Abstract

In her everyday work, the translator faces the multiplicity of languages, experiencing their irreducible diversity. Is this a condition of imperfection or something that can have a positive meaning? This question is the starting point for some reflections about the philosophical meaning of translation. What does the experience of translation teach us? In the wake of some authors who reflected on it – such as F. Schleiermacher and J. Ortega y Gasset -, we will consider how translation is an essential praxis in the development of cultures, which fosters their osmosis and above all allows them to become aware of their diversity. If, on one hand, to translate can be the symptom of a deep-rooted nationalism, on the other hand, it can be a way to prevent the totalitarian closure: translation, as Ortega said through a very beautiful metaphor, is “a voyage to the foreign.” The task of the translator has therefore a great political and cultural meaning: that of fostering such encountering, on the limit between identitarian closure and feeling of diversity