After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation

by George Steiner

When it first appeared in 1975, After Babel created a sensation, quickly establishing itself as both a controversial and seminal study of literary theory. In the original edition, Steiner provided readers with the first systematic investigation since the eighteenth century of the phenomenology and processes of translation both inside and between languages. Taking issue with the principal emphasis of modern linguistics, he finds the root of the Babel problem in our deep instinct for privacy and territory, noting that every people has in its language a unique body of shared secrecy. With this provocative thesis he analyzes every aspect of translation from fundamental conditions of interpretation to the most intricate of linguistic constructions.

For the long-awaited second edition, Steiner entirely revised the text, added new and expanded notes, and wrote a new preface setting the work in the present context of hermeneutics, poetics, and translation studies. This new edition brings the bibliography up to the present with substantially updated references, including much Russian and Eastern European material. Like the towering figures of Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault, Steiner's work is central to current literary thought. After Babel, Third Edition is essential reading for anyone hoping to understand the debates raging in the academy today.

Genres: Language, Nonfiction, Linguistics, Philosophy, Criticism, Literary Criticism, History

560 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

See also: George A. Steiner, author on Management and Planning.

Dr. Francis George Steiner was an essayist, novelist, philosopher, literary critic, and educator. He wrote for The New Yorker for over thirty years, contributing over two hundred reviews. Among his many awards, he received The Truman Capote Lifetime Achievement Award from Stanford University 1998. He lived in Cambridge, England, with his wife, historian Zara Shakow Steiner.

In 1950 he earned an M.A. from Harvard University, where he won the Bell Prize in American Literature, and received his Ph.D. from Oxford University (Balliol College) on a Rhodes Scholarship in 1955. He was then a scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, for two years. He became a founding fellow of Churchill College at the University of Cambridge in 1961, and has been an Extraordinary Fellow there since 1969. Additionally, Steiner accepted the post of Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Geneva in 1974, which he held for 20 years, teaching in four languages. He became Professor Emeritus at Geneva University on his retirement in 1994, and an Honorary Fellow at Balliol College at Oxford University in 1995. He later held the positions of the first Lord Weidenfeld Professor of Comparative Literature and Fellow of St. Anne's College at Oxford University from 1994 to 1995, and Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University from 2001 to 2002.

Reviews

[LaHaie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard as hell to get into but so thoroughly worth the effort. Reading After Babel, I could actually feel some of the old lazy given-up-for-dead neurons that I torched in the 80s and 90s springing back to life and looking to start up fresh.

What I learned from this book:

1. If you are reading this, you are translating, even if you are a native English speaker.

2. Being creative or at least alert with language amplifies your experience of life. Using the same old run-down vocabulary and hackneyed clichès flattens your experience. Every moment is fleeting and unique-- if you use the same expressions to describe different events then you are half dead.

3. George Steiner speaks more languages than I ever will, has read more than I ever will, has thought harder than I ever have. How many others upon this Earth are able to do throw downs with Noam Chomsky?

4. There is something inherently numinous in the speech-act, particularly so when using the conditional (What would you do...?)

5. What numinous means. It has nothing to do with numbers.

[Nuno R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A forma como George Steiner aborda a tradução mudou a minha visão da humanidade. Este livro dá pistas sobre muito mais do que aspectos técnicos ou filosóficos sobre o acto de traduzir. Ou melhor, considera que o acto de traduzir é muito mais do que pegar num texto e criar uma versão desse texto noutra língua. Steiner sugere que a tradução de um livro para outra língua descobre novos significados que sempre lá estiveram. Se um épico grego é traduzido para o mandarim, o universalismo que ali existia é ainda mais expandido. Os milénios de cultura chinesa, presentes de forma viva no vocabulário, no tom, nas estruturas do mandarim, acrescentam ao texto original o potencial que só a tradução pode realizar. É assim que vejo a cultura humana. Quando alguém traduz a minha cultura para a sua, esse movimento, essa apropriação permite-me saber mais sobre quem sou e de onde venho: é esse olhar estrangeiro que faz a ponte e é a ponte que aumenta os caminhos possíveis de cada margem. Traduzirmo-nos é prestarmos uma homenagem de grande intimidade e fulgor. É dizermo-nos que nenhuma cultura se esgota em si mesma e todas importam ao resto do mundo. Que o esforço de nos compreendermos faz parte do longo processo de nos tornarmos humanos. Tradução é civilização.

