The Problem With Reading Hannah Arendt in English: How Poor Translation Can Impair the Reading and Understanding of Philosophy

The author argues that Hannah Arendt's self-translation of her book The Human Condition, from excellent German into poor English, significantly and unnecessarily compromised its readability. Arendt could have asked for editorial assistance with her English but clearly chose not to do so. On the basis of this premise, the author goes on to suggest that there may be a larger, as yet unremarked, educational problem in the English-speaking world: translated philosophy texts are assigned for reading without making students aware of the impact that translation can have on coherence. The naive acceptance, by English-only readers, of incoherent wording as though it were a mark of stylistic eccentricity or semantic innovation, is defined as the translation-induced lionization of text or TILT. The problem is further exacerbated by an epidemic of infectious monolingualism in the English-speaking world. While a return to polyglotism in higher education, once a highly valued skill directly relevant to the reading and understanding of philosophical and literary works, would be ideal, the teaching of translation theory plus slow-reading is proposed as a more realistic and very feasible solution.