Translation as an Ethical Paradigm in the Work of Paul Ricoeur

Angelo Bottone
(University College Dublin)

In his most recent works Paul Ricoeur examines the work of alterity in the heart of selfhood. He specifically deals with the
question of translation in some discourses and short articles published only very recently, in 2001 in Italy and in 2004 in
France. An English collection of them will appear in 2006. Translation is for him not only a linguistic but also a philosophical
issue, in as far as it concerns problems of identity and otherness.

Ricoeur begins with the recognition of a clear but fundamental matter of fact: there are many languages and science cannot
give any plausible explanation of it. The plurality of language is a clear rejection of any attempt to explain human evolution in
term of utility. Plurality is useless, he says. If the purpose of language is communication, then the number of languages is an
obstacle to its own purpose. There is no instantaneous intelligibility between human beings speaking, writing and reading
different languages and from this peculiarity of human condition arises the need for translation.
Ricoeur wants to provide an optimistic reading of plurality, holding that these characteristics of language express the essential
plurality of humanity: as language exists only in the plurality of languages, so humanity as well exists only in the plurality of
cultures. The plurality of languages has raised discussions among scholars, and their different points of views can be gathered
in two distinct groups of thoughts, in two opposite poles that paradoxically lead to the same conclusion: the impossibility of
translation, the intranslatability. On one side, we have the idea that diversity expresses a radical heterogeneity and translation is
theoretically impossible because languages are a priori untranslatable. This idea of a radical heterogeneity is a result of those
ethno-linguists like Whorf and Sapir who deny the overlap of different linguistic systems. Every language, they hold, maps the
world differently therefore different visions cannot be compared. On the other side we have the opinion that translation is only
possible because languages have a common ground. Historically this idea of common ground in every language has led the
search for a original and lost language (gnosticism, Kabbalah, pure language in Walter Benjamin), or to the reconstruction of a
universal language and of its transcendental structures.
The tentative idea of a universal language has a long history1 and has its equivalent in modern linguistics in the great project of
Noam Chomskys Generational Grammar. Ricoeur recognises some partial results from Generational Grammar on the
syntactical level, but its complete failure on the lexical and phonological level. All these attempts for an original or a universal
language are destined to fail, he believes, because of the very way the language works: these models presuppose a lexicon of
basic ideas expressing complete correspondence between sign and thing, between language and the world. The problem is that

there is no agreement among scholars on such a set of basic ideas. Furthermore, a second big problem is how to derive a
natural language from a perfect one.
If this is the case, that there is no original or universal language, then there cannot be translation but in spite of the
heterogeneity of languages there are and there always have been bilingualists, polyglots, interpreters and translators, Ricoeur
reminds us. Translation is a reality, despite any theoretical impossibility. Ricoeur maintains that we should give up the
dangerous alternative translatable/untranslatable and assume the task of translation with sobriety: translation can be possible.
He believes that what leads us is something more than the mere need or utility. We dont translate just because it is useful or
because we need it, we harbour a desire for translation. The wish to discover our own language and its resources is maybe one
of the reasons for this desire.
Borrowing his terminology from psychoanalysis, Ricoeur compares the task of the translator to the twofold Freudian concept
of the task of remembering (souvenir) and the task of mourning (deuil). As in psychoanalysis, the patient meets resistance in
his remembering, this resistance being a special instance of the egos defensive efforts, so the translator finds resistance to his
desire to translate, in both the target and the source languages.
Resistance from the side of the target language has the form of ethnocentrism and cultural hegemony, according to which
dominant cultures have determined that they have nothing to gain from inferior cultures. Translation wields enormous power in
constructing representations of foreign cultures and the foreigner, in the case of resistance from target language, is here
perceived as a threat to identity. Ethnocentrism resists the desire of translation not only by refusing it, as Ricoeur says, but I
would add also in misunderstanding, distorting and censoring.
On the side of the source language, resistance also has various forms. Ricoeur presents a dramatization of the work of the
translator, a sort of narrative in which the myth of the perfect translation prevents him from succeeding at different stages: at
the beginning, when the text seems to be an insurmountable inert mass, during his task, when zones of untranslatability are
found everywhere, and at the end, when the translator is not sure of his achievement and he has no other way to improve it
besides translating once again.
Once the task of remembering is complete, mourning occurs. Why mourning? Because we need to recognise and accept that in
translation something is lost, but the acceptance of this deficiency, is the only way to proceed. Abandoning the dream of a
perfect translation means to admit the insurmountable difference between the self and the foreign. It is recognition of a
residual, lasting alterity.
We can see here a characteristic of Ricoeurs philosophy: the acceptance of the limits. Difficulties and impossibilities are
unbearable only for an absolute conception of philosophy. On the contrary Ricoeur proposes a philosophy without absolutes, in
between the exaltation and humiliation of the subject. We could say that the failure to reproduce the original in its totality
guarantees the essential humanity of the translators undertaking. Ricoeur underlines the fact that we really need to feel this
lack of an absolute to accept the difference. We need to pass through the work of mourning. The happiness of translation lies