[Bill FromPA · Rating 4 out of 5]

Steiner cites many texts in French, German, Latin, and Italian, but does not always translate these citations. He does however reiterate the salient points of the quotation so that it is possible to follow his argument without full translation.
Chapter 1. Steiner asserts that, even with speakers of the same language, every act of reading or listening to a verbal message involves translation at some level; the meanings and connotations of words change with time and across social milieus, even from individual to individual.
Chapter 2. Steiner considers the vast number of languages inexplicable; their multiplicity confers no evident benefit and causes definite perils to survival by making cooperation difficult or impossible. He reflects on the myth of Babel, which asserts the existence of an Ur-Sprache, a universal primal language spoken and understood by God and all humankind. He looks at this myth as interpreted by three “modern Cabalists”, Walter Benjamin, Kafka, and Borges. (Appropriately for the book’s subject matter, the Borges quotes contrast two different English translations.) He examines the two schools of thought about the multiplicity of languages: the “monadist” view which asserts that each language expresses and imposes a unique worldview, accessible only to speakers of that language, and the “universalist” which asserts some underlying unity in all languages. While the universalist camp seems to hold the most hope for a science of translation, the general rules they propound founder on counterexamples from various languages; Chomsky’s “linguistic universals” operate at a level too inaccessible to consciousness to be of use to a study of translation.
Chapter 3. Steiner claims three languages, French, English, and German as his “native tongue”. It is only through language with its past and future tenses that we have access to the past or can project ideas into the future. Steiner reviews the idea of whether a ‘private language’ is possible, considering the ‘difficult’ poetry and prose that arose starting toward the end of the 19th century, nonsense verse, Dada. Attempts at creating a universal language concentrate on public use of language, communication with others. Linguistic science concerns itself with ‘truth’ and ‘falsity’, but Steiner thinks the primary evolutionary benefit of language is in its ability to embody that which does not exist, either now, as lies or fiction, or in the future. “Language is the main instrument of man’s refusal to accept the world as it is.” He suggests the origin of a multiplicity of languages arises from a need to communicate with one’s family or tribe while remaining opaque and deceptive with outsiders.
Chapter 4. Theories of translation fail to have any true utility lacking a theory of language. Generalizations about translations are tripartite: literal word-for-word translations, paraphrases or adaptations, or the conveying of the meaning of the original reformulated in idiomatic form in the target language. The last involves not a literal translation, but conveys in the target language the sense of the words that a native speaker of the source language would instinctively understand. Conjectures about the way in which languages occupy up physical space in the brain, reflections on instinctive use of analogies of storage and retrieval, spatial relationships when speaking about the use of language.
Chapter 5. The “workshop” section. Steiner presents a four part “hermeneutic” of translation: trust (the translator trusts that the foreign text has meaning), penetration (the meaning of the text is extracted from within), embodiment (the text is rendered into the target language), and restitution (the target language is enriched with a new text, the source work gains prestige and a larger audience). The appeal of literal translations: Browning’s Aeschylus and Hölderin’s Sophocles. A paradox: the sound and style of translations from an exotic language (Chinese, Arabic) are more intuitive and recognizable than those from geographically or culturally close languages. He critiques examples of Shakespeare into French prose, Madame Bovary into English, Shakespeare sonnets into German. Does the fact that there’s no French Shakespeare allow for the existence of Proust? A translation of Ovid into Italian is presented as an example of translation of closely related languages. He gives examples of failed translations, betraying the original by either diminishing or elevating it. Two examples of almost perfect translation are given.
Chapter 6. Steiner considers the setting of a text to music a type of translation, discusses settings of Goethe’s “Es war ein Konig im Thule”. Culture is a series of translations / transformations / substitutions / permutations / interanimations of basic concepts and situations. Steiner looks at three speeches describing the death of Hippolytus: Euripides, Seneca, and Racine, and how each depends on its predecessors; he also examines poems expressing similar ideas over several centuries and the effect of Rousseau’s Le Nouvelle Héloïse on European sensibility, particularly subsequent French novels by Sainte-Beuve, Balzac, and Flaubert. Finally he considers the advantages for and threats to English as it becomes an international lingua franca.

