Translation has so far been looked at as both a possible and an impossible task. The myth of the Tower of Babel provides the arguments in favour of the act of translation, but also those against translating – Adam’s language became a diversity of languages that need being bridged between, just as it is also true that translation is a blaspheme, since God’s will of separating languages is ignored. Wilhelm von Humboldt’s theory on the diversity of human language is also approached, since it provides one of the most important arguments supporting the untranslatability postulate – languages are energeia i.e. expressions of national geniuses that cannot be transferred from one language to another without being damaged. At the same time, it is still Humboldt who claims the existence of a universal concordance. Individual languages are, in fact, segments of a lingua universalis and the much-debated upon (cultural and linguistic) universals are the very proof of this fact.
Key words:
human language diversity, translatability, untranslatability, language universals, national genius of a language
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