The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

Lost in translation?

Lost in translation?
Lost in translation?
According to neo-Russellianism, in a sentence such as John believes that Mont Blanc is 4000 m high, any other proper name co-referring with Mont Blanc can be substituted for it without any change in the proposition expressed. Prima facie, our practice of translation shows that this cannot be correct. We will then show that neo-Russellians have a way out of this problem, which consists in holding that actual translations are not a matter of semantics, but also make an attempt at preserving some pragmatic features of the sentences to be translated. We then turn to translations that only preserve the semantic characteristics of the sentences and we argue that, although these translations are unable to show that neo-Russellianism is incorrect, they still show that it relies on some theses that seem to have no justification, apart from saving neo-Russellianism itself.
0167-7411
265-276
Felappi, Giulia
9c0bc4c5-5547-434e-8bbd-0c785bece1bc
Santambrogio, Marco
cb075a55-4148-4187-bbdd-b6e0e081868f
Felappi, Giulia
9c0bc4c5-5547-434e-8bbd-0c785bece1bc
Santambrogio, Marco
cb075a55-4148-4187-bbdd-b6e0e081868f

Felappi, Giulia and Santambrogio, Marco (2019) Lost in translation? Topoi, 38 (2), 265-276. (doi:10.1007/s11245-016-9433-9).

Record type: Article

Abstract

According to neo-Russellianism, in a sentence such as John believes that Mont Blanc is 4000 m high, any other proper name co-referring with Mont Blanc can be substituted for it without any change in the proposition expressed. Prima facie, our practice of translation shows that this cannot be correct. We will then show that neo-Russellians have a way out of this problem, which consists in holding that actual translations are not a matter of semantics, but also make an attempt at preserving some pragmatic features of the sentences to be translated. We then turn to translations that only preserve the semantic characteristics of the sentences and we argue that, although these translations are unable to show that neo-Russellianism is incorrect, they still show that it relies on some theses that seem to have no justification, apart from saving neo-Russellianism itself.

Text
lost in translation.docx - Accepted Manuscript
Download (94kB)

More information

Accepted/In Press date: 6 October 2016
e-pub ahead of print date: 20 October 2016
Published date: June 2019
Organisations: Philosophy

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 401310
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/401310
ISSN: 0167-7411
PURE UUID: f30cdf09-3dae-4df8-af28-eff032528492
ORCID for Giulia Felappi: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-0110-6371

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 17 Oct 2016 08:09
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 05:57

Export record

Altmetrics

Contributors

Author: Giulia Felappi ORCID iD
Author: Marco Santambrogio

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×