[Andrew]

You filthy fucking American pigs. You can't even begin to intuit the sensitivities of translations between English, French, German, and Latin. But here's the thing, George Steiner, really, really wants you to try, and so he quotes the originals in full. Untranslated, of course. Because he knows you can do it if you really try, and he wants to give you the opportunity to do so (a task I wasn't always up to).

This is what differentiates Steiner from so many more recent popular-audience intellectuals, in that he has faith in his audience. The subtext of a typical book by, say, Sam Harris or Steven Pinker is more emphatically "you filthy fucking American pigs," but with a gloss of "it's OK, let people like me do your thinking for you and shout at you in the most banal terms, as long as you show us the reverence we deserve and then you get to cite me to let some of my brilliance rub off on you." It's also what differentiates Steiner from many of his Continental European influences. The subtext of a typical book by, say, Jacques Derrida or Bernard-Henri Levy is more emphatically "you filthy fucking pigs, regardless of nationality, let me do your thinking for you and shout at you in the most incomprehensible terms, now worship me as I discourse wildly on French TV without substance, and I don't give a fuck if you show me any reverence, I'm getting my cock sucked by a 19 year old Romanian model backstage after this."

George Steiner, like Susan Sontag, for instance, bridges the gap by engaging with the concept of translation and the nature of language in a serious, sustained, meaningful, brilliant manner. I'm mourning the fact that books like this are so rarely published anymore.

[Zorro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Εξαιρετικό πόνημα.
Το βιβλίο μπορεί να διαβαστεί από όλους όσοι τους τους αρέσει η γλωσσολογία.
Ο τρόπος που επικοινωνούμε είναι ο τρόπος που σκεφτόμαστε.
Η γλώσσα των λαών δείχνει την κουλτούρα τους και τον τρόπο σκέψης τους.
Κάποια στιγμή θα πρέπει στα σχολεία να διδαχθούμε αρχές γλώσσολογίας. Ίσως αυτό βοηθήσει να καταρρίψουμε και διάφορους μύθους γύρω από την "ανωτερότητα" της Ελληνικής γλώσσας αλλά ίσως βοηθήσει και στο να κατανοήσουμε το μεγαλείο της Αρχαίας Ελληνικής και σε σύνολο της Ελληνικής γλώσσας που δεν έχει καμια σχέση με τις διογκωμένες εθνικιστικές φανφάρες του κάθε αρχαιολάγνου τενεκέ.

[Giovanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quello che invidio a Steiner, oltre alla conoscenza di tante lingue e di tante letterature, è la lucidità. Pensieri incisivi, che vanno in profondità ma che vanno anche in alto, mostrandoci i temi su cui davvero vale la pena ragionare quando si parla di linguaggio. La riflessione è veramente su un altro livello, i problemi affrontati sono complessi, e per fortuna! Abbasso le teorie spicciole, evviva Steiner! Non ho capito proprio tutto, ovviamente, ma la sensazione dopo la lettura è che questo libro abbia spalancato finestre nella mia testa e fatto girare buona aria fresca.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in 1970s Steinerian autistic idolect, AB submits itself as proof that language obscures as much as it communicates; shatters and Babelizes with every evocation; protects, prevaricates, privatizes, proposes that the way natural things appear to us could, should, would, will be different.

