To browse Academia. George Steiner was a peerless scholar of literature and, with "After Babel", first published in , he made an enormously significant contribution to the study of translation. In doing so, they demonstrate that "After Babel" has not lost its power to galvanise contemporary research in translation and interpretation studies even today.
It is to be hoped that Steiner, who sadly passed away in February , would have appreciated this new collection of essays and received them as a sincere homage to his work. Published under the auspices of the "Hermeneutik und Kreativität" Research Centre based at the University of Leipzig, "Engaging with Translation. My admission alone that I had read it and found some of its contents interesting caused unease among my interviewees.
As a representative of traductology, one had to view such things with condescending distance. In the meantime, I have often taken Steiner's opus magnum off the bookshelf, not so much as an aid in questions of translation studies, but as a contribution to the history of translation and the history of the philosophy of language cf. The quotations from Heidegger, Borges and Meschonnic that precede After Babel show that George Steiner, in contrast to many a translatologist, is not afraid to translate himself -here from German, Spanish and French.
This impressive prelude is missing in Monika Plessner's German translation. Engaging with Translation. Steiner ist Tensing Norgay, der Sherpa, der jeden Weg und jeden Steg kennt, der uns ein Leben lang hilft zu begreifen, was wir tun, wenn wir zu denken, zu schreiben, zu singen versuchen.
Seit der »kulturellen Wende« in den er Jahren befindet sich auch die Literaturtheorie in einer anhaltenden Phase des semantischen Umbaus. Die »offene epistemologische Situation«, von der Gumbrecht und Pfeiffer Anfang der er Jahre sprachen, hat die deutsche Literaturwissenschaft zusätzlich in eine Legitimationskrise gestürzt. Der Blick richtet sich auf das »Kerngeschäft der Literaturwissenschaft« 8 , die Interpretation. This article attempts to start an interdisciplinary dialogue, dealing with the different approaches on translation coming from philosophy and translation studies.
