ABSTRACT
This chapter makes the case that engagement with the philosophy of history can be of benefit for translation theorists and practising translators. It asks what is the philosophy of history, using Collinwood’s questions: ‘How do historians know? How do they come to apprehend the past?’. The key debate is how far the past can be discovered and how far reconstructed. Philosophy of history is, therefore, relevant because all texts must be read in history. The chapter illustrates how this might be done, by discussing the notion of applying philosophical tools outside philosophy and taking two philosophers as examples: Collingwood, a philosopher of history, who claimed that history must be imaginatively re-enacted by the historian, avoiding what he called the ‘scissors-and-paste’ approach; and Wittgenstein, a philosopher of language, whose tools for investigating language can support re-enactment by showing that we cannot point to facts but can intersubjectively point out facts. Philosophiszing about history can also help in the translation of older texts, and there is a case study of a recent translation of Neville’s 1575 Latin history of Norwich, Norvicus is used as a case study. The chapter sketches out areas for future interdisciplinary research: ethics –, because no translation history can ever be neutral; the poetics of translation history, – because stylistic choices are an integral part of any enquiry; the historicizsation of translation studies, which is a two-way process ,– because translation theory must be read in historical context using tools from the philosophy of history, while translators play an integral role in the dissemination of that philosophy.
