Traduzibilidade & Repetição, Transformação

This essay sustains that Wittgenstein’s later philosophy can help us overcome certain impasses around (un)translatability and epistemic (in)justice. David Spitzer (Citation2025, M. Parmenides & Translation: Figures of motion, figures of being. New York: Peter Lange) operates with two opposing concepts of translation: transformation vs. repetition (of the same content, in another form). Angelo Vannini (Citation2023, “Towards Epistemic Translatability: On Epistemic Difference and Hermeneutical Injustice.” Social Epistemology 37 (6): 839–851. https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2023.2188127) suggests the possibility of an epistemic translatability based on praxis, with an effect on symbolic institutions. Both themes are closely related to ethical and epistemic issues addressed by Wittgenstein under different lights (cf. Salles Citation2025, Gatos, peixes & elefantes. A gramática dos acordos profundos. Salvador: Aretê. (2ª impressão, corrigida. Vencedor do prêmio Jabuti Acadêmico 2025)). Here I provide a brief summary of the shifts in the Wittgensteinian concept of translation, from Tractatus to the later work, with Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty, i.e., from the rigidity of logical form to the malleability of forms of life. Drawing on Wittgenstein’s work and Moreno’s analytical commentary, I understand that it is inappropriate to establish a clear distinction between distinct yet corelated domains (form vs. content; symbolic/transcendental vs. empirical). I thus recur to the method of language-games as an object of comparison as applied to Ricœur’s (2011, Sobre a tradução. Belo Horizonte: UFM. (Texto introdutório e tradução: Patrícia Lavelle. Original: Sur la traduction. Paris: Bayard, 2004)) ‘construction of the comparable’, which has received less attention than it deserves. As a result, translation as transformation expands the applicability of the concept, but deep disagreements continue to set limits that may be insurmountable.