2005-06 Translations: The Movement of Meanings

Inside or between languages, human communication equals translation.

A study of translation is a study of language.

Cultural critic and literary historian George Steiner makes this broad claim in his magisterial work After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. “Translation,” he goes on to say, “is formally and pragmatically implicit in every act of communication, in the emission and reception of each and every mode of meaning, be it in the widest semiotic sense or in more specifically verbal exchanges. To hear significance is to translate.” Once a word has been uttered, written, or otherwise made evident, it has already become a translation and incorporated into the world’s Babel. Translation, then, is an inevitable act of every cognitive process. Learn More: