This volume presents selected papers from the second symposium on Translational Hermeneutics held at Cologne in 2013. Hermeneutics offers a way to understand understanding itself – how we apprehend and process meaning, and indeed go in search of it. To that extent, hermeneutics reveals its roots in the philosophy of language, given that the philosophy of language reflects deeply on the nature of human understanding and on how that understanding is enabled by the use of language. Historical embedding, factual knowledge and openness to new horizons of experience are the relevant topics here.
In the practical event of translating a text from one language to another, Translational Hermeneutics focuses on the translator’s holistic perspective in dealing with texts. It seeks to understand how a translator understands his or her own practice – how, that is, a translator apprehends the meaning that emerges in the nuanced back-and-forth negotiation translation involves, and how that meaning is inflected by the translator’s own subjectivity. Evidently, cultural differences are at stake, as too the rhetorical resources a translator relies upon, particularly in view of the expectations of an intended audience. Translational Hermeneutics also takes note of the way in which a translator often relies on his or her voice (and so-called inner ear), as when a translator queries whether a translation "sounds right", or "rings true".
Translational Hermeneutics works at the intersection of theory and practice. It seeks to clarify the relationship Translational Hermeneutics has with philosophical hermeneutics, and it also explores the viability of a hermeneutical method that could enhance the teaching of translation, a method that splices both hermeneutics and phenomenology, and which could, we hope, provide new ways to carry out research undertakings in the field of Translation Studies.
