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The Task Of The Translator By Walter Benjamin

Decent Essays

Walter Benjamin’s essay, The Task of the Translator, is illuminating in the way in which it shatters any preconceived ideas that may view the act of translation as diminishing the value of the original. Benjamin has high regard for translation, placing it in the realm of art as a distinct form. He argues that art is not about the audience or the receiver that is, it is not primarily about communication. The purpose of art is not to instil a specific belief, impart information or to entertain certain sentiments in the reader thus, appreciation does not reside in generating a moral by interpreting its content. As an art form, translation for Benjamin is not about propagating ideas or beliefs but is about embarking on the task of attaining pure …show more content…

Likewise, translation cannot be considered to interact with the reader, seeking to communicate the meaning of the original text as the content is not essential in our appreciation of the text. His question assumes the original and the translation as distinct categories, both of which, for him, are works of art. Apart from carrying messages and prolonging the value of texts, what is unique to translation is its potential to “express the central reciprocal relationship between languages”(72), its kinship to another language and its potential to bring out the pure language where the “mutually exclusive elements among languages can mingle and supplement one another” (74) and where ‘complementary intentions’ between two languages can be communicated. Therefore, the translator should not be restrained by the burden of relaying what the original means. Benjamin claims that “languages are not strangers to one another, but are, a priori and apart from all historical relationships, interrelated in what they want to express” (72). The affinity between languages can best be brought out by an accurate transmission of the form and meaning of the original

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