ФИЛОСОФИЙН ЭХ ЗОХИОЛ ОРЧУУЛАХ ТУХАЙД: ЛОГИК-ФИЛОСОФИЙН ТРАКТАТ ЗОХИОЛЫН ЖИШЭЭН ДЭЭР

Abstract

This paper argues that the translation of philosophical texts is not a technical exercise but an interpretive act, drawing on the experience of translating Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus into Mongolian.Philosophical translation differs from both technical and literary translation. Unlike technical translation, it cannot rely on standardized terminology, since philosophers frequently assign new meanings to ordinary words or repurpose existing terms for their own systems. Unlike literary translation, it must prioritize conceptual precision and the logical structure of the argument over aesthetic effect. As Parks observes, philosophers “use ordinary words in a new, technical sense,” making it impossible to translate without first understanding the thinker's system as a whole. This means that every translational choice reflects a philosophical reading of the source text, and the translator, as Rée argues, “cannot duck the duty of interpretation. This interpretive dimension is illustrated through two key terms in the Tractatus. The German Satz, which in everyday usage simply means “sentence,” carries an interconnected cluster of meanings in Wittgenstein's text, including proposition, statement, and remark. The choice to render it consistently as “proposition” rather than “sentence” reflects an alignment with the analytic tradition and with Russell's framing of the work as a contribution to logical philosophy. The German Bild, while meaning “picture” or “image” in everyday usage, is the central term of Wittgenstein's picture theory of meaning. Comparison of English and Russian translations reveals that the choice between “картина” and “образ,” or between “the form of representation” and “the pictorial form,” reflects not stylistic preference but divergent philosophical readings of what kind of thing a Bild is in Wittgenstein's philosophical system. Rather than following any single source translation throughout, our Mongolian translation drew selectively on five English and Russian versions according to what each context demanded. This practice is itself evidence that translation is interpretation.