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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...