Classifying

Publisher’s Note: On Translation

In The Order of Things a Publisher’s Note appears on the opposite page to the Foreword. In his note one can sense the daunting task of the translator. He writes about ‘confusion’ and how it has ‘has not proved feasible’ to trace the numerous citations of works originating in other languages. Not being able to read French I can only wonder at how the experience of reading this book in the original must differ.

I had a brief encounter with French at my school in Johannesburg which I attended in the early 1980’s. Our subject choices for language were either French or German, languages from the empire, from countries few of us had visited. No African languages were taught.

The translation from one language to another echoes the daunting task of translating image into word, and the seemingly impossible conflict of bringing two systems - language and image - together in one space. ‘Neither can be reduced to the other’s terms; it is in vain that we say what we see, what we see never resides in what we say.’ [4]

NOTES

[1] M. Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London, 1970, p. 11). [2] J. Sey, The Visual Field and the Place of the King (2015. p. 1). [3] M. Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London, 1970, p. ix). [4] Ibid. p. 9.