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ЗМІСТ

1. В.І.ЛІПІНА. НОВІ НАПРЯМКИ У ПЕРЕКЛАДОЗНАВСТВІ..............................................................3

1.1. ТЕОРЕТИЧНІ ПРОБЛЕМИ ПЕРЕКЛАДУ ……………………….........

1.1.1. ВАЛЬТЕР БЕН’ЯМІН.....................................................................................

1.1.2. ОРТЕГА-І-ГАССЕТ..........................................................................…..........

1.1.3. В.НАБОКОВ......................................................................................…..........

1.1.4. Р.ЯКОБСОН.....................................................................................……........

1.2. КРИТИКА ПЕРЕКЛАДУ. ЗАВДАННЯ ДО САМОСТІЙНОГО АНАЛІЗУ ПЕРЕКЛАДІВ..............................................................................

2. Г.В.ЛІПІН. ПРОБЛЕМИ ПЕРЕКЛАДУ З ЯПОНСЬКОЇ

МОВІ………………………………………………………………

2.1. ПРОБЛЕМИ ПЕРЕКЛАДУ У КОНТЕКСТІ ГЛОБАЛІЗАЦІЇ

2.2. АНАЛІЗ НОВОГО ПЕРЕКЛАДУ “ГЕНДЗІ МОНОГАТАРІ”

МУРАСАКІ СІКІБУ………………………………………………….…….

3. Н.О. ЧЕРНИШ. ПРОБЛЕМИ ПЕРЕКЛАДУ З КИТАЙСКОЇ МОВИ...........................................................................................

3.1. ПРОБЛЕМИ ПЕРЕКЛАДУ ОСНОВНИХ ПОНЯТЬ ТРАКТАТУ “ДАО-ДЕ ЦЗІН”………………………………………………………………….

3.2. ПРОБЛЕМА ПЕРЕКЛАДУ СЕРЕДНЬОВІЧНОЇ КИТАЙСЬКОЇ ЛІРИКИ………………………………………………………………….

1. VICTORIA LIPINA. NEW TRENDS IN TRANSLATION STUDIES [1]

Now it is obvious that new approaches to humanities have influenced translation studies as well. An attack on much privileged linguistically oriented concepts of translation theory and the introduction of broad humanitarian strategy in defining translation characterize the academic scene today.

At the end of the 20^th century deconstruction theory started to redraw fundamental questions of traditional translation theory (the notion of equivalence, formal correlations, social acceptability, and the very concept of determinable meaning) opening new perspective on seeing translational phenomena. Challenging limits of language, writing and reading, deconstruction (while not offering a specific theory) opened new insights on the problems of translation process and the possibility of translation. In contrast to linguistically oriented translation scholars, Derrida suggests that there is no deep (kernel) structure, rather the chains of significations - the original and its translations among them. Derrida believes that deconstruction and translation are closely connected: it is translation that makes invisible différance visible[2]. What is crucial here is the destabilization of the theoretical framework of translation. Derrida redefines translation, calling into question any approach to definition of translation as “reproduction”, suggesting that translation can be viewed only as deferring the original text without any possibility to grasp what the original text aimed to tell. However this stance is quite familiar to the historians of translation studies: the discussion of the impossibility to reproduce the original is not new. But deconstructionists gave new impetus to this idea and questioned the very possibility to raise the problem of equivalence, claiming that the text’s meaning depends only on translation (or reading). Noteworthy, poststructuralist reader-response theory (H.Jauss, W.Iser, S.Fish et al.) has the same background.

Thus, deconstruction is challenging traditional translation borders, suggesting to accept limitations and restrains. But while raising the questions about representation and translatability, it aims at showing cultural differences at work. Translations, according to deconstructionists, do not fix the same meaning as in the original, but open up a free play, extend language boundaries, make visible an effort of grasping nonexistent meaning. Derrida develops the idea of Walter Benjamin (his influential essay is included in this textbook for analysis), who in his foundational work “The Task of the Translator” allows the target language to be affected by the foreign language, and values heterogeneity over homogeneity: “It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language which is under the spell of another…For the sake of pure language he breaks through decayed barriers of his own language”[3]. Derrida follows Benjamin, regarding that the translator should less think in terms of copying and more in terms of how languages relate to each other. The realization of the limits of translation opens new avenues of thought for this field of study. Thus, the deconstructionist’s main point is that translation puts us in contact not so much with original meaning as with the plurality of languages and meanings. “Difference is never pure, no more so is translation, and for the notion of translation we would have to substitute a notion of transformation: a regulated transformation of one language by another, of one text by another”[4]. Such a strategy of translation involves the extension of original to a new stage. Perhaps the best example of this approach (which demonstrates that deconstructionists are not “the intellectual terrorists”, as Ihab Hassan whimsically states) is James Joyce’s own translation of passages from “Finnegans Wake” into Italian. J.Risset, a poet and translator herself, describes Joyce’s translation as radical Italianization[5], as deconstruction which makes visible the pluralistic qualities of the language, making them even more dramatic than in the source language text.

