Fellows

Translation in Philosophy: Heidegger’s Being and Time in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian Translations

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

We know the history of philosophy precisely by virtue of translation. When reading foreign philosophical texts in translation we often forget that we are reading translations, and treat them as if they were originals. A philosophical text relies per se on terminology transferred and translated from one language, context, culture, or philosophical tradition into another. In this way, it raises the claim to be translated into a different language, context, culture, and philosophical tradition. This question will be explored by analyzing translations of Heidegger’s Being and Time into Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian. In the process, one must keep in mind both the impact that translation has on the reception of a philosophical text in the target language and its role in the respective philosophical tradition. The connection between translation and philosophy will be examined by relying on a descriptive translation studies approach that departs from the notion that the investigation of translational phenomena should start from empirical fact, namely, from the translated text itself.

CV

Sabina Folnović-Jaitner studied philosophy and sociology at the University of Zagreb, where she graduated with the thesis Nicolaus Cusanus on Learned Ignorance. She began her doctoral research project in 2009 in Moscow at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Russian State University for Humanities, and is currently enrolled as a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Slavic Studies at the University of Vienna. From 2011-2012, she and Tatevik Gukasyan coordinated the project "Memories of the Chechen War." The aim of the project was to begin a process that would lead to an understanding of the consequences of the Chechen war in Russia. She is a freelance translator specialized in translating Russian philosophical texts into Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (recent translation: Avtonomova, Nataliya S. Knowledge and Translation. Zagreb: Disput, 2016). Her research interests are translation in philosophy, the politics of translation in reception, and the translation of war trauma and its role in coming to terms with the past.

Publications

with Tatevik Gukasyan, Last to Know: Stories of a War. Moscow, 2013; “Polozhenie yazyka i philosophskoe mishlenie v Horvatii v 90ich g. XX. v” [Language and Philosophical Thought in Croatia during the 1990s], in: Philosophia. Kultura. Istoria. Materialy mezhvuzovskoy konferencyi, Moscow, 2011, pp. 186-191; “Osobennosti perevoda philosophskogo teksta” [The Specificity of Translating the Philosophical Text], in: Yazyk philosophii: tradicii i novacii. Materialy mezhvuzovskoj konferencii, Moscow, 2010, pp.150-153.