Reworking George Steiner’s hermeneutic motion through Irigarayan translational praxis

Abstract This article rethinks George Steiner’s hermeneutic motion from the perspective of feminist translation studies by interrogating its central metaphor of penetration through Luce Irigaray’s ethics of relation. While Steiner’s model has been widely influential in theorizing translation as interpretation, its reliance on a vocabulary of appropriation reflects a masculinist epistemology that remains insufficiently reworked at the level of translational practice. Addressing this gap, the article proposes circulation as an alternative hermeneutic orientation grounded in relational ethics. The study adopts an auto-reflexive, practice-based approach, drawing on the author’s positionality as both a translation scholar and a translator of Irigaray. By mobilizing Irigaray’s philosophical concepts to guide the translational encounter, the article unsettles the conventional division between analytical subject and translated object. Through a reflexive analysis of Turkish translations, it demonstrates how concepts such as natality and relationality are enacted in concrete linguistic decisions. The article contributes to feminist translation studies by offering a relational model of translational understanding that moves beyond appropriation-based frameworks. It reconceptualizes translation as an ethically situated practice of meaning-making, in which being-with sustains irreducible difference.