Reclaiming Radical Translation and Interpretation: The Translator’s Charity
Reclaiming Radical Translation and Interpretation: The Translator’s Charity

Summary/Abstract: The present essay addresses the ideas of radical translation and radical interpretation advanced by celebrated analytic philosophers such as W. V. O.Quine and D. Davidson, attempting to show their relevance for translation theory and, more broadly, for the corpus of literary theory. I aim to reassess the debate over the translatability or untranslatability of a literary or cultural text, taking it beyond the politics of translation and multicultural studies and placing it within the framework of hermeneutic theory. Here, one should take into account the specifier “radical” associated with “interpretation,” which challenges the too rigid interpretable/uninterpretable dichotomy. The comparative reenactment of notions such as “untranslatability,” “radical translation” and “radical interpretation” may lead to a mutual critique of their interpretative power and limits. I also reconsider the concept of “charity” in connection to the translator as an interpreter, in the context of Davidson’s arguments on “radical interpretation.” The rather dry rationale underlying a theory of truth and interpretation, as upheld by analytic philosophers,can gain in conceptual liveliness and even in literary relevance if one privileges an ethical/anthropological approach to the translator’s “charity” towards his/her reader,as well as towards the delegated authority of the author.

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