exactly in the acceptance of equivalence without adequacy. The only reasonable horizon for the desire for translation is the
insurmountable dialogical statute of the act of translating. In translation a dialogue take place, where two different subjects
meet. It is only through the acceptance of the irreducibility of the foreigner to the self that the translator can find his happiness,
happiness in what Ricoeur calls linguistic hospitality, where the two entities are not cancelled. The other is not completely
absorbed or forgotten and the host satisfies his desire for translation experiencing the pleasure of receiving the guest in his own
language. In this perspective translating becomes an ethical problem: how to practice linguistic hospitality. Moreover, Ricoeur
presents the work of the translator as a model for other forms of hospitality.
Ricoeur includes in his reflections all kinds of translation. He agrees with George Steiner who in After Babel maintains that
every act of communication is a translation. 2 Translation, in this broad sense, is synonym of interpretation of every signifying
set inside the same linguistic community. So reflections on translation give lights upon interpretation, translation makes
implicit aspects of language explicit. Ricoeur holds that the reasons for a bad comprehension are the same as the distance
between a perfect language and a living one. A characteristic of every natural language is that it is always possible to say
something in another way.; when we try to say the same thing in different words to explain what we mean, we meet all the
difficulties of a translation from a foreign language. The intralingual translation has similarities with the interlingual one. The
translator says the same thing in another way, in a different way; so does anyone who needs to give explanation. We find here
again the dialectic of the self and the other, not between two languages but inside the same one. Even inside the same
community, comprehension needs at least two interlocutors that are not strangers but others. Moreover, all cultures and
languages are hybrid, mixed or creolised.
It is good to remember that in his work Oneself as Another Ricoeur considers the other not only to be any other man but all the
possible form of alterity that the self meets: its own body, its conscience. And now we can say language also. Translating, in
every one of the three possible sense, is an experience of alterity.

Ricoeur presents some instances of practical application of translation as an ethical paradigm. One example is the ecumenical
dialogue between Christian churches. He proposes to consider different religious confessions as foreign languages, one foreign
to another, every one with its own vocabulary, grammar, rhetoric and style. In October 1999 the Catholic Church and the World
Lutheran Federation reached an historic agreement on the issue of Justification. Undersigning a Joint Declaration on the
Doctrine of Justification they stated that the past condemnations issued by both churches no longer apply to their actual
teachings. Ricoeur takes this agreement as a positive example of the paradigm of translation. He considers the two Christian
confessions as two constellations of sense, a kind of linguistic totality. They are languages with their own internal rules of
interpretation, foreign languages for the one who is not within. The task of the ecumenical dialogue is precisely to say in
each of the confession languages what it is already said in the other confession language, i.e. to translate believes from one to
another. There cannot be an absolute translation; if this were the case there would no longer be differences but perfect

