Apart from the Tractatus, Wittgenstein did not write whole manuscripts, but composed short fragments. The current volume reveals the depths of Wittgenstein's soul-searching writings - his "new" philosophy - by concentrating on ordinary language and using few technical terms. In so doing, Wittgenstein is finally given the accolade of a neglected figure in the history of semiotics. The volume applies Wittgenstein's methodological tools to the study of multilingual dialogue in philosophy, linguistics, theology, anthropology and literature. Translation shows how the translator's signatures are in conflict with personal or stylistic choices in linguistic form, but also in cultural content. This volume undertakes the "impossible task" of uncovering the reasoning of Wittgenstein's translated texts in order to construct, rather than paraphrase, the ideal of a terminological coherence.

In this eminently readable study, Philip Wilson explores the later writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein and shows how a reading of this philosophy can enable the translation theorist and the practising translator to reflect upon and improve the phenomenon of translation. Wittgenstein, whilst a key figure in twentieth-century philosophy, remains peripheral to the field of translation studies and Wilson argues that his later work, because it deals with the nature of language and meaning, is potentially of great significance and an awareness of this can change translation, both literary and non-literary. Wittgenstein’s life and thought is treated in the introduction, where it is shown how his methods can be applied to areas outside philosophy. The central three chapters of the book survey: the reading of the source text for translation; the writing of the target text; the theorisation of the target text. The author demonstrates how tools from Wittgenstein’s work can be of use in translation studies: the notion of the language-game, for example, helps us to understand meaning by looking at the way that words are used, and this can both help us describe translation and suggest ways of translating. A wide variety of examples and case studies is given throughout the book, from both literary and non-literary sources. Aimed at translation studies scholars, graduate students and researchers, this interdisciplinary book will also be of interest to scholars of philosophy and literature.

The Philosophical Investigations of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) present his own distillation of two decades of intense work on the philosophies of mind, language and meaning.

Wittgenstein's dictionary for children: a rare and intriguing addition to the philosopher's corpus, in English for the first time "I had never thought the dictionaries would be so frightfully expensive. I think, if I live long enough, I will produce a small dictionary for elementary schools. It appears to me to be an urgent need." -Ludwig Wittgenstein In 1925, Ludwig Wittgenstein, arguably one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, wrote a dictionary for elementary school children. His Wörterbuch für Volksschulen (Dictionary for Elementary Schools) was designed to meet what he considered an urgent need: to help his students learn to spell. Wittgenstein began teaching kids in rural Austria in 1920 after abandoning his life and work at Cambridge University. During this time there were only two dictionaries available. But one was too expensive for his students, and the other was too small and badly put together. So Wittgenstein decided to write one. Word Book is the first-ever English translation of Wörterbuch. This publication aims to encourage and reinvigorate interest in one of the greatest modern philosophers by introducing this gem of a work to a wider audience. Word Book also explores how Wörterbuch portends Wittgenstein's radical reinvention of his own philosophy and the enduring influence his thinking holds over how art, culture and language are understood. Word Book is translated by writer and art historian Bettina Funcke, with a critical introduction by scholar Désirée Weber, and accompanied with art by Paul Chan. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was an Austrian-born British philosopher, regarded by many as the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. He played a decisive if controversial role in 20th-century analytic philosophy, and his work continues to influence fields as diverse as logic and language, perception and intention, ethics and religion, aesthetics and culture.

In the most comprehensive account to date of Walter Benjamin’s philosophy of language, Alexander Stern explores the nature of meaning by putting Benjamin in dialogue with Wittgenstein. Known largely for his essays on culture, aesthetics, and literature, Walter Benjamin also wrote on the philosophy of language. This early work is famously obscure and considered hopelessly mystical by some. But for Alexander Stern, it contains important insights and anticipates—in some respects surpasses—the later thought of a central figure in the philosophy of language, Ludwig Wittgenstein. As described in The Fall of Language, Benjamin argues that “language as such” is not a means for communicating an extra-linguistic reality but an all-encompassing medium of expression in which everything shares. Borrowing from Johann Georg Hamann’s understanding of God’s creation as communication to humankind, Benjamin writes that all things express meanings, and that human language does not impose meaning on the objective world but translates meanings already extant in it. He describes the transformations that language as such undergoes while making its way into human language as the “fall of language.” This is a fall from “names”—language that responds mimetically to reality—to signs that designate reality arbitrarily. While Benjamin’s approach initially seems alien to Wittgenstein’s, both reject a designative understanding of language; both are preoccupied with Russell’s paradox; and both try to treat what Wittgenstein calls “the bewitchment of our understanding by means of language.” Putting Wittgenstein’s work in dialogue with Benjamin’s sheds light on its historical provenance and on the turn in Wittgenstein’s thought. Although the two philosophies diverge in crucial ways, in their comparison Stern finds paths for understanding what language is and what it does.

Once upon a time, anthropology had something to offer philosophy. It was a time when Continential thinkers drew on anthropology's theoretical terms—mana, taboo, potlatch—in order to reflect on the limits of human belief and imagination. Among these philosophic dialogues with anthropology, we find Ludwig Wittgenstein's Remarks on Sir James Frazer's magnum opus, The Golden Bough. Now, Hau Books brings you the first translation by an anthropology—Stephan Palmié—of this masterpiece. Wittgenstein's remarks on ritual, magic, religion, belief, ceremony, and Frazer's own logical presuppositions are as lucid and thought-provoking now as they were over half-a-century ago. Anthropologists find themselves repeating many of Wittgenstein's same questions and confronting similar doubts today: Is metaphysics a kind of magic? What do we call “ritual”? Are humans simply “ceremonial animals”? This book is not only a fresh translation, but a fresh set of engagements with Wittgenstein's ideas from some of the world's most brilliant anthropologists. Contributors include: David Graeber, Veena Das, Michael Lambek, Heonik Kwon, Carlo Severi, Michael Taussig, Wendy James, Giovanni da Col, and Michael Puett. Here is a unique and well-overdue discussion of the mythologies in our language. Taking interdisciplinarity seriously, this volume returns to the ethnographic imagination that made great thinkers like Sigmund Freud, Jean-Paul Sartre, and indeed Ludwig Wittgenstein take heed—and returns the favor to the philosophical tradition that found wonder and pause for thought in the anthropological canon.

Does scepticism threaten our common sense picture of the world? Does it really undermine our deep-rooted certainties? Answers to these questions are offered through a comparative study of the epistemological work of two key figures in the history of analytic philosophy, G. E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein.