ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that a historical approach to the question of untranslatability may be more fruitful than theoretical speculation. The practical need for translation in particular circumstances cuts across misgivings about translatability even in cases of early contacts between very different languages and cultures. These encounters initiate the process of creating cross-lingual equivalences thanks to, not despite, the entanglement of the participants in their own presuppositions and agendas. The chapter briefly explores three such encounters dating from the Early Modern period. In the European tradition, untranslatability was not raised as an issue until the Romantic period, and the chapter concludes with a discussion of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s near-engagement with the concept.
