German Translation Theory: Legacy and Relevance ANDR&Eacute

Journal of European Studies 

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German Translation Theory: Legacy and Relevance 

André Lefevere 

Journal of European Studies 1981 11: 9 

DOI: 10.1177/004724418101104102 

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German Translation Theory: Legacy and Relevance 

ANDR&Eacute; LEFEVERE 

University of Antwerp 

Luther’s reflections on his translation of the Bible stand at the beginning 

of a valuable collection of critical texts on literary translation, to which 

most of the great writers of German literature have contributed. With a 

few exceptions, these critical texts do not appear to enjoy a wide 

popularity in the Anglo-Saxon world, nor do most scholars of German 

literature seem able to call them to mind instantaneously. Yet most of the 

concepts contained in these texts tend to surface, with amazing regularity, 

in many recent discussions of literary translation. In the present paper I 

propose to summarise the main points made by German theorists and to 

briefly discuss their relevance for a theory of literary translation today. 

It is important to keep firmly in our mind that traditions do not arise, 

even though 

certain historians would like us to believe so. On the 

contrary: they are consciously shaped by a number of people who share 

the same, or at least anaiogous, goals over a number of years, decades, or 

even centuries. One must, therefore, be aware of the tradition as a 

tradition. Positions taken by certain theorists are given 

only when they are read in comparison, 

their full relevance 

or contrasted with statements 

made by their predecessors. Schleiermacher’s notorious maxim, that the 

translator should either leave the reader in peace and move the author 

towards him, or vice versa, appears first in Bodmer and then in Goethe, 

whereas Walter Benjamin’s essay &dquo;The Task of the Translator&dquo;, much 

of the ramifications of 

glorified of late in an Anglo-Saxon world ignorant 

the German tradition, turns out to be an elaboration of certain thoughts 

first found in Herder, Goethe, Schleiermacher and Schopenhauer. Simi- 

larly, German theorists of relatively minor stature, who happen 

to have 

written towards the end of the nineteenth century, often tind their way 

into English bibliographies on the subject, whereas their more profound 

and influential predecessors are as often urmitted, presumably because 

their work was published too long before a new interest in literary 

translation awoke in the last two decades of Victorian England. Bayard 

Quincey Morgan’s bibliography (in Brower’), for example, lists Tycho 

Mommscn, Cauer, Beyer, Fulda, but not Gottsched, Bodmer, Herder or 

even the Schlegel brothers. 



10 

The first point, or rather cluster of statements, we turn to is connected 

with that feature of theorizing on literary 

translation which has been 

declared irrelevant so often, and which is still what the layman sees as the 

central problem: the opposition between literal and free. 

Schopenhauer is primarily responsible for that &dquo;morbid respect 

for the 

text as a sacred object [which] condemns [the translator] to 

semi-sterility&dquo; . 

¿ With Schopenhauer the German tradition moves 

towards that atomization of the source text, which was anathema to the 

can still 

previous exponents of the tradition. Schopenhauer’s arguments 

be heard today, 

if we allow for certain variants: there is the theoretical 

impossibility of translation, there is the awesome grammatical perfection 

of classical languages which can never be rendered satisfactorily in others, 

and there is, above all, the concept of translation as an exercise to 

improve the translator’s mind and his powers of expression. Schopenhauer 

deflects the tradition from its interest in the improvement of langue 

to a new interest in the improvement of parole. This switch, which was 

soon to be called into question again by Willamowitz, succeeded, for a 

time, in channelling the whole tradition towards the kind of translation of 

that it is not 

translation&dquo; .’ 

It is also interesting to note, in this context, that the German theorists 

are quite free from the native-speaker syndrome which is, to my mind, 

responsible for the fact that many excellent translations do not get 

written: the syndrome which holds that &dquo;no more than a single language 

-the one we live and think in-can be fully alive for us&dquo;/ The fact that 

which we now say not that it &dquo;is impossible, only 

this is constantly empirically falsified has, unfortunately; not yet led to the 

theoretical collapse of this ideology. Both Gottsched and Schleiermacher 

readily admit that it is possible to translate well from one foreign language 

into another. They condemn the practice, however, not on linguistic but 

on ethical grounds: it is simply unpatriotic (Schleiermacher even uses the 

word &dquo;treason&dquo;) for a German to write in anything 

but German. 

