“Self” and “Other”, Deforming Translation Tendencies and Untranslatability from Antoine Berman’s Perspective

Abstract

Translation has always been a space for the encounter of "self" and "other". Most of the French translation scholars and philosophers such as Jean-René Ladmiral, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Lévinas and even Paul Ricoeur have concerned themselves with these two concepts. One of the contemporary translation scholars who has based his translational approach upon these concepts is Antoine Berman. The present paper deals with the significant features of these two concepts within the frame of translation theories. Moreover, it briefly reviews what Berman has called “deforming translation tendencies”. The concepts of Self and Other lead us to “untranslatability”. The last section of this paper studies Mounin and Du Bellay's approaches.