데리다의 언어의 간극과 번역

The In - betweenness of Language, Translation and Derrida

This essay addresses the problems of the in-betweenness of language and translation as exposited by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his notions of l'ecriture, proper names, the tower of Babel, relevant translation, and deconstruction. I try to receive the ethico-political message of deconstruction, rethink the difference of language and translation and ask what 'the real task of the translator' is in the essay. Levi-Strauss's anthropological translation and his apparently value-natural descriptions of non-European cultures tend to efface the brutality of a project like colonialism, and show that the tendency to valorize speech over writing goes along with a European ethnocentrism. Taking Derrida's comments on Levi-Strauss as a point of departure, I'd like to show monolingualism may involve colonial discourse. The story of Babel is the story of the multiplication of languages. The building of the tower is meant to ensure the unity and dominance of the one people and the one language. God interrupts the colonial violence or the linguistic imperialism and ruptures the rational transparency to which the tower builders, the descendants of Shem(which literally means name) wanted to bring the world. And the replacement of the single human language with multiple, mutually incomprehensible languages means that translation becomes necessary, but perfect translation is no longer possible. If translation is necessary but there is not such a thing as the original after Babel, then how translation can be relevant without being appropriated in power-related contexts? In this point, I try to develop the Derrida's argument that the elaboration of the notion of undecid ability in deconstruction addresses the relationship between the responsibility to act and the responsibility to otherness.