Translation studies have approached the moment to begin an exploration of translation différance in action, and the translation theory needs to be equipped with the possibilities of new methodology that is the starting point of re-examining the translation theory in general. In the book I will question (comparing Byron’s poem “Sun of the Sleepless” with its four translations done by Russian translators and poets of the 19^th –20^th centuries: I.Kozlov, A.Tolstoy, A.Fet, S.Marshak, which is suggested for class discussion at the translation seminars) whether it is possible to think about translational phenomenon in other than traditional terms.

Much confusion that complicates the procedure of training is created by the vague usage of the terms “equivalence”, “adequacy”, and “interpretation”. It seems certain that the translation term “equivalence” should retain its specific meaning, signifying a full referential and pragmatic counterpart to the source language. If so the term “adequacy” might acquire the meaning of aesthetic relevance to the original discourse. This adequacy could be achieved only through deep and comprehensive interpretation of the linguistic peculiarities of the source language text. The process of translation should be viewed as a scholarly research based on complex procedures of interpretation of the source language text, and the analysis of the parallel texts (the original and the translation) should be regarded as a major tool in translation training. It could be used not only as a demonstration of the variety of translation techniques but also as a laboratory for developing the analytical proficiency of a translator with special emphasis on the activization of broad philological knowledge.

The most influential translation studies scholar Lawrence Venuti suggests that the practicing translator should resist domestication. He calls such translation “foreignizing translation”[6]. By “foreignizing” he means any abusive fidelity of translation strategy, that leads to transparency and fluency. By abusive fidelity he means that the translator seeks to reproduce those very features of the foreign text that “abuse”, or resist the prevailing forms and values in the receiving culture, allowing the translator to be faithful to aspects of the source text. Venuti is attracted to poststructural strategies that foreground the play of the signifier, puns, neologisms, archaisms, fragmented syntax, and experimental forms. He shows that the manipulations of translation in terms of faithfulness to some sort of essential core have resulted in vast distortions. It will be obvious from what follows that Nabokov’s strategy as of a practicing translator had the same premises.

In the last twenty-five years translation studies has grown intensively, though there are classical works in the field that must be mastered by all professionals. The works by Benjamin, Ortega y Gasset, Nabokov, and Jakobson presented in the book are acclaimed as most thought-provoking, foreshadowing much of the future developments in translation studies. This book gathers the articles that represent the main approaches to the study of translation developed during the twentieth century, focusing particularly on the first half of the period. It was during this period that translation studies began to emerge as a new academic field, at once international and interdisciplinary.

The aim of this textbook is to bring together the most resonant ideas on translation but in the form of a historical survey that invites sustained examination of key theoretical developments. It is the first step to fill in the gap and satisfy institutional needs, especially in the case of emergent translation departments.

The book is organized into four chronological sections with discussion questions.

Walter Benjamin, who opens this list, views translation as a “mode”, which transforms something living – the original text. His essay “The Task of the Translator” defines the laws specific to translation alone. Benjamin speaks in terms of recreation and argues that translation can liberate language imprisoned in a work.

On the other pole Vladimir Nabokov maintains that only a literal (not literary) translation, a word-for-word translation, is a valid one. In the essay that appears here he formulates his own scholarly versim of translation: close to the Russian, devoid of Anglo-American poetic diction, and heavily annotated.

The Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset develops his resonant ideas on the misery and splendor of translation, underlining that “misery” of translation lies in its impossibility, because of irreducible differences which are not only linguistic, but cultural, and they stem from different mental pictures. The “splendor” of translation is its manipulation of these differences. For Ortega, translating is useful in challenging the complacencies of contemporary culture.

