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...