concurrence. And there will always be points on intranslatability, that is why in spite of the agreement the Catholic Church and
the World Lutheran Federation are still two separate identities, but the wish to move inside the other languages sphere of sense
and the desire to host the discourse of the other into their own has led these two Churches to a fruitful dialogue and to some
sort of convergence.
Another example of the use of the model of translation can be found in the lecture Quel thos nouveau pour lEurope? where
Ricoeur reflects upon the process of European integration. Translation can be a paradigm of integration as language is never a
closed model that excludes communication. Translatability is a condition of communication; it is what makes it possible, even
if always in a fallible way. We have in Europe a plurality of languages, reflecting the pluralities of histories, cultures, and
traditions. The only possible form of universalism is not a unique language, which would hardly be accepted by all peoples, but
the practice of translation that respects differences and identities recognizing their value. 3 On the institutional level this means
to promote the study of the living European languages, while on the more broad cultural level it implies the extension of the
spirit of translation to the relationship between the cultures themselves. As language, conceived as a universal phenomenon,
exists only in the plurality of languages, so humanity as well exists only in the plurality of cultures.
This model of translation ties in with the model of the sharing of memories: there is not only the past but there are pasts and a
common European history has to be written through a slow and hard process of narration. If the identity of a group is not fixed
but narrative, as Ricoeur maintains, to repeat at the cultural level the gesture or hospitality mentioned above, is to put ourselves
into listening to other peoples customs, fundamental beliefs, deepest convictions and try to express them in our own language;
to translate their stories and our stories.
Ricoeurs thoughts should be developed in a more detailed and cohesive way. I find some over-simplifications in his views,
perhaps due to the fact that he presents them not in the form of a comprehensive and exhaustive book but in some short
lectures, which should be integrated with his wider works. Identity is not irrevocably fixed but rather relational and we know
that relationships between cultures are not relationships between peers: we find among them power conflicts and hegemonies. I
will try to give just one example, taking into consideration Ricoeurs reflections on the process of European integration.
If we consider the minority languages in Europe, where minority in this instance is an expression of a relationship, not of
essence, then we will find that in their historical development, these languages tended to lose their identity, their own essence
was suppressed due to being overwhelmed by a dominant power. What would it entail for a minority speaker to practice
linguistic hospitality towards a dominant language? Is this akin to hosting a giant in a small room? We would have here an
asymmetrical relationship. Even accepting linguistic hospitality as a value, we need to reconcile it with other values, as for
instance legitimate and genuine defence of identity. To practice hospitality is not the same thing in a fortress as in a tent. The
guest has also obligations and one of these is respect. How do we ask respect from a dominant guest, from an invader?
Ricoeurs model does not solve difficulties; rather it gives us real examples of the complex practice of translation, from which
we can learn. Translation in a globalised world has the same difficulties and challenges of multicultural co-existence; what we

can learn from it are not only techniques but also its essential spirit, the underlying desire to share that drives the undertaking
of the task. As Ricoeur says: It is really a matter of living with the other in order to take that other to ones home as a guest.

Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Blthnaid Quinn for her ongoing care and support.

References
Cronin, M. 2003. Translation and Globalization. New York and London: Routledge.
Eco, U. 1997. The Search for the Perfect Language. Oxford: Blackwell.
Jakobson, R. 1971. Selected Writings. The Hague Paris: Mouton.
Lotman, Y. 2001. Universe of Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Ricoeur, P. 1992. Quel thos nouveau pour lEurope. In ed. P. Koslowski. Imaginer lEurope. Le march intrieur europen, tche culturelle
et conomique. Paris: Cerf. (English translation in ed. R. Kearney 1996. Paul Ricoeur The Hermeneutics of Action. London: SAGE.)
---. 1997. Dfi et bonheur de la traduction. (Lecture given on the occasion of conferring of the Prix de Traduction pour la promotion des
relations franco-allemandes, to the Institut Historique Allemand of Paris, on 15 April 1997.)
---. 1999. Le paradigme de la traduction. (An opening lecture given to the Facult de Thologie protestante de Paris, October 1998, later
published in Esprit 253:8-19.)
---. 2000. Du Concile de Trente au Colloque de Trente. (Lecture given at the conference Lutero e i linguaggi dellOccidente, Trento, 29-31
May 2000.)
---. 2001. La traduzione Una sfida etica. Brescia: Morcelliana. (It contains Italian versions of Ricoeur 1992, Ricoeur 1997, Ricoeur 1999 and
Ricoeur 2000)
---. 2003. Lintraducibile. Studium 5:669-676.
---. 2004. Sur la traduction. Paris: Bayard. (It contains Ricoeur 1997, Ricoeur 1999 and a French version of Ricoeur 2003).
Steiner, G. 1992. After Babel. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

1 See (Eco 1997).

2 Translation is formally and pragmatically implicit in every act of communication, in the emission and reception of each and every
mode of meaning, be it the widest semiotic sense or in more specifically verbal exchanges. To understand is to decipher. To hear
significance is to translate. Thus the essential structural and executive means and problems of the act of translation are fully present in
acts of speech, of writing, of pictorial encoding inside any given language. Translation between different languages is a particular
application of a configuration and model fundamental to human speech even where it is monoglot. (Steiner 1992, xii).
3 I find similarities between Paul Ricoeur and Michael Cronin when, for instance, Cronin affirms that to acknowledge the right to
separate linguistic existence is to give political effect to what is a cultural act of recognition and a powerful element in recognition is the
fact of translation. (Cronin 2003, 168)