> "Of course, a lecturer should make the occasional historical
> remark, and it should be well founded. But it is not possible to
> acquire historical knowledge about the Renaissance authors without
> reading Italian, about the Baroque authors without Latin, about
> the 18th/19th century authors without French. And even for Peano
> we also need latine sine flexione. Every translation is already
> an interpretation. Second hand clothes may be acceptable; second
> hand knowledge is not."
Regarding translation, I certainly felt this way until I was about 35,
which is roughly when I realized that my detailed knowledge of the
nuances of English would never be equalled in my understanding of
other languages, no matter how much effort I devoted to it.
But I would point out to the author that reading in any language
including the original is already an interpretation. So what? Isn't
that why we read?
What you need to know to write sensibly about something depends
a good deal on your aims. Let me describe a somewhat
hypothetical case. What I have read of Plato in the original
amounts only to a few thousand lines, but the fact that I have
encountered most of the works in English at least allows me to
have some understanding of nineteenth-century debates
concerning certain aspects of the interpretation of Plato's
epistemology at that time -- which is a very subsidiary element of
my interests. A detailed knowledge of the Greek text wouldn't help
much in this case (I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice to have, mind
you), since my aim as an historian would not be to determine who
held a correct view about Plato, but rather to distinguish between
different views about Plato in a way that was relevant to the
interpretation I was making.
By contrast, if I were studying the practice of theoretical
mechanics in Germany in the 1860s I would regard it as relevant to
know the details of both the French and the German versions of
Poisson's textbook (for example) and to know who had read which
one (or which ones), and in which edition. And if I were writing a
book about nineteenth-century commentaries on Plato I would feel
that the time spent with the original would be time well-spent.
In short: people should go ahead and read translations. Of course
they should be aware that they may be tendentious or simply
wrong. Hence arguing based on translation is a risky business -
but isn't everything in which we are attempting to grasp the thought
of others?
**********************************************************
Tom Archibald
Head, Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics
Acadia University, Wolfville, N. S. B0P 1X0
Tel: 902-585-1475 Fax: 902-585-1074
email: Tom.Archibald@acadiau.ca
Home Page: http://ace.acadiau.ca/MATH/ARCHIBAL/archi1.htm