Kääntäminen kyseenalaistamisena

Författare

• Ritva Hartama-Heinonen

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.61200/mikael.145935

Abstract

The starting point for this article, a contribution to a neosemiotic approach to translation, is provided by the concepts of resistance and negation. They are concepts which here derive their meaning from Eero Tarasti’s existential semiotics and are applied to the phenomenon of translation. A complementary starting point can be found in the thematic description of the KäTu2007 symposium: translations function as heralds of sciences and knowledge. This claim is explored by juxtaposing it with another claim, from the early 1990s, by René Gothóni: science is not about translating and spreading knowledge, but rather primarily about challenging received views. This position might find a parallel in a further claim that translations in turn are not merely mediators of sciences and knowledge or a means of spreading theoretical lines of approach but, instead, in the same way as scholarship, translations appear to have a role in an activity of a different and more hidden nature: resistance and challenge. Translating and translations continuously question our assumptions and practices of translation, and paradoxically even the very possibility of translation, thereby challenging received ideas known as theories. Recent Finnish discussions on the translation of philosophical texts are used as support for this proposal.