from the ordinary later use of the word "truth" or which offers itself as the outcome of later thinking.
What is named "unconcealedness" ["Unverborgenheit"]. what we have to think in the name Ἀλήθεια in order for our thought to be fitting, is not yet experienced thereby, let alone secured in rigorous thinking. It could be that the specially formed word "dis-closure" ["Entbergung"] comes closer to the essence of the Greek ἀλήθεια than the expression "unconcealedness," which nevertheless, for several reasons, is at first appropriate to serve as the guiding word for a meditation on the essence of ἀλήθεια. It should be kept in mind that in the following we will be speaking of "unconcealedness" and "concealment" but that the obvious expression "unconcealment" ["Unverbergung"] is avoided, although it is the "most literal" translation.1
Every attempt at a "literal" translation of such foundational words as "truth," "Being," "semblance," etc. immediately arrives within the radius of an intention reaching essentially beyond the clever fabrication of literally matched words. We could appreciate this sooner and in a more serious way if we reflected on what it is to "translate." At first we conceive of this process in an external and technico-philological way. It is said that "translating" is the transposing of one language into another, of the foreign language into the mother tongue or vice versa. What we fail to recognize, however, is that we are also already constantly translating our own language, our native tongue, into its genuine word To speak and to say is in itself a translation, the essence of which can by no means be divided without remainder into those situations where the translating and translated words belong to different languages. In every dialogue and in every soliloquy an original translating holds sway. We do not here have in mind primarily the operation of substituting one turn of phrase for another in the same language or the use of "paraphrase." Such a change in the choice of words is a consequence deriving from the fact that what is to be said has already been transported for us into another truth and clarity—or perhaps obscurity. This transporting can occur without a change in the linguistic expression. The poetry of a poet or the treatise of a thinker stands within its own proper unique word. It compels us to perceive this word again and again as if we were hearing it for the first time. These newborn words transpose us in every case to a new shore. So-called translation and paraphrase are always subsequent and follow upon the transporting of our whole being into the realm of a transformed truth. Only if we are already appropriated by this transporting are we in the care of the word. Only on the basis of a respect for language grounded in this
1 See pp 132ff