Philosophy’s Treason

"Philosophy’s Treason" not only eloquently shows how translation works within Western philosophical discourse, but it does so while opening a much-needed dialogue with translation studies as an academic discipline. The poststructural thus connects with both the empirical and the experiential, drawing on the reason of those who have actually translated philosophy.

Prof. Anthony Pym

The University of Melbourne

[...] Whether discussing untranslatability, the translator’s invisibility, or postcoloniality, translation theorists’ application of the hermeneutics of suspicion typically involves moving even further to the margin and exterior of the given agent, discourse, or – in this case – book than has already been done. If hermeneutic translation theory were a branch of cosmology, it would study the contours around the universe. As Robinson points out, translation functions precisely on the border between agency and non-agency since a translator can almost always disguise an ideologically inflected decision as a norm-abiding attempt at fluency or at closeness to the source text. This clever closing move by one of the mages of contemporary translation theory would be enough to recommend the purchase of this slim volume for your library

Extract from book review appearing on the journal 'Translation Studies', 19 Apr 2021. Reviewer: Spencer Hawkins (University of Mainz, Germany)