LUCA ILLETTERATI
 is a Full Professor of Theoretical philosophy at the University of Padua and President of the Italian Society of Theoretical philosophy

SAŠA HRNJEZ is a Marie Curie researcher at the University of Padua and currently a visiting scholar at the Department of Contemporary Continental Philosophy, Institute of Philosophy

TRANSLATION AND ITS REFRAMING IN PHILOSOPHY

Since the 80s, we have witnessed a certain boom in translation theory and a proliferation of general theoretical interest towards translation. Some authors have spoken about a translational turn in the humanities, registering a tendency to move the category of translation beyond its traditional context and to place it at the very centre of the analysis of various cultural and social phenomena. On the other side, it can be argued that there has also been a certain political turn within translation studies, since translation is more and more approached through the lens of power relations and political strategies of inclusion/exclusion. What are the philosophical responses to these challenges and what can philosophy tell us about an apparently self-evident, and therefore often unthematized, activity such as translation? Can we claim a certain translational turn in philosophy as well? After various linguistic turns in the 20th century, is philosophy still able to provide new insights concerning language, but now from the point of view of translation? Although these questions can seem linked exclusively to the contemporary moment, the problem of translation is introduced by the history of Western philosophy itself. Historically speaking, translation was always an inherent aspect of conceptual production and the history of philosophy reveals itself as a nonlinear transmission of translations, as well as mistranslations. But how then can we explain the fact that translation still remains an insufficiently discussed and somewhat marginalized object of philosophical reflection? This seminar on translation and its reframing (a notion itself closely related with that of translation) within philosophy will address some questions regarding ontology, language, history, universality, community, which should bring us to the crucial question: what does it mean to translate?

The event is organized within TRANSPHILEUR project (Principal investigator: S. Hrnjez, Scientific supervision: Prof. Illetterati).
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 798275