Translation and Relativism

<strong>JNU Philosophy Colloquium</strong> a lecture by <strong>Barbara Cassin </strong> on<strong> Translation and Relativism</strong> I'll start from the Presocratic Poem of Parmenides' «On nature», paradigmatic for the occidental culture, to show how translation is in itself an interpretation, and depends on philology as well as on philosophy and literature. There is more than one good translation, and this sole fact puts into question the relationship between translation and the principle of non-contradiction as set up by Aristotle in his Metaphysics. But some translations are better than others, and this «better» - which is always a « better for », a kind of dedicated comparative - could be the mark of the relativity of translation. Barbara Cassin is director of research at the CNRS, previous director of the Léon Robin Center for Research on Ancient Thought, and President of the Administrative Board of the Collège International de Philosophie. Trained as a philosopher and philologist specializing in Ancient Greece, her research focuses on the relationship between philosophy and what is posited as not being philosophy: sophistic, rhetoric, literature. Chair :<strong> Franson Manjali</strong> Centre for Linguistics, SLL&amp;CS, JNU <strong>Date :</strong> <strong>1st February 2016</strong>