Various translation theories adopt some of the stances of hermeneutics without espousing all of them, as does the Interpretive Theory of Translation (ITT). The first part of this paper argues that, contrary to the view held by a number of translational hermeneutists, language and culture are far from being inseparable. It also tries to put into perspective the question of the translator’s subjectivity. It then deals with the comprehension of culture in intralingual communication and compares it to translators’ comprehension and readers’ comprehension of translated texts. The last part of the paper asks whether it is possible for translators to transmit a source culture as a whole and how a translator can make readers of translations understand the relevant parts of culture included in the text.

Th is paper organizes the hermeneutical study of translation into fourteen principles, the fi rst six borrowed from a paper (in this volume) by Larisa Cercel, John Stanley, and Radegundis Stolze entitled “Hermeneutics as a Research Paradigm”: subjectivity (1), historicity (2), phenomenology (3), process (4), holism (5), and reflection (6). The next seven are a compilation of the author’s own research agenda “beyond” or “outside” classicalhermeneutics, but arguably congruent with and supportive of a hermeneutical project: social constructivism (7), iterability (8), multiple subjectivities (9), dialogism (10), the double-bind (11), performativity (12), and rhetoric (13). Th e last (14) is somatics: It’s not enough to study how we interpret; we have toexplore how we work in groups (almost always unconsciously) to regulate interpretation. Without social regulation, imperfect and incomplete as it is, incapable as it is of imposing robotic conformity on human communication, interpretation remains a subjective will o’ the wisp, an evanescent connectivity that is easily dismissed as sheer solipsistic fantasy.

Th is paper investigates the role of translators’ experience and understanding of Islam in the translation of the Quran. After juxtaposing and analyzing four translations of the verse 4:34, which deals with the issue of women’s rights and obligations, it shows how conservative, moderate, modernist and pro-feminist readings produce completely different images of women and their relationship to men in family and society from a Quranic viewpoint. It also provides a hermeneutical analysis of the assumptions each translator brings into play when trying to reconcile the question of modern women’s rights with the scripture. In doing so, this paper demonstrates how translators as real agents of translation immerse themselves from a particular viewpoint, or horizon, into the living context of the original text.

This paper introduces some of the most infl uential fi gureheads in the emerging field of Translation Studies in East and West Germany after World War II. It outlines the reasons why Translation Studies parted from the traditional hermeneutical approach to translation. On the other hand it traces theresurgence of a new hermeneutical inquiry into the process of translation in the new, basically linguistic approaches and their science orientation.

The historical overview covering Schleiermacher and the disciplinary status of translational hermeneutics was written by Cercel, the sections on important concepts and research within the paradigm of translational hermeneutics was authored by Stolze, and Stanley wrote the last three sectionsdealing with language games, a concrete research project and the role of phenomenology in research. The text was geared towards providing some background information on translational hermeneutics, a field which has bearing not only on the practice of translation but also on research in TS. From the vantage point of translational hermeneutics, research in translation studies takes its point of departure from the translator’sperspective: The guiding question is one centered on how a translator deals with the texts he or she has to translate.

The purpose of this essay is to explore the place Hans-Georg Gadamer makes for the activity of translation within his philosophy of interpretation. In general terms, the interest of Gadamer’s approach lies in the effort to inscribe translation within what is described as the ‘hermeneutic circle’. This essay accordingly offers a brief, but detailed account of the Gadamerian arc of interpretation, but suggests that the critical issues – along the lines suggested by Werner Hamacher in his book Premises – concern the way in which the circle begins to turn, and furthermore, how one actually enters the hermeneutic circle. If these are matters basic to the Gadamerian way with textual interpretation tout court, the principal claim of this essay is that it is the translatorwho experiences the most serious diffi culties in beginning, and indeed, in entering the ambit of hermeneutics. In detailing these particular difficulties, one reaches a limit-case of the hermeneutical interpreter – the translator as one to whom Gadamer grants a privileged place in his philosophy, but also as one who reveals to hermeneutics the nature of the problems that beset hermeneutic philosophy from the outset.