It should be pointed out that certain correlative concepts retain their meaning, and possibly their foremost significance, if they are referred exclusively to man. Only superficial thinking will deny the independent meaning of the latter and declare both questions to be of equal significance. Either: Will an adequate translator ever be found among the totality of its readers? Or, more pertinently: Does its nature lend itself to translation and, therefore, in view of the significance of the mode, call for it? In principle, the first question can be decided only contingently the second, however, apodictically. The question of whether a work is translatable has a dual meaning. To comprehend it as mode one must go back to the original, for that contains the law governing the translation: its translatability. If the original does not exist for the readers sake, how could the translation be understood on the basis of this premise? However, if it were intended for the reader, the same would have to apply to the original. This will be true whenever a translation undertakes to serve the reader. But do we not generally regard as the essential substance of a literary work what it contains in addition to information - as even a poor translator will admit - the unfathomable, the mysterious, the poetic, something that a translator can reproduce only if he is also a poet? This, actually, is the cause of another characteristic of inferior translation, which consequently we may define as the inaccurate transmission of an inessential content. This is the hallmark of bad translations. Its essential quality is not statement or the imparting of information - hence, something inessential. For what does a literary work say? What does it communicate? It tells very little to those who understand it. Moreover, it seems to be the only conceivable reason for saying the same thing repeatedly. Is a translation meant for readers who do not understand the original? This would seem to explain adequately the divergence of their standing in the realm of art. No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener. Art, in the same way, posits mans physical and spiritual existence, but in none of its works is it concerned with his response. Not only is any reference to a certain public or its representatives misleading, but even the concept of an ideal receiver is detrimental in the theoretical consideration of art, since all it posits is the existence and nature of man as such. In the appreciation of a work of art or an art form, consideration of the receiver never proves fruitful. (1968).Īccessed at North Carolina State University See also Arendts Introduction, attached. Lawrence Venuti (London: Routledge, 2000), with some additions and pagination added here from Zohn, op. The copy-text is The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Hannah Arendt (NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1968), pp.69-82 and Do. Walter Benjamin, The Task of the Translator, in Illuminations (1968)īibliographical note: Walter Benjamin, The Task of the Translator, in Illuminations, trans. Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator”, in Illuminations (1968)
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