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DOI: https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2022.54.06.17
How to Cite:
Vakhovska, O. (2022). The sin of the translator: On words and mental images in translation. Amazonia Investiga, 11(54), 178-188.
https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2022.54.06.17
The sin of the translator: On words and mental images in translation
Гріх перекладача: про слова та ментальні образи у перекладі
Received: June 2, 2022 Accepted: July 19, 2022
The closer the look one takes at a word,
the greater the distance from which it looks back
K. Kraus
Imagery is an ubiquitous and inherent property of language
and it is only from image to image that we can translate languages
O.O. Potebnya
Written by:
Vakhovska Olha72
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7720-0970
Abstract
This paper explores the interface between the
conscious and unconscious minds in translation
and focuses on the inner word form that it
considers to be the linchpin in this interface. This
paper assumes that words pertain via their inner
forms directly to archetypal images and via these
images indirectly to archetypes, which underpins
image-driven interpretations of individual words
in translation.
This paper discusses Ukrainian гріх commonly
translated as English a sin and shows that this
translatability does not imply an interpretability
as the words via their inner forms relate to two
distinct archetypal images - of fire and of
movement, respectively, - that uniquely
transcend the cultures to the core and capture a
different, culture-specific knowledge of SIN.
Pictorially, these are different SINs, owing to
which гріх means something different to a
speaker of Ukrainian than a sin does to a speaker
of English. Yet, ingredients and associations
drawn into the archetypal images show that THE
SHADOW, ANIMA, THE SELF, and
TRANSFORMATIONS are the archetypes that
jointly endow to speakers the same
foreknowledge of SIN as mediated from within
the collective unconscious. This way the inner
word forms via their connection to archetypal
images extend back beyond the conscious into
the unconscious mind.
72
Associate Professor, Dr. Department of English philology and philosophy of language Kyiv National Linguistic University Kyiv,
Ukraine.
Vakhovska, O. / Volume 11 - Issue 54: 178-188 / June, 2022
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Key words: archetypal image, archetype, inner
word form, interpretation in translation, mental
image, word.
Introduction
This paper explores the interface between the
conscious and unconscious minds in translation
and focuses on the inner word form that it
assumes to be the linchpin in this interface.
This is a follow-up paper to Vakhovska (2022a).
The common ground for these papers is the
theory of image-driven interpretations in
translation that I develop in keeping with the
agenda of cognitive translation research. In this
theory, interpretation is viewed as ‘drawing’
images in the mind, with the mind’s phenomenal
content converted into its propositional content,
and the other way round when it comes to
converting propositional into non-propositional
thought. In effect, the meaning of a word in the
source language must convert into a mental
image; this mental image must re-convert into a
meaning for a word to be picked in the target
language so that what this word describes
corresponds to what this mental image depicts in
the world, which is non-trivial since both
depicting and describing involve several
different-stage representational changes in the
content of the mind. The genuine translator
commits to find in a language such words that
make for mental images their optimal
descriptions.
Though mental images are inherently conscious,
their root and sustenance are in the unconscious
mind and its archetypes (in Jung’s terms). For
mental images, archetypes are the primary
schemes that get filled with peculiar contents
only upon entering the conscious mind. Images
that crop up immediately at the interface between
the minds are termed archetypal; archetypal
images date back to the time in evolution when
humans’ emerging consciousness would light
upon their vast unconsciousness, with the mind
increasingly populated by images from then on.
Thinking in images is evolutionarily older than
thinking in words first coined as symbols whose
visual and sound forms constituted a syncretic
sacred whole; from the very onset, the form and
the meaning of a word were intimately,
inextricably linked. The element in the word’s
makeup that reaches archetypal images is the
inner word form (the term by Potebnya) as the
archaic image that came to motivate this word at
the moment of creation. Inner word forms are
generally discovered in an etymological analysis
carried out on the etymons of words.
