The present chapter discusses the human dimensions of the translation process. Translators responsibly act as mediators of a comprehended message and undertake their work as culturally embedded persons. The scientific subject of translation studies is therefore the person of the translator, a person possessed of a body and a mind. The various activities of translators are described socio‑psychologically in terms of the four ‘E’s’: human activities are embodied, embedded, extended and enactive. The process of translation as a performance can be understood in the same terms. Insofar as knowledge, emotions and cultural background play a role, what is significant is the relationship of translators to the outside world, aspects of which are both sensual and existential, and which only afterwards involve mental and cognitive ones. A systematic model of translation also includes the personal growth of the translator who tries to understand texts in a constant learning process. In his or her handling of the text, one’s interest, intuition and feeling for language are decisive for what is presented as the translation. In this chapter, therefore, what is at issue is that the scholarly perspective in translation studies accordingly changes from the comparison of languages to the analysis of translational thinking. The hermeneutic translation competence integrates a variety of aspects both on the linguistic level and in the social dimension, and because this is so, this chapter profiles new questions for research. Keywords: Interest, Intuition, Feeling for Language, Embodiment, Cognition, Understanding.

In terms of the bidirectional relationship between hermeneutics and creativity, the responsibility of the communicator is of the essence. Given the Covid pandemic, this responsibility, and the connections to be made with truth and solidarity, has become particularly clear. In order to better understand these connections, this chapter proceeds as follows: First, responsibility is anthropologically anchored as a human‑relational attitude. Secondly, this attitude is shown to be particularly illuminated by the process of interpretation, a process which can be deemed an effort to recognise reality, and not simply to bypass it. Thirdly, a question arises concerning the means by which the communicator can do justice to his task and grow in responsibility. In what follows, two dimensions of the communicator's responsibility are clarified: Responsibility as the awareness of doing justice to reality through one's own interpretation as far as is possible (this is the hermeneutic dimension), and responsibility as commitment, as an active participation in the communicative process (this is the creative dimension). The virtues of humility and boldness are recognised as ways to consolidate responsibility whereby responsibility does not become an unbearable burden that one wants to get rid of quickly, but a concrete exercise of personal freedom.

This essay attempts to gain critical purchase on the burgeoning field of enquiry, within Translation and Translator Studies, that is focused on the matters of creativity and originality. What does it mean to claim that translators are creative, and that their translations are creations? At issue is perhaps negotiating beyond the truisms (indeed translators are creative, and assuredly their translations are creations) and engaging with what the present essay argues remain the difficult challenges to be faced: why is creation and creativity, when such things are achieved by translators and translations, always invidiously assessed in respect of a putatively unattainable originality? Is that unattainable originality always a consequence of the still‑abiding doctrine of translatory fidelity and the imposition of the prescriptions and laws of equivalence? The present essay seeks to gain a degree of clarity on such matters by proposing (without endorsing) three options: translation and creativity, translation as creativity, translation or creativity. The aim is then to relay such options to a broader inspection of past and current research in Translation and Translator Studies, as well as to certain instructive reference points in the philosophical, psychoanalytic, and psychological literature on the topic of creativity.

Because of the influence of globalisation, pluralisation, individualisation and secularisation, children and teenagers are increasingly distancing themselves from the Christian traditio since they either do not understand or barely understand its specific language, whether it be its vocabulary, syntax or semantics. This has a concrete effect on religious education, whose subject matter, Christian traditio, lacks appeal for many students. Religious education and didactics react by attempting to translate the language of Christian traditio, which is perceived as difficult, into the language worlds of the students. Although this appears to be a logical consequence, it raises questions in theological and translatological terms that need to be clarified in different ways. Elaborating and addressing these questions takes place on two levels: Firstly, this chapter takes up the discourse on religious education and didactics in order to articulate the churches’ pronouncements in this regard. Secondly, task formats from lesson plans for Protestant and Catholic religious education are discussed in light of the present author’s own pedagogy. At issue is encouraging the students to make intra‑, interlingual and intersemiotic translations of the Christian traditio. Both levels are explored against the background of the opportunities but also limitations that arise in view of a theologically and translatologically appropriate translation of the Christian traditio placed under the sign of hermeneutics and creativity.

