Gained in Translation

Translation is probably the core idea in Flusser’s thought (Guldin Philosophieren zwischen den Sprachen, 2005).  He was never concerned with accuracy with respect to an “original”, though.  It is not about some sort of copying, and this is crucial, because if you think of it as copying, you can only think in terms of loss, inadequacy. But Flusser translated his own texts among the four languages he knew, sometimes back and forth, sometimes more than once, in order to “mine” his texts for new thoughts.  He described the process as a movement between different consciousnesses–all of them being his own, of course, but accessible through different languages.  It was an aspect of his creative work.

I’ve long suspected that learning something is creating something.  I don’t have any very solid basis for thinking so, beyond the pleasure both things provide.  It would be unusual to think of learning a language as creative, for example, but I’m sure it is.  Installing an existing linguistic system — with all the memory and experience embedded in it — in a different consciousness, one with a unique memory–skills, experience–has already created something new, and seems extremely likely to generate more new things.  But it wouldn’t be true of language alone.  I’m thrilled to learn the most basic concepts of computing, for example and perhaps such an improbable grafting of new tricks into old dogs is exactly the stuff of invention.

Surely it’s fair to describe such learning as  adjusting the terms of one consciousness to the possibilities of another.  And that  sounds like translation.