'Alienation' & Translation (was Re: Adorno & Translation)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Dennis wrote:
>Ah, here we go, p. 216: "Identitaet des Selbst und Selbstentfremdung
>begleiten einander von Anbeginn; darum ist der Begriff Selbstentfremdung
>schlecht romantich. Bedingung von Freiheit, ist Identitaet unmittelbar
>zugleich das Prinzip des Determinismus."
>
>Now here's the Ashton translation:
>
>> "The identity of the
>> self and its alienation accompany each other from the very beginning;
>> whence the bad romanticism of the concept of alienation in the first
>> place.  A precondition of freedom, identity is at one and the same time
>> also and immediately the principle of determinism."  (_Negative
>> Dialectics_)
>
>Oh, dear. No sentence is too small for Ashton to mangle. The passage
>reads, literally:
>
>"The identity of the self and self-alienation accompany each other from
>the very beginning; that is why the concept of self-alienation is bad
>Romanticism. The precondition of freedom, identity is at the
>same time immediately the principle of determinism."
>
>Note the subtle Adornic wordplay which gets lost by Ashton; self vs.
>self-alienation (not "its alienation", as if the self has this character
>flaw called alienation, but merely the objective fact of self-alienation),
>plus the compact "identity is... the principle", which
>jars the reader, invoking precisely the dialectical shock Adorno wants to
>communicate; Ashton bogs down in extraneous qualifiers. Ugh.

Quite interesting.  Speaking of translation, do you know any study that
tackles Marx & translation with regard to the concepts of alienation and
objectification?  I read somewhere that not just _Entfremdung_ but also
_Entäusserung_ is translated as alienation.  What is the difference in
connotation between the two words?  And what about _Entäusserung_ and
_Vergegenständlichung_?  If you point me to a study that discusses whether
(and if so, how) Marx used these three words in ways different from Hegel's
use, your help will be much appreciated.

Yoshie