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The Vocabulaire takes as its unit of analysis the Untranslatable. Variously defined, it has been cast by the British philosopher Peter Osborne as that which refers to “the conceptual differences carried by the differences between languages, not in a pure form, but via the fractured histories of translation through which European philosophies have been constituted.” Barbara Cassin (CNRS), perhaps more geopolitically attuned, speaks of a “cartography of philosophical differences.” For others Untranslatablility is something embedded within each natural language and a condition shared by national languages. To compare “untranslatables,” is in this sense to compare aporia among languages. An Untranslatable might also be cast as something on the order of “an Incredible,” an Incontournable, an “Untouchable,” (translated as an “L’Incorruptible” in French). There is a quality of semiotic intransigence attached to the Untranslatable, making it more than just a garden-variety.

By publishing an English and American version of the Vocabulaire, for Princeton University Press in 2011, we would like to achieve eight major objectives that build on and somewhat diverge from those embodied in the French edition:

1. We see the book as a major contribution to new ways of thinking about philosophical translation. In this respect, the translational process, in which we are all engaged, is conceived of as a way of doing philosophy.

2. We hope to reinforce a philosophical/theoretical dimension in translation studies which has tended to emphasize literature.

3. We want to induce further the productive confrontation between Continental and Anglo-analytic traditions.

4. We are devising ways to enhance the volume's global framework. We hope the book, by virtue of appearing in English, will garner a strong reception in Asia, South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and become a model for future comparatisms.

5.We project that is English edition will extend the relationship between non-European philosophical traditions, while preserving the relay between Europe-non-Europe. To this end, for example, we are adding select entries dealing with Islamic thought. We are fortunate to have Ali Ben Maklouf contributing a new entry on “Sharia” and Bachir Diagne writing on terms like Ijtihad(اجتهاد ) from the verbal radical jhd meaning “to apply oneself to”, “to strive” and whose substantive jihād has also come to be used for “holy war”) and Qu’ran, referring to the action of recitation, reading and proclamation.

6. The French edition of the Vocabulaire was particularly thorough on Greek, medieval, and German Untranslatables, but there were some terms from "theory" parlance in a broader context that we felt had to be added. Some examples include: Jacques Lezra on sovereignty; Judith Butler on gender; Ben Kafka on Media and Mediality; Kevin McClaughlin on select terms marked by Walter Benjamin (Erleben, Erinnerung, Gedächtnis, Aura); Daniel Heller-Roazen on the biopolitical, the state of exception, and bare life (marked by Foucault and Giorgio Agamben), Robert Young on imperium and colonia; Suzanne Wofford on conscience; Immanuel Wallerstein on longue durée.

7. We hope to provide an example of how to use translation as a model of collaborative pedagogy. In addition to involving collective, multi-authored contributions, this book occasions reflection on how "the untranslatable" carries within it a philosophy of "languages together." What we find in this book, in a sense, is philosophy cast as a political theory of community, built up through the transference and distribution of irreducible, exceptional, semantic units. The places where languages touch reveal the limits of discrete national languages and traditions. We obtain glimpses of languages in paradoxically shared zones of non-national belonging, at the edge of mutual unintelligibility.

8. Ideally the book will encourage curricular initiatives in the form of courses, colloquia and cross-institutional degree programs. We believe that such initiatives might be particularly important for Comparative Literature as a field called to devise substantive ways of doing deep language work with a theoretical cast. Comparative Literature arguably derives its raison d’étre from the constant updating and revision of vocabularies of cultural reference; serving as a kind of self-translating machine of the humanities.