The objective of this paper is to show that words
via their inner forms pertain directly to distinct
archetypal images and that it is via these images
that the words relate indirectly to particular
archetypes. Whereas archetypes are pan-human
and cross the cultural divide, archetypal images
do not: as transformations of the archetypes, they
may have the same basic structure but tend to
appear as specific, local variations across
cultures worldwide. Hence, inner word forms
bind word meanings with peculiar archaic
images, and in doing so mediate the conscious
and the unconscious minds; on that, inner word
forms imbibe cultures, which is of particular
relevance for translation as a form of cultural
mediation engaged with the phenomenon of
language.
The assumptions this paper makes have
implications for the theoretical concept of
(un)translatability in translation: I think the
heuristic value of this concept will increase if the
concept of (un)interpretability is introduced as a
counterpart. Indeed, whereas the word A is
effortlessly translatable as the word B, this does
not imply their interpretability as the words via
their inner forms bind their meanings with
peculiar archetypal images that uniquely
transcend the two cultures to the core. The
genuine translator who is not a walking
dictionary but a cultural mediator is a master of
this transcendence.
This paper presents the translation case study
of names of SIN in Ukrainian and English: the
nouns гріх and a sin, respectively. This is an
etymological exploration of words motivated by
human (fore) knowledge of sin, with the surmise
that these words, once coined, carry through time
their original, archaic motivators as uniquely
pictorial inner word forms. SIN is a universal
human concept: its archetypes help humankind
avoid perpetual evolutionary deadlocks and also
grant the opportunity of multeity, which in
different cultures translates into peculiar
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archetypal images of SIN. Whereas translating
гріх as a sin is straightforward, this study shows
that pictorially these are very different SINs: two
distinct archetypal images drive the
interpretations of гріх (the image of fire) and of
a sin (the image of movement) from within the
Proto-Slavic and Proto-Germanic world models,
with extensive cultural implications up to
nowadays. This virtually overrides the
straightforward translatability and makes the
wording гріх is translatable but not interpretable
via a sin very intuitive and even preferable if one
is to genuinely respect the two cultures in their
mediation.
In the view of cultural variation, total
interpretability appears unattainable, though:
there is no getting apple juice out of oranges,
unless the fruit is genetically modified, which I
find suboptimal. The genuine translator then can
only strive for a total interpretability as for this
translation’s ultimate extent that otherwise
threatens to become the cultures’ vanishing
point. It is with this idea of sin as an inherent
imperfection in humans and in translations that
this paper’s title plays.
Theoretical framework
On inner forms in words and on sins in
humans
The inner form of a word is a fragment of this
word’s meaning that motivated the emergence of
this word in its peculiar form into the language
(Potebnya, 1892). An inner word form is a
primary, archaic image that shows the relation of
the content of a thought to consciousness:
‘отношеніе содержанія мысли къ сознанію;
она [внутренняя форма слова] показываетъ,
какъ представляется человѣку его
собственная мысль,’ as the original goes (ibid.,
p. 102). In effect, the thought relates its content
in a particular way to consciousness, and this
relation (отношеніе, literally, as an offering that
the thought carries along to give to
consciousness) is an image.
Inner word forms are a linguistic community’s
shared archaic memories that, even when
obliterated, preserve an influence upon the
interpretive mind. On this view, words by their
inner forms give rise to myths (ibid.) and myths
come to be the ‘first and foremost psychic
phenomena that reveal the nature of the soul’
(Jung, 1981, p. 6).
The theoretical concept of the inner word form
derives from Humboldt’s views on the inner form
of language. Correspondingly, an inner word
form is treated as an active force, a spirit that
sculpts this word’s raw material and infuses into
it a life of its own, which this paper’s epigraph
picks up as ‘it looks back’: as a creature capable
of sight, the word looks back at a researcher, and
in this eye contact there is a meaningful
connection. In this light, translation ‘is not a
matter of knowing many words; it is a matter of
going deep into their meanings so that the spirit
of their content is not lost’ (Vakhovska, &
Isaienko, 2021, p. 248).
