Art Historical and Anthropological Translation: Some Notes and Recollections

Abstract

This article is the outcome of a panel discussion on the interface between translation and art history, held at the annual conference of the College Art Association in 2011. Drawing on his experiences as a translator and as Editor of Res, Pellizzi proposes that an “anthropological condition” and a concern for the “untranslatable” can be found in art history. For the translation of literary texts, he suggests, the translator needs to belong to the language-culture into which s/he is translating. For the translation of scholarly, critical, and philosophical texts, however, knowledge of the cultural-intellectual and historical-temporal context of the original text is vital. In the latter case, it is advantageous for the translator to translate from his/her own into the target language in order to avoid the kind of simplification of the source text that characterizes run-of-the-mill translations of scholarly texts. Drawing on Nabokov, Borges, Malinkowski, and Derrida, Pellizzi emphasizes the importance of the gap between the intellectual world of the author and that of the translator.