A Log Cabin Out of Stone: - Dartmouth College

An interesting example that I often find myself thinking about is the French
phrase “je ne sais quoi” which we use in English. In French it literally means “I do not
know what.” However, that’s not what the phrase means to us in English. When we say
something possesses a certain “je ne sais quoi” we don’t mean that we don’t know what it
possesses, we mean to say that it has an air of something pleasant, exotic, and rare. Or do
we even mean that? This translated phrase is retranslated for us. It is meant in our
language to remain distant. If we wanted to explain to a French person what the phrase
“je ne sais quoi” means to an American, we would have a very difficult time. Therefore,
to translate it, we would have to sacrifice the very aspect of the phrase that identifies it;
its power lies in its inaccessibility.
Range of Options
The next thing to do is choose a direction or a point of view. Schleiermacher lays
out two paths that the translator may take:
The true translator, who really wants to bring together these two entirely
separate persons, his author and his reader, and to assist the latter in
obtaining the most correct and complete understanding and enjoyment
possible of the former, without, however, forcing him out of the sphere of
his mother tongue—what paths are open to the translator for that
purpose?…Either the translator leaves the writer alone as much as possible
and moves the reader toward the writer, or he leaves the reader alone as
much as possible and moves the writer toward the reader. 5
He approaches the problem of translation as one in which the reader and the author are on
different ends; the goal is to find a meeting point. He goes on to explain that the first
option, leaving the writer alone and forcing the reader to the writer, would be translating
as conservatively as possible—paying close attention to the grammar, the lexical and
5 Schleiermacher, Friedrich “On the Different Methods of Translating” In Theories of Translation Ed.
Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1992). 42
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