2021
Text Performances and Cultural Transfer/Textperformances und Kulturtransfer
Lavinia Heller
Pages 153-164
Translatorische Treue und philosophische Freiheit. Ein praktisches Beispiel übersetzerischer Performanz
Given the widespread tendency to celebrate the openness of meaning maintained by texts, it can come as a surprise to hear philosophers expressing a certain skepticism with regard to translational sense-making. This distrust often manifests itself in negative metaphors – many of which are appreciably material metaphors – which describe translation as the ‘distortion’ of the original. This parti pris against translation problematizes the form-taking and form-giving character of translation. With recourse to the concept of performance supplied by Cultural Studies, this article aims to bring the dimension of the materiality of translation, which is too often treated in a merely metaphorical fashion, into analytical view. But not in order to confirm that materiality as an obstacle, as so many pejorative metaphors concerning the ‚deformation’ effected by translation suggest, so much as to show, on the contrary, how materiality and performance can be a heuristic impulse, and offer an important resource for translational creativity.