This is a parallell post from my Gramsci blog.
As a thank you for being the conferancier at the Red party’s electoral wake in Trondheim recently, I got the book “Consequences of Capitalism” by Chomsky and Waterstone as a gift. (Both the wake and election were a success by the way – probably the former to a large extent because of the latter.)
The first chapter of the book discusses several Gramscian terms, like hegemony and Common sense, and upon reading it I got to thinking about the power of translations. Different languages have slightly different words and concepts, so no translation can fully translate the entirety of an original text. There will always be smaller or larger shifts in meaning. This is however not something that can be said to be inherently negative. Although it makes it harder to understand what the exact and precise meaning of the original text is, new concepts coming from a new language may assist us in thinking about concepts and phenomena, and allow new cultures to take part in the epistemic community around the subject discussed. It can create increased richness in understanding.
In the English translations Gramsci’s “senso comune” is usually translated as “common sense”, and his “buon senso” is usually translated as “good sense”, these are quite literal translations, that however (I believe without being an italian scholar) also captures the original meaning with little slippage or change in understanding.
When thinking about how to translate this into Norwegian, however, I enter some rocky terrain. Although we have a concept that is in everyday speech used quite similar ot the english common sense – “sunn fornuft”, its literal meaning is akin to good sense (literal: “healthy sense”). This concept and its use may seem to indicate that in Norwegian thought there is no difference between common and good sense, which may be an inheritance from our relatively egalitarian history, with no nobility and a large class of landowning farmers. In Norway it is assumed (you might say it is an hegemonic idea) that what the large population believes is what is good sense. The use of this concept to translate Gramsci’s “senso commune”, underlines this, while “buon senso” is e.g. translated as “den gode forstand” which is not a much used concept in common language.
Although much good can be said about Norway’s egalitarian history, this idea naturally has its potential problems. Ontological questions are not right or wrong depending on how large a part of the population believes in them. They are independent of this, and sometimes the majority is quite wrong. It would thus be good sense to have separate concepts for common and good sense.
Now, the question in Norwegian is not that simple. Norway is a language of two (relatively similar) official written languages and many dialects (like Italy), and in the past decades there has been increased acceptance for using these dialects in official capacities. In more rural, dialect and oral use we have the concept of “sunt folkvett” (lit: healthy popular sense). This is used much in the same way as “sunn fornuft”, however the addition of popular, in “healthy popular sense”, indicates an underlying suspicion that there may also be an unhealthy popular sense, and as such opens the concept up more than the standard written Norwegian.
There are also slight differences in meaning between the Norwegian concepts “fornuft”, “forstand” and “vett”, apart from “vett” being more a more popular concept rarely being used in e.g. academic literature, and “forstand” being a bit archaic. Fornuft can be seen as more abstract, philosophical, and universal, while forstand is a bit more concrete and practical implying e.g. to have sound judgment. Vett implies a more down-to-earth practical wisdom, and shares linguistic roots with the English “wit”, but is more similar to the older English meaning of “mental faculties”.
So there is, in Norwegian dialects an understanding, I believe, that there can be common perceptions that are unhealthy, like Gramsci sees. In the dominant “bokmål”, however, there is no difference between the common and the good sense.
Go figure.