Translation does not

transmit subject
matter.
WALTER BENJAMIN
ON

THE TASK OF THE

TRANSLATOR
WILMA DE CASTRO MA Ed - English
(DISCUSSANT)
 WALTER
BENJAMIN
July 15th 1892
to
September 27th 1940
•one of the twentieth
century’s most
important literary
and cultural critics
 • Benjamin’s Works
analyses of:
• photography
• film
• language
• material culture
• the poet Charles Baudelaire
• and his vast examination of the social, political,
and historical significance of the Arcades of
nineteenth-century Paris
• left an enduring and important critical
legacy
The Cambridge
Introduction to
Walter Benjamin
David S. Ferris
Professor of Comparative Literature
University of Colorado at Boulder
a substantial selection of his important
critical writings from 1916 to 1940
Outlines:

- his life in pre-war Germany

- his association with the Frankfurt
School

- the
dissemination of his
ideas and methodologies into
“Images – my
great, my
primitive passion.”
• Walter Benjamin’s writings
essential reading for students of
modern criticism and theory
 • Works
Metaphysical beginnings 1914–1918
“The Life of Students”
“Two Poems by Friedrich H¨olderlin”
“On Language in General and on the Language
of Man”
“On the Program of the Coming Philosophy”
Raising criticism 1919–1925
The Concept of Criticism in German
Romanticism
• “Critique of Violence”
• “Goethe’s Elective Affinities”
• “The Task of the Translator”
• Origin of the German Tragic Drama
• Culture, politics, and criticism 1926–
1931
• The Last Snapshot of the European
Intelligentsia”
• “Theories of German Fascism”
• “Karl Kraus” Media and revolution
1931–1936
• “Little History of Photography”
• “The Author as Producer”
• “Franz Kafka On the Tenth
Anniversary of His Death”
• One-Way Street 75 “Surrealism
• “The Work of Art in the Age of Its
Technical Reproducibility”
• “The Storyteller”
• History, materialism, and the messianic
1936–1940
• The Arcades Project
• Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the
Age of High Capitalism
• “On the Concept of History”
Born into a wealthy Jewish family, eldest
- fragile physical physic - a strong reason
he has such close relations with his
books
- was sent to boarding school in 1905
• Enrolled at Friedrich Wilhelm
University to study philosophy
•began to write essays arguing
for the need of educational and
general cultural change
*In 1917 he got married and moved to the
University of Bern. The following year they
had a son
*1919 - earned his PhD with the essay, The
Concept of Criticism in German
Romanticism
Seperated from his wife and moved to
the University of Heidelberg in 1921
to start an academic career
• Frankfurt school- institute for social
research founded in 1923, Walter
Benjamin met Theodor Adorno
•Origin of German Tragic
Drama was rejected by
Frankfurt University which
closed the doors to an
academic career
• The next year began writing for
the German newspapers
1929 - met Bertolt Brecht and became
his assistant
• Moved to Nice during 1932 - planned
to commit suicide
• Adolf Hitler became the Führer and
his dictatorship started the
persecution of the Jews
• stayed in shelter with Bertolt Brecht
• Financial situation got worse
• collaborated with Max Horkheimer
• got funds from the Institute of Social
• World War I started in 1914,the following
year moved to Munich and continued his
studies at Ludwig Maximilian’s University
- met Gershom Scholem
Just before the Germans entered Paris
obtained a Visa to the United States
- joined a group of Jewish refugees on his
way
- intercepted by the Spanish Police
- overdosed on morphine
• details of his last days are unclear so
there’s a possibility that he was
• Summary of influences
• His first influence was Gustav Wyneken when
Benjamin was at boarding school in Thüringen
1905 – 07. It was here Benjamin discovered a
new way of thinking.

• The Frankfurt School is an institute of

social research early members including
Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse
developed a form of Marxist Theory known
as Critical Theory. This had a huge impact
on Walter Benjamin.
• Horkheimers essay in 1930 ‘Traditional and
Critical Theory’ should perhaps be regarded as
the founding document of the Frankfurt School
so there for a main influence to Walter Benjamin.

• Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht first met in

Berlin 1929. Benjamin wrote a series of essays
on Brecht’s plays and poetry. His writings about
Brecht are some of the most important critical
theory about theatre in the century; particularly
Brechts influenced the essay ‘The Work of Art in
the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’. Moscow
Diary also contains some reference to Brecht.
• The most important philosophical influence
on his thinking had been neo-Kantian (a
revived or modified type of philosophy).

