GEORGE STEINER'S PHILOSOPHY: TRANSLATION AS A NEW

PARADIGMA

Faire l'histoire de la traduction, c'est

decouvrir patiemment ce reseau culturel
infinitement complexe et déroutant dans
lequel, à chaque epoque, ou dans des
espaces differents, elle se trouve prise.
Et faire du savoir historique ainsi obtenu
une ouverture de notre présent.

Antoine Berman, L'epreuve de

l'etranger

In what language am-I, suis-je, bin ich,

io sono, in the depths of myself? What is
the range of the ego?

G. Steiner, After Babel

The legitimacy of historical and cultural Western identity cannot disregard the importance of re-
thinking the act of translation: what would have happened if Luther hadn't translate the Bible? How
much would be lost if Shakespeare hadn't been tralslated in Italian, if Dante had not been translated
in English, Hegel in French? After Babel, a George Steiner's controversial work, offers a new
reading of the anthropological significance of the biblic myth. Scorned in academic circles, as it was
the role of comparative study of language and literature in the last century, this work has now been
handled differently and exerted its influence in various fields, from linguistic up to aesthetics, so
that now a reinterpretation of his ideas may seem trivial, if not operated with critical consciousness.
In order to understand how a work written more than 30 years ago can tell us something, we have to
analyze what our author means talking about translation. Transalation it's meant as controversial
concept, a fertile soil for a comparation beetween different parts of human spiritual life, a concept
that can report on the plan of interdisciplinary many aspects of humanistic research.
Translation as a hermeneutical problem, but mostly as a philosophical field of knowledge within
which it's impossible to separate praxis from theory, to distinguish the language from its many
empirical applications, will inevitably lead to a problematization of the same concept of method and
of order of discourse because such spaces are inseparable from a rethinking of the relationship
between man and language. In this essay we'll try to underline the strong points of this rethinking in
Steiner's work, a work in which the relationship between language and identity, interpretation and
context, ermeneuthics and historiography is originally re-analized. Steiner's point of view appeared
shockingly heretical in 1975, but nowadays it seems almost prophetic about the trends that
philosophical studies has acquired from authors like Berman, Ricoeur, Gadamner and even about
the contemporary reinterpretation of the still existing problem of Heidegger's ermeneuthic.
In Steiner's argument, translation is not only a formal act but an existential experience, and can
therefore stand as an analysis and a revivification of the meaning of our "post-Babel condition" in a
universe of symbols that defines, by language, in the words of Foucault, the empirical orders with
which every man will have to do and where he'll find himself. In conclusion, Babel review by
Steiner, is made through the eyes of an author lived in wide-ranging European horizon that, shortly
after the middle of last century, re-evaluates the fertility of cross-cultural comparison, in literature as
in any other realm of human experience, opening through its philosophy of translation, a glimmer of
that parameter that should refer to all types of knowledge: the constant need of redefinition,
change,criticism.

1. After Babel: intended to translate ... and take a step back!

In addition to the biblical story of Genesis, explaining myths about the amazing diversity of
languages ??are - as testified, among others, Frazer studies between 1900 and 1920 1 - even in the
imagination of many civilizations of Africa and Asia. The connotations attributed to this kind of
cosmologies are, in most cases, negative: the bewilderment of the man who can not understand the
"lip" of his brother, the anxiety aroused by the heterogeneity that inhibits a reassuring overview as
any kind of strangeness, have always fascinated every human being, and aroused a sense of the
sacred as «rebellion and worship are inextricably mixed, as are the impulses of speech to lead
towards and away truth»2. We start then from the time when Babel population is assigned to the task
to «settle down anywhere [through] the multitude of languages ??that will break even in dialects and
will plante on the ground 3. The dispersion after Babel makes the words no longer have a single
referent and thus irrevocably change the way people communicate, «translation is, therefore, the
perpetual and inescapable condition of signification»4 . As a metaphor for this paradox, «the tower
of Babel represents only the irreducible multiplicity of languages, exhibits an incompletness, the
inability to complete, to score, to saturate, to do something that would order the building of
architectural construction. What the multiplicity of languages ??reaches to limit [...] is [...] a
structural, a consistency of constructum»5. The post-Babel metaphor becomes a reality in which
every human language draws a different plan of the world.
After Babel is a work that opens new avenues for investigation by linguistic paths away from the
rigid requirements of the academic culture. The author proposes a study that choose, as places of
research, fields not closely related to the formalization of an alleged, and often pretentious scientific
request in human studies. The impression that the work will probably continue to represent a kind
of scandal or monster that corporations and analytic linguistic philosophy would prefer to ignore, as
the author himself wrote in the preface to the second edition in 1991, will prove to be incorrect.
Already in 1953 a linguist such as Roman Jakobson affirms the need to study the language together
with anthropologists because they constantly argue and demonstrate that language and culture
implicate one another, that language must be construed as integral part of social life, the language is
closely linked to culture 6. Again, therefore, should not be considered a coincidence that After Babel
has now become a classic of world literature and found resonance in different areas belonging to
linguistics, philosophy, anthropology intertwine with each other, taking turns to actual treatment of
the history of literature and culture. Steiner gives us an overview that opens up alternative routes, a
chance to investigate further along paths apparently beaten. Undeniably may seem difficult, faced
with such a wealth of facets, identifying a strong theoretical core, although the basic thesis, laid
since the first lines, is disarming simple and seemingly obvious: to understand means to decipher.

