The Energy of the Untranslatables: Translation as a Paradigm for the Human Sciences

This article tells the story of a double adventure. Firstly, that of the Vocabulaire européen des philosophies: Dictionnaire des intraduisibles, which was published in 2004 by Editions du Seuil/Le Robert. This was an innovative tool that used the ‘untranslatables’ — defined as ‘not that which is not translated, but that which one never stops translating’ — in order to explore the key symptoms of the differences between languages in the philosophies of Europe. Secondly, that of the translations and transpositions of this work, written originally in the French language, into a dozen or so other languages, including English, Arabic, Ukrainian and Romanian, each of which brought to it a different set of concerns. The gesture of translating the original volume into different languages necessitates a genuine reflection on the weighty problem of the génie des langues, and on translation itself as a form of philosophizing with differences.