Plays with Chomsky ("postulate of transformational generative grammar pointless"), Quine ("Word Against Object"), and Wittgenstein ("All Language Private"). Reviews what translators have said about translation, and hypothesizes why the same pablums get repeated about translation over and over again. Reads a lot of translations against their originals. Some of these rabbit holes are fun to go down, but his sauntering style may be annoying to some.

One of my friends was kind of annoyed by what a show-off Steiner was: untranslated French, German, Italian, Latin, and Greek float off the page, and I just let them float through my head. Ostensibly there are enough Steiner-like multilingual over-educated highly lettered individuals (euro comp lit renaissance men & women) out there for whom this kind of shorthand would suffice. (In attempting to show how translation works and fails to work, only untranslation *could* suffice).

I liked the Word Against Object chapter and the Hermeneutic Motion (four movements: 1) trust, 2) aggression, 3) incorporation, 4) retribution) chapters the best. But I fundamentally still don't trust Steiner, I don't know if it's because he's anti-modern or a humanist or what...

[Anna Hiller · Rating 5 out of 5]

For those who do Translation Studies, are translators, or are doing anything comparative in their post-secondary education, this book is a must-read. It gives a detailed, comprehensive history of the practice of translation, beginning with its roots in biblical studies. Steiner never quite looses sight of the spiritual aspects of translation, in the religious and post-Hegelian sense of the word. He writes an especially adept analysis of Walter Benjamin's "The Task of the Translator" that clarifies Benjamin's somewhat murky text, making it accessible and, moreover, *useful* for the translator-scholar.

I recommend getting the most recent edition, and not buying a used copy of an older addition, as the introductions to the new editions generally amend and add information to the original text which was written in the '70s, I believe.

All in all, this book should be on the shelf of anyone interested in "world literature"--i.e. literature in translation--because it is essential that we question the efficacy of translation, its necessity, its drawbacks, and the ways it enriches our understanding of language, society and art.

[Robin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sorry George te ingewikkeld te veel te langdradig

[Bria · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book requires you to know 3 languages (sure, translators will know at least 2 but not necessarily these specific languages) and to have read exactly the entire body of works that Steiner has read. French and German passages that are, apparently, transmitting information vital to the discussion are not translated (occasionally some Greek or Latin might be, if you're lucky), no author or person or book or work of literature is ever explained as to background, context, summary, or remotely giving any clue as to what it is or is about, because obviously you already know it and all the commentary around it. All of this couched in the language of deeply entrenched literary criticism that seems to definitely be about something but is so wrapped up in its own convoluted vocabulary and concept web that any two people who read it would come away with completely separate messages. But that's the problem of translation, right? That it's impossible to ever truly transmit anything from one person to another, let alone from one language to another, so really, it's quite genius for this book to be so infuriatingly insensitive to its audience, right? And it does touch on many topics of immense interest and relevance, of course only meandering across them in whatever manner strikes Steiner's mind instead of directly dealing with them. And the last chapter does, actually, finally, have concrete examples that, supposedly, illustrate much of what we've been talking about all this time, and here you can't really blame anyone if some of the subtleties are lost on you for not being fluent in the languages under discussion, although opinions on subtle emotional effects and whether or not a work is successful or anything are taken as obvious fact.

[Mike Blyth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I mistakenly got this book thinking it would be an interesting book for the general public about language and the issues of meaning and translation. Instead, it's a scholarly book probably suitable for those with graduate studies or equivalent in literature. It assumes a wide knowledge of literature which few people outside academia will have. My rating of two stars doesn't mean that this is a bad book, simply that it wasn't one I could enjoy; I gave up partway through.

A couple of quotes give some idea of the style.

"Feminine uses of the subjunctive in European languages give to material facts and relations a characteristic vibrato. I do not say they lie about the obtuse, resistant fabric of the world: they multiply the facets of reality, they strengthen the adjective to allow it an alternative nominal status, in a way which men often find unnerving."