1 P. Zumthor, Babel ou l'inachevèment, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1997.

2 G. Steiner, After Babel, Oxford University Press, London, 1975, p. 67
3 E. De Luca e G. Matino., Sottosopra. Alture dell’antico e del nuovo testamento, Mondadori, Milano, 2007, cit., pp.
44-45.
4 G. Steiner, op. cit., p. 260
5 J. Derrida, Des tours de Babel, in Teorie contemporanee della traduzione, a cura di NERGAARD S., Bompiani,
Milano 2002, p. 386.
6 R. Jakobson, Antropologi e linguisti. Bilancio di un convegno, in Luigi Heilmann (a cura di), Saggi di linguistica
generale, trad. it. di Luigi Heilmann e Letizia Grassi, Feltrinelli, Milano, 2008, p. 6.
In line with this statement, the route proposed by the author, through an analysis and a study of the
meaning of the translation, the act of translation, extends to a consideration of the issues related to
the study of language and communication. The translation, therefore, becomes a metaphor, a
controversial concept, not only understood in the strong sense as “proper translation”, but as «a
special case of the arc of communication which every successful speech act closes within a given
language»7. In the consideration of English “to translate” can have different meanings: the
translation from one floor to another in the linguistic, semiotic or artistic field is the core of the
same interpretive process. We distinguish three modes of interpretation of a linguistic sign,
according to the results in other signs of the same language in another language, or in a system of
non-linguistic symbols. These three forms of translation must be designated in a different way8.
Jakobson called respectively these three operations reword, proper translation and transmutation.
The consideration of each can help us to clarify Steiner's theory on the translation and why it binds
inseparably to an analysis of language and the different ways of "mean" the world. We focus a
moment's attention on the first and third steps: in the case of re-structuring (reword) there is a re-
codification, replacement of a unit of code with another, within the same language. What happens is
a paraphrase, an act which should be evaluated and interpreted widely not only in the metalanguage
of logic, but especially in everyday speech. Even in the case of Transmutation we can further expand
the boundaries of the concept of semantic translation, interpreted far beyond the verbal means as
model of understanding and the full potential of enunciation, this analysis include forms
intersemiotic9. However, as Derrida underlines10, Jakobson makes use of a "definitional
interpretation" to explain in what sense is related to both these forms the word "translation",
otherwise the interim operation, the proper translation, is identified by Jakobson only as the
interlingual translation. The idea that there is no need for additional explanations regarding this
definition stems from the fact that everyone understands what it means because they all have
experience: it is assumed that everyone knows what is a language, the relationship between
languages and above all that we know the identity or difference in terms of language 11. So every
man would be in a given time to deal with this particular experience of foreignness, and hence the
idea that the translation is an inevitably act, characteristic of our species as the language itself.
Therefore the study of speech acts is closely related to the primary paradox of Babel, between the
expression and interpretation of the meaning through verbal sign systems on one side, and the
extreme diversity and variety of other languages, is the field of language as a whole. However, the
consideration of what has yet to tell us the wonder that suggests to us the diversity of existing
languages ??is a topic that had not found much success in the considerations of linguists, especially
during the 70s of last century, a time when the authority of Chomsky's generative grammar was still
prevalent in the study of language. The claim to universality and the characteristic tendency to
uniformity that characterizes this kind of approach will be the target of a harsh rebuttal since the
theoretical premises of Steiner's work. We find, in fact, at the opening of the second chapter, the
statement that «we ought not, perhaps, to regard should as either formally or substantively correct,
as responsible to verification or falsification, any model of verbal behavior, any theory of how
language is generated or acquired, which does not recognize as crucial the matter of the bewildering
multiplicity and variousness of languages ??spoken on this crowded planet»12. The possibility of
overcoming the separation between the rigid formalization of linguistic and anthropological
investigation resulting from the real diversity of all languages, therefore, would lie in the
7 G. Steiner, op. cit., p. 47
8 R. Jakobson, On Linguistic Aspects of Translation, in R. A. Brower (ed.) On Translation, Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1959, pp. 232-39.
9 G. Steiner, op. cit., p. 260
10 J. Derrida, op. cit., p. 378
11 Ibidem.
12 G. Steiner, p. 49
consideration of the matter by an empirical point of view. What is being said here is that the
language as a living, multiple and ever-changing reality can not be studied apart from the
consideration, at least theoretically, about its many manifestations.
Having determined the inability to study all the existing grammars and to formalize them in
theoretical prescriptive models, which would value a speculation about the potential equivalence of
all languages? Undeniably the anatomical and neurophysiological features, common to every
individual of the human species, make more complex theoretical problems that arise from the
observation of linguistic diversity, which often occurs even among radical ethnic groups living in
the same socio-political and environmental issues. Therefore, the starting point of a philosophy of
translation, starting from the reality of living language, is the consideration about the phenomenon
of linguistic diversity. This kind of perspective has to make a possible rationalization of mental and
developmental needs that had required this diversity. Moreover, the multiplicity of languages ??
appeared (and still) appears as an obstacle to the progress of the human species: first, the same use
of language, although useful from the evolutionary point of view, reduces the range of possibilities
and linguistic atomization meant that many cultures disappeared as "linguistically marginalized “.
The search for a compromise to this problem has often accelerated the decline, disrupting the
medium on which rested the very notion of belonging and ethnic identity. How to classify the
function of this diversity then? Can we suggest that the same Darwinian models, taken from a
different perspective, offer a fruitful suggestion? The dispersion of Babel on hearth occurred after
the split between nature and culture through language, after the destruction of the tower but there is
a further fragmentation: this dispertion makes human language and experience interact in shaping a
local affair, the constructive force of language in the conceptualization of the world has played a
crucial role in human survival, opposing the inevitable biological constraints. Each language thus
becomes that particular response on which is based an ethnic identity, every language becomes a
dimension within which the various individual adjustments create a unique construction of reality:
speakers of different languages ??inhabit intermediate different worlds (Zwischenwelten). Hence
the demand that drives the investigation of Steiner - «is it indeed possible to convey any conceptual
content in any language?»13 - is not only the premise to a study concerning the language but also a
comparison with the radical otherness that takes us along a reflection on our own identity.
Recognizing in each translation, a comparison with another possible construction of the world, the
figure of the translator are the synthesis of the metaphorical comparison with the stranger,with
something else.
During the analysis we'll need, anyway, to be borne in mind that every speech community is an
aggregate of different language-atoms: after Babel communication becomes a problem of
transmission of meanings, through the vehicle of language, to cross boundaries of space and time,
but primarily the boundary that separates each individual from another. So, far from considering
only the translation as interlingual translation itself, we must enter into an order of discourse less
defined, within which we are less aware of the problems inherent in communication. To understand
the meaning of the act of translation we first have to "step back": we have to underline the need for
interpretation, even within the same language, in order to show that «any model of communication
is at the same time a model of trans-lation, of a vertical or horizontal transfer of significance14.»

