Princeton University Press has just released a new 1,344-page book called “Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon.” It’s a new English-language edition of a book previously published in French, edited by Barbara Cassin. This new edition (interestingly, they’re calling it a new edition and not a “translation”) is edited by Michael Wood, Emily Apter, and Jacques Lezra. (Apter and Lezra are professors here at NYU!)
“An untranslatable word or phrase is … not what we can’t or don’t translate but what we can’t stop trying and failing to translate. To be precise, we don’t always fail, sometimes we succeed rather well. But we feel we could do better and that’s why we keep trying.
We’ve talked a lot on this blog about the idea of untranslatability and whether it’s even a valid idea in the first place. If we can’t come to an answer after 1,344 pages with four great minds, I’m not sure if there is one!
French and the city 