{"id":66744,"date":"2025-07-03T22:02:35","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T20:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/?p=66744"},"modified":"2025-07-03T22:02:40","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T20:02:40","slug":"anthroposophy-multilingual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/anthroposophy-multilingual\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthroposophy, Multilingual"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>Cambridge, Massachusetts. <\/em><strong>The translation of Rudolf Steiner&#8217;s texts from German into other languages plays a crucial role in the global networking of the anthroposophical movement and in its research. Thoughts by Henry Holland, translator and co-organizer of the \u201c100 Years of Rudolf Steiner\u201d conference at Harvard University.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Ever since the first consecutive lecture translations in London in 1902, translations of Steiner\u2019s writings and lectures into scores of languages have been indispensable in spreading what was originally a tiny movement to all corners of the Earth. The conference at Harvard could never have had the appeal it is having without these translations. Around 100 individuals have submitted papers, from a spectrum of linguistic, national, and class backgrounds, including people of color wanting to speak on the racism question. Most of these individuals don\u2019t read German. The UNESCO\u2019s Index Translationum, \u201cthe first census of translated works in the world,\u201d reveals that for the 1979-2009 period during which anthroposophy continued to reach new groups globally, Steiner was the third most translated German-language author, behind only Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, and, surprisingly, ahead of Freud, Nietzsche, and Marx. An influential Germanophone scholar has recently belittled the overall quality of the English translations, prompting his preposterous conclusion that serious \u201canthroposophy research\u201d must be reserved for those who read German. Yet what are biodynamic farmers in Peru\u2014some of whom have expressed strong interest in the Harvard Conference\u2014doing through their daily work, other than conducting significant research into anthroposophical principles? Rather than casting blanket aspersions on the heterogeneous translations to date, commentators should look at protagonists intervening now on translation quality. Thomas O\u2019Keefe, lead translator and editor at Chadwick Library Press, deserves attention for the \u201cnew and thoroughly revised translations\u201d he\u2019s directed. The major new English biography of Steiner, which Aaron French and I are currently writing, also foregrounds new translations of excerpts from Steiner, coming from our critical encounter with this captivating figure in cultural and intellectual history, about whom ignorance and clich\u00e9d polemic continue to abound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>More <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/pes.hds.harvard.edu\/steinerconference\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Program for the Evolution of Spirituality<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Image<\/strong> Harvard shield, Xiangkun Zhu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cambridge, Massachusetts. The translation of Rudolf Steiner&#8217;s texts from German into other languages plays a crucial role in the global networking of the anthroposophical movement and in its research. Thoughts by Henry Holland, translator and co-organizer of the \u201c100 Years of Rudolf Steiner\u201d conference at Harvard University. Ever since the first consecutive lecture translations in London in 1902, translations of Steiner\u2019s writings and lectures into scores of languages have been indispensable in spreading what was originally a tiny movement to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21907,"featured_media":66430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9183,8848,8820],"tags":[11667,11672,8803,8799],"class_list":["post-66744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-anthroposophy","category-literature","category-news","tag-ausgabe-24-2025-en","tag-english-issue-27-28-2025","tag-news-en-2","tag-worldwide"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21907"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}