The LWP’s Spanish Translation of the Philosophical Investigations: A Translator’s Note

The Ludwig Wittgenstein Project recently published its Spanish translation of the Philosophical Investigations.

The translator, Alberto Buscató, shared his work with us in 2023, releasing it for publication under a free Creative Commons licence. In compliance with our quality policy, we immediately started looking for a proofreader. However, it was only earlier this year that we managed to hire translator and editor Gerardo Piña—who recently published his own translation of On Certainty with a publisher in Mexico—to carry out a comprehensive revision of the text. This was made possible by funding from Wikimedia Italia.

The purpose of the editing was to verify the completeness and accuracy of the translation, but also to improve its readability. Buscató’s translation had been purposefully aimed at following Wittgenstein’s German very closely, even to the detriment of the flow and naturalness of the Spanish. In order to respect this intention of the translator, it was decided to publish two editions of the revised translation: Edition A only includes edits to correct typos and close gaps, whereas Edition B includes those plus edits to improve the readability of the text.

Below you will find an English version of the translator’s note for Edition A, explaining the reasons for the approach he chose and outlining the differences between the two editions published by the LWP.

— The Editors of the LWP’s Blog

Edition A aims to offer a translation that reproduces as faithfully as possible not only the content of the original German text, but also its form, its fragmentary style, and its tone. Rather than striving for a polished version adapted to academic Spanish conventions, we have chosen to preserve its expressive peculiarities, its irregular sentence construction, dislocated syntax, hesitations, and, ultimately, the discursive texture of a thought in motion—characteristic of an author writing more for himself than for a reader. This includes features like the constant use of expressions such as “more or less” (etwa) or “what [if this happens]?” (was or wie, see 80).

Accordingly, we have maintained the structure of the original at every level: colloquial expressions, redundancies, repetitions, oral turns of phrase, and barely sketched fragments have all been preserved. We have avoided, as far as possible, “smoothing over” the text or filling in gaps that a reader might otherwise interpret as editorial “errors”. Instead, we have sought to respect the open, unfinished, and at times contradictory character of many passages—even when doing so makes reading more difficult.

We have also retained anacolutha (sentences that break expected syntactic structure), verbless propositions, incorrectly formulated equations (always signalled with footnotes), and the original typographic signs as they appear in the manuscript or base edition. This includes, for example, the variable use of ellipses or the omission of punctuation marks that would normally be required in Spanish for clarity. Thus, in remark 184, we read: “No niego que al enunciado la melodía está ahí también se le pueda dar un sentido completamente distinto” (roughly: “I do not deny that to the statement the melody is there one can also assign a completely different meaning”), without any explicit indication of what the quoted statement is—leaving it to the reader to infer, as in the original.

We understand that this type of translation—more literal than literary—demands more from the reader. But we are convinced that it is precisely this literalness, or rather, this attentiveness to the author’s mode of expression, that enables a more faithful understanding of Wittgenstein’s thought. A translation that pursues fluency or elegance sometimes risks interpreting, simplifying, or channelling a work that deliberately resists such treatment. Take, for example, the expression woher dies? (remark 103), which some versions render as Where does this idea come from?, thereby loading the fragment with theoretical intent that the original does not contain. We prefer to retain the strangeness of the original form, which could just as well be translated as “Where does this come from?”.

In short, this translation does not aim to soften or explain Wittgenstein, but rather to accompany him in his way of thinking—even when that thinking is expressed imperfectly, fragmentarily, or incompletely. We have tried, as far as possible, not to interfere with the rhythm or cadence of his writing, respecting even his silences, repetitions, and blind spots.

On this same website, readers will also find Edition B, which offers a more traditional and academically polished translation of the text—a version with stylistic corrections and greater fluency in Spanish, intended to make reading easier without sacrificing philosophical rigor. The two editions complement one another and offer different ways of approaching the work, depending on each reader’s interests or needs.

— Alberto Buscató

About the author

Alberto Buscató

After studying Biotechnology at the university, motivated, as it were, by the search for knowledge, Alberto Buscató Vázquez decided to change his path to philosophy. For that purpose, he did an M.Sc. in Cognitive Science and an M.A. in philosophy, both in Germany. He currently focuses on writing about culture, history, and philosophy, while planning to live with less and contribute the most.