ABSTRACT
I met Naoki Sakai in 2002 at Cornell, at a seminar on visual culture. He was then member of a group of scholars discussing the object of a new discipline as well as the possibility of introducing it in the academic curriculum. A year and a half later I had the privilege of attending another ongoing seminar at the same University sponsored by the Society for the Humanities, its topic this time being translation. Again Professor Sakai was closely involved in its work. I have learned much from those extensive and animated discussions and, to my delight, have discovered things that, I dare say, point to a certain commonality, to what we seem to share. This is all the more exciting as we come from different cultural and academic backgrounds and as Professor Sakai’s experience, both professional and personal, is absolutely unique. What distinguishes him, however, is an inherent loyalty to the Other – be it another language, discourse or a different form of experience. Naoki Sakai is always willing to translate – and is engaged in this complicated activity. It is from him that we learn what translation implies – not as a technical or semiotic procedure, but as the very condition for retaining the trace of the Other. Professor Sakai’s seminal theory of translation is helpful in understanding non-linguistic phenomena, including the image. In the notes that follow I will try to combine the two themes that have initially brought us together, namely, visuality and translation, while sketching out a way of reading present-day visual data. I would like to offer these thoughts to Naoki Sakai.
