Uexküll's essay "Darwin and the English morality" published online

Jakob von Uexküll's 1917 essay "Darwin and the English Morality", which has been translated from German to English by me and language-edited by Jonathan Beever, has now (or specifically November 21st) been published online in Biosemiotics. It will soon appear in print as well, along with the framing essay "“Darwin und die englische Moral”: The Moral Consequences of Uexküll’s Umwelt Theory" written by Jonathan and myself.

Uexküll translation project completed - to be published in Biosemiotics

About a month ago Jonathan Beever and myself finished our cooperative Uexküll translation project, involving two articles:

• "Darwin and the English Morality", translation (by me, with English language editing by Jonathan) of Jakob von Uexküll's 1917 essay "Darwin und die Englische Moral"
• the framing essay "“Darwin und die englische Moral”: The Moral Consequences of Uexküll’s Umwelt Theory", written by Jonathan and me

Both articles will be published in the journal Biosemiotics - online this autumn and in print in early 2014. The two articles were resubmitted with minor changes made on April 2nd.

See also: Abstract for 13th Gathering in Biosemiotics: "Uexküll in translation: "Darwin and the English Morality""

Blurb on forthcoming book on Wittgenstein in translation

My Dutch colleague Dinda Gorlée (cf. previous posts), who is among other things Associate Editor of American Book Review, has written a book entitled Wittgenstein in translation: Exploring semiotic signatures. It is to be published this spring by De Gruyter Mouton (Berlin). Translation theory is her specialty, and she has for years been affiliated with the Wittgenstein archives in Bergen (see her profile page), Norway, so this should be a valuable publication.

Here's a blurb that I got from Dinda:

Apart from the Tractatus, Wittgenstein did not write whole manuscripts for books, but composed short fragments. The current volume reveals the depths of Wittgenstein's soul-searching writings - his "new" philosophy - by concentrating on ordinary language and using few technical terms. Wittgenstein followed St. Augustine (as translator) and Plato (as teacher). Wittgenstein is finally given the accolade of a neglected figure in the history of semiotics, when he moved from Saussure to Peirce and Jakobson. This volume provides an application of Wittgenstein's methodological tools to study the multilingual dialogue in philosophy, linguistics, theology, anthropology, and literature. Translation shows how the translator's signatures in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Swedish can be in conflict with personal or stylistic choices in linguistic form, but also in cultural content. This book undertakes the "impossible task" of uncovering the reasoning of Wittgenstein's original and translated texts in order to construct, instead of a paraphrase, the ideal of a terminological coherence of Wittgenstein's fragmentariness in philosophy.

See also Dinda Gorlée's homepage, and her earlier book chapter on the theme of "Wittgenstein, translation and semiotics" (also available in part through Google Books). She can be contacted directly via gorlee@xs4all.nl.

New Uexkull translations to be reviewed

Around the time of my visit to Tartu the last week of November I received the news that a new translation of Jakob von Uexküll has just been published:

A FORAY INTO THE WORLDS OF ANIMALS AND HUMANS, with A Theory of Meaning
By Jakob von Uexküll
Translated by Joseph D. O'Neil
Introduction by Dorion Sagan
Afterword by Geoffrey Winthrop Young
University of Minnesota Press | 280 pages | 2010

The book is published as volume 12 of the Posthumanities series.

It is neither the first nor the last time these texts are translated, but it will be interesting to compare it with both the originals (Bedeutungslehre and Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen) and the other existing translation of each text.

I have now scheduled with my supervisor Kalevi Kull that I will, as an assignment for the doctoral seminar of autumn 2010, carry out a review of the translation (whether for publication or not).