What a literal translation does to the form of the source text is not yet a 

problem for Gottsched, whose concept of language was firmly grounded 

in Leibnizian speculation: as long as words are merely seen as expressions 

of ideas, sense must, of necessity, take precedence over form. Humboldt 

sounds a very modern note indeed when he points 

out that form is of the 

utmost importance for the shaping of a tradition in literature, and that 

forms are often introduced into national literatures by translators, whose 

original work, if they have ever produced any, is soon deservedly 

forgotten, whereas the form they have made available is taken over by 

better writers. This point is so important because it leads to the concept of 

literature as some kind of system of works linked to one another, and a 



system in which all links are important, not just the ones singled 

11 

out for 

their aesthetic or ethical merits. Humboldt’s profound insight was, 

however, overshadowed for a long time by August Wilhelm Schlegel’s 

fanatical insistence on the unalterability of form. Just as Schopenhauer is 

responsible for many literal translations, just so A. W. Schlegel must take 

the responsibility for many metrical translations. 

For a time-and linked to a certain time-some exponents of the 

German tradition occupied a third position, somewhere between that 

symbolized by Luther and that symbolized by Schopenhauer. Breitinger 

was the first to point out that readers of translations (in the eighteenth 

century) were not necessarily readers who could not read the original, but 

that part of the pleasure of reading derived from the fact that the reader 

was able to compare original and translation. Breitinger’s cultivated 

reader is a vanishing breed in our time, but he represented a large enough 

group still to give Schleiermacher the idea that since a cultivated reader is 

able to read books in various languages, and therefore to appreciate the 

differences between various languages, he should not be deprived of this 

pleasure when he is reading translations from languages he does not 

know. In other words, since a Spanish original sounds different from a 

Greek one, the translations too should sound different, in their linguistic 

dimension. The translator must, in other words, create some kind of sublanguage, 

on the basis of German, but in which certain Spanish-like 

characteristics should be visible. He will, of course, have to create another 

kind of sub-language for translations from Greek, and so on. In effect, we 

are faced here with a not-illogical and very spirited defence of what we 

now know as &dquo;translationese&dquo; or, with another phrase: &dquo;static 

equivalence&dquo;, and which is still very much with us, in spite of the fact that 

most theoreticians would now subscribe to the concept of dynamic 

equivalence, which ‘ ‘aims at complete naturalness of expression 

to relate the receptor 

his own culture&dquo; .5 ’J 

and tries 

to modes of behaviour relevant within the context of 

Undeterred by translationese, Schleiermacher went on to sketch an 

ideal situation, which brings us to our second cluster of statements: that of 

the German language, or rather its different varieties of German-based 

translationese, as the repository of world literature. Since the Germans 

translate best, the reasoning goes, they should translate everything so that 

foreigners who learn German would not only have access to German 

literature itself, but also, through the medium of the German language, to 

world-literature. Let us, before we are tempted to smile at so much 

naivety, pause to reflect that a situation close to that ideal has now, in 

effect, been reached, only not in German, but in both English and 

Russian. 



12 

Schleiermacher still thinks of translation as something that can be 

taught, as opposed to Gerstenberg, whose &dquo;conception 

successful translation reads: ’One must be steeped in the spirit 

of the basis of a 

of the 

original, one must be a creative writer oneself.’ With this requirement 

Gerstenberg removes translation from the realm of the teachable, for 

poetry, which should be the basis of translation, cannot be taught any 

longer&dquo;h-at least not in Romantic literary theory. It is easy to see how 

as the Romantic 

Gerstenberg paved the way for Schopenhauer, just 

critical concept of the genius militated against a wider acceptance of 

Humboldt’s idea of the systemic 

nature of literature, whose evolution is to 

a great extent defined by the way in which people who process texts 

introduce new devices. Schopenhauer’s switch to parole was also prepared 

by the concept propagated by younger Romantic critics of &dquo;an independent 

German literature, which creates its own standards, and which 

no longer needs models and examples&dquo; .’ 

