Abstract
The English translations of Piaget's work often miss qualities of his writing that distinguish his “organismic” model of psychology from more mechanistic models. This paper is a comparison of the English translations of Piaget's The Origins of Intelligence in Children and The Construction of the Real in the Child with the French originals. Three substantial differences between the French originals and the English translations are discussed: (a) many of Piaget's biological metaphors are altered in favor of more mechanistic ones, (b) some of Piaget's metaphors are entirely eliminated, and (c) Piaget uses metaphors to construct links between similar ideas. I conclude that the French originals offer more support for the assertion of Piaget's “organismic” model, and that the reader's understanding of Piaget is hindered by the exclusion of Piaget's metaphors from the English language texts.
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