If Language Is Not Substance, What Does Translation Transfer? Saussure and Benjamin in Dialogue
— Walter Benjamin, The Task of the Translator
“La langue est une forme et non une substance” (language
itself is a form, not a substance)
— Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics
Introduction
Walter Benjamin's The Task of the Translator opens with a claim that immediately unsettles ordinary assumptions about art and literature:
“No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.”
Taken literally, the statement appears implausible. Poems are written to be read, paintings to be seen, and music to be heard. Yet Benjamin refuses this familiar picture. His concern is not empirical but structural: not who constitutes the ideal receiver, but what a work of art is.
Translation is commonly understood as a means of making a text accessible to those unable to read the original. Yet Benjamin suspends this assumption as well. The focus shifts from the audience to the work itself and the conditions of its existence. The opening gesture thus displaces a deeply ingrained model according to which linguistic and aesthetic forms exist primarily to transmit meaning from sender to receiver.
What is at stake is therefore not interpretation but ontology. Benjamin asks whether a poem, a painting, or even a translation can be understood in terms of the audience it serves, or whether its mode of existence exceeds such a framework altogether. A literary work, on this view, cannot be reduced to the effects it produces on readers any more than a translation can be reduced to the information it conveys.
A parallel displacement can be found in Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics. There, language is no longer treated as a repository of pre-existing meanings attached to sounds, but as a system in which value emerges from relations alone. Saussure's formulation is explicit: language is “a form, not a substance” (Saussure, 2011, p. 169).
Read together, these two interventions pose a precise and unsettling question: if language contains no transferable substance, what exactly does translation transfer?
Translation Beyond Information
Benjamin begins by asking whether translation is addressed to readers who cannot access the original:
Is a translation meant for readers who do not understand the original?
At first glance, the answer seems obvious. Yet Benjamin quickly complicates this assumption by shifting attention away from communication. A literary work, he argues, does not derive its significance from the information it conveys. As he writes: “For what does a literary work ‘say’? It ‘tells’ very little to those who understand it” (Benjamin, 1968, p. 69).
A simple example clarifies the point. The plot of Romeo and Juliet can be summarized in a few sentences: two young lovers from rival families fall in love and die as a result of tragic misunderstandings. Yet such a summary leaves untouched what makes the play meaningful. Rhythm, imagery, dramatic structure, and verbal density cannot be reduced to informational content. The literary work is not exhausted by what can be paraphrased.
Benjamin therefore criticizes translations that aim only to transmit content. Such translations may succeed at conveying information, but they fail to engage with what he calls the “poetic” dimension of the work. Translation cannot be reduced to message transfer because the literary work itself exceeds what can be communicated as information.
Saussure and the Critique of Substance
Benjamin arrives at this conclusion through a reflection on translation. Saussure reaches a comparable destination through an analysis of linguistic value itself.
Saussure argues that language cannot be understood as a collection of ready-made ideas linked to ready-made sounds. Discussing the relation between signifier and signified, he writes: “The contact between them gives rise to a form, not a substance” (Saussure, 2011, p. 111). Neither ideas nor acoustic images exist as independent entities prior to language. Both are constituted through their relation within a system.
This leads to his central claim: “In a language there are only differences” (Saussure, 2011, p. 166). A linguistic sign has no positive value in itself but acquires meaning through its position within a network of oppositions.
Even minimal contrasts illustrate this principle. The distinction Saussure draws in the Course between Nacht and Nächte shows that linguistic value does not reside in isolated terms:
“In isolation, Nacht and Nächte are nothing: the opposition between them is everything.”
What matters is the system of differences that structures their relation to other signs.
Language, then, is not a repository of pre-existing meanings. It is a structured field of relations in which value emerges through difference rather than substance.
Translation as Relation Rather Than Transfer
Read in light of Saussure's account, Benjamin's claim that “translation is a form” takes on a more precise meaning. If meaning does not exist as an independent substance, then the traditional model of translation as transfer becomes difficult to sustain.
The question follows naturally: if there is no substance to carry across languages, what exactly is being translated?
From a Saussurean perspective, the answer cannot be “meaning” understood as a fixed entity. Meaning exists only within a system of relations. Translation therefore does not transport content from one language to another; it reorganizes relations within a different linguistic system.
Benjamin's notion of translatability converges with this idea. Certain works do not simply await translation as an external operation; rather, they contain within themselves a potential for further linguistic realization. Translation becomes part of a work's historical unfolding rather than its secondary reproduction.
One might therefore suggest a parallel: for Saussure, linguistic value arises from internal relations within a system; for Benjamin, literary significance unfolds through the relation between a work and its translations. In both cases, meaning is not a substance transmitted across boundaries but a structure of relations that continually reorganizes itself.
Conclusion
Although Saussure and Benjamin address different problems, both challenge the assumption that language is grounded in a stable substance available for transmission. Saussure dissolves the idea of intrinsic meaning by showing that linguistic value arises only through differences within a system. Benjamin, in turn, rejects the view that translation consists in carrying a self-contained content from one language to another.
Taken together, their arguments suggest a different understanding of translation. If meaning is relational rather than substantial, translation cannot be conceived as the transport of an invariant essence. It becomes instead a process in which a work is rearticulated within new configurations of relations.
In this sense, Benjamin's claim that “translation is a form” extends a principle already implicit in Saussure's linguistics: language does not contain substances. It produces value through relations. If this is so, then translation transfers no hidden essence from one language to another. What it transfers, or more precisely reconstitutes, is a network of relations through which meaning continues to emerge.
References
Benjamin, W. (1968). The task of the translator. In H. Arendt (Ed.), Illuminations (H. Zohn, Trans., pp. 69–82). Schocken Books. (Original work published 1923)
Saussure, F. de. (2011). Course in general linguistics (R. Harris, Trans.). Bloomsbury. (Original work published 1916)
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