Why Walter Benjamin Thought Poets Make the Best Translators

Yet any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information — hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations. 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? 

—Walter Benjamin, The task of the translator

Introduction: Translation and the Life of Language

Walter Benjamin's The Task of the Translator contains a remark that is easy to overlook but difficult to explain. Discussing literary translation, he writes that an ordinary translator can reproduce only information, whereas "the unfathomable, the mysterious" can be reproduced "only if he is also a poet."

At first glance, the statement seems almost self-evident. Poets possess a refined sensitivity to language, so perhaps Benjamin simply means that they produce more elegant or beautiful translations. Yet this reading quickly runs into difficulties. Throughout the essay, Benjamin shows remarkably little interest in elegance, readability, or stylistic polish. His concern lies elsewhere. He repeatedly argues that translation is not primarily concerned with transmitting information but with revealing something about language itself.

The question, then, is not why poets write well, but why poetry occupies a privileged position within Benjamin's theory of translation. The answer emerges gradually over the course of the essay. What distinguishes the poet is not mastery of ornament or expression, but a capacity to work with dimensions of language that exceed meaning itself. Translation, Benjamin suggests, belongs to this same domain.

Beyond Information: What Literature Contains

Benjamin begins by separating literary language from the transmission of information. His claim is uncompromising:

"Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information—hence, something inessential."

This is not a criticism of information itself. Newspapers, manuals, and legal documents exist precisely to communicate facts or instructions. Their success depends on clarity. Literary works operate according to a different principle. What matters in them cannot be reduced to the message they convey.

Benjamin deliberately leaves this surplus unnamed. He refers to it only as "the poetic." Rather than defining these expressions, he points toward a quality that resists paraphrase. A poem may retain its force even after its basic meaning has been summarized, because its significance also resides in rhythm, syntax, sound, imagery, verbal texture, and the unique interplay among these elements. These features do not merely accompany meaning; they participate in its creation.

This explains why a literary work cannot simply be transferred into another language as though it were a container of ideas. Once language ceases to function as a transparent vehicle for information, translation becomes something more demanding than the reproduction of content.

Why the Translator Must Also Be a Poet

Benjamin's remark that only a poet can reproduce "the poetic" now acquires greater precision. He is not suggesting that translators should embellish a text or imitate poetic style. Rather, he is identifying a common activity shared by poets and translators.

A poet does not merely communicate thoughts through language. Poetry discovers possibilities within language itself. It stretches syntax, experiments with rhythm, creates unexpected associations, and reveals expressive resources that ordinary usage often leaves dormant.

Benjamin assigns an analogous task to the translator. Near the conclusion of the essay, he writes that the translator must "release in his own language that pure language which is under the spell of another" and, in doing so, "break through decayed barriers" within the receiving language.

This is no longer a description of faithful transmission. Translation becomes an act of linguistic renewal. Instead of asking how best to reproduce an existing text, Benjamin asks how the encounter with a foreign work might disclose previously unrealized capacities within one's own language.

Seen from this perspective, the affinity between poet and translator becomes unmistakable. Both work not simply with meanings but with the latent possibilities embedded in language itself.

From Schleiermacher to Benjamin: Three Visions of Translation

Benjamin's position becomes even clearer when placed alongside two earlier reflections on translation.

Friedrich Schleiermacher famously argued that translators face two fundamental options. They may bring the author closer to the reader by adapting the foreign work to familiar linguistic habits, or they may bring the reader toward the author by preserving enough foreignness to make the original's distinctive character perceptible. His preference was for the latter, since genuine understanding requires an encounter with what remains unfamiliar.

Rudolf Pannwitz extends this argument in a striking direction. The central issue, he insists, is not simply how readers experience a translation but how the target language itself responds to the foreign text. Translators, he writes, should not attempt to transform Greek, Hindi, or English into German. Instead, they should allow German to become receptive to those languages. The foreign work should reshape the language into which it is translated.

Benjamin embraces this insight but moves beyond it. Translation is no longer concerned only with readers or with the historical development of individual languages. It reveals what he calls their hidden kinship. Languages differ from one another, yet each expresses only a fragment of a larger linguistic reality. Translation allows these fragments to encounter one another without collapsing their differences.

The progression is revealing. Schleiermacher seeks to transform the reader. Pannwitz seeks to transform the receiving language. Benjamin understands translation as a moment in which the deeper relationship among languages becomes visible.

Why Benjamin Turns to Poets

It is no accident that Benjamin concludes his essay by praising translators who were also major literary figures. He names Martin Luther, Johann Heinrich Voss, Friedrich Hölderlin, and Stefan George, observing that they expanded the expressive resources of German.

The emphasis falls not on accuracy in any narrow sense but on creative transformation. Their translations mattered because they altered the possibilities of their own language. Rather than smoothing away foreign structures, they allowed those structures to leave lasting traces within German itself.

Although Benjamin devotes particular attention to Hölderlin's versions of Sophocles, the broader point applies to all the figures he mentions. Each understood translation as something more than faithful reproduction. Their work demonstrates that another language is not merely an obstacle to overcome but a source of renewal.

This perspective also sheds new light on Benjamin's famous distinction between information and "the poetic." What exceeds information is precisely what permits languages to enrich one another. A literal transfer of content leaves the receiving language fundamentally unchanged. A poetic translation, by contrast, enlarges its expressive horizon.

Conclusion

Benjamin's assertion that only a poet can reproduce "the poetic" should not be understood as praise for literary elegance. His concern is far more ambitious. Translation is not an exercise in replacing words from one language with corresponding words from another. It is an encounter capable of revealing dimensions of language that ordinary communication seldom reaches.

For this reason, Benjamin repeatedly returns to poets when discussing translation. Poets possess an awareness that language is more than a medium for conveying information; it is itself a field of creative possibility. The translator participates in this same activity. Rather than preserving language exactly as it is, the translator enables it to discover what it might become.

Benjamin's theory therefore shifts the purpose of translation in a remarkable way. Success is measured neither by transparency nor by fluency alone, but by the extent to which the receiving language grows through its encounter with another. In that encounter, translation ceases to be a secondary act. It becomes one of the ways in which the life of language continues.

References

Benjamin, Walter. The Task of the Translator. In Illuminations. Translated by Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books, 1968.

Pannwitz, Rudolf. Die Krisis der europäischen Kultur. Nuremberg: Hans Carl, 1917.

Schleiermacher, Friedrich. "On the Different Methods of Translating." In The Translation Studies Reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti. London: Routledge.

Steiner, George. After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975.