2. Science of language and translation theory: the problem of context.

At this point it becomes necessary to consider the emergence of some methodological problems
discussed extensively in Steiner's work. The experience of language and his scope in determining
13 Ivi, p. 102
14 Ivi, p. 45
the perception of reality and primarily of the self, makes the language an object of study very
strange. If we consider the cases of language as «the cognitive substance of our existence»15, we
cannot avoid questions about the epistemological status of the disciplines studing the language. The
development of a «mediate thought about language is an attempt to step outside one's own skin of
consciousness, a vital cover more intimately enfolding, more close-woven to human identity than is
the skin of our body»16. Can we speak of a science of language, therefore? Let's analyze the problem
in the key proposed by Steiner: first the epistemological status of such a "science" is necessarily
different from what is commonly regarded as belonging to the hard sciences, although, made by
comparative and typological studies, on the basis of logic and the formalization has established,
even more strongly the idea of ??a possible parallel between linguistics and such disciplines. The
dilemma that undermines this possibility is the emergence of a sort of "ontological autism ' that
trapps epistemology itself. This state of affairs is the inevitable consequence of the circularity
determined by examining the link between the process of examination and the examined object : the
same analysis is a transformational speech act that can hardly find a place outside that context that
includes its object of study. The attempt of modern linguistics to proceed inductively, by progressive
derivation, trying to build prescriptive paradigms and models, is invalidated by the fact that «the
elements of language are not elementary in the mathematical sense. We do not come to them new,
from the outside or by postulate»17. It is therefore difficult, if not impossible, to isolate inside the
language nuclear elements from which construct a theoretical system, it's impossible to submit these
elements to quantification and formalization. We can not really isolate the elements, but only tell
them apart. If we treat them separately in the process of linguistic analysis, we must never forget the
artificial nature of such a separation18. In Roman Jakobson's words, we can find that impasse
constituted, in recent decades, in the study of linguistics science: a typical installation of our
sciences, deriving from centuries of metaphysical development are based on the principle of non-
contradiction, consists in the pursuit of knowledge and dogmatic foundation. Often the claim of a
scientific basis has led to a confusion between the ontologic plane and the plane of logic. The
formal language operates on the basis of a misunderstanding similar to the one who led the
sociological theories based on the assumption of the existence of a state of nature: is there a zero
level in the study of language? The formal structures, far from being regarded ontologically founded
or founding, are functional to produce “fiction of isolation" designed to study special cases: a model
may include a limited range of linguistic phenomena, it did not agree in a direct and absolute match
with the underlying reality. This fact in the «mobile, perhaps anarchic prodigality of natural forms»19
is not well adapted to the prescribed schedule of scientific language. So this approach to language
risks to dig in «a sort of profound isolation from contamination of the real context». If a formalized
science can not escape from the horizon of that language assigned, is not the same for a science that
studies the same linguistic reason that average every possible construction of meaning. The finding
that effectively, even if tautologically, validate, within a field theory, an axiomatic system as a
mathematical one, does not find its equivalent in paths that are inherent to a living thing which is
continually changing as the language. The tendency to overlap with formal linguistic models all
phenomena of language is what Merleau-Ponty calls «la revolution contre le language donneè»20.
While taking account of the merits of the analytical and heuristic Revolt we have to consider that
precisely in the context of the language donnée we live our lives. The chance that we encounter in
trying to lay the theoretical foundations for linguistic research may lead to a purely reductionist

