Language Implications in the Steiner's Theory Understanding as Translation

Abstract

In some theories, the act of translating overcomes the act of enunciating in a foreign language what had been said in a source language: it also happens inside of a language. Jakobson (1959) is one of the names who mentions this phenomenon, stating what he calls intralingual translation. George Steiner (1992), however, deepens this issue in his book After Babel, in whose first chapter – named Understanding as translation –, there is the exhibition of the fact that, in order to be understood, a recreation of the meaning in an interpretative way is necessary, and, since the interpretation is a private residue, built upon memories, psychological and somatic identity, there is a proliferation of nuances of meanings which convey a pure expression as unallowable. Thus, for the latter author, the interpretation is an intralingual translation process. Keeping in mind that understanding is translating, the present paper aims to sketch some linguistic theories present in Steiner (1992) explicitly or implicitly. Although the author mostly makes uses of examples from literature, his arguments are based on pure linguistic theories, so it is interesting to expose them and to show how they validate his thesis.