1.1 Source-target 198 4.4.1.2 Equivalence 199 4.4.1.3 Untranslatability 201 4.4.1.4 Free-vs-literal 202 4.4.1.5 All-writing-is-translation 204 4.4.1.6 Conclusions about the supermemes 205 4.4.2 Translation theories after Wittgenstein 207 4.5. Case study: New Testament translation 210 4.5.1 New Testament translation: a cluster concept 210 4.5.2 A description of Barnstone’s The Restored New Testament 216 4.6 Conclusions 225 5 Conclusion 227 5.1 Wittgenstein’s story 228 5.2 Practice and theory 235 5.3 Why Wittgenstein 243 5.4 Translation after Wittgenstein 251 5.5 Story’s end 255 Bibliography 259 4 LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES FIGURES 1 The duck-rabbit 56 2 A Wittgensteinian reading list for translation 242 TABLES 1 Stylistic effects according to Moyal-Sharrock 55 2 The word in context 75 3 Forms of life in Table 2 76 4 Mörike’s poetry 92 5 Translation polarities 165 6 Ovid as a cluster of translations 168 7 Translators’ note to Effi Briest 175 8 Reading Weinberger as Wittgensteinian 190 9 The evaluation of quality in translation studies 194 10 A sample of major translation studies 207 11 Some NT translations 211 12 Extending the cluster 214 13 Nomenclature in Barnstone 220 14 Translation theories, Wittgenstein and Barnstone 222 15 Wittgenstein’s stories 229 16 Wittgensteinian tools for translation studies 237 17 A surveyable representation of (140) 246 5 PREFACE My own interest in Wittgenstein began some twenty years ago. He was initially recommended to me by Michael Finnissy, who informed me in conversation that Wittgenstein had been inspirational to him in his work as a composer. My intellectual position at that time was Thomist, following the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Friends in the Dominican Order, of which I was for a time a member, later recommended reading Wittgenstein as a way of approaching Aquinas’s thought and I was influenced by my reading of Fergus Kerr (1988) and Gareth Moore (1998). When my professional interests turned to translation, I used my reading of Wittgenstein as a way of approaching the texts on which I was working, for example, in my translations from Martin Luther (Gledhill and Wilson, 2007), where I sought to play the same language-games in my translations that I found in Luther’s sermons. My motivation for researching translation after Wittgenstein can therefore be seen as a coming together of my philosophical and professional interests. I would no longer call myself a Thomist, but I continue to turn to the writings of Wittgenstein. I owe to John Gledhill the notion of linking Wittgenstein to translation: my thesis ‘Translation after Wittgenstein’ is in many ways an application of an insight he expresses in his book on translating Thomas Mann (2007) and a continuation of a dialogue that has gone on for more than forty years. 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I should like to thank my supervisors at the University of East Anglia: Jean Boase- Beier, Valerie Henitiuk, Marie McGinn and Ross Wilson. David Cockburn and Gareth Jones gave generously of their time for philosophical discussion. Thanks also to those who helped me to find my path to Wittgenstein: Michael Finnissy, John Gledhill, Fergus Kerr, Gareth Moore. And to the following for their support: Odai Alzoubi, Anna Clover, Tamara Dobler, Chris Doman, B.J. Epstein, Antoinette Fawcett, Marc Fielder, Lina Fisher, Hiroko Furukawa, Tom Greaves, Peter Green, Jon Hills, Susanne Klinger, Oskari Kuusela, Richard Lewis, Andrei Nasta, Ben Needham, Trudi Needham, Silvia Panizza, Rupert Read, Catherine Rowett, Lorna Savage, Maria Serban, Clara Stern, Simon Summers, Helen Tierney, Vlad Vexler, Ben Walker. I have been able to undertake doctoral research thanks to the Arts and Humanities Scholarship awarded by the University of East Anglia. This thesis is dedicated to the memory of my parents. 7 ABBREVIATIONS Works by Wittgenstein: BT Big Typescript CV Culture and Value LA Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief LWPP Last Writings on Philosophical Psychology NB Notebooks 1914-1916 OC On Certainty PI Philosophical Investigations PG Philosophical Grammar PPF Philosophy of Psychology – A Fragment RPP Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology PR Philosophical Remarks RFM Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics TL-P Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus WFV Wörterbuch für Volksschulen Z Zettel Other abbreviations: DTS Descriptive Translation Studies HG Hellenistic Greek NT New Testament SL source language ST source text TL target language TT target text (dir) director ed. edited (ed) editor (eds) editors np no page tr. translated (tr) translator (trs) translators 8 A NOTE ON REFERENCING 1. Works are referred to by author, year and (where relevant) page, e.g. ‘Adair (1995:5)’. 2. I follow practice in philosophical scholarship by referring to the works of Wittgenstein by title and section or page, and by referring to the works of Plato by section, e.g. ‘Wittgenstein (PI 1)’; ‘Wittgenstein (CV p.5)’; ‘Plato (514a)’. 3. I follow practice in theological scholarship by referring to the Bible by chapter and verse, while making clear which edition is being used when relevant, e.g. ‘King James Bible, John 1:1’. 4. If a translation is being discussed, then the translator is given as the author in the main text and in the Bibliography, e.g. ‘Constantine, D. (tr) (2005) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Faust Part I, London: Penguin’. No translator is given for group translations of the Bible. 5. Where a translated text is considered in its own right, the translator is credited in the Bibliography but the text is given under the name of the source text author, e.g. ‘Tolstoy, L. (1997) The Gospel in Brief, tr. by F.A. Flowers III, Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press’. 6. Internet references in the Bibliography include the full date on which a website was viewed, e.g. ‘AQA (9 May 2010) http://store.aqa.org.uk’. In the text, reference is by year only, e.g. ‘AQA (2010)’. 9 TRANSLATION AFTER WITTGENSTEIN While we all use language, none of us actually owns it. Spence (2010:42) 10 1. INTRODUCTION In the beginning was the Deed! Goethe (1972:44)1 1 My translation. 11 1.1 Aim The Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) is the subject of a poem by Herbert Lomas (2009:41), which is given as (1).