After the author explicates how his academic relationship to Paepcke began in the 1970s, he proceeds to discuss critically the latter’s reflections on language and translation. Latent contradictions in Paepcke’s conceptual framework and in his understanding of the relationship between theory and practice are brought to the fore. This conceptual tension shows that Paepcke’s understanding of and approach to dealing with texts is problematic. Using concrete examples, the author demonstrates that Paepcke did not rely on the text as the criterion for constituting meaning. Rather Paepcke relied on historically mediated conceptual constructs which were given the status of authoritative units of sense, and these units guided Paepcke in his process of establishing the meaning of the whole. The reason for this can be found in unreflected preliminary decisions that are seen as “a priori evidence.” This also explains why Paepcke’s real achievement lies in the contrastive analysis of comprehensive concepts – of traditionally rich concepts developed over the course of time (human orientation) as well as in rationalized contemporary language (functional orientation).

Evidentia is a concept passed on to us from rhetoric – more precisely from the third of the five canons of classical rhetoric, namely elocution. The goal of this canon is to achieve a stylistic quality that enables the listener to see what (s)he hears with his or her inner eye, i.e. to enable the listener to really visualize what is being said. Fritz Paepcke – whose one hundredth birthday we celebrated at this conference – applied the concept of evidentia to the field of translation studies. Within his conceptual framework, he portrayed it as a new experience – one which arises immediately, i.e., not through induction or deduction, but “as a result of the rule-governed and yet playful process of developing the most adequate wording of a translation” and from one’s interaction with the text. Paepcke did not, however, elaborate on this “intuition of intuition.” This article attempts to further develop the concept evidentia rhetorically and philosophically and to apply it to the field of translation studies. Two conceptions are particularly instrumental here: 1) The concept of fidélité créatrice as elucidated by the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel – to whom Paepcke often referred – as well as 2) the conceptual approach underlying and informing the research center Hermeneutik und Kreativität. In the latter, the processes of understanding and translating / translating and understanding are conceived of as being bi-directional and interdependent; this conception, which fuses understanding with empathy, is making new, significant inroads into translation studies. The notion of evidentia will be exemplified here using an empathetic Italian translation of a very young poet – Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger.

This article seeks to shed some light on the experience of interpretation and translation from a hermeneutical point of view, more precisely on how the subjectivity of the translator plays an essential mediation role in the process of rendering the meaning of a text in a new language, a role that certainly goes beyond the sole linguistic transfer, without being per se subjective. This idea can best be understood through the concept of “game” as developed by the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer and introduced in translation theory by Fritz Paepcke, because it offers a model in which the participation of the individual is necessary without being arbitrary, since the players have to abide by the rules of the specific game they are playing – in this case, the text itself. However, the aim of this article is not to offer a method of translation, but is rather an attempt to consider the adequacy of translation on the basis of subjective and intersubjective factors – including the translator’s own prior knowledge and experience, his openness towards the text and his critical self-awareness – and therefore to propose an alternative to the overly normative and restrictive theoretical framework strictly focused on linguistic equivalence between ST and TT.