15 Ivi, p. 72
16 Ivi, p. 110
17 Ivi, p. 113
18 R. Jakobson, op. cit., p. 6.
19 G. Steiner, op. cit., p. 122
20 Cit. in G. steiner, op. cit., p. 112
solution: this kind of solution doesn't consider the speech as the real starting point for such studies
but as the result. The real speech is a condition that can only be defined by induction, through a
consideration of the interaction between the context and the elementary parts of the language. The
very elements that generative grammars, in its axiomatic system, exclude as non-formalized and
deeply subversive are probably the same generative centers of language, «the slippery, ambiguous,
altering, subconscious or traditional contextual reflexes of spoken language, the centres of meaning
[...] fall outside the tight but exiguous mesh of logic. They belong to the pragmatic»21. The anomaly
is capable of entering into common infinite possibilities of expression, the language flow of magma
is a not static, in constant motion phenomena.«A logical grammar, such as the universalists aim for,
has to ignore all differences between the way in which different languages, cultures and individuals
use words»22. However, in order to proceed, it won't be irrelevant reflect on Steiner's experience:
«The realization that the chestnut tree on the quai outside of our house was no less a marronier than
a Kastaniebaum [...] and that these three configurations coexisted, though in the actual moment of
utterance at varying distances of synonymy and real presence, was essential to my sense of a meshed
world» 23.
Such an experience, which has allowed to ascertain in practice, even before the theory, why «to the
many-centered, the very notion of “milieu”, of a single and privileged rootedness look is suspect»24,
can only lead to the conclusion that «the application of the concept of exact science to the study of
language is an idealized simile»25, as in any fixed definition there is an obsolescence or a missing
intuition. Although there is a need to start from a center in the elaboration of a model, what is
missed, when a theoretical construct rises to any claim of universality, is the view of the existence of
a real dynamic that can not be formalized in a theory: the rule is always given as a methodological
abstraction. The comparison with the foreignness leads to the necessity of challenging the dynamics
of the codification of meanings within a given language and the definition of the context within
which the signification process should be studied. We can, therefore, define a field of inquiry
"fictitious" and not ontologically well-founded as regards the interpretational translatological
process. This process is constantly evolving, always on the hunt for his own theory. Study of
translation and study of language are inextricably intertwined: if we can not define the scientific
rules to be fulfilled by a science of language, can we postulate the idea of ??a theory of translation?
Such a science, in search of his method, will take at least to fix the distinction between reality and
theoretical construction, the general propositions about language may never be an absolute
validation. Their truth is a kind of momentary assumption of equilibrium. This distinction can be
kept alive only by referring constantly to the context within which the language occurs, a context
that interacts with the text which the author gives life and with the work of the translator in a
dialectic Gestalt, undecidable in procedural terms. The translation-oriented theories have always
been divided between the extremes represented by two alternatives: the universalist position and the
monadic position, a dichotomy that Ricoeur defines “translatable vs untranslatable”26.
The monadic position is the result of a certain ethno-linguistic which was proposed to emphasize
the non-overlapping of different subdivisions on which rest the many linguistic systems, the
universal model would be misleading since they were too abstract and ambiguous, identifing
common structures among languages, impossible to achieve through logical and psychological
survey.
Although, on the basis of what has been said previously, metamathematics interpretation of

