Knowledge of Language or Participatory Anthropology

Abstract

The linguist translator cannot be satisfied with a normative knowledge of two languages when he comes to translating one into the other. He must apply to ethnolinguistics which help him to approach what dictionnaires cannot supply : culture. In fact, even if the universals of language belong to all men, they form a nomenclature which is limited in quality by the fact that their transposition its external to ma thematical exactness (for the needs and the con- ditions which deteFmine the cultural features are variable) — and in quantity owing to the fact that these universals represent a restricted part of the lexicon. Cultures form their own instru- ments of communication without referring to a semantic international standard. The translator is thus compelled to replace the word into its original context, if he wants to be able to mea- sure all its dimensions.