Roman Jakobson, an influential structuralist, classifies translation into three kinds: intralingual translation or rewording, interlingual translation or translation proper, and intersemiotic translation or transmutation. The latter is an interpretation from verbal art into music, cinema, or painting. In his widely cited essay Roman Jakobson have introduced a semiotic reflection on translatability. He describes translation as a process of recording which involves two different messages in two different codes. Roman Jakobson suggests to reconsider the traditional formula “Traduttore, traditore” (“the translator is a betrayer”), and to answer the questions: translator of what messages? betrayer of what values?

Discussion questions that follow these works check students’ comprehension and assist in the exchanging of ideas gained from their reading.

1.I. THEORIES OF TRANSLATION

1.I.I. WALTER BENJAMIN

WALTER BENJAMIN. The Task of the Translator (1923)[7]

In the appreciation of a work of art or an art form, consideration of the receiver never proves fruitful. Not only is any reference to a certain public or its representatives misleading, but even the con­cept of an "ideal" receiver is detrimental in the theoretical consid­eration of art, since all it posits is the existence and nature of man as such. Art, in the same way, posits man's physical and spiritual existence, but in none of its works is it concerned with his re­sponse. No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.

Is a translation meant for readers who do not understand the original? This would seem to explain adequately the divergence of their standing in the realm of art. Moreover, it seems to be the only conceivable reason for saying "the same thing" repeatedly. For what does a literary work "say"? What does it communicate? It "tells" very little to those who understand it. Its essential quality is not statement or the imparting of information. Yet any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information—hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations. But do we not generally regard as the essential substance of a literary work what it contains in addi­tion to information—as even a poor translator will admit—the un­fathomable, the mysterious, the "poetic," something that a translator can reproduce only if he is also a poet? This, actually, is the cause of another characteristic of inferior translation, which con­sequently we may define as the inaccurate transmission of an ines­sential content. This will be true whenever a translation undertakes to serve the reader. However, if it were intended for the reader, the same would have to apply to the original. If the original does not exist for the reader's sake, how could the translation be understood on the basis of this premise?

Translation is a mode. To comprehend it as mode one must go back to the original, for that contains the law governing the trans­lation: its translatability. The question of whether a work is trans­latable has a dual meaning. Either: Will an adequate translator ever be found among the totality of its readers? Or, more pertinently: Does its nature lend itself to translation and, therefore, in view of the significance of the mode, call for it? In principle, the first ques­tion can be decided only contingently; the second, however, apodictically. Only superficial thinking will deny the independent meaning of the latter and declare both questions to be of equal significance... It should be pointed out that certain correlative concepts retain their meaning, and possibly their foremost signifi­cance, if they are referred exclusively to man. One might, for ex­ample, speak of an unforgettable life or moment even if all men had forgotten it. If the nature of such a life or moment required that it be unforgotten, that predicate would not imply a falsehood but merely a claim not fulfilled by men, and probably also a refer­ence to a realm in which it is fulfilled: God's remembrance. Analo­gously, the translatability of linguistic creations ought to be consid­ered even if men should prove unable to translate them. Given a strict concept of translation, would they not really be translatable to some degree? The question as to whether the translation of cer­tain linguistic creations is called for ought to be posed in this sense. For this thought is valid here: If translation is a mode, translatabil­ity must be an essential feature of certain works.

Translatability is an essential quality of certain works, which is not to say that it is essential that they be translated; it means rather that a specific significance inherent in the original manifests itself in its translatability. It is plausible that no translation, however good it may be, can have any significance as regards the original. Yet, by virtue of its translatability the original is closely connected with the translation; in fact, this connection is all the closer since it is no longer of importance to the original. We may call this connection a natural one, or, more specifically, a vital connection. Just as the manifestations of life are intimately connected with the phe­nomenon of life without being of importance to it, a translation issues from the original—not so much from its life as from its af­terlife. For a translation comes later than the original, and since the important works of world literature never find their chosen trans­lators at the time of their origin, their translation marks their stage of continued life. The idea of life and afterlife in works of art should be regarded with an entirely unmetaphorical objectivity. Even in times of narrowly prejudiced thought there was an inkling that life was not limited to organic corporeality. But it cannot be a matter of extending its dominion under the feeble scepter of the soul, as Fechner tried to do, or, conversely, of basing its definition on the even less conclusive factors of animality, such as sensation, which characterize life only occasionally. The concept of life is given its due only if everything that has a history of its own, and is not merely the setting for history, is credited with life. In the final analysis, the range of life must be determined by history rather than by nature, least of all by such tenuous factors as sensation and soul. The philosopher's task consists in comprehending all of natural life through the more encompassing life of history. And indeed, is not the continued life of works of art far easier to recognize than the continual life of animal species? The history of the great works of art tells us about their antecedents, their realization in the age of the artist, their potentially eternal afterlife in succeeding genera­tions. Where this last manifests itself, it is called fame. Translations that are more than transmissions of subject matter come into being when in the course of its survival a work has reached the age of its fame. Contrary, therefore, to the claims of bad translators, such translations do not so much serve the work as owe their existence to it. The life of the originals attains in them to its ever-renewed latest and most abundant flowering.