21 Ivi, p. 203
22 Ivi, p. 204
23 Ivi, p. 116
24 Ibidem
25 Ivi, p. 114
26 P. Ricoeur, Sur la traduction, Bayard, Paris, 2004
language, which works mainly with atomic units pre-or pseudo linguistic we would not be able to
give an account of the nature and possibilities of relationships between the languages ??which in
fact exist and differentiate. Backed up to its radical consequences this position could lead to the idea
that a complete translatability is nearly impossible, especially if the source language and the
recipient does not belong to the same strain: if the thought was «nothing but internalized language,
each language would be a monad that structure the experience in different ways according to proper
habits of knowledge. The idea, therefore, that there would always be a residual difference of
meaning in any translation from one language to another, the idea that «language is based on a
grammar and syntax that while have to reflect reality, inevitably interpret» 27, has been the subject of
numerous criticisms. Specifically, the deterministic parallelism between syntactic structures and
conventional acts of perception, thought and language would be tautological and irrelevant like the
theoretically rudimentary hypostatization of parallelism of mind and body in animal species, would
be in any case a form of reductionism. Moreover, from the practical point of view, interlingual
communication, acquiring a second language or the translation itself are actually possible. In
contrast, with regard to the universalist position, the hypothesis that there are universal ways to give
sound to the world is ancient, the mystical intuition of an Ur-Sprache echoes the idea of ??the
existence of a common matrix on the basis of which would be born all the different languages. The
structure of each language would be based on a grammar universalis, a unique array of common
discourse, whose differences in the various linguistic manifestations, would be accidental and
historically determined. Starting from these assumptions, linguistic theory should therefore be
explored and developed through a comparative method, a list of linguistic universals that can be
detected in the grammar of any natural language.
Now, if the relativistic theory led to the paradox of the impossibility of radical translation, the idea
of ??the existence of substantive universals common to all languages ??should logically lead to
build a solid base of operations for any theory of translation. However, this assumption has led to
universal abstractions and formalizations and to no fewer problems, this theory increasingly depart
from the living language and every level of development is proved to be incomplete. The paradox is
created when these abstract models move from theory to the comparison with natural language,
making it virtually unusable, proving in practice tha any attempt to catalog or any prescriptive
model is ambiguous. Thus, a brief summary of the criticism made by Steiner to the elaboration of
the comparativistic and Chomsky's school can help in understanding the theoretical limits of such a
position. Let's start by defining a field of inquiry: what level of language must be found the
universal language? If you want to define each language within certain boundaries, the simplest type
of cataloging is part of the phonological level, the result in each individual speaker of the
combination of a limited set of physical phenomena. However, the cataloging of the physiological
and phonological universals, especially considering the infinite variety of existing languages, have
proved to be simplistic and problematic when the argument becomes prescriptive. As for the
grammatical level, i.e. a level within which you should do a comparative analysis of all the syntactic
systems, classifications that can be operated are very general. Although the different changes in
SVO structure can be a criterion to classificate different languages, it would always be a rule based
on the implantation of English and the number of languages ??studied is reduced, in the syntax as in
phonology, to a rigorous formalization which are beyond many exceptions. Faced with the
impossibility of a comparative approach that hinges on these two levels, the generative grammar in
its early versions, attempt to identify common matrix in the structure of existing languages, moving
the inquiry to a deeper level: semantics.
The correct starting point, the existence of an innate language faculty, however, remains axiomatic:
intuitively puts a universal starting point, however, the nature of which is theoretically unfounded.
The classical behaviouristic scheme "stimulus-response", which roots in the socio-cultural language
27 S. Givone, Il bibliotecario di Leibniz, Einaudi, Torino, 2005, p.112.
acquisition capacity, is rejected as inadequate. The possible response is detected by the innate ability
of each speaker to internalize a grammar that generated potentially each language: from the
generation center of "deep structures", common to any natural language, individual languages ??are
generated by the emergence in the concrete surface at the phonetic level of accidental differences.
