Morris distinguishes between mechanical translation and expressive translation, arguing in fact that expression is translation in the paradoxical sense in which an original text becomes orginal only by being translated. He says "below the turn of experience the representational relation between subject and object is one of mechanical translation: representation amounts to a shift of content from one form to another in an already established system. At the turn of experience the relation between subject and object would instead involve expression [i.e., expressive translation]" (Sense, p. 84, my emphasis). Does translation have a pilgrimatical quality? Does the meaning of the pilgrimage, enigmatically, come from a within? Morris maintains that expressive translation elaborates a plane of meaning from within. Where does that take us?
Labels: expression, Morris, peregrinations, translation
2 Comments:
FtY:..."arguing in fact that expression is translation in the paradoxical sense in which an original text becomes orginal only by being translated."
Kvond: I don't know if you saw it, but on seveal posts I dealt with Latour's conception of the "original", which is linked here:
http://kvond.wordpress.com/2009/03/08/the-flatness-of-latours-concept-of-origin-and-holbeins-the-ambassadors/
It seems to follow Morris's thinking on translation.
Nice discussion. I like your idea of an original being recordedly pregnant.
The quote from Charles Péguy: "If we stop interpreting, if we stop rehearsing, if we stop reproducing, the very existence of the original is at stake. It might stop having abundant copies and slowly disappear." This idea implies some depth, I think.
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