Being a special and high form of life, this flowering is governed by a special, high purposiveness. The relationship between life and purposefulness, seemingly obvious yet almost beyond the grasp of the intellect, reveals itself only if the ultimate purpose toward which all single functions tend is sought not in its own sphere but in a higher one. All purposeful manifestations of life, including their very purposiveness, in the final analysis have their end not in life, but in the expression of its nature, in the representation of its significance. Translation thus ultimately serves the purpose of expressing the central reciprocal relationship between languages.[…] In the individual, unsupplemented languages, mean­ing is never found in relative independence, as in individual words or sentences; rather, it is in a constant state of flux—until it is able to emerge as pure language from the harmony of all the various modes of intention. Until then, it remains hidden in the languages. If, however, these languages continue to grow in this manner until the end of their time, it is translation which catches fire on the eternal life of the works and the perpetual renewal of language. Translation keeps putting the hallowed growth of languages to the test: How far removed is their hidden meaning from revelation, how close can it be brought by the knowledge of this remoteness?

This, to be sure, is to admit that all translation is only a some­what provisional way of coming to terms with the foreignness of languages. An instant and final rather than a temporary and provi­sional solution of this foreignness remains out of the reach of man­kind; at any rate, it eludes any direct attempt. Indirectly, however, the growth of religions ripens the hidden seed into a higher devel­opment of language. Although translation, unlike art, cannot claim permanence for its products, its goal is undeniably a final, conclu­sive, decisive stage of all linguistic creation. In translation the orig­inal rises into a higher and purer linguistic air, as it were. It cannot live there permanently, to be sure, and it certainly does not reach it in its entirety. Yet, in a singularly impressive manner, at least it points the way to this region: the predestined, hitherto inaccessible realm of reconciliation and fulfillment of languages. The transfer can never be total, but what reaches this region is that element in a translation which goes beyond transmittal of subject matter. This nucleus is best defined as the element that does not lend itself to translation. Even when all the surface content has been extracted and transmitted, the primary concern of the genuine translator re­mains elusive. Unlike the words of the original, it is not translat­able, because the relationship between content and language is quite different in the original and the translation. While content and language form a certain unity in the original, like a fruit and its skin, the language of the translation envelops its content like a royal robe with ample folds. For it signifies a more exalted lan­guage than its own and thus remains unsuited to its content, over­powering and alien. This disjunction prevents translation and at the same time makes it superfluous. For any translation of a work orig­inating in a specific stage of linguistic history represents, in regard to a specific aspect of its content, translation into all other languages. Thus translation, ironically, transplants the original into a more definitive linguistic realm since it can no longer be displaced by a secondary rendering. The original can only be raised there anew and at other points of time. It is no mere coincidence that the word "ironic" here brings the Romanticists to mind. They, more than any others, were gifted with an insight into the life of literary works which has its highest testimony in translation. To be sure, they hardly recognized translation in this sense, but devoted their entire attention to criticism, another, if lesser, factor in the continued life of literary works. But even though the Romanticists virtually ignored translation in their theoretical writings, their own great translations testify to their sense of the essential nature and the dignity of this literary mode. There is abundant evidence that this sense is not necessarily most pronounced in a poet; in fact, he may be least open to it. Not even literary history suggests the tra­ditional notion that great poets have been eminent translators and lesser poets have been indifferent translators. A number of the most eminent ones, such as Luther, Voss, and Schlegel, are incomparably more important as translators than as creative writers; some of the great among them, such as Hölderlin and Stefan George, cannot be simply subsumed as poets, and quite particularly not if we con­sider them as translators. As translation is a mode of its own, the task of the translator, too, may be regarded as distinct and clearly differentiated from the task of the poet.

