Posts

From Übersetzbarkeit to le supplément: Benjamin, Derrida, and the Origin That Requires Translation

Image
The Tower of Babel, Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Source: Wikipedia Translation is a mode. To comprehend it as mode one must go back to the original, for that contains the law governing the translation: its translatability. Translatability is an essential quality of certain works, which is not to say that it is essential that they be translated; it means rather that a specific significance inherent in the original manifests itself in its translatability. It is plausible that no translation, however good it may be, can have any significance as regards the original. Yet, by virtue of its translatability the original is closely connected with the translation; in fact, this connection is all the closer since it is no longer of importance to the original. — Walter Benjamin, The task of the translator Thesis Walter Benjamin's The Task of the Translator argues that translatability (Übersetzbarkeit) is not an external property added to literary works but an essential characteristic of...
Post a Comment
Read more

When Bread Becomes River: A Thought Experiment on Walter Benjamin's Theory of Translation

Image
Introduction Walter Benjamin's The Task of the Translator contains one of the most frequently quoted passages in twentieth-century translation theory: "The words Brot and pain "intend" the same object, but the modes of this intention are not the same. It is owing to these modes that the word Brot means something different to a German than the word pain to a Frenchman, that these words are not interchangeable for them, that, in fact, they strive to exclude each other. As to the intended object, however, the two words mean the very same thing" (Benjamin, 2000, p. 258). The example appears almost self-evident. German and French use different words for the same object, while each language approaches that object according to its own "mode of intention." Benjamin's point is not that languages merely substitute different labels for identical realities, but that each language discloses the world in its own distinctive way. But what if Benjamin had...
Post a Comment
Read more

Modes of Intention and the Problem of the “Same Object”: Benjamin Between Linguistic Tradition and Structural Critique

Image
The words Brot and pain "intend" the same object, but the modes of this intention are not the same. It is owing to these modes that the word Brot means something different to a German than the word pain to a Frenchman, that these words are not interchangeable for them, that, in fact, they strive to exclude each other. As to the intended object, however, the two words mean the very same thing. —     - Walter Benjamin, The task of the translator Introduction “The words Brot and pain ‘intend’ the same object, but the modes of this intention are not the same…” (Benjamin, 2000, p. 258). The apparent simplicity of this formulation conceals a decisive assumption about language: that translation operates on a shared object whose identity remains intact across linguistic systems. Meaning is thereby divided between what is referred to and the manner in which it is referred to. Yet this distinction is not self-evident. What sustains this symmetry is less transparent than i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hölderlin and the Foreign: Why Walter Benjamin Thought Great Poets Make Better Translators

Image
Thesis Hölderlin's translations of Sophocles were long regarded as strange, defective, or even unreadable because they violated conventional expectations of fluency. Walter Benjamin's theory of translation allows us to see these translations differently. Rather than domesticating Greek tragedy into smooth German, Hölderlin preserved its alterity and thereby revealed a deeper purpose of translation: not merely the transfer of information, but the encounter between languages themselves. A Translator Accused of Failure Friedrich Hölderlin's translations of Sophocles had a strange fate. Today Hölderlin occupies an undisputed place among the major poets of the German tradition. Yet his versions of Antigone and Oedipus Tyrannus bewildered many of his contemporaries. Readers complained that the language sounded awkward, unnatural, and at times almost incomprehensible. What should have been a bridge between Greek tragedy and German literature appeared instead as an obstacle...
Post a Comment
Read more