Emily APTER (NYU), Barbara CASSIN (CNRS), Jacques LEZRA (NYU)

Translation		Un-Translatable		back >
presentation	seminar	events	previously	in collaboration with
		A unique experiment in plurilingual philosophical philology The Vocabulaire takes as its unit of analysis the Untranslatable. Variously defined, it has been cast by the British philosopher Peter Osborne as that which refers to “the conceptual differences carried by the differences between languages, not in a pure form, but via the fractured histories of translation through which European philosophies have been constituted.” Barbara Cassin (CNRS), perhaps more geopolitically attuned, speaks of a “cartography of philosophical differences.” For others Untranslatablility is something embedded within each natural language and a condition shared by national languages. To compare “untranslatables,” is in this sense to compare aporia among languages. An Untranslatable might also be cast as something on the order of “an Incredible,” an Incontournable, an “Untouchable,” (translated as an “L’Incorruptible” in French). There is a quality of semiotic intransigence attached to the Untranslatable, making it more than just a garden-variety. By publishing an English and American version of the Vocabulaire, for Princeton University Press in 2011, we would like to achieve eight major objectives that build on and somewhat diverge from those embodied in the French edition: 1. We see the book as a major contribution to new ways of thinking about philosophical translation. In this respect, the translational process, in which we are all engaged, is conceived of as a way of doing philosophy. 2. We hope to reinforce a philosophical/theoretical dimension in translation studies which has tended to emphasize literature. 3. We want to induce further the productive confrontation between Continental and Anglo-analytic traditions. 4. We are devising ways to enhance the volume's global framework. We hope the book, by virtue of appearing in English, will garner a strong reception in Asia, South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and become a model for future comparatisms. 5.We project that is English edition will extend the relationship between non-European philosophical traditions, while preserving the relay between Europe-non-Europe. To this end, for example, we are adding select entries dealing with Islamic thought. We are fortunate to have Ali Ben Maklouf contributing a new entry on “Sharia” and Bachir Diagne writing on terms like Ijtihad(اجتهاد ) from the verbal radical jhd meaning “to apply oneself to”, “to strive” and whose substantive jihād has also come to be used for “holy war”) and Qu’ran, referring to the action of recitation, reading and proclamation. 6. The French edition of the Vocabulaire was particularly thorough on Greek, medieval, and German Untranslatables, but there were some terms from "theory" parlance in a broader context that we felt had to be added. Some examples include: Jacques Lezra on sovereignty; Judith Butler on gender; Ben Kafka on Media and Mediality; Kevin McClaughlin on select terms marked by Walter Benjamin (Erleben, Erinnerung, Gedächtnis, Aura); Daniel Heller-Roazen on the biopolitical, the state of exception, and bare life (marked by Foucault and Giorgio Agamben), Robert Young on imperium and colonia; Suzanne Wofford on conscience; Immanuel Wallerstein on longue durée. 7. We hope to provide an example of how to use translation as a model of collaborative pedagogy. In addition to involving collective, multi-authored contributions, this book occasions reflection on how "the untranslatable" carries within it a philosophy of "languages together." What we find in this book, in a sense, is philosophy cast as a political theory of community, built up through the transference and distribution of irreducible, exceptional, semantic units. The places where languages touch reveal the limits of discrete national languages and traditions. We obtain glimpses of languages in paradoxically shared zones of non-national belonging, at the edge of mutual unintelligibility. 8. Ideally the book will encourage curricular initiatives in the form of courses, colloquia and cross-institutional degree programs. We believe that such initiatives might be particularly important for Comparative Literature as a field called to devise substantive ways of doing deep language work with a theoretical cast. Comparative Literature arguably derives its raison d’étre from the constant updating and revision of vocabularies of cultural reference; serving as a kind of self-translating machine of the humanities. Emily APTER (NYU), Barbara CASSIN (CNRS), Jacques LEZRA (NYU)		Completed in 2003 and published by Le Seuil in 2004 (with support from the European Union), the Vocabulaire was hailed as “a major philosophical event, not only in France, but for European philosophies as a whole” (Peter Osborne, Radical Philosophy), and as the new “Lalande” (referring to the great Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie published between 1902 and 1923). Many of France’s, and indeed of Europe’s foremost philosophers collaborated. The result was a volume of 1500 pages that addressed the extraordinary diversity of vocabularies within the European tradition, and the great number of national languages in which the pursuit of philosophy had been undertaken.