The task of the translator consists in finding that intended ef­fect [Intention] upon the language into which he is translating which produces in it the echo of the original. This is a feature of translation which basically differentiates it from the poet's work, because the effort of the latter is never directed at the language as such, at its totality, but solely and immediately at specific linguistic contextual aspects. Unlike a work of literature, translation does not find itself in the center of the language forest but on the outside facing the wooded ridge; it calls into it without entering, aiming at that single spot where the echo is able to give, in its own lan­guage, the reverberation of the work in the alien one. Not only does the aim of translation differ from that of a literary work—it intends language as a whole, taking an individual work in an alien language as a point of departure—but it is a different effort alto­gether. The intention of the poet is spontaneous, primary, graphic; that of the translator is derivative, ultimate, ideational. For the great motif of integrating many tongues into one true language is at work. This language is one in which the independent sentences, works of literature, critical judgments, will never communicate— for they remain dependent on translation; but in it the languages themselves, supplemented and reconciled in their mode of signifi­cation, harmonize. If there is such a thing as a language of truth, the tensionless and even silent depository of the ultimate truth which all thought strives for, then this language of truth is—the true language. And this very language, whose divination and de­scription is the only perfection a philosopher can hope for, is con­cealed in concentrated fashion in translations. There is no muse of philosophy, nor is there one of translation. But despite the claims of sentimental artists, these two are not banausic. For there is a philosophical genius that is characterized by a yearning for that language which manifests itself in translations.

Les langues imparfaites en cela que plusieurs, manque la supreme: penser étant écrire sans accessoires, ni chuchotement mais tacite en­core I'immortelle parole, la diversité, sur terre, des idiomes empeche personne de proférer les mots qui, sinon se trouveraient, par une frappe unique, elle-meme materiellement la vérité.[8]

If what Mallarmé evokes here is fully fathomable to a philosopher, translation, with its rudiments of such a language, is midway be­tween poetry and doctrine. Its products are less sharply defined, but it leaves no less of a mark on history.

If the task of the translator is viewed in this light, the roads toward a solution seem to be all the more obscure and impene­trable. Indeed, the problem of ripening the seed of pure language in a translation seems to be insoluble, determinable in no solution. For is not the ground cut from under such a solution if the repro­duction of the sense ceases to be decisive? Viewed negatively, this is actually the meaning of all the foregoing. The traditional con­cepts in any discussion of translations are fidelity and license—the freedom of faithful reproduction and, in its service, fidelity to the word. These ideas seem to be no longer serviceable to a theory that looks for other things in a translation than reproduction of meaning. To be sure, traditional usage makes these terms appear as if in constant conflict with each other. What can fidelity really do for the rendering of meaning? Fidelity in the translation of individual words can almost never fully reproduce the meaning they have in the original. For sense in its poetic significance is not limited to meaning, but derives from the connotations conveyed by the word chosen to express it. We say of words that they have emotional connotations. A literal rendering of the syntax completely demol­ishes the theory of reproduction of meaning and is a direct threat to comprehensibility. The nineteenth century considered Hölderlin's translations of Sophocles as monstrous examples of such literalness. Finally, it is self-evident how greatly fidelity in reproducing the form impedes the rendering of the sense. Thus no case for literalness can be based on a desire to retain the meaning. Meaning is served far better—and literature and language far worse—by the unrestrained license of bad translators. Of necessity, therefore, the demand for literalness, whose justification is obvious, whose legit­imate ground is quite obscure, must be understood in a more meaningful context. Fragments of a vessel which are to be glued together must match one another in the smallest details, although they need not be like one another. In the same way a translation, instead of resembling the meaning of the original, must lovingly and in detail incorporate the original's mode of signification, thus making both the original and the translation recognizable as frag­ments of a greater language, just as fragments are part of a vessel. For this very reason translation must in large measure refrain from wanting to communicate something, from rendering the sense, and in this the original is important to it only insofar as it has already relieved the translator and his translation of the effort of assembling and expressing what is to be conveyed. […] On the other hand, as regards the meaning, the language of a translation can—in fact, must—let itself go, so that it gives voice to the intentio of the original not as reproduction but as harmony, as a supplement to the language in which it expresses itself, as its own kind of intentio. Therefore it is not the highest praise of a translation, particularly in the age of its origin, to say that it reads as if it had originally been written in that language. Rather, the significance of fidelity as ensured by literalness is that the work reflects the great longing for linguistic complementation. A real translation is transparent; it does not cover the original, does not block its light, but allows the pure language, as though reinforced by its own medium, to shine upon the original all the more fully. This may be achieved, above all, by a literal rendering of the syntax which proves words rather than sentences to be the primary ele­ment of the translator. For if the sentence is the wall before the language of the original, literalness is the arcade.

