DECONSTRUCTIONIST TRANSLATION THEORY: VISIBILITY OF DIFFÉRANCE

The paper focuses on the challenge deconstructivist theory constitutes for translation via an analysis of Derrida’s theory that revised not only the «violent hierarchy» of the ‘original – translation’ but also the keystones of translatability: equivalency, adequacy, formal correlation, etc., arguing that translation, in the conventional use of the term, is impossible. From the perspective of deconstruction it is viewed only as a powerful tool in unveiling the plurality of the text’s meaning that makes invisible différance visible. Untranslatability in Derrida’s use of the term does not imply that translators should not translate. It simply implies that it is impossible to produce the plurality of the source text in a translation. Derrrida, Paul de Man, Foucault, Jonathan Culler, J. Hillis Miller et al. criticize the traditional views of translation by eliminating equivalence from the purpose of the translation. The focus is on the complex set of relations between the two texts. The article investigates the issue providing explanations for new approaches to translational phenomena through discussion of Derridian ideas on the variation of meanings advocated in his resonant article «Des Tours de Babel». Derrida redefines translation, calling into question any approach as «reproduction», suggesting that translation can be viewed only as deferring the original text without any possibility to grasp what the original text aimed to tell. He argues that deconstruction and translation are phenomena of the same order and one cannot talk about the reproduction of what does not exist. Rather, there is a reason to talk about «unrepresentability.» The deconstructivists gave a fundamentally different dimension to the old translation problem, casting doubt on traditional theories, demonstrating the illusory nature of any attempt to find the meaning of how to read, interpret or translate.