Asylum hearings require a high degree of sensitivity from interpreters. Language mediation during the procedure must meet requirements that are different from conventional consecutive interpreting: In addition to linguistic competence, specific interaction skills come into play—involved here is a comprehensive habitus geared towards the moment of encounter between the parties to the conversation. But how does this work? Are there concepts that are suitable for quickly grasping certain emotions such as the feeling of fear? Is there a terminology that takes emotional impulses into account and which have a lasting influence on interpreting? In the following chapter, I explore these questions with the help of Sören Kierkegaard’s concept of fear, which—in contrast to psychotherapeutic concepts— opens up to a non‑pathological approach to the emotional dimension of the asylum interview.

The purpose of this chapter is to elucidate the hermeneutical potential latent in specialized language, and the specialized language of medicine will be used as an example. The phrase “hermeneutical potential”—as it is invoked in what follows —refers to the spectrum of possible interpretations that specialized language allows for in different contexts and which, in turn, influence the particular message imparted. In a first step, this chapter addresses the factors which determine the hermeneutic potential of specialized language, focusing on the one hand on the linguistic resources available (also employed in pseudo‑specialized language, moreover), and on the other hand on three different levels of interpretation: 1) denotation, 2) connotation and association, and 3) metaphor. On the basis of these factors, a rubric is proposed which facilitates analysis of the potential contexts in which this specialized language is used: in the specialized field itself, in advertising, and in literature. The results of this analysis are then discussed with reference to the translation of Romance languages into German and vice versa.

Texts that display multiple relationships with nonverbal elements (music, images, scene) are likely to demonstrate more than others that some forms of translation cannot, or cannot yet, be fully taken over by machines. The human translator remains the final authority for weighing the many choices and their consequences when transferring a polysemiotic artifact from one cultural context into another. The subject of this book chapter is the effects of translational decisions on the syntactic connection between music and language. Comparing the recitatives from Gluck’s Italian‑language opera Orfeo ed Euridice (1762) with a French translation by Pierre‑Louis Moline (1774)—as well as two German translations, by Heinrich Abert (1914) and Hans Swarowsky (1962)—the chapter shows the resultant changes in the target text when completely new recitatives are composed, or when attempting to ensure that the original music be preserved in the translation.

The field of performative translation focuses on forms of translation as they result from the influence of the human body in its psycho‑physical form. The human body, which is involved in productions such as a dance performances or in church processions, functions as a media relay for the translation to be performed: through it and on it, transformation processes are connected. This transformation performs two translation services: on the one hand, it extends from the sensual impression of a template to the (individual) ideas related to it and, on the other hand, from the (individual) ideas to a body movement related to it. In terms of the latter translatory step, however, regulatory measures are often implemented, and these are intended to dictate performativity vis‑à‑vis the individual. They can accordingly be described retrospectively as disciplining measures in regards to the individual and his or her capacity for imagination insofar as the individual imagination is determined as something that endangers the social (e.g. the procession of the faithful, the choreography of the dance ensemble), because it is hypertrophic and must therefore be subdued if it proves necessary. The term performative translation can thus be used to address not only aesthetic but also discursive issues.

As an inroad into translating sustainability and sustaining translation, the article takes a close look at the translational interactions between humans and aliens in Ted Chiang’s novella “Story of Your Life” (1998) and the 2016 film adaptation, Arrival. The close reading covers two aspects of the story: (1) alienation from the familiar, so that the alien experience, which is so disconcerting at first, comes to feel ordinary, with metaphorical extensions of the human‑alien encounter to colonizers and the colonized and parents and children; and (2) coming unstuck in time, perceiving time from what is apparently the fourth dimension, so that temporal sequence is denarrativized. In two conclusions, the implications for “sustaining translation” (section 4) and “translating sustainability” (section 5) are considered, the latter in terms of both cultural sustainability and the sustainability of the natural environment on Earth.