7 

The responsibility of the translator in the actual shaping of the canon of 

world-literature was first pointed out by Lessing, who also warned of the 

harm bad translators can do. A. W. Schlegel himself could have written 

that &dquo;the universal validity of a writer depends to no small extent on 

whether there exist excellent translations of his work into other 

languages&dquo;.,’ 

Ii 

Goethe goes one step beyond this: he calls for a kind of clearing-house, 

which would determine what translations are needed, and commission 

texts in 

them. In other words, the power of those who translate (or process 

other ways) is explicitly recognised, but the full implications of the part 

they play in the evolution and interpenetration of literatures are not 

realised. It is also important 

beginning to be thought of as something 

to note that the canon of world-literature is 

that can be-and should 

be-very consciously shaped, not left to chance. Finally, the enormous 

heuristic value of translations is explicitly recognised-not just in terms of 

the production, but also in terms of the study of literature. Needless to 

say, for both Goethe and A. W. Schlegel world-literature is exactly that, 

not what it has since, unfortunately, in eflect come to mean: the 

literatures of Western Europe and the Americas as a firm core, 

surrounded by various &dquo;exotic&dquo; literatures which are now and then 

brought to the attention of the reading public in Western European and 

North American bookshops in translations often characterised by the 

same &dquo;morbid respect for the text as a sacred object&dquo; Schopenhauer 

insisted Oil for translations from the classical languages of Western 

Europe. 

S< hlt’it’lll1.l( 11

the most quoted statements ever in the theory of literary 

13 

translation. It 

surfaces again-unacknowledged and in a slightly different guise-in the 

following recent statement: &dquo;Decentring is a textual relationship between 

two texts in two languages-cultures, which penelrates into the linguistic 

structure of the language, which is a component of the system of the text. 

Annexation is the obliteration of this relationship, the illusion of the 

was written in the 

natural, the as-if; as if a text in the source language 

receptor language, and as if all differences of culture, epoch and linguistic 

structure had been wiped out.&dquo;&dquo; As I pointed out before, the first 

formulation of this apodictum is not to be found in Schleiermacher 

himself. Goethe says something similar, but the real credit should be 

&dquo;between the 

given to Bodmer, who was the first to clearly distinguish 

one manner of translating, the interpretation of thought, of content, 

whose goal was the clare et distincte percapi which is most easily reached by 

mean> of the linguistic devices of the receiving reader, and the other 

manner which is directed towards the formal and individual charac- 

teristics of the original, which can be captured only by 

precision and the adaptation of one’s own linguistic 

means of utter 

devices to what is 

foreign&dquo; In other words, Bodmer has been the first theoretician of 

literary translation to put his finger on the central problem of the theory, 

which is by no means solved tod4y. 

It remains, in the context of this cluster, to point to the different 

orientation Goethe has given to the theory of literary translation in 

general, simply by bypassing the vexed question of whether or not one 

can formulate rules for the production of good translations, and by 

insisting that the successful functioning of a certain type 

depends mainly on whether or not it is able to integrate 

of translation 

itself in the level 

of reciprocity and understanding relationships between two cultures at a 

given moment in time. Or, in modern parlance: &dquo;That the choice of 

authors and works to be translated is typologically defined shows very 

clearly in such periods of the historical evolution of different national 

literatures, in which certain deviations from the valid esthetic norm arise, 

in which two poetics, for example, succeed each other, and which are 

often designated as moments of crisis. The search for the right impulses in 

the literary evolution of another national literature is especially topical in 

such periods and leads consequently to an increase in translation 

activity.&dquo;&dquo; 

In modern theorizing this corresponds to a shift away from 

to research into the 

research into the process of translation (the rules) 

parts the products of translation (the actual texts that have been 

processed) play in the receptor system, it also leads to an intensification of 

research into the importance that should be attached to processed literary 

texts within literary theory as a whole. 



14 

A third concept to be discussed, rather more briefly than the others, is 

that of the so-called third language phenomenon in translating, by which 

is meant that the translator creates a language which is no longer that of 

the source culture, but which is also not that of the target culture. Rather, 

it is a language in which both the others meet, usually as a result of the 

target language having been more-or-less systematically forced into the 

mould of the source language. 