Practically, the inner word forms in Ukrainian
ведмідь and in English a bear, for example,
show that once bears were culture-specifically
‘seen’ via the images of honey and of the brown
fur, and have remained pictorially different ever
since (ibid., p. 244). BEAR is a concrete concept;
this paper takes up SIN which is abstract:
whereas bears are generally tangible, sins are not,
and exposing in sins their unique visually
perceived properties is quite non-trivial. SIN is a
propositional knowledge structure that, similarly
to language, can describe but not depict. SIN sits
on the universal set of propositions ‘sin (X
committed a sin), X did something bad, X knew
that it was bad to do it, X knew that God wants
people not to do things like this, X did it because
X wanted to do it, this is bad’ (Wierzbicka, 1996,
p. 280-281) that indeed do not resemble sin in
appearance. What is more, Ukrainian and
English unlike Chinese or Japanese are not
ideogram-based: in them, there is no counting on
the outer word forms for a culturally-preferred
pictorial resemblance to sin; this resemblance
must be looked for in the words’ inner forms
instead.
The title of this paper echoes that of W.
Benjamin’s seminal work: ‘The task of the
translator’ (2000[1923]) professed fidelity in the
translation of individual words and came to
fundamentally distinguish what a word means
from the manner in which this word means. To
Benjamin, words rather than sentences must be
the primary elements of translation, and manners
of meaning must be prioritized because they are
unique, whereas meanings are not: to underline
the manners of meaning in native vs. foreign
words is the task of the translator. My views on
the inner word form generally resonate with
Benjamin’s distinction. Though manners of
meaning are never spoken of as mental images,
let alone as archaic images that bind the
unconscious and conscious minds in acts of word
interpretation in translation, the point Benjamin
makes, as well as his call to render the spirit but
not the letter of the text, add a better clarity to this
paper’s approach.
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If translated into Benjamin’s terms, sin is the
object of intention (the referent, in this paper’s
terms) that inherently remains the same in this
world. SIN’s set of propositions is the intention
(the word meaning) that is the same for гріх and
a sin; it makes the two words generally
translatable via each other and is the what. The
images of fire and movement are the modes of
intention (the inner word forms) that make гріх
and a sin different and uninterpretable via each
other; they are the how. This proves a many-to-
one relationship, with one and the same intention
having two different modes. A one-to-many
relationship, however, is also possible, with one
and the same mode steering different intentions,
as is shown in Vakhovska (2022b). Modes of
intention do not lend themselves to translation
and, if the translator treats language seriously,
must be ‘lovingly and in detail’ (Benjamin,
2000[1923], p. 21) extracted and interpreted.
They are the myriad different ways in which
humans attempt to take this world into a
linguistic possession (cf. also Weber’s (2005,
p. 72) point on translation as touching vs. taking).
Yet, whereas a mode of intention is rather
processional, an inner word form is not: it is a
pictorial result of the meaning-making process
going on in the archaic mind rather than the
process itself.
Hence, гріх and a sin mean one and the same
‘thing’ but mean it in different manners, owing to
which гріх means something different to a
speaker of Ukrainian than a sin does to a speaker
of English: a sin as a translation can only touch
гріх as the original but never take it. The speakers
may find themselves in a snare of semantic
illusions unless there is the genuine translator
able to operate in the different modes within
nested frames of cultures and subjective
experiences respecting the singularity of peoples
as much as that of individuals. I discuss
subjectivity in translation in Vakhovska (2021);
in this paper however my focus is on collective
rather than personal experiences having their
way in translation. The collective SIN emerges
into a culture in the form of distinct archetypal
images mediated by archetypes from within the
collective unconscious. The nature of these is
discussed in the sections that follow.
Methodology
The investigation that this paper presents took
three stages: (1) The etymons of the nouns гріх
and a sin were exposed and analyzed. This
showed the words’ inner forms and (2) allowed
to arrive via these forms at the archetypal images
of SIN as given in the Proto-Slavic (the image of
fire) and Proto-Germanic (the image of
movement) world models; the images were then
‘drawn’ as metaphorical narratives and their
cultural implications were examined. (3) The
archetypes of SIN that the images of fire and
movement represent were considered next.
Archetypes and archetypal images from the
Jungian perspective
Archetypes, according to Jung, are primordial
elements of the human psyche: they are ‘the
chthonic portion of the psyche <...> through
which the psyche is attached to nature’ (Jung,
1970, p. 53). As ‘forms without content’ (Jung,
1936, p. 99), archetypes remain hidden from
observation and it is only on entering one’s
consciousness that their content is supplied and
arranged into a peculiar form.