• All these influences have took

Benjamin through different types of
work. First starting with the philosophy
of art and language, through to his
cultural criticism, then to his final
reflections on the concept of history
“The Task of the
Translator”
(1921, pub. 1923)
. originally published as the preface to Benjamin’s
translation
of poems from Baudelaire’s Les fleurs du mal,
• achieved the status of a work that cannot be avoided
in discussions of translation and its theory
• far from being a practical guide to translation
• Its essential quality is neither communication nor
information.
• indicates how little this essay’s concern with
translation can be divorced from an understanding of
what a literary work is
• since a literary work says very little in the way of
information, then the question of what can be
translated is no longer a simple case of conveying the
same content in another language
• concerned with the question of what significance
translation possesses
• Benjamin’s response to this question: to show
how translation attains its fullest meaning when
we understand what its relation to language is
• In this respect, the significance of translation is
not restricted to simply providing another version
of what a work represents
• Benjamin takes away from translation
the task of repeating in another
language what an original work refers
to through its language
• Translation does precisely the opposite
according to Benjamin: “[a literary
work] ‘tells’ very little to those who
understand it.
•In contrast to a
translation based on
content, Benjamin states
that “Translation is a
form”.
• Translation is a form for
Translation is form for Benjamin

•its significance is not

decided by what the original
work means
•Benjamin explains this by
reference to the German and
French words for bread: “In the
words Brot and pain, what is
meant is the same, but the way of
indicating it is not”.
•Form is the way of intending meaning.
• as the words Brot and pain
indicate each form by which
bread is known belongs to a
specific set of relations in
each language
• (a way of earning) one’s living
• gagne-pain
• Writing novels is my bread
and butter.
• a type of food made
of flour or meal baked
• pain
• bread and butter
• a loaf of bread.
• one’s living
• pain
• This is how
I earn my daily bread.
-the task of translation:
- to bring out these relations,
translation is intimately related to
how language is structured, and to
how it means
- the theory of translation is
simultaneously a theory of
language
• Benjamin’s 1916 essay on
language,
• “It is necessary to found the
concept of translation at the
deepest level of linguistic
theory”

- relation of translation to the

• The proximity of
translation to the
nature of art had
also been noted in
The Concept of
Criticism.
importance of the
Romantics in
establishing
translation as more
than a secondary
activity
• “The Task of the Translator”
• not an isolated work within
Benjamin’s thinking between 1916
and 1921
• the deepening of existing
concern with language and the
work of art
• theory of language presented in
this essay addresses the
Benjamin considered this
foreignness in a more limited
way:
“ On Language as Such
the difference between a name and an object is
thought across the multiplicity of languages
Translation offers an understanding of
this difference but it is also a way of
understanding a foreignness that belongs
• coming to terms remains a
“temporary and provisional
solution” because a “final solution”
- “out of the reach of mankind”

• it still points the way to what

Benjamin calls the “hitherto
inaccessible realm of reconciliation
and fulfillment of languages”
• realm is characterized as
“pure language” like “pure
means” and “the
expressionless,”
•has a constitutive role to
play even if its
existence can only be
• Central to Benjamin’s theory of
language: account of intention
•Intention in language as
the way in which
language expresses
meaning
• a word can only intend a
meaning or an object while
maintaining its difference from
that object
•something that intends, a word
promises a meaning but cannot
itself be what it means (or intends)
- difference between a word and what it means
indicates a deficiency that the historical
development of languages continually strives
• Every single language is incomplete in some way, but
in their multiplicity to make up for or supplement to
make up for or supplement
• Benjamin describes this striving as
something that not only occurs within an
individual language but also occurs
between languages because of the kinship
of all languages with one another
• Benjamin explains:
• kinship between languages consists in
this: in every one of them as a whole,
one and the same thing is meant. Yet,
this one thing is achievable not by any
single language but only by the totality
of their intentions supplementing one
another: the pure language.
• Every single language is incomplete in
some way, but in their multiplicity,
languages relate to one another in
such a way as to supplement one
another.
•Benjamin locates this
supplementing activity in
intention (the way language
means rather than what is
• According to what Benjamin said earlier,
this means that such an activity is located
in the form of a translation
• Because every language participates in this
condition, Benjamin writes,
• “languages are not strangers to
one another but are . . .
interrelated in what they want
to express”
•As a result,
•the task of translation is
to express this “innermost
relationship of languages
to one another”
•A