This concept is, in effect, the hybrid offspring of two philosophical 

traditions. On the one hand we must go back, once again, to Leibniz and 

the idea that words are so many signs for concepts, so many counters as it 

were, and therefore easily interchangeable. Schopenhauer goes one step 

beyond this: since languages are, in essence, the repositories of concepts, 

it follows that comparisons between different languages will, eventually, 

lead to the liberation of pure concepts from the captivity they are held in 

by various languages. On the other hand we must turn to Herder, for 

whom the spirit of the infinite revealed itself in all languages, 

and can 

therefore to be said to exist beyond languages, and who consciously 

widened the familiar concept of improving the German language to 

include the technique of linguistic imports. He is no longer satisfied with 

paraphrases or loan-translations, he is definitely prepared to wrench the 

target language into the mould of the source language, if the result is 

likely to be an enrichment of the expressive powers of that target 

language. Under the influence of the Kabbalah, Walter Benjamin has 

of the 

elaborated on the two traditions mentioned above. The object 

exercise is now no longer the liberation of concepts or even the improvement 

of language, but quite simply the freeing of the pure language itself 

from the bondage in which it is held by the great variety of existing 

natural languages. 

A fourth and final cluster has to do with the relationship between translation 

and the rest of literary studies. Gottsched was the first to grasp the 

importance of translation as a critical tool. His call for comparative 

criticism of translations is still echoed today: &dquo;Comparatists are uniquely 

qualified to perform the important task of investigating the nature and 

accuracy of existing translations and that of gauging the degree of 

distortion introduced into literary criticism and literary theory by the use 

of such translations.&dquo; 12 Both Humboldt and Lessing distinguish between 

commentary and translation and make a point later rephrased as follows: 

&dquo;On condition that it tactfully applies the method of the explication of 

texts, the comparative study of translations allows us to make great 

headway in the analysis of the poet’s art, to isolate, in each poem, what 

partakes of prose and what of the gifts and conquests of poetry, to 

precisely state which parts of this poetry may be transmitted, which are 



lost in one language and saved in another. &dquo;1 Lessing 

this, but proceeds to state quite categorically that commentary 

15 

is not satisfied with 

is inferior 

to translation, a statement also made, albeit in a somewhat less categorical 

form, by Cermak, some two hundred years later: &dquo;As long as the 

translator is a real artist, his interpretation cannot become an empty game 

and neither can it destroy a poem-two dangers threatening theoretical 

interpreters. ’ ’ 14 

The final logical step along this path is taken by the brothers Schlegel. 

Friedrich sees criticism and the study of literature as peripheral, the 

translation of literature on the other hand as a central activity in the life of 

whoever concerns himself with literature. August Wilhelm represents the 

impersonation of this thought, &dquo;the thinking of which requires some 

courage: the task of the critical scholar of literature is not just that of 

collecting and transmitting critical insight; 

rather he should-this seems 

to be the most important task Schlegel implies-test and prove his critical 

insight in scientifically exact translations. Recreation through translation 

and critical analysis of poetic works share a hermeneutic relationship 

which is, with Schlegel, by no means a ci,culus vitiosus, but rather the basis 

of all historical insight. The union of translator and literary scientist, of 

recreative artist and universally educated scholar, is valid even today as 

an ideal requirement.&dquo;,’ Even though, it might be added, the consensus 

of theorists in the field is only reluctantly beginning to admit this still 

somewhat unpalatable fact, which is still decried as heresy in wider circles 

of literary scholarship. And yet it remains a fact that I can really introduce 

a work into world-literature only by translating it into English or Russian 

(at the present moment), not bv writing learned articles on it in either 

English or Russian and leaving the work itself untranslated. As so often, 

the obvious is the most difficult to face or, to allow myself a paraphrase, 

for a change: &dquo;humanities cannot bear too much translation&dquo;, for various 

reasons, none of which is too scientific in nature. Prejudice shores up 

prestige, as usual, and both rest, relatively serene, on a hard rock of 

ignorance. 

It will come as no surprise that neither Lessing nor Humboldt saw any 

difference at all between the translator and the creative writer in his own 

right, that other relatively recent fabrication of translation theory. 