As a result of these trends the "transformation rules" generate complex sentences, which, being
independent from the surrounding context, determine, within a universal system, a particular
language family.
But what Steiner points out is that there isn't a real theoretical foundation at the base of Chomsky's
models: the definition of "deep structure"as «innate component of the human mind that can process
certain types of formal operations in sequence»28, does not refer to a hypothetical verbal unit nor to
an atom of grammatic relation, but just defines, in a formal way, axioms that are the basis of this
model. Proving that the basic elements of this system have an axiomatic statute, Steiner refutes the
ability to validate the universalist discourse in terms of ontology.
A final validation of “nativist” hypothesis could rely on the relevance that the universality of human
neurophysiology has in the formation of language: in any case, as Chomsky himself wrote in his
work Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, this strong negation of relativism would lead to the idea that
you can express any conceptual content in any language, but this tendency to monolingualism of
generative grammar is invalidated by the onset of problems associated with a fundamental question:
can we effectively consider the possibility of the existence of semantic universals? The center of this
formulation is always the mother tongue and the risk is to limit as "deep structures" aspects of
grammar belonging solely to a single linguistic group: the same mathematical systems and
philosophical constructs that have built the tradition of West were often based on hypostatizations
present only in certain areas of language and culture, internalized to such an extent as to be
considered universal or universalizable. In conclusion, the epistemological obstacle would be this:
there could be "a real and universal character if the relation between words and the world was one
of complete inclusion and unambiguous correspondances. But could we actually desire such a
situation? Citing his own experience as an example, Steiner points out about the cases of
multilingualism in the field of linguistic science, there has never been a serious and methodical
study, although both in learning the language, which in the dynamics of signification it is clear that
the Statute of the polyglot is different from that of "idealized native speaker." A multilingual mind
operates differently from those who use just one language? What is the relationship between syntax
and identity for a polyglot? If sentences that make up the speech are acts taking place in a context,
can we say that the exceptional nature of this situation will affect the first stage of language
acquisition? In view of these questions, like many others, faced with what we have defined the
anarchic profusion of real forms, any attempt to state an analogy beetwenn laguages will prove to be
unproductive. The need to adopt a method, and consequently pre-established criteria, in any
construction aimed at a theoretical study, including language, is undeniable. However, it is
undeniable too the need to problematize this method constantly until we reach the paradoxical
denial of the very possibility of establishing a method. Considering the failure both of the
synchronic abstraction of generative grammar and relativistic study of language and translation, we
must not forget that so far we have moved into a well-defined dichotomy. If language has a nature
crossed by interactive polarities that do not allow to isolate nuclear facts from which to build a
system, whether that communication is a continuous redefinition of the balance between individual
boundaries and contradictions of real context, we must remember that «the opposition [...] is not
necessarily between consecrated, round contraries [...] but it's always and throughout between the
exception and the rule»29. Then, what is this hostility (Zwischen), this area of ??discourse within
which you can survey on language and translation that are not fossilized in theoretical models
28 N.Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Cambrige, Mass., 1965, p. 27, cit. in G. Steiner, op. cit., p. 95
29 R. Barthes, The pleasure of the text, tr. Richard Miller, Blackwell ltd, Uk, 1994, p. 41
alienated from the real context? If «the transformational grammar has failed [because] studied the
structure of language without considering the fact that language is used by humans to communicate
in a social context»30, it becomes necessary a re-evaluation and definition of the space of semantic
meaning starting from the living language, the language in-text, rather than abstract and formalized
models. But if the language is actually a reality open in flux properly in the social element, the
solution proposed here by Steiner is to choose the literature, as working- field, for a study on
translation and language. Literature is the testimony of the popular historical memory, testimony by
which we can take account of the diachronic changes of language in relation to time, in which we
can study the expressive potential of these mutations and the different dynamics of signification.

