The task of the translator

Translation as transformation

pp. 10-21

in: Michael Thomas, The reception of Derrida, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006

Abstract

[F]or the notion of translation we would have to substitute a notion of transformation: a regulated transformation of one language by another, of one text by another. We will never have, and in fact have never had, to do with some ‘transport’ of pure signifieds from one language to another, or within one and the same language, that the signifying instrument would leave virgin and untouched. (POS, 20) Derrida’s comments on translation theory add an important new dimension to the translation and transformation of his own work, and to the conflict between the positive and negative understandings of deconstruction that have been mixed up in the process.