"Everything is translation at every level, in all
directions." It seems a well-known quote like this doesn't need more
commentary. It belongs currently to what we already assume in practice. It is
the same as saying that everything is reading. An organism that orients itself
in space already makes use of all its faculty to successfully recognize and
navigate. That is obvious enough an idea. Another that is no longer probably
worth mentioning is the notion that writing is already reading. These
assumptions lead us to another given, that all reading takes place within
pre-established frames: all reading is interpretation and perspective. We live
in one universe, but we have many competing views about it. Simple enough,
nothing new here.
What is more interesting are the elements that a system of
reading cannot read or translate, and are indicated by place-holder terms that
we can indeed read, but indicate the place where translation or reading fails.
The illegible exists as a readable sign in the translating medium, but not as a
term with a positive semantic content, but as a "blind spot" within
language translated as that point where language cannot say anything about. And
we have many words like that, words that tell us nothing even by saying it.
"Zero" is probably the archetypal example. Other candidates are:
gibberish, indecipherable, glossolalia, babble, cryptic, unreadable,
untranslatable, inexplicable, enigma, opaque, unknown, nothing, and unnameable.
The term "illegible" itself belongs to this category: it marks the
point where translation fails or is absent; but not completely, of course.
The situation is more ambiguous. There is something we can
read, the signifier is legible. We cannot say that its semantic content is
zero. In fact, this is what it is precisely saying: it is that signifier
pointing us to what it cannot really provide. It signifies the category of
anything that has no semantic content, or whose semantic content cannot be
ascertained. It performs the role of the legible surface of whatever it is that
remains illegible. In short, the illegible is not an absolutely unreadable
state; it is still within language (since what is outside language cannot be
imagined), and translates for us whatever it is that has resisted translation.
It is saying nothing beyond saying that nothing further can be said on whatever
it was trying to signify. By saying less, by signifying nothing, it is capable
of signifying successfully.
Where it succeeds, however, is where it fails absolutely. I
cannot read this, but I mark what I cannot read by a sign that we can all read.
Thus, we can read the sign, whenever reading or translation is confined to the
level of the legible surface of language. It is on this very surface that
language warns us where we can no longer go further, and where we can go on
indefinitely. Between words that say something to say nothing and those that
say something to say another thing, we ask: what is this other thing that
language must be able to say something about to avoid saying nothing? If
"illegible" is just the opposite of "legible," and has no
more value than the legibility that it negates, then what does the legible give
us? No doubt, to answer these questions is to relaunch ourselves into the world
of so many competing interpretations.
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