3. The Tower of differences: symbolic inversion of a myth.

Published for the first time in 1975, Steiner's work is presented as a pioneering enterprise: such a
philosophical study trying to systematize and to periodize the history of translation and to open the
possibility of theoretical approaches and practical alternative in different fields, in those years, has a
relatively short life. In the 50s of last century, in the wake of Heidegger's and Gadamer's influence,
linguistics and Western philosophy have opened the door to the hermeneutical problem:
interdisciplinary studies give rise to "intermediate territories" such as ethnolinguistic or
sociolinguistics. However, the hermeneutic and epistemological problem had in the first half of the
900 and in the following decades, echoes and reflections among all areas of scientific approach in
the West: the loss of the dream of a rationalism which brings to the universal Logos every possible
real application is gone when the alleged hegemony of Western science and traditional approach to
knowledge of their installation has proved unsuitable to the diversity of reality, the emergence of
many vanishing points in the comparison between theory and praxis. All this appears clearly in the
attempt to define the epistemological status of the new sciences that we specified. This kind of
sciences begin to emerge in the last century as "intermediate territories", an example of all:
ethnology.
This science of the stranger, trying to take ownership of its object, finds necessarily a
methodological impasse: the ethnologist, in his approach with radical otherness, exceed what Levi-
Strauss, at a conference in 1962, defines the initial depaysement and détachement, caused by the
inability to categorize this experience through known patterns. In the systematization of knowledge,
the methodological problem becomes even clearer, the ethnologist risks to use as a method of
understanding an analogical process. Ethnology makes an attempt to bring within the limits of the
familiar what is totally other, an operation which could lead to dissolution of foreignness as such:
trying to reduce it we would end up to remove it31. A similar problem arises, however, more subtly,
when the alien is not radical, when the analogical process is easier, for example in the approach to a
culture "closer" to the one which the observer belongs. In this case, to listen to the differences is
really complex: the apparent closeness of the distance can be more insidious than obvious distance.
This matters, and following paradoxes, find resonances and parallels also in the work of the
translator: translating means trying to overcome resistant strangeness that stands before us.
But what does it mean “to overcome”? Is there a real chance to understand without incorporating
the stranger, respecting the boundaries and differences that characterize something else? It follows a
methodological problem that brings out the impossibility of defining a theory of translation. This
30 G.Steiner, p. 201
31 We refer to B. Waldelfens, Fenomenologia dell'estraneità, it. tr. by Renato Cristin, Fulvio Longo, Mariannina Failla
and Gabriella Baptist, Vivarium, Napoli, 2002. In particular we have to recall the pages where the author faces the
problem of the relationship between phenomenology and ethnography: "If we look for a logic of the stranger the logos
of the stranger itself would wear out the phenomenon of the stranger as a stranger. Phenomenology as a science would
dissolve xenology with its object and itself. [...] We consider in this regard ethnology which first offered herself as the
science of the stranger. "(Ibid., pp. 121-22). Translation is mine.
inability leaves open space for theoretical speculation that necessarily relies on the pragmatic
dimension: not a theory but a kind of phronesis is what the work of the translator requires. All these
reasons explain the basic idea that the translation, as interweaving of theory and practice, is not
simply an area which should occupy the language studies, but a speculative note that is played at
multiple levels: in addition to the need of analytic moment, the result is the need for an analysis that
takes place on a different plane. If considered in a wider perspective as tradition and comparison,
the practice of translation reflects the approach that a culture has with its past, but also with the
otherness and identity in the present. To translate then becomes, in this perspective, an experience.
«You can assess the degree of historical sense that an era has, analyzing as it does the translations
and try to incorporate the ages and the books of the past»32. Here, we analyzed only a few highlights,
some methodological assumptions, in Steiner's work. After Babel is born, as specified, in a period in
which the problem of interpretation becomes strongly felt in all fields of Western philosophy. The
analysis of the points which show the close relationship between language and society is actually
functional to understand the meaning of Steiner's attempt to pass through the problematization of
the concept of understanding, the classical tripartite approach to the work of contemporary
translation (aggression- understanding-appropriation) and thus express cultural and historical
problems much more complex: the search for an ethic of translation is the search for an ethic in
comparison with the strangeness. Would it be the ethic the other dimension within which we should
conduct an inquiry into the practice of translation? Why does the translation would require an
ethics?
«La visée meme de la traduction -ouvrir au niveau de l'ecrit un certain rapport à l'Autre, féconder le
Propre par la médiation de l'Etranger- heurte de front la structure ethnocentrique de toute culture, ou
cette espèce de narcissisme qui fait que toute société voudrait etre un Tout pur et non mélangé»36.
In this regard Steiner introduce a fourth phase in the process of hermeneutic motion: reciprocity.
Reciprocity is the idea that the hermeneutic act [should] [...] become an exchange , and not remain a
mere appropriation. Translation should be, therefore, a growth of the Proper in comparison with the
Stranger, following the need for an ??ethic as well as an analytic of translation. However, such a
process of "balancing" and rearrangement of the boundary line that must necessarily find a common
space, an hostility which can achieve this exchange, is strongly linked to the problem of the
relativization of their own cultural reality. Translation must be considered as an approach to the
other, then, but also as a self-analysis and comparison of ethnic identity and history. To consider the
problem of the stranger means a reflection about the question of our origins whose construction and
foundation passes, as we have seen, by a diachronic hermeneutic transmission of meaning submitted
to a constant re-translation. This process is vital for survival and innovation of our expressive codes:
«the translation [...] is also tradition [...] it belongs to the innermost movement of history»37. The
need to conquere for each translation a dialogical horizon, never finally gave in a stable theory,
corresponds to the need to restore and to modernize testimonials threatened «by translations
belonging to a stage of Western consciousness that no longer corresponds to our»38 . Translation, as
contingent experience, and not simply as technical practice, becomes a vantage point to understand
the problems arising from the approach to Otherness and Identity. The highlighting of cultural and
individual diversity in the transmission of meanings is the theoretical premise of the whole Steiner's
work. This diversity flows in a speech that makes possible a radical questioning of the concept of
truth and ontology, however, that speech is not an affirmation of the impossibility of understanding
and translating (which is continually avoided referring to the pragmatic dimension) but, as we have
pointed out, highlights the need for constant problematization.

