Article: Ricoeur and Berman, an encounter between hermeneutics and translation studies

Ricoeur and Berman, an encounter between hermeneutics and translation studies

Philosophy Today | February 1, 2012 | Lee, Hyang; Yun, Seong-Woo

This essay surveys commonalities and differences between Antoine Berman, a translation philosopher, and Paul Ricoeur, a hermeneutic philosopher, and thereby tries to discover where and how Translation Studies and hermeneutics might come into contact. Ricoeur and Berman are known as leading representatives of modern hermeneutics and modern Translation Studies, respectively. Ricoeur, however, takes translation as his last philosophical topic in the context of his research about the problematics of meaning, textual interpretation, Self-and-Other. On the other hand, Berman incorporates a variety of philosophers' thoughts on translation - such as Schleiermacher's, Benjamin's, Heidegger's, and Derrida's - into today's Translation Studies, and thereby develops philosophical reflections in Translation Studies that we can call translation philosophy, per se.