Jung defines archetypes as archaic, universal,
eternal images that are too abstract to be
representable (Jung, 1981). Yet, as utter
abstractions archetypes have the power to
arrange elements of the psyche into still other
images at different levels of generality. This
appears a graded semantic continuum that scales
from completely general through less general and
more specific to completely specific mental
images and has its poles in the unconscious and
conscious minds (Jusuk, & Vakhovska, 2021).
On this scale, the images immediately after the
archetypes are those that Jung calls archetypal.
Archetypal images are triggered by archetypes
and are a way for these archetypes to be given to
humans and known by them. An archetypal
image is a representation of a distinct archetype
in consciousness; it is a form that this archetype
takes on entering the conscious mind. While
archetypes are irrepresentable, archetypal images
‘appear in human consciousness in a complete
pictorial form without applied intellectual effort’
(Bradshaw, & Storm, 2013, p. 154) and thus are
images per se. They make a subset in the set of
mental imagery (Goodwyn, 2012, p. 28-59) and
as such are non-propositional and ineffable.
What distinguishes archetypal images is their
‘numinosity and fascinating power’ (Jung, 1947,
p. 414). With this, archetypal images emerge as
symbols (Jung, 1971, p. 474) with an inherent
significance of their own. Extending far beyond
themselves into many other things, symbols tend
to make sense within particular cultures only:
they bind the cultures’ fundamental values and
traits, while the cultures support symbols in their
interpretation and use.
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Results and discussion
From etymons of SIN’s names to the
archetypal images of SIN
One of the major archaic concepts, SIN got its
first names in myths and it is in myths that SIN
became a concept per se. According to my
lexicographic sources, the etymon of the
Ukrainian noun гріх is the Old East Slavic noun
грѣхъ with the meaning ‘a mistake; a confusion,
a mess’ (Miklosich, 1886; Brugmann, 1892;
Berneker, 1908-1913; Preobrazhensky, 1959;
Makovsky, 1992; Melnichuk, 1982-2006), while
the etymon of the English noun a sin is the Old
English noun synn with the meaning ‘a mistake;
a bad act’ (Brugmann, 1892; Onions, 1966;
Makovsky, 1992, 2000; Levitsky, 2010). Both
words did not have either ethical or religious
connotations, and it is only later that they came
to develop the meaning ‘a violation of the will of
God’ as primary.
Old East Slavic грѣхъ ascends to the Proto-
Slavic root *grěxъ whose meaning evolved as ‘a
burning sensation of the body > something that
burns one’s body and causes physical suffering
and pain > a burning sensation of conscience;
scruples; remorse, guilt > something that burns
one’s conscience and causes moral suffering and
pain;’ cf. Old Indo-Aryan tápas ‘heat > pain’ and
Proto-Indo-European *gher- ‘to burn.’
The archetypal image of fire apparently is the
bedrock for Ukrainian гріх. Fire sustained life
and was a sacred object in the archaic world
model. Its symbolism was vast. Interweaving of
flames in particular symbolized the connection of
the three worlds: the upper world with light gods
in it, the middle world populated by people, and
the lower world where dark forces abode. This
interweaving was also the connection of the
times: the past, the present, and the future, and
this tribe’s connection with its (animal)
ancestors.
Flames had a symbolism of their own: Proto-
Slavic *grěxъ ties up with *groikso-/*groiso- ‘a
curve, a wryness’ and relates to the (near-
)universal archaic opposition of straight ‘good’
to wry ‘evil.’ The meanings ‘curved’ and ‘to
burn’ were connected: literally, these curves
were the flames that got interwoven in the fire;
their quick movement enchanted and made one
lose consciousness.
Entangling in flames was used in witchcraft as a
means to cast a spell and take one’s will away.
The meaning ‘to burn’ of Proto-Indo-European
*kei-/*kai- reconstructed in English soon and in
Ukrainian синій ‘blue’ merged into this archaic
idea of sins committed in a loss of consciousness.