32 F. Nietzsche, Le Gai Savoir, Gallimard, Paris, 1967

33 A. Berman, L'épreuve de l'étranger, Gallimard, Saint-Amand, 1984, p. 16
34 M.Heidegger, Principio di ragione, cit. in A. Berman, op. cit., p. 227..
35 Ivi
 «This study began by trying to show that translation proper, [...] is a special, heightened case, of the
process of communication and reception in any act of human speech. The fundamental
epistemological and liguistic problems implicit in inter-lingual translation are fundamental just
because they are already implicit in all intralingual discourse»39
However on this particular point we can contradict Steiner or, in a sense, we can lead to its natural
conclusion the process. His analysis starts on the basis of an enlarged theory of translation: «tout en
étant un cas particulier de communication interlinguistique, interculturelle et interlittéraire, la
traduction est aussi le modèle de tout processus de ce genre. [...] On peut dire que celle-ci occupe
une place analogue à celle du lagage au sein des autres systèmes de signe. [...] le language n'est en
un sens que un système de signes parmi d'autres; mais en un autre sens, c'est le systeme des
systèmes, celui qui permet d'interpreter tous les autres».37
Although, from an analytical point of view, Steiner's considerations would seem as impressive, in
some places theoretically unfounded, in search of an ethic of translation, this analysis opens the way
to the task that Antoine Berman, after a decade from the first edition of After Babel, gives the aim
for a theory of translation. Berman writes that such a theory has to «definir plus precisement cette
visée ethique, et par là sortir la traduction de son ghetto ideologique».38
The ability to create many different constructs around the same biological time and, more
specifically, the different categorizations of the concept of time or even the possibility of linguistic
projection through the use of hypothetical future time, possible evasion in worlds created by the
literary word, are examples of how, at both conscious and unconscious level, there is a poietic
potential of language. It's possible to communicate what is not in the immediate givenness. This
possibility of language is specifically human, and it is here suggested that, having developed from
biosociologic issues of survival, it has emancipated and became an important, totally free
possibility. This result contributed in a further development in the humanization of the same species
and conservation of social life: the aim to escape the asphyxial givenness of immediate reality, may
provide the key to understanding the function of linguistic diversity in biological evolution of man.
Re-evaluate the masking aspect of language is essential to an understanding of culture: the poietic
capacity of language, not only the possibility to say what is but what might be, allows us to
communicate "emotional local structures," to transpose what otherwise would be emptied and
crushed by the whole concept of truth that is nothing but a «fictive ideal of the courtroom or the
seminar of logic»39. Once again, disorders that generative theories exclude as matrices against
communication could be re-evaluated: the dialectic of otherness, which is the potential for
enunciation of otherness that every language possesses, is a defense mechanism, properly
understood not as a rudimentary "ability to misinform" to maintain its supremacy over the territory
by an ethnic group, but as an essential technique for the preservation of cultural and spiritual life of
the species.
So the chaos of language is not an element or a surface defect, it is not only creative and innovative
in the sense of transformational generative grammar. Language as a vital response then find its place
in our biological heritage as the main instrument of man's refusal to accept the world as it is. This
possibility brings us back to what we have defined symbolically as the second and final fall of man,
which occurred through the acquisition of such technology. Each linguistic expression, then, but
even more profound, every language is a particular type of vital response, a denial of determinism:
the interplay of conflicting and often contradictory elements constantly taking place in the language
is also its generative center. Thus highlighting the “inside” function of the language closely related
to training and experiential identity of the speaker and the ethnic group and the assumption that the

36 G. Steiner, p. 414
37 A. Berman, op. cit., p. 291
38 Ivi p. 17
39 G. Steiner, op.cit., p.220
word has not evolved solely for informational purposes, could result in a further step backwards for
the possibility to base a theory, broadly speaking, of translation. The contradictory nature of
instinctual centers of language, not susceptible to formalization, manifests itself dramatically in the
work of the translator, a work that becomes continuous transmutation and exemplification of the
unifying and separating nature of language and then continually living experiment, «the diacritical
externalization (mise en relief) of the language differences which test or, more often, concatenate
different possibilities or versions of being»40.
«To move between languages, to translate, even within restrictions of totality, is to experience the
almost bewildering bias of the human spirit towards freedom»41.The claim of allegiance, then, in a
work of translation, is rooted in specific ideological assumptions. The possibility to express the
alternative that emerges strongly in the comparison between languages, does not lead to a relativism
without end, but calls for the possibility of choosing a different order, and never definitively given.
This possibility is view with suspicion in a time when the standardization of communication
systems, and the rationalizing thrust which tends to disintegrate the regional realities, to dissipate
the wealth found in every manifestation of human genius, which is a language, culture or work of
the past. In conclusion, beyond the theoretical claims that Steiner's analysis can advance in the field
of applied linguistics, the last message into which the considerations we have analyzed end up can
be considered still present: we have to open up to Otherness in order to assure the survival of our
culture, we have to preserve the difference in order to preserve freedom. And here is perhaps the
true meaning of modern consciousness of translation: maximum requirement of" knowledge " to re-
supply a certain capacity of speaking of the language, a certain way of living and lucid defense of
Babel in time in the Tower-of-Multiple-Languages ??(ie the difference) is threatened.
The translation, therefore, is a comparison, an act of creative decentralization conscious of itself,
whose essence is to be openness, dialogue, mestizaje. This kind of translation requires an
overcoming of the metaphysical purpose that platonically, looks for a “real” beyond of natural
languages that is manifested as a threat, homogenisation imposed in the dream of a one-
dimensional rationality. «If we were lodged inside a single language skin or amid very few
languages ?, the inevitability of our organic subjection to death might well prove more suffocating
than it is»42 Here again, therefore, that question posed at the beginning: what has to tell us the myth
of Babel today? In all likelihood, the negative connotations that history has given to this enigmatic
text could be reversed by making a real symbolic reversal: the real problem of Babel is very simply
that of human individualisation. Our starting question finds in Steiner's analysis an evocative
response: humanity like languages ??is given only in the plural, is thus not the pidgin, the dream of
finding the lost single language, but the utopian horizon of Pentecost the conclusion of Babel. It is
not the aim of having an Esperanto or a planetarized English the only way to ensure the integration
of cultures: «the languages ??most of the bones of ancestors bind a community to the earth 21. The
ability of a community, to recognize in their own language is the first necessary step towards greater
openness: starting with the premise of an identity in order to fund in otherness. Translation is the
paradigm of this dialectical process. The Tower of differences must be preserved to protect the Self
and the Other that is just one thing: the possibility for relationship to exist.

40 G. Steiner, op. cit., p. 333

41 Ivi, p. 473
42 Ibidem