"White and black trade words as do front-line soldiers lobbing back an undetonated grenade. Watch the motions of feigned responsiveness, menace, and non-information in a landlord’s dialogue with his tenant or in the morning banter of tally-clerk and lorry-driver. Observe the murderous undertones of apparently urbane, shared speech between mistress and maids in Genet’s Les Bonnes. So little is being said, so much is ‘being meant,’ thus posing almost intractable problems for the translator."

[Roy Kesey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A monster of a book. Linguistics and anthropology and poetics and literary criticism and history all applied to natural language in the service of thought on translation. And even that feels too small to serve as a description for what this book is. There are slight moments during his applications to specific translations where he overstates his case, and his attacks on Chomsky feel maybe a bit simplistic, but otherwise, magnificent.

[E. C. Koch · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first came to Steiner's book through Brian Friel's play Translations, and then again after taking a Old English translation course, but have only now sat down to read the whole thing all the way through. Steiner is what you'd expect a good translator to be: He's a polyglot, polymath who liberally quotes texts in their original French/German/Russian/Hebrew/Latin and has seemingly been alive for the last three thousand years taking in the translation scene in order to better make his case to his readers. What's great about After Babel is the fullness of Steiner's argument - he lays down a foundation of language theory before taking on the problems of translation itself - which is also what makes it so long (and at times needlessly pedantic). Of greatest interest to me is his foundational theory of language which can be grossly rendered as: All communication requires translation because no two speakers - even of the same language - associate signifiers with the same signifieds; language is so conditioned by individual experience that each speaks her own ideolect. I find it remarkable that Steiner (writing in 1975) essentially comes to the same argument Derrida makes in "Differance" without, apparently, having ever heard of the guy, making the claim that there is no one-to-one correspondence between word and world even more robust. Perhaps the most significant of Steiner's accomplishments in After Babel, though, is his demonstration of the importance of translation for the Humanities which goes so easily unrecognized exactly because good translations of literary texts don't present themselves as such. If you've ever read the works of Aristotle or Baudelaire or Cervantes or Dostoevsky in English then you know what I mean. The work of translation, like editing, is perilous, for no translator sets out trying to transmogrify the original author's text. But then also, as Steiner makes plain, no translation can be perfectly rendered without any loss of meaning or influence from the translator, which is what makes an understanding of the intricacies of language and literary theory so important, which is what makes After Babel so important. It is an education in what it means to make sense of the slippery signs that compose each of our realities.

[Maksim Karpitski · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel I have to start this with a disclaimer. George Steiner might put off some modern readers since he's somewhat insensitive to gender issues. He starts his introductory chapter with an outrageously sexist passage of Shakespeare's Cymbeline, moves on to offhandedly and obscurely lash out against some feminists who were supposedly detrimental to language studies and sometimes makes essentialist remarks about submissive femininity. Steiner is hardly sexist, though. He exposes sexist bias in literature more than once and openly criticises the way women are exploited. Moreover, After Babel is an essential book on the theory of translation and has many an insight to offer if you bear with Steiner's old-fashioned manner, his somewhat unclear politics and long-winded style.

[hh · Rating 1 out of 5]

i'd actually give this a 1.5. there were a few good moments, but overall it was just totally overblown. a book about translation that is inconsistent in how it deals with translations in the text is not really winning my respect. basically, the afterword says everything that's important here in 3 pages instead of 500.

[Kyren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing book. Picked it up used in a bookstore as background reading for my dissertation. Turned out to be a fantastic book. Great intro to the (previous) state of the field in theories on Translation and Language. Has some really edgy and innovative ideas on translation. Also well-written and easy to read, which is not easy to say of most books on language or translation, etc.

