Friedrich Schleiermacher: A Theory of Translation Based on Dialectics

Abstract

The conference “On the Different Methods of Translating” presented by Schleiermacher before the Academy of Berlin on the 24th of June 1813 clearly reveals a confluence of its author’s multiplicity of interests: his activity as a translator (Plato’s Dialogues), his courses on Ethics, Hermeneutics, Psychology or Aesthetics, his expertise as a philologist, and above all his endeavors in the field of Dialectics. In his courses on Dialectics, Schleiermacher deals thoroughly with the topic of the “irrationality” between languages which constitutes the starting point of his argumentation in the 1913 conference. In those courses he also develops a theory of images and language which sets the fundamentals for his option for the method of translating which moves the reader in the direction of the author. To conclude, the present paper shows that not only does Dialectics constitute the basis of Schleiermacher’s propositions on translation, but also that the translator’s place as a mediator between languages is in total homology with the subject of the dialectical task, which is the resolution (and “construction”) of difference between the “representations in dispute”.