It's nice to be a native speaker of the world's dominant language, especially since I've never bothered to learn any other languages. However, there are problems with an intellectual monoculture. As physicist Freeman Dyson argued in the 1970s, maybe the Tower of Babel was, on the whole, a good thing. Lots of languages leads to lots of different cultures, which leads to different ideas and ways of doing things, some of which will turn out to be better than others, which can be adopted by others later.
It used to be that some Americans were interested in what was being published in foreign languages. But now we live in a world where Thilo Sarrazin or even Alexander Solzhenitsyn can't get published in America.
Of course, high quality translation is terribly difficult. For example, in the early 1970s, there was much interest in Solzhenitsyn's books, so there would be a large sale of the American translation. This led to people saying things like, "Well, he's a great man but he's not a great writer." A few years after the American translations, the superior British translations of Solzhenitsyn would appear in America in small editions, and it was pretty obvious that he was a great writer.
Thirty years ago, I knew a UCLA professor named Michael Henry Heim who played a small role in winning the Cold War by doing terrific, sexy translations of the exiled Czech dissident novelist Milan Kundera, such as The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. It certainly didn't hurt that at the climax of the Cold War in the 1980s perhaps the most fashionable writer in the world was an anti-Communist (which wouldn't have happened without Heim's quick, deft translations into English.) The 1988 movie of Unbearable Lightness proved that anti-Communists were as handsome as Daniel Day-Lewis and had Juliet Binoche and Lena Olin fighting over them. The next year, as you'll recall, the demoralized Communists just plain gave up.
Thirty years ago, I knew a UCLA professor named Michael Henry Heim who played a small role in winning the Cold War by doing terrific, sexy translations of the exiled Czech dissident novelist Milan Kundera, such as The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. It certainly didn't hurt that at the climax of the Cold War in the 1980s perhaps the most fashionable writer in the world was an anti-Communist (which wouldn't have happened without Heim's quick, deft translations into English.) The 1988 movie of Unbearable Lightness proved that anti-Communists were as handsome as Daniel Day-Lewis and had Juliet Binoche and Lena Olin fighting over them. The next year, as you'll recall, the demoralized Communists just plain gave up.
Professor Heim recently pointed out that these days younger academics in the modern languages seldom get publish-or-perish credit with their tenure committees for translations, even though it's hard to imagine that the original research they do instead is more valuable.
So, what I'm looking for are suggestions for important work from outside the Anglosphere in English (either reasonably well-translated or written in English by somebody from outside the Anglosphere).
For example, I believe there are one or two East Asian economists who have books out in English explaining why the economic theories that seem so indisputable to English-speakers are pretty much laughed at in the booming economies of the East.
Or, here's a contemporary German philosopher named Peter Sloterdijk. Anybody have an informed opinion on whether he's worth the effort?
More suggestions?
So, what I'm looking for are suggestions for important work from outside the Anglosphere in English (either reasonably well-translated or written in English by somebody from outside the Anglosphere).
For example, I believe there are one or two East Asian economists who have books out in English explaining why the economic theories that seem so indisputable to English-speakers are pretty much laughed at in the booming economies of the East.
Or, here's a contemporary German philosopher named Peter Sloterdijk. Anybody have an informed opinion on whether he's worth the effort?
More suggestions?
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206 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 206 of 206Severn:"Are you trying to parody somebody? The relentless use of "dear boy" suggests that you are. (Either that or you're trying to project the image of a simpering homosexual)"
And here I thought that I had been successful in coming across as a simpering homosexual...
Syon
Severn:"The white captain of the English national football (soccer) team was put on trial in a court of law for using racist language.
The racist language he used was the "b-word" - he called a black player "black".
Such is the state of individual liberty and freedom of expression in England in the the 21st century.
It's a damn good thing that they don't believe in "leftist radicalism" like the French and Germans, eh?"
Where do you suppose that the ideas for such laws come from, dear boy?
Syon
anonymous:"It's called anglosphere because of use of English but given the dominance of Jewish thinkers, shouldn't it be called Judeosphere?
I mean how many influential Jamaican or hillbilly thinkers are out there? they speak english."
Cultural spheres are defined by language, dear boy.
Syon
The Anglo-Saxon roots of Bolshevism:
East Anglia
(...)
But the key to Puritanism as a group strategy, like other strategies, was the control of behavior of group members. As with Calvin’s original doctrine, there was a great deal of supervision of individual behavior. Historian David Hackett Fischer describes Puritan New England’s ideology of “Ordered Liberty” as “the freedom to order one’s acts in a godly way—but not in any other.”[6] This “freedom as public obligation” implied strong social control of thought, speech, and behavior.
Both New England and East Anglia (the center of Puritanism in England) had the lowest relative rates of private crime (murder, theft, mayhem), but the highest rates of public violence—“the burning of rebellious servants, the maiming of political dissenters, the hanging of Quakers, the execution of witches.”[7] This record is entirely in keeping with Calvinist tendencies in Geneva.[8]
The legal system was designed to enforce intellectual, political, and religious conformity as well as to control crime. Louis Taylor Merrill describes the “civil and religious strait-jacket that the Massachusetts theocrats applied to dissenters.”[9] The authorities, backed by the clergy, controlled blasphemous statements and confiscated or burned books deemed to be offensive. Spying on one’s neighbors and relatives was encouraged. There were many convictions for criticizing magistrates, the governor, or the clergy. Unexcused absence from church was fined, with people searching the town for absentees. Those who fell asleep in church were also fined. Sabbath violations were punished as well. A man was even penalized for publicly kissing his wife as he greeted her on his doorstep upon his return from a three-year sea voyage.
Kevin Phillips traces the egalitarian, anti-hierarchical spirit of Yankee republicanism back to the settlement of East Anglia by Angles and Jutes in post-Roman times.[10] They produced “a civic culture of high literacy, town meetings, and a tradition of freedom,” distinguished from other British groups by their “comparatively large ratios of freemen and small numbers of servi and villani.”[11] President John Adams cherished the East Anglian heritage of “self-determination, free male suffrage, and a consensual social contract.”[12] East Anglia continued to produce “insurrections against arbitrary power”—the rebellions of 1381 led by Jack Straw, Wat Tyler, and John Ball; Clarence’s rebellion of 1477; and Robert Kett’s rebellion of 1548. All of these rebellions predated the rise of Puritanism, suggesting an ingrained cultural tendency.
(...)
The Anglo-Saxon roots of Bolshevism
I don't know how you managed to get "Bolshevism" out of the stuff you cut-and-pasted. Unless you think that "Bolshevism" translates to "Stuff I don't like".
don't know how you managed to get "Bolshevism" out of the stuff you cut-and-pasted. Unless you think that "Bolshevism" translates to "Stuff I don't like".
Sure. What's not to like about radical egalitarianism, a culture of everyone spying on their neighbors and savage repression of nonconformity and dissent?
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