Translating Interpretation

I am particularly fascinated by Scalia's account of interpretation and how it relates to the field of translation. Every famous philosopher, writer, and their grandma wrote about the near impossibility and challenge of translation. While these writers specifically wrote about translation between two languages -- such as Greek to English or French to Spanish -- the concepts certainly map onto temporal translation or translation between people even in the same language, especially over time.

In his essay The Task of the Translator, Walter Benjamin, a German philosopher, cultural critic, and translation theorist, states that the “task of the translator consists in finding the particular intention toward the target language which produces in that language the echo of the original” (258). As Benjamin wrote, “Translation is so far removed from being the sterile equation of two dead languages that of all literary forms it is the one charged with the special mission of watching over the maturing process of the original language and the birth pangs of its own” (256). Benjamin is speaking about the dual responsibility of translation (or interpretation). The interpreter must pay attention to both the context of the original language and the birth of the new interpretation. This process and balancing act is valuable in its own sense.

The act of translation reveals our universal language. According to Benjamin, in every language, “the same thing is meant” but told in different ways (257). Understanding this intention is “achievable not by any single language but only by the totality of their intentions supplementing one another: the pure language” (257). Essentially, the idea of pure language can parallel Dworkin's discussion of abstract principles. Text is our best attempt at and representation of the approximation of abstract, pure principles.

That being said -- it is through the very act of translation that the pure language of humanity shines through. Translation is the systematic decoding of an original author's intent and the explosion of language into the primitive, intangible building blocks of life reprojected into the chassis of another tongue. Like in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” we can only ever see the shadows of an author's intent dancing on the walls in front of us -- the objects of her inspiration illuminated behind us by the fiery passion of her work (Plato). Every translation becomes each author's best approximation of the pure, abstract principles. In their combination, the underlying, abstract principle holding them all together -- like a shish-kabob -- shines through, becoming more well defined with each attempt. It is this act of translation which is key. That is, I buy Dworkin's argument that "The Constitution insists that our judges do their best collectively to construct, reinspect, and revise, generation by generation, the skeleton of freedom and equality of concern that its great clauses, in their majestic abstraction, command" not because it is beneficial, but because that process is absolutely essential to reifying the principles it intends to preserve (123).

According to Alexander Pope, in the preface of his translation of Homer’s Iliad, it is this “fire” of the work that “a translator should principally regard” (26). Likewise, I argue, for interpretation of the Constitution, it is not the "intent," "context," "semantic meaning," "import" that should be of concern, rather, its translation must maintain the fire of the Constitution or else risk extinguishing its own lifeblood. This, I think, parallel's Dworkin's moral principle argument but extends it to emphasize the necessary process of translation in revealing them.