Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Linguistic Parity

Reading these fascinating essays on translations of the Declaration of Independence into various languages-including Russian, Chinese, Italian, Japanese, French, and Spanish-what emerges is how remarkably paradoxical that document is. It is clearly both revolutionary and universal. Yet, we should perhaps remind ourselves of the inevitable contradiction in those two claims. If it is revolutionary, its precepts run counter to mainstream tradition: They contravene received wisdom and contradict normative experience, which together constitute the basis of the universal. In other words, if the declaration is revolutionary, how can it be universal

Declaration · Declaration of independence · Independence (probability theory · Linguistics · Parity (physics · Political science · Politics · Australian History and Society · Classics · History · Law · Philippine History and Culture · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies