El historiador como traductor

Abstract

Assuming the dialogic approach of the H.-G. Gadamer's and P. Ricoeur's hermeneutics (there is only language if it contains an attempt at understanding and agreement [Verständigungsversuche ), the aim of this paper is to analyze the possibilities and requirements offered and demanded to historians now (in our new age of multiculturality and globalization) for performing in a deeper sense than the traditional one, their noble function of making different cultures mutually understood.

Historians have an exceptionally good experience of the polymorphism of human nature because they are familiar with the fact that, even inside the same culture, words change meaning (partly) over time. These qualifications allow historians to translate the understanding of the world from one culture to another. The intercultural dialogue (the greatest challenge of the XXIst century) requires that our communication, always influenced by a language pervaded with troubling experiences, can be liberated by the catharsis of a history read jointly and irenically. Historians can collaborate in this way in rediscovering and transforming a world which we share increasingly closely, with the conscious of our common existential necessity and interdependence.