[Magda]

Am aflat de cartea asta mulțumită unei profesoare de la facultate. Mi-a fost de mare folos, am apelat la ea și la redactarea lucrării de licență (fiind și la profil de Traduceri...). Cu toate acestea am terminat prima lectură abia după vreun an jumătate. Mi-am propus să trec măcar odată prin ea cap-coadă, căci oricum am la ce să mă întorc și am și umplut-o de adnotări.

Odată ce trecem de începutul cărții, înțelegem de unde provine interesul autorului față de actul traducerii. Steiner a avut 3 limbi materne. Ce l-a fascinat pe acesta a fost că îi era nespus de greu să înțeleagă care era limba principală totuși, căci era capabil chiar și să viseze la fel de mult în toate cele 3 limbi.

"Era un lucru obișnuit, neobservat ca mama să înceapă o propoziție într-o limbă și să o termine în alta. Acasă, conversațiile erau interlingvistice nu numai în cadrul aceleiași fraze sau segment lingvistic, ci și între vorbitori. Numai o întrerupere bruscă sau o dezmeticire conștientă mă făceau să-mi dau seama că răspundeam în franceză la o întrebare pusă în germană sau engleză sau viceversa. Chiar și aceste trei "limbi materne" erau numai o parte din spectrul lingvistic al copilăriei mele. Particule puternice de cehă și idiș austriac continuau să fie active în limbajul tatălui meu. Și dincolo de acestea, ca un ecou familiar al unei voci ce nu poate fi auzită, se afla ebraica."


Înțelegând ansamblul său de cunoștințe lingvistice și literare, nu e de mirare nici faptul că a lăsat suficiente pasaje din alte limbi complet netraduse, tocmai ca să îl provoace pe cititor. Deși, cartea întreagă mi se pare o provocare ce necesită o citire activă și o implicare pe termen lung. Cu toate acestea, cred că nu doar cei interesați de traducere în sine (cine ar fi crezut că poți spune așa multe despre traducere?) ar găsi cartea lui Steiner cel puțin interesantă.

[Caracalla · Rating 4 out of 5]

An absolutely fascinating work on a subject (translation) that still doesn't receive the attention it deserves. Chief among its achievements is a synthesis of (or at least a negotiation between) vastly different methodological perspectives on language, notably linguistics, analytical language philosophy and Heideggerian hermeneutics. There is only one chapter in the work that is really original in its insights, the second-last one specifically on translation: as Steiner argues, it is rare for theoretical writing on translation to go much beyond an emphasis on the polarity between literal translation and translation that is more liberal but attempts to model the sense or poetics of a text more closely; he argues it is better to see translation as a complex form of commentary on the sense of the passage and that even literal translation have this quality, foregrounding what is implicit in the original, thus dismissing this common emphasis in writing on translation; he also argues that instead all translations enact a dialectic between the text in question's suitability to the language it's being translated into and the sorts of literary discourse that language is most at home in representing and it's fundamental strangeness when written in that language, the way it sounds unnatural in that language. He then has lots of interesting things to say about translation, particularly on the history of translation of Shakespeare in German and French, how the former was highly influential on the literature of Goethe's period and the development of a pan-German literary sensibility, influencing changes in the way language was used, etc., while the latter was commonly the object of dismissal. Other chapters go to depth on theoretic issues of language like Wittgenstein's private language argument or Chomskian deep structures and not only explain these issues well but offer a subtle and interesting perspective on them but, on the other hand, have less of a theoretic nature to contribute. The weakest chapters are the first and last which try to analogize the reception of older poetry and the process of allusion to translation, a heuristic that offers little extra insight to these processes. The former chapter has an odd section where Steiner muses on the possibilities of a liberation movement for children akin to Feminism; I guess this made a lot more sense when Freud was given more credence so it could just be dated stuff but it was very odd to read.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Caprice brought this book into my soft hands. I was in a pub reading an Agamben collection when someone (who later proved to be a thorough nyaff [as the kids say]) told me, in passing, 'Put down Agamben and read Steiner'. So, I heeded the advice of the pub prophet and bought a book by Steiner. The name 'After Babel' struck me—Mormon upbringing, I suspect, coupled with a longstanding hesitation of mine to switch from English to linguistics. (I have since settled into a happy medium: classics and linguistics.) In came the book. This was my first foray into proper linguistic theory and history and, from what I have gathered, it is a masterpiece to many. On the one hand, Steiner punctiliously outlines the trajectory of the field, going through the nitwitted views of Noam Chomsky (the linguist who never learnt another language) and the perplexing/alluring theories of Sapir and Whorf. After some exposition, Steiner departs into his masterful style of scholarship. He beats Harold Bloom at his own game, in this sense: both critique literature through a panoptic lens, connecting books across the canon. Steiner does one better: he critiques literature through a panoptic lens, connecting books across languages, canons, phonemes, scientific disciplines, religions, politics, mythologies, etc. At worst, he's a bit too exploratory, but he's always quick to point out when he's pontificating or conjecturing rather than arguing. He indulges in parallelomania, but that's part of the fun. Where else can one find biological evolution, Nietzsche, Nahuatl, and Antigone all in one chapter? It's never scatter-brained, but it is demanding. Also rewarding. Not just the best book I've read this year, but one of the best I've ever read. Something I bought on a lark has become an intrinsic part of my dissertation and future academic pursuits.

