by Ruth Chester

I’d like to tell you about my latest translated book, Translating Concepts: Metamorphosis Through Encounter by Stefano Arduini, which is coming out with Routledge later this year. As seems to be often the way with finding works you really want to translate, I came across this book through other people, and it has been born out of relationships and (new) friendships. The Italian book on which my translation is based, Con gli occhi dell’altro: Tradurre, was recommended to me by Ceci Rossi, a lecturer on my MA course at UEA, not because she had read it but because she wanted to be able to read a translation of it in English. I read the book and felt an immediate affinity. The author, Stefano Arduini, has worked for many years as an academic studying linguistics and translation with a special interest in Bible translation. This book brings together his wealth of knowledge on translation theory and intercultural studies, and his many years of experience working as a translator and as a facilitator of events that bring translators together. I am an academic by training and so my work in translation has always gone hand in hand with research and learning. One of the things I love about translation is how it puts you into the mind of another person in a way unlike any other. You have to think and rethink their thoughts. It is a unique type of learning.

Arduini’s book is particularly enjoyable and affirming to inhabit. It is a humane and accessible call to see translation as a positive model for encountering otherness. The book develops the idea that it is because of translation that we think the way we do in the West about central concepts such as Love, Beauty, and Truth. Since it is a continual rethinking and rewording, translation proves to be central to the way concepts develop and change across time. Most importantly though, it is only through encounter with the unknown other that change can happen and new ideas can be created. Arduini argues that friendship is the mode of encounter that translation best embodies. There is a desire for relationship in translation, a desire to define and grow the self through an open and respectful relationship to another self. Encountering difference makes us look at ourselves and reflect on who we really are; we create ourselves by encountering what is different. This argument runs throughout the book and is explored from different angles. The chapters delve into the fascinating topics of Otherness, Translating, and Untranslatability, and employ metaphors like Confines and Metamorphosis to uncover new ways of exploring related questions. Arduini draws on a wealth of sources to make his points, from Patristic writers to Paul Ricoeur, from Aristotle to Deleuze, from Aeschylus to Freud. The book is an erudite, lucid, and compact volume written with the voice of a teacher who wants to share their passion for language and translation itself, and to communicate the personal joy that is found in inhabiting and expressing the words of others.

While working on the translation, I had the pleasure of collaborating with the author and – in a small way – seeing how the ideas the book discusses play out in the real process of translating. We would debate the precise intended meaning behind words, how the simple choice of one word over another can send the mind down a totally different path. It was fascinating to see for real how ideas shift ever so slightly as they move across languages, and it was great to experience the fact that openness and friendship are the best generators of creativity.

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Translating Concepts: Metamorphosis Through Encounter

• by Stefano Arduini
• Translated from the Italian by Ruth Chester
• Original Title: Con gli occhi dell’altro: Tradurre (2020)
• Publisher: Routledge
• Coming out in late 2024 (pub date TBD)

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