Archaic symbolism of the blue color embraced
the lower (dark blue) and the upper (light blue)
worlds: *kei- meant ‘dark colors in the color
range of a burning fire,’ with blue at the bottom,
or in the lower world whose dark forces made
one commit a sin. Colors of the fire were taken to
be the sacred chakras, and their interplay was
mystical. Blue as the lower chakra connected the
fire and the Mother Earth who gave birth but also
was the furnace cremating the buried dead; cf.
English Earth < Proto-Indo-European *аr- ‘to
burn.’ Each of the chakras symbolized a different
cosmic level and was a higher step in the
staircase connecting the three worlds. Fire was
the journey of a soul transcending the different
cosmic levels. The top as the hottest point was
the chakra where the soul reached catharsis
through suffering: the meaning ‘a fire’ links with
‘to purify;’ literally, this was a ritual purification
of meat; cf. English flesh and a flash.
Flames interwove so tightly that this was a grip
of fear, torment, and pain; cf. German Angst
‘fear’ < Proto-Indo-European *angh- ‘tight,
narrow’ from *ag-/*eg- ‘a fire.’ Suffering was
taken as a blessing and the greatest good bringing
one closer to the light god(s) and to the truth; cf.
Latin punire ‘to punish’ but Old Indo-Aryan
punya ‘good, beautiful; sacred,’ and Proto-Indo-
European *andh- ‘to burn’ but Hittite handaz
‘the truth’ and handai ‘to set in order.’
Old English synn ascends to the Proto-
Germanic root *sunðjō-/sunjō- whose meaning
evolved as ‘movement > a trespass on a territory
that must not be trespassed > any violation > an
incongruity, a mismatch;’ cf. Old Saxon sundia,
Old Frisian sende, Old Norse synd, Old High
German sunta all developed their meaning ‘a sin’
this way.
The archetypal image of movement hence is the
bedrock for English a sin. Movement, and
particularly continuous movement along a way,
had a mystical significance and rested on the
fundamental opposition of center to periphery.
The circle this opposition drew was the circle of
life; nested into it were the Cosmos as opposite
to the Chaos and this tribe’s territory (‘us’) as
opposite to that of another (‘them’). So, one’s
trespass was beyond this sacred circle whose
boundaries stood between the realms of the good
and evil.
When moving to the center, one was in order and
harmony; when moving away, one apprehended
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transience and corruption; stepping outside was
entirely forbidding. German Weg ‘a way’ but
Weh ‘a pain’ resonate with this mysticism; cf.
also Old Indo-Aryan juti ‘to go, to move’ but
German gut ‘good’ and Russian жуть ‘horror.’
Cognates of Old English synn draw on the same
archetypal image of movement but highlight it
differently. Old High German sind develops the
meaning ‘movement > something that happens
once; one time, an occasion > a blemish’: if we
adopt a mythological view and compare
continuous movement along a way to a dynamic
sequence of scenes, then ‘an occasion’ is a static
snapshot of one scene in this sequence, while ‘a
blemish’ is a graphic depiction of this scene as a
point on the trajectory curving the way.
This static snapshot is the here and now, or the
there and then, of the traveler making their way.
On that, Old English soð develops the meaning
‘movement > something that currently exists >
true’ traced back to Proto-Indo-European *es- ‘to
be;’ cf. Gothic bi-sunjanē ‘around’ and sunja ‘the
truth’ and English sooth ‘true.’ Soð later
develops from ‘true’ to ‘a true guilt as the guilt
that has verily been proven;’ cf. Latin sons
‘guilty, criminal’ (from sum (esse) ‘to be, to
exist’) and Old Norse verð sannr at ‘to be found
guilty.’
The traveler whose here and now is their truth is
a corruptible and transient mortal, which is
another truth: Proto-Germanic *sunð-/sanÞ-a/ja-
develops the meaning ‘true > worldly, carnal >
mortal,’ which comes close to Proto-Indo-
European *ost- ‘a bone (a symbol of human
nature as of mortal flesh);’ cf. Old Indo-Aryan
sant- ‘the existing, the true,’ Old Indo-Aryan
ásthi- and Latin os ‘a bone.’