[E]

Read this book for school, and I don't know if I would have read it otherwise. This work is a rather wide-sweeping view of translation..filled with plenty of digressions and asides, Steiner knows a lot and is not afraid to tell you. Some of my favorite gems include his remark that sex is an incredibly semantic act. Not sure I really know what he means, but I suppose there's some Freudian and linguistic theory tangled up in that idea.

[Gabriel Franklin · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Any model of communication is at the same time a model of translation, of a vertical or horizontal transfer of significance. No two historical epochs, no two social classes, no two localities use words and syntax to signify exactly the same things, to send identical signals of valuation and inference. Neither do two human beings.”

[David Mccracken · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant.

The author can speak 3 languages natively and many more fluently and he isn't afraid to use examples from any of them. The book is written in English, but contains many examples in French and German that are intentionally untranslated (as he is commenting on the translation itself). When you combine this with the author's presumption that the audience has detailed knowledge of 16th - 19th century European literature and poetry and ancient Roman and Greek literature and poetry, the going gets difficult. Large sections can be at best skimmed, at least for a monolingual person such as myself who didn't major in literature.

That all being said, the fundamental thesis and the great writing around it are worth a lot of effort. He fundamentally believes that speech and communication are always about using words in ways they were not intended to be used. To get around the limitations of meaning. Because of this, all speech is translation in some form, even between folks nominally speaking the same language. It is always necessary to invent a way to convey information and intent to another person. This is why languages diverge over time and this is why translation is interesting to examine not just on its own, but as part of understanding language itself.

[Mel Vil · Rating 5 out of 5]

This seminal work explores lying in a must read way. It serves as an astonishing testament to the complex relationship between language, truth, and deception. Steiner deciphers how lying isn't merely an aberration but an integral facet of human communication that shapes the semantics and pragmatics of language itself. By taking us through the philosophical and ethical landscapes that underpin lying, he offers profound insights into how we navigate moral ambiguity and construct reality. His text doesn't just examine language as a passive medium; rather, it showcases language as an active, evolving entity that bears within it the capacity for both truth and deceit. This is a critical study that challenges our understanding of communication, pushing us to reevaluate the complexities and contradictions inherent in the way we interact with each other.

