Barbara Cassin (ed.): Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon (2004–) [FR, EN]

“This is an encyclopedic dictionary of close to 400 important philosophical, literary, and political terms and concepts that defy easy–or any–translation from one language and culture to another. Drawn from more than a dozen languages, terms such as Dasein (German), pravda (Russian), saudade (Portuguese), and stato (Italian) are thoroughly examined in all their cross-linguistic and cross-cultural complexities. Spanning the classical, medieval, early modern, modern, and contemporary periods, these are terms that influence thinking across the humanities. The entries, written by more than 150 distinguished scholars, describe the origins and meanings of each term, the history and context of its usage, its translations into other languages, and its use in notable texts. The dictionary also includes essays on the special characteristics of particular languages–English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

Originally published in French, this one-of-a-kind reference work is now available in English for the first time, with new contributions from Judith Butler, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Ben Kafka, Kevin McLaughlin, Kenneth Reinhard, Stella Sandford, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jane Tylus, Anthony Vidler, Susan Wolfson, Robert J. C. Young, and many more.The result is an invaluable reference for students, scholars, and general readers interested in the multilingual lives of some of our most influential words and ideas.”

The book has been or is in the process of being translated into Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Portuguese (5 Vols, scheduled 2009-11), Romanian (scheduled 2013), Russian, Spanish, and Ukrainian (3 Vols, 2009-13, (2), (3)).

First published in French as Vocabulaire européen des philosophies: Dictionnaire des intraduisibles, Seuil/Le Robert, Paris, 2004.

English edition
Translated by Steven Rendall, Christian Hubert, Jeffrey Mehlman, Nathanael Stein, and Michael Syrotinski
Translation edited by Emily Apter, Jacques Lezra and Michael Wood
Publisher Princeton University Press, 2014
Translation/Transnation series
ISBN 0691138702, 9780691138701
1344 pages

Untranslatables and their Translations (Barbara Cassin, Transeuropéennes, 2009, in French, English, Arabic and Turkish)
Commentary (Jacques Lezra, video, 12 min, 2014, in English)
Wikipedia (FR)

Project website (archived)
Publisher (FR)
Publisher (EN)

Vocabulaire européen des philosophies – Échantillon IMAGE (French, HTML version of 30 entries related to the notion of image)
Dictionary of Untranslatables (English, EPUB, PDF)

Roger Shattuck: The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I., Rev. ed. (1955/1968)

In this book Roger Shattuck portrays the cultural bohemia of turn-of-the-century Paris who carried the arts into a period of renewal and accomplishment, and laid the ground-work for Dada and Surrealism.

“…Then came the idea–a kind of gambler’s hunch–that the trio Rousseau-Satie-Apollinaire represented several significant aspects of the period and could reveal them better than any single figure. The idea would not die. [..] Jarry had forced his way into the group and established himself close to the center of things. He helped clarify my underlying subject: how the fluid state known as bohemia, a cultural underground smacking of failure and fraud, crystallized for a few decades into a self-conscious avant-garde that carried the arts into a period of astonishingly varied renewal and accomplishment. [..] An enormous amount has been written on this era and these men since the first edition of this book in 1958. I have taken account of some of it by changing those passages where new facts have come to light.” (from the Preface to this edition)

First published in 1955
Publisher Vintage Books, 1968
397 pages

Review (Alfred Kazin, The Reporter, 1958)
Review (Sidney Tillim, College Art Journal, 1959)
Review (Justin O’Brien, The Saturday Review, 1958)

PDF (115 MB, no OCR)

Richard Kostelanetz: Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes (1993–)

“This book elucidates, celebrates, enumerates, and sometimes obliterates achievers and achievements in the avant-garde arts. Although it runs from A to Z, it could as easily have been written from Z to A (or in any other order you might imagine) and may be read from front to back, back to front, or point to point. It is opinionated, as all good dictionaries should be, but it is also inclusive, because there can never be just one avant-garde.

Blake • Rimbaud • Apollinaire • Stein • Cage • Lichtenstein • Tatlin • Keaton • Captain Beefheart • Hologram • Text-Sound Texts • Strobe Light • Grotowski • Soho • Micropress • Electronic Music • Reinhardt • Pound • Performance • Postmodern • Duchamp • Fuller • Oldenberg • Paik • Armory Show • Reich • Cunningham • Copy Culture • Pattern Poetry • Bread and Puppet Theatre” (from the back cover)

With contributions by Richard Carlin, Geof Huth, Gerald Janecek, Katy Matheson, H.R. Brittain, John Robert Colombo, Ulrike Michal Dorda, Charles Doria, and Robert Haller.

Publisher A Capella Books, an imprint of Chicago Review Press, 1993
ISBN 1556522029
246 pages

PDF
2nd edition (2000, 47 MB, added on 2020-3-18)
New additions (2011) selected for Soanyway by Derek Horton (HTML)