Language, Communication, and Social Environment - P.J.Chamizo Domínguez, I.E.Klyukanov. M.Bakhtin and J.Ortega y Gasset: Nostradad and Beyond, продолжение (часть 2)

It becomes clear then that, instead of fearing boundaries and viewing them as something to be overcome or destroyed, we should embrace them and treat them as the very essence of polyglossia and the process of translation, as such. When, through translation, meanings are liberated and salvaged the view of the world becomes more multi-dimensional, and people can freely choose between language signs. Such a phenomenon, for example, is found in the so-called “code switching” often used by bilingual and polylingual (sic!) language users. M. Epstein calls such a multidimensional, multilingual, “culturally curved” discourse “interlation”. He writes: “Bilingual or multilingual persons have no need of a translation, but they can enjoy an interlation, a contrastive juxtaposition of two or more apparently identical texts running simultaneously in two different languages – for example, a poem of Joseph Brodsky in the Russian original and in English autotranslation. Interlation is a multilingual variation on the same theme, where the roles of “source” and “target” languages are not established or are interchangeable. One language allows the reader to perceive what another language misses or conceals” (http://glossary.isud.org/2007/11/interlation.html).

In an earlier work (Chamizo Domínguez & Klyukanov 2001), we described one such case of “interlation” as it applies (mostly) to the translation of technical terms in linguistic and philosophic texts whereby the “source” term is given in parenthesis right after its “target” translation. We called this device TSD – “Translation Safeguarding Device”, alluding to the translator’s attempt to safeguard against any loss of meaning. We stated that “TSD <…> makes the sign two-dimensional, as it were, and the reader comes to appreciate all the complex dynamics of translation, i. e. the original text in its relation to the translation” (Chamizo-Domínguez & Klyukanov, 2001: 56). In light of the ideas discussed in the present article, we feel TSD can be best described as “Translation SALVATION Device” for its ultimate goal is to liberate meaning and save it for future uses, thus showing full potential of languages in each context of usage.

In conclusion, it is possible to argue that the views of M. Bakhtin and J. Ortega y Gasset on language, communication, and translation can be considered somewhat “romantic”, cf. the influence of German romanticism. However, their views are firmly planted in the ground, so to speak, i. e., grounded in the life experiences of concrete individuals in concrete contexts. At the same time, both thinkers realized that treating experience as just Erfahrung, i. e., as objective and socially regulated “form”, is not enough to understand the true nature of any symbolic act. For M. Bakhtin, “a code is a deliberately established, killed context” (1986a: 147), and for J. Ortega y Gasset, “que dos y dos son cuatro es siempre un poco triste” – “that two and two are four is always a bit sad” (Pasado y porvenir del hombre actual, IX: 19). For M. Bakhtin and J. Ortega y Gasset, communication has a both-and character, i. e., it involves signs (language signs, in the first place) and their dialogic relationships in real-life contexts. Thus, communication is always polyglossia, always translation. Through their Works as well as through their very lives M. Bakhtin and J. Ortega y Gasset showed us the value of nostradad as “the ground of potentialities that makes possible future concrete acts that produce the social in existential and concrete ways” (Ramsey 2007: 226).

2 We quote J. Ortega y Gasset’s writings according to (Ortega y Gasset 1983). We firstly provide in each quote the work we refer to, secondly (in Roman numerals) we refer to the volume, and finally (in Arabic numerals) we refer to the page or pages of each volume.

3 Note that, in spite of the fact that this second concept of culture is the most usual one nowadays, the early concept of culture remains workable, particularly in the adjective cultured, which is synonymous with cultivated, refined, sophisticated, civilized, or educated, but not with social, folk, racial, ethnic, or religious.

4 “Now linguistic identity is not the kind of identity the suit has, but the kind of identity the train and the street have. Every time I utter the word Messieurs! (‘Gentlemen’), I renew its material being: it is a new act of phonation and a new psychological act. The link between two uses of the same word is not based upon material identity, nor upon exact similarity of meaning, but upon factors the linguist must discover, if he is to come anywhere near to revealing the true nature of linguistic units” (Saussure 1986: 152. Original italics).

5 “For a large class of cases – though not for all–in which employ the word ‘meaning it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language. And the meaning of a name is sometimes explained by pointing to its bearer” (Wittgenstein 1984: I, 43. Original emphasis).

6 We quote the English version of The Misery and the Splendor of Translation according to the translation provided by Elisabeth Gamble Miller (J. Ortega y Gasset, 2003).

7 Since J. Ortega y Gasset is talking with French scholars, he resorts to French words from time to time. Here flou (fuzziness, vagueness, blur, haziness) is written in French.

8 J. Ortega y Gasset is alluding to the Humboldtian concept of “innere Form der Sprache”. Further information on the topic can be found in (Di Cesare 1996).

9 This translation could be considered an excellent instance of the thesis that J. Ortega y Gasset is expounding, since the Spanish text makes clear that J. Ortega y Gasset’s translator is a female while the English translation disregards such information.

Язык, коммуникация и социальная среда. Выпуск 7. Воронеж: ВГУ, 2009. С. 68-88.

Chamizo Domínguez, Pedro J. – Professor, Universidad de Málaga, Departamento de Filosofía, Málaga, Spain; pjchd@uma.es

Клюканов, Игорь Энгелевич (Igor E. Klyukanov) – Professor, Department of Communication Studies, Eastern Washington University; iklyukanov@mail.ewu.edu