[吕不理 · Rating 5 out of 5]

作者的野心和学术素养直冲门面而来啊 也让我窥视到比较语言学一隅 I will be there sooner or later. 过往的翻译学习注重的是技法和翻译理论 都很难让我信服 技法是根据文本量身定制的 这能被教授复制吗？翻译理论在遇到实操的时候更犯难 研究理论的大多不符合中英翻译实操 毕竟两个语言风马牛不相及。很多困惑在这里有了部分解答。

“语言自身的内在动因引起语言本质的差异，传递信息，传达外在的、可确证的“事实”，只是人类言语的一个部分，且很可能是次要部分。虚构、反事实、未决的未来等潜在可能是语言的起源和本质中的根本特征。它们是语言同动物所使用的其他各种符号系统的本质区别。它们决定了人类意识独特而模糊的基调，让这种意识和“现实”的关系具有创造性。通过语言--它很大一部分都是在向内关注私密的自我--我们拒绝世界中符合经验的必然。通过语言，我们构建了我所谓的“异己的存在”(alternities ofbeing)。鉴于每个个体都使用自己的个人言语，巴别塔的问题可以说就是人类个性的问题。而不同的语言让“他异性”的机制得到了动态的、可传达的具现。它们满足了我们的身份对私密性和区域性的重要需求。每种语言都或多或少给出了自己对生活的解读。在语言之间移动、翻译(哪怕是在整体的界限之内)，就是去体验人类精神对自由的令人困惑的偏见。如果我们只栖息于一种或少数几种“语言皮囊”中，躯体终有一死这个事实可能会更容易让我们感到压抑和窒息。”

对翻译理论评价之难上 镜廊、发光的镜子的比喻绝妙。学皮囊容易 理解所需的文化却是需要土壤和时间的。作者天生的三种语言都是母语水平 对语言本能的困惑和诘问让我某个程度上感同深受。四岁开始学英语 一直在语言皮囊里寄居 如今想来我似乎没有母语 毕竟中文和英语都不咋滴（气死） 很多感受无法被任何语言转述。理解即翻译 可能我还没有学好自己的私人语言。

我爱翻译！

[Patrícia Gonçalves · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is a sexist piece of garbage. Steiner proposes a four-part process of translation using terms such as "initiative trust", "appropriative penetration" and "capturing" to describe the act of translation. He then says the translator must make amends for the act of aggression through and act of restitution. His model for this act of restitution is, quote, "that of Levi-Strauss's Antropolegie structurale which regards social structures as attempts at dynamic equilibrium achieved through an exchange of words, women, and material goods", making the connection explicit between the exchange of women, for example, and the exchange of words in one language for words in another.

[Everett Dixon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent book, terrible edition

This book is highly erudite, sensitive and world-changing. It's view of translation as a fundamental process of all language is like no other, and it has completely changed my view of my own profession. So, the sloppiness of the edition, it's amateur reliance on automatic pdf readers and embarrassing typos in the simplest words in English are a disgrace, and really should mean an immediate refund of the price of the book. In a book of such particular multilingual erudition, the riddling of the German and French citations with mistakes is especially shameful.

[Jens Gärtner · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Steiner le pasa como a Empson: quiere distanciarse de toda la French theory a como dé lugar, pero acaba por parecerse bastante a Derrida y a Barthes… terminan haciendo parecer que los desconocen y no que los desprecian. Pero, a diferencia del crítico inglés, Steiner no se esfuerza en ocultar sus pataletas en sus libros.

Por lo demás, un libro excelente. La crítica a Wittgenstein brilla por su elegancia y agudeza. Además, Steiner es agradablísimo de leer.

[Mauro De Zordo]

Ciascuno è formato e forma in sé un cosmo esistenziale che gli altri, nel dialogo, traducono per inserirlo nel proprio. Ne risulta che le parole come riferimenti a fatti non esistono, ognuno ha un proprio middleware di interpretazione del mondo, sempre dinamico e sempre suscettibile di fallimento. Questo spiega la cecità dialogica tra le persone. Se non possiamo cogliere l'altro nella sua essenza, non possiamo cogliere la verità neppure su noi stessi.

[Mark Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was unfortunately unable to finish this book before returning it, but what I read was both fascinating and dense. The idea of linking understanding in all forms to translation is quite ingenious, and it puts language into a very interesting perspective.

[Willam Shine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why is language?