Fidelity and freedom in translation have traditionally been re­garded as conflicting tendencies. This deeper interpretation of the one apparently does not serve to reconcile the two; in fact, it seems to deny the other all justification. For what is meant by freedom but that the rendering of the sense is no longer to be regarded as all-important? Only if the sense of a linguistic creation may be equated with the information it conveys does some ultimate, deci­sive element remain beyond all communication—quite close and yet infinitely remote, concealed or distinguishable, fragmented or powerful. In all language and linguistic creations there remains in addition to what can be conveyed something that cannot be com­municated; depending on the context in which it appears, it is something that symbolizes or something symbolized. It is the for­mer only in the finite products of language, the latter in the evolv­ing of the languages themselves. And that which seeks to represent, to produce itself in the evolving of languages, is that very nucleus of pure language. Though concealed and fragmentary, it is an ac­tive force in life as the symbolized thing itself, whereas it inhabits linguistic creations only in symbolized form. While that ultimate essence, pure language, in the various tongues is tied only to lin­guistic elements and their changes, in linguistic creations it is weighted with a heavy, alien meaning. To relieve it of this, to turn the symbolizing into the symbolized, to regain pure language fully formed in the linguistic flux, is the tremendous and only capacity of translation. In this pure language—which no longer means or expresses anything but is, as expressionless and creative Word, that which is meant in all languages—all information, all sense, and all intention finally encounter a stratum in which they are destined to be extinguished. This very stratum furnishes a new and higher jus­tification for free translation; this justification does not derive from the sense of what is to be conveyed, for the emancipation from this sense is the task of fidelity. Rather, for the sake of pure language, a free translation bases the test on its own language. It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language which is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work. For the sake of pure language he breaks through decayed barriers of his own lan­guage. Luther, Voss, Hölderlin, and George have extended the boundaries of the German language.—And what of the sense in its importance for the relationship between translation and original? A simile may help here. Just as a tangent touches a circle lightly and at but one point, with this touch rather than with the point setting the law according to which it is to continue on its straight path to infinity, a translation touches the original lightly and only at the infinitely small point of the sense, thereupon pursuing its own course according to the laws of fidelity in the freedom of lin­guistic flux […] The extent to which a translation manages to be in keeping with the nature of this mode is determined objectively by the translatability of the original. The lower the quality and distinction of its language, the larger the extent to which it is information, the less fertile a field is it for translation, until the utter preponderance of content, far from being the lever for a translation of distinctive mode, renders it impossible. The higher the level of a work, the more does it remain translatable even if its meaning is touched upon only fleetingly. This, of course, applies to originals only. Translations, on the other hand, prove to be untranslatable not be­cause of any inherent difficulty, but because of the looseness with which meaning attaches to them. Confirmation of this as well as of every other important aspect is supplied by Hölderlin's transla­tions, particularly those of the two tragedies by Sophocles. In them the harmony of the languages is so profound that sense is touched by language only the way an aeolian harp is touched by the wind. Hölderlin's translations are prototypes of their kind; they are to even the most perfect renderings of their texts as a prototype is to a model. This can be demonstrated by comparing Hölderlin's and Rudolf Borchardt's translations of Pindar's Third Pythian Ode. For this very reason Hölderlin's translations in particular are subject to the enormous danger inherent in all translations: the gates of a language thus expanded and modified may slam shut and enclose the translator with silence. Hölderlin's translations from Sophocles were his last work; in them meaning plunges from abyss to abyss until it threatens to become lost in the bottomless depths of lan­guage. There is, however, a stop. It is vouchsafed to Holy Writ alone, in which meaning has ceased to be the watershed for the flow of language and the flow of revelation. Where a text is iden­tical with truth or dogma, where it is supposed to be "the true language" in all its literalness and without the mediation of mean­ing, this text is unconditionally translatable. In such case transla­tions are called for only because of the plurality of languages. Just as, in the original, language and revelation are one without any tension, so the translation must be one with the original in the form of the interlinear version, in which literalness and freedom are united. For to some degree all great texts contain their potential translation between the lines; this is true to the highest degree of sacred writings. The interlinear version of the Scriptures is the pro­totype or ideal of all translation.

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