Novalis goes even further than this: both the original and the translation 

are merely approximations to an ideal. To put it in modern parlance once 

again: &dquo;Only a writer is a translator, and whether translation constitutes 

the whole of his writing, or whether it is integrated into the rest of his 

work, he is that creator who could not be perceived by an idealization of 

cremation. 

Finally, a few words about the most original insight 


jes.sagepub.com by guest on February 18, 2013 

the German

16 

tradition has produced: 

that all human behaviour is a form of translation. 

Schleiermacher’s point that translation also happens inside the same 

language, between individuals and social classes, that it does not 

necessarily imply interaction between two languages, is only a weak 

some modern 

formulation of this insight, even though it prefigures 

thinking on the way in which texts are processed 

to suit various situations. 

It is taken over in modern parlance as follows: &dquo;Any model of communication 

is at the same time a model of trans-lation, of a vertical or 

horizontal transfer of significance. No two historical epochs, no two social 

the same 

classes, no two localities use words and syntax to signify exactly 

things, to send identical signals 

two human beings. ’ ’ 17 

&dquo; 

of valuation and inference. Neither do 

At the end of this paper I would like to draw two conclusions, one 

negative and one positive. Or rather, the negative conclusion can be 

the reader himself: we do not know what has been done. This 

can easily be remedied, especially since a collection of the main writings 

on literary translation in the German tradition is now available in 

inferred by 

English.’&dquo; The positive conclusion must, paradoxically, 

start from a 

negative statement, namely that nothing much that is new has been said 

in the theory of literary translation after the heydays 

of German 

Romanticism. And since I hope to have shown how pervasive the 

influence of the German tradition is, I hope I shall be forgiven for 

generalizing the following quotation: &dquo;I would like to voice the suspicion 

that the stagnation of German translation theory [read: translation theory 

in general] after the Romantic era should essentially be blamed on the fact 

that the eonnections between translation and criticism, which the brothers 

Schlegel had focused on for the first time, were lost sight of. &dquo;1’1 

of this disconnection 

The most concrete and pernicious consequence 

can be seen in the educational system of many countries, where one 

studies literary theory, among other serious matters, at universities, 

whereas translation is taught at &dquo;specialized institutions&dquo;, just as 

beauticians, mechanics and electricians are also given their training in 

specialized institutions. Only if we restore to the theory and practice of 

literary translation, to the theory and practice of the processing of literary 

texts in general, the place it should rightfully occupy inside a theory of 

literature, will we be able to overcome the stagnation described above. 

REFERENCES 

All quotations from French and German have been translated by the author. 

1. R. A. Brower (ed ), On Translation (New York, 1966). 

2. C. Pichois and A. M. Rousseau, La Littérature Comparée (Paris, 1967), 160. 

3. O. Paz, "The Literal and the Literary", Times Literary Supplement, 25 September 

1970, p. 1019. 



4. H. Gifford, Comparative 

Literature (London, 1969), 45. 

5. E. A. Nida, Towards a Science of Translating (Leiden, 1964), 159. 

6. T. Huber, Studien zur Theorie des Übersetzens im Zeitalter der deutschen Aufklarung 

(Meisenheim am Glan, 1968), 95. 

7. Ibid. , 99. 

8. A. Closs, "The Art of Translating", German Life and Letters 

, xxii (1968-69), 

17 

210 - 19, 

p. 211. 

9. H. Meschonnic, Pour la Poétique (Paris, 1973), 308. 

10. A Senger, Deutsche Ubersetzungstheorie im 18 Jahrhundert (Bonn, 1971), 68. 

11 D. Durisin, Vergleichende Literaturforschung (Berlin, 1972), 67 

12 S. Prawer, Comparative Literary Studies (London, 1973), 82. 

13. Etiemble, Comparaison n’est pas Raison (Paris. 1963), 95-96. 

14. J. S Holmes (ed.), The Nature of Translation (The Hague, 1970), 42. 

15. A Huvssen Die fruhromantische Konzeptio n von Ubersetzung und Aneignung (Zurich, 

1969), 120 

16. Meschonnic, Pour la Poetique, 354 

17 G Steiner, After Babel (London, 1975), 45 

18. A. Lefevere, Translating Literature The German Tradition (Assen, 1977). 

19. Huyssen, op cit (ref. 15), 111.

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