An archetypal image ‘can be something as simple
as a static dream image or it can be an entire
narrative in complexity, as stories can be
metaphors just as static images can’ (Goodwyn,
2012, p. 56). Fire and movement appear not as
single images but as image sequences, or
narratives, that capture certain regularities of
how the images got arranged within their
cultures. Whereas each image is emotionally
moving by itself, their cumulative impact
climaxes in the narrative.
The narrative for Ukrainian гріх: One is in a
confusion and commits a sin because their will
and consciousness were taken by dark forces.
The world vertically splits into the lower, middle,
and upper worlds against the continuum of time.
Dark forces are in the lower world. This sin is
committed in the middle world where humans
live. The upper world is where light gods abide.
The three worlds are connected by the sacred fire.
On committing this sin, one is in the fire whose
flames become a tight grip of fear, torment, and
pain (burning of the body → burning of the soul).
Up the fire, one’s soul takes steps to the upper
world and transcends the different cosmic levels
from bottom to top. One is mortal and the bottom
of this fire is where their body burns to ashes
when buried. The top is the hottest; this is the
point where the soul suffers the most and gets
purified through suffering and pain. Here, the
soul becomes closest to light gods and to the
truth. This purification sets things in order.
The narrative for English a sin: One moves
continuously along a way (the life) and trespasses
on a territory that is forbidden (commits a sin).
This trespass is a bad act because in it one
violates the sacred order of the horizontally
marked up world. This world is the nested circles
of the Cosmos vs. Chaos and of this vs. another
community’s territory that have their center as
the good and their periphery as the evil. One goes
beyond the boundaries of these circles in sin.
Whereas one’s movement is a dynamic sequence
of scenes, a sin is a scene in this sequence only (a
moment in life). A sin is an occasion in the
journey (the life) and a blemish on the trajectory
that curves one’s way (a line of life) but the
journey continues and is not terminated by the
sin. This sin is this traveler’s natural lot because
all humans are corruptible and mortal. This sin is
a true fact about the traveler. Their guilt in
committing this sin is verily proven.
The two narratives obviously capture a different
knowledge of SIN and are two very different
metaphors: (THE CONSEQUENCE OF) SIN is
BURNING IN THE FIRE for гріх, and (THE
CIRCUMSTANCE OF) SIN is MOVING THE
WRONG WAY for sin; entailments of these
metaphors are bracketed in the narratives. While
both metaphors are grounded in embodied
cognition, they explain mental experiences of sin
in terms of peculiar and unrelated primary
experiences of the body. Pictorially, these are
different SINs. The world for гріх is organized
vertically from bottom to top. This sin is one’s
moral state after committing a bad act, i.e. гріх is
not action-oriented but relates to moral
consequences of the bad act for the sinner. This
state is that of fear and guilt; the burning
sensation of the body with its suffering and pain
is transferred metaphorically to one’s soul’s
experience in sin: гріх is something that burns
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one’s conscience, and is a lasting sensation.
There is repentance and internal admonition
against sin rather than external inhibition or
judgment in the face of the community: the focus
is on one’s relation to the light gods and to the
truth, cf. Ukrainian совість ‘conscience’ from
Old East Slavic съвѣсть ‘knowledge,
understanding that comes together with another,
tenably a divine, one.’
The world for a sin is organized horizontally
from center to periphery. This sin is a bad act, i.e.
a sin is action-oriented and highlights the nature
or, rather, the circumstance of the bad act but not
the moral consequence of this act for the sinner:
a sin is when one moves beyond and trespasses a
boundary, which may be momentary. This is
external rather than internal admonition against
sin since there must be someone in the
community (or this must be the community as a
whole) who proves the sinner guilty of the bad
act, cf. corpus delicti in Western law.
