Paul Ricœur şi aventura traducătorului în epoca „După Babel”
Paul Ricœur and the Translator’s Adventure in the “After Babel” Era

Summary/Abstract: The „Babel” metaphor is one of the most fruitful sources of interpretation within a large palette of approaches. Theology, psychology, the linguistic narrative, all of them can pull a thread that can be exploited in every domain which is specific to their area of interest. Paul Ricœur introduces also another cultural beneficiary: the psychology of philosophical essence that he attributes to the translator. Using terms utilized in psychoanalysis, he talks about the instinct for translation – what could be named with a more familiar term, the call. In other words not anyone can attempt a translation, but only the one who possesses we could say, in his very genetic dowry, the capacity to translate. Even so, the translator’s situation is a disagreeable one – he is a mediator between the „foreigner”- the author and his/her work on one side and the reader on the other side. He is also a mediator between two languages which seldom reject each other. Here Ricœur utilizes another term, taken over from psychoanalysis, that is, the resistance. It is about the resistance of one language against the other one, but also, about the resistance met in the very process of the translation. The resistance of all kind can be annulled only by the translator’s capacity and will who must also get over the barrier/prejudice of the untranslatable text. For demonstrate this, the philosopher appeals to the Babel biblical event. Taking over Georg Steiner’ syntagm –“after Babel”, Ricœur places the modernity precisely in this moment, the moment of the results, of the negative effects. Starting from the Babel tower event, he re-establishes it but in an inverse sense. In its first design and intent, construction has the characteristic of a unifier of the world as a proud and demanding cooperation. Also, the direction is different from the later one. The speakers of a unique language try a new unification, the one of the Earth with Heaven. The effect is the collapse and confusion not only at the linguistic level, but on the all plans. Hence we have the resistance of all kinds which expresses in fact, the absence of understanding. In Ricœur’s opinion, the answer to the legendary hubris is given through translation and translator. He explains his statement by introducing some notions of philosophical essence: radiation cross, cultural-narrative identity, variation of the horizons as well as by the approach from the philosopher’s position, of some psychological concepts as memory and loss. In this texture, the pluralism and identity become equivalent, but not similar, in the context of translation. The semantic transfer from one language to another or from one culture to another one respects the originality of all the participants in this process. And this happens because, as there is no absolute translation, there is also no absolutely untranslatable. On the other hand, the direction of unification changes: what was vertical pride becomes an agreement between peers.

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