The Task of the Translator, or, How to Speak to Martin Heidegger’s Texts

Abstract

Why are Martin Heidegger’s texts so difficult to translate? Several complicated answers might be given to this simple-seeming question. (1) Because Martin Heidegger’s texts employ a quirky, highly eccentric, idiosyncratic German dialect (Swabian? Friesian? Or maybe just Heideggerian?) that can’t easily be imitated (without risk of travesty or parody) in a comparable English dialect. (2) Because Martin Heidegger’s texts frequently rely on elaborate etymological word-play and elusive esoteric punning on Old High German words (Wahren, Walten, Wesen, etc.) or even contemporary German expressions (l ike the quintessentially Heideggerian Dasein/das Sein/das Sein des Seienden, etc.) which can’t be duplicated in the English lexicon. (3) Because Martin Heidegger’s texts frequently proceed by breaking down (“de-construct-ing,” ab-bauen) even the simplest German words (for example: bauen: Old High German buan, buri, buren, beuren, beuron, etc.) and twisting and distorting them (the essential meaning of one of Martin Heidegger’s favorite verbs: verwinden) to make them disclose strange meanings and obscure, unfamiliar senses previously un-heard of in those German words. After the controversy surrounding Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly’s notoriously unreadable translation of the Beitrage zur Philosophie, the contemporary translator might do well to contemplate these difficulties before embarking on the task of translating Martin’s Heidegger’s difficult texts. But the simple answer is: Martin Heidegger’s texts are difficult to translate because they’re difficult texts! even in the twentieth century German original in which they are written (which is obviously not Goethe’s German! naturlich!). And an English translation of Martin Heidegger’s difficult texts is bound to be as challenging, as difficult (and, sometimes, as obscure) as Martin Heidegger’s texts themselves. Which doesn’t mean that the contemporary translator should simply give up on the difficult texts as incomprehensible or un-translatable. But the translator should realize, in translating these difficult texts, it’s probably not possible to reduce them to a simple, straightforward, unequivocal translation; to a simple-minded crib or definitive gloss; or to what’s called, in the Western tradition of “Great Authors,” an authorized translation; even when that translation is authorized by the twentieth century’s Greatest Philosopher: Martin Heidegger himself. And so, because Martin Heidegger’s texts are difficult (beyond most texts) to translate, it’s maybe uncharitable to find fault with Andrew J. Mitchell’s translation of Martin Heidegger’s Bremen and Freiburg Lectures: Insight Into That Which Is and Basic Principles of Thinking. This is one of Heidegger’s most difficult collections because it contains some of his most inscrutable, elusive texts (like “Das Ding”) which carry his cryptical, elliptical word-play to strange heights (or depths?) of paradoxical simplicity and abstrusity (simple example: Das Ding dingt: the thing things) and, at the same time, also contains some of Martin Heidegger’s most directly political texts (like “Die Gefahr”), wherein Martin Heidegger (for maybe the only time after his brief controversial endorsement of the German National Socialist Party and its Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, in 1933) discusses diffi-