Romanticism Exhibition

Appreciating what is foreign

On 24 June 1813, Friedrich Schleiermacher delivered the lecture “On the Different Methods of Translation” at the Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Today it is regarded as one of the canonical texts of translation theory. Schleiermacher begins with reflections on how often “a speech is translated from one language into another”. According to him, translation is needed to understand not only different national languages, but also their historical stages and regionally, socially, and individually influenced ways of speaking. Ultimately, all understanding is based on translation.