On the (Un)translatability of some of Ferdinand Tönnies' Principal Sociological Ideas

Tönnies' Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887) has been translated into French (1946), Spanish (1947), English (1955), and Italian (1963). It is surprising that, while an actual translation into French and Italian is possible, the only way, so far, to render Tönnies' ideas in English has been to promote Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft to English words and then to use them as such. Much the same is true of "translations," e.g., into Swedish and Finnish. An actual translation into Russian, on the other hand, is demonstrated to be possible. It is a reasonable hypothesis to adopt that, what we here encounter are different systems of social concepts, distributed in various parts of Europe and woven into the languages in use there.