It is possible that Habermas’ early usage of the term “translation“ simply served as a metaphor, as a first attempt to grasp a phenomenon and normative requirement. At any rate, already at the Colloquium in Legal, Political and Social Philosophy at the NYU School of Law on October 5, 2006, when he presented his paper “Religion in the Public Sphere,” Habermas changed his terminology during the discussion, switching from “translation“ to “mutual interrogation.” Most recently, in a new article on “Die Dialektik der Säkularisierung“ (Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, April, 2008), Habermas further modified his terminology, talking about a complementary learning process (”komplementärer Lernprozess”). He continues to use “translate” (”übersetzen”) as a verb, but only in quotation marks and as a metaphor.

Like Craig Calhoun’s notion of “transformation in culture, belief and self”, Habermas’ notion of a complementary learning process expresses a “transformation“ process as well — a process of mutual transformation. Mutual learning means sharing the burden in the process towards mutual understanding in public discourse.

Borges himself left several essays on the process of translation, such as “The Homeric Versions,” in which he refers to translations as “partial and precious documentations of the changes the text suffers” rather than attempts at a definitive text: “The concept of the ‘definitive text’ corresponds only to religion or exhaustion” (Eliot Weinberger’s translation). Many translators have seen Borges’s description of literary translation as providing a level of freedom with regard to fidelity to “the original.” After discussing several versions of The Iliad, Borges asks, “Which of these many translations is faithful? my reader will want to know. I repeat: none or all of them. If fidelity refers to Homer’s imaginations and the irrecoverable men and days that he portrayed, none of them are faithful for us, but all of them would be for a tenth-century Greek. If it refers to his intentions, then any one of the many I have transcribed would suffice, except for the literal versions, whose virtue lies entirely in their contrast to contemporary practices.” For Borges, the imprint of the translator and his cultural moment are crucial aspects of a version’s value.

Regarding the present concept of the translation of religious sensibility, I am reminded of Slavoj Zizek’s recent interest in Christianity. Could we see The Puppet and the Dwarf (2002) as a translation of both the apostle Paul’s epistles and G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy (1908) for non-religious consumption? What do we make of such work? Interestingly, Zizek handles Chesterton’s ideas with almost as much reverence as those of his beloved Lacan, and it seems that both Christian and non-religious communities can learn from the fresh perspective Zizek brings to Orthodoxy.

In a similar vein, when Ernesto Laclau briefly responds in On Populist Reason (2005) to Habermas’s idea of “constitutional patriotism,” he characterizes the milieu of the contemporary public sphere as necessitating more of just this type of work: “in contemporary societies we do not have simply a juxtaposition of separate cultural ethnic groups; we also have multiple selves, people constituting their identities in a plurality of subject positions” (199). Such interstitial subjects inhabit the space of translation, and indeed, such translations offer powerful potential for mutual understanding in the public sphere, where a committed intellectual can serve as an intermediary in order to carry important ideas across previously rigid barriers. In my view, “transformation” seems to suggest too much, an encounter with the other that would involve more commitment than is necessary, although, as previously stated, I eagerly await Professor Calhoun’s forthcoming clarification.