SIN is a universal human concept always
delivered in culture-specific configurations. In
the course of time, the images of fire and
movement have continued to shape cultures
sustaining the implicit basic constants of their
unique worlds. Archetypal perceptions indeed
have manifested themselves in the Biblical
prototype and in the evolution of SIN in the
Christian world model (Vakhovska, 2011). In
The Old Testament in particular SIN tends to
regulate the social life of a community rather
than the spiritual life of an individual (cf. also
Hanba et al., 2022), and it is in The New
Testament that SIN acquires a pronounced
spiritual value. Notably, Eastern Christianity
places a big emphasis on repentance and
atonement for sin, whereas Western Christianity
locates sin in humans’ corrupted free will and in
the imperfection of human nature that cannot but
be sinful. Western Christianity treats sins as
deliberate acts and with great precision classifies
these; attitudes to sin are rather rational and
pragmatic: sin proves of a fairly legal nature, e.g.
an indulgence could reduce the punishment for
sin. This way SIN’s archetypal images are
reflected distinctively in the light of the
differences that Christianity has accommodated
for the interpretations of SIN.
From SIN’s archetypal images to the
archetypes of SIN
SIN rests on certain ‘schemes of human spirit’
(Florensky, 1914) and is incomprehensible in
terms of rational reflection. In SIN, the collective
unconscious finds a manifestation and abides in
an individual who conceives of sin.
Archetypes as abstractions can only be
recognized from the effects that they produce:
‘the archetype may not quite be ‘in’ the brain,
rather it uses the brain’ (Haule, 2010, p. 21) and
can be recognized in this usage. Archetypes are
an orchestra striking music in the dark: there is
no seeing the instruments but each can be
recognized by the tones it produces. I believe
SIN’s archetypes, too, can be recognized by the
‘ingredients or associations’ (El-Shamy, &
Schrempp, 2005, p. 481) drawn into the
archetypal images of SIN. These indicate that
SIN is mediated by THE SHADOW, ANIMA,
THE SELF, and by non-personified
TRANSFORMATIONS from among the
archetypes cataloged by Jung. The four
archetypes jointly endow to humankind the same
foreknowledge of SIN.
Jungian psychology maintains that any
personality is holistic but yet splits into partial
personalities whose names are the various
archetypes, each contributing to the whole
(below, the nature of the archetypes is given
according to Jung (1921; 1936; 1947; 1970;
1971; 1981)). THE SHADOW is one’s
relatively autonomous ‘fragmentary’ personality
that accumulates the adverse, evil inclinations
suppressed as incompatible with the good and
consciously preferred ones. When in sin, THE
SHADOW comes to dominate over the other
partial personalities.
ANIMA (Latin ‘the vital principle, a soul, a life’)
rests with the animal ancestors of humankind and
is a major regulator of behavior in humans.
ANIMA induces spontaneous responses in the
psyche and is irrational; striving for life, ANIMA
strives equally for good and evil: such categories
are simply absent from her nature; the life of the
body and that of the soul have neither a modesty
of their own nor a conventional morality in
themselves, which only makes them healthier.
ANIMA, the soul’s female part, is addicted to
everything that is unconscious and dark,
ambiguous and chaotic in a woman.
THE SELF is an archetype of order; it is the
center of existence for all human creatures: the
point of beginning and that of end, THE SELF is
an aspect of God. SIN plugs into THE SELF as
the idea of one’s integrity and wholeness that sin
violates. Sin splits THE SELF apart; it is a moral
evil, cause of fragmentation, root of corruption
and dissociation in humans. Sin deprives the soul
of its substantiality.
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TRANSFORMATIONS actuate the other
archetypes in sin. The evil derives from the good
and verily cannot originate from anything other
than the loss of good (Augustine of Hippo, 426).
The good, too, cannot but originate from the evil,
and if there had not been the evil of the Original
sin, there would not have been the good of felix
culpa with an even bigger good of Redemption
(Jung, 1960): ‘opposites attract and combine to
make up wholes greater than the sum of the
opposing parts. <...> any given entity contains
within itself its own opposite’ (El-Shamy, &
Schrempp, 2005, p. 482). To the archaic mind, all
that exists came from the darkness, and in the
Biblical account the light, too, comes from the
darkness. In the human psyche, nothing is
unambiguous or single-valued: ANIMA may
appear as an angel of light, and THE SHADOW
may induce a range of good and morally right
urges such as normal instincts, creative impulses,
and insights. This ambivalence sustains sin as
well.
