ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein can be of use to the translator who is reading the source text for translation. It examines Wittgenstein's stress on looking at phenomena, his notion of language-games, his notion of forms of life and how his work supports a descriptive approach to the source text. It applies insights from Wittgenstein to examples taken from poetry, theology and from non-literary texts. The chapter argues that to explore the concept of the form of life can help the translator who is reading for translation. It gives the source text an interlinear gloss, following good practice in translation studies, in order to enable an English-speaking reader without knowledge of Old High German to be able to work out. In the language-game of poetry translation, however, translators usually produce a target text that can also function independently of the source text as a poem.