Tables 1 and 2 summarize my findings. There,
the symbolism of ingredients and associations in
the archetypal images of SIN is given according
to Makovsky (1996; 2012).
Table 1.
From the archetypal image of fire to the archetypes of SIN.
Archetypal image
Ingredients and associations
Archetypes
Fire
▪ the blue color in the archaic world model
symbolized the unconscious and the
otherworldly
▪ the quick movement of flames was believed to
make one lose consciousness and symbolized
the unconscious
THE SHADOW
▪ fire was a symbol of the soul
▪ fire symbolized the intertwining of life and
death
▪ fire was a symbol of the (animal) ancestor’s
soul
▪ blue symbolized the confusion in which dark
forces made one commit a sin
▪ blue was a sacred color of the Mother Earth,
or the feminine, the passive, and the
unconscious
ANIMA
▪ fire was a symbol of integrity and wholeness:
the fire vertical connected the three worlds that
represented the divine cosmic integrity
▪ suffering was believed to give integrity,
wholeness and to set the world in order
THE SELF
▪ flames were curves, and curving symbolized
transformation and change: bending, curving
had a mystical symbolism of a re-birth and
were believed to restore the order and harmony
that had previously been broken ▪ interweaving of flames symbolized the
connection of times and of the three worlds, and
also the connection to (animal) ancestors
TRANSFORMATIONS
Table 1 shows that the region most densely
populated with ingredients and associations of fire is that of ANIMA, which sides with the
peculiar knowledge stored in гріх.
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Table 2.
From the archetypal image of movement to the archetypes of SIN.
Archetypal image
Ingredients and associations
Archetypes
Movement
▪ the outside, the periphery of the sacred circle
were taken to be the Chaos and symbolized the
unconscious
▪ the meanings ‘a boundary, an edge’ and ‘the
evil’ were immediately connected
THE SHADOW
▪ as a symbol of the unconscious, the Mother
Earth related to Old Indo-Aryan ardha- ‘outside,
on the periphery’ that was a manifestation of the
Chaos
ANIMA
▪ the center of the sacred circle symbolized the
ordered Cosmos ▪ the ideas of movement and integrity were in a
close connection ▪ trespassing the boundaries symbolized a loss
of integrity
▪ the boundary marked up the sphere of the
unconscious; cf. also the wall that, as a
metaphor, separates the conscious and the
unconscious minds in (Krishtal, 2020) ▪ the Cosmos meant the good, while the Chaos
meant the evil
THE SELF
▪ life changing to death and death changing to
life were the divine integrity symbolized by the
sacred circle
TRANSFORMATIONS
Table 2 shows that the region most densely
populated with ingredients and associations of
movement is that of THE SELF, which resonates
with the culture-bound knowledge in a sin.
Archetypes ‘present themselves as ideas and
images, like everything else that becomes a
content of consciousness’ (Jung, 1947, p. 435).
Whereas this paper concentrates on the pictorial
presentation of SIN’s archetypes, I approached
the archetypes of SIN as ideas, but never as
images, in Vakhovska (2011): these proved the
same four archetypes as discussed above, which
I believe validates this paper’s approach. The two
approaches as complementary ways to positively
arrive at a concept’s archetypes feel like reaching
the top of a mountain, which is singular, but
having climbed there up this mountain’s different
sides. Yet, this paper’s concern is the word and
the mental image(s) it uniquely imparts but not
the sentence and the idea(s) it conveys in the
form of propositions.
Conclusion
This paper has shown that words pertain via their
inner forms directly to archetypal images and via
these images indirectly to archetypes, which
underpins image-driven interpretations of
individual words in translation. This paper has
chosen Ukrainian гріх commonly translated as
English a sin as its case study; yet, the theoretical
assumptions that frame this case are intended as
equally effectual for the other world’s languages
that engage into the dialogue of cultures.
The prospect of this paper is to substantiate its
assumptions in the context of university
translation education with reference to students’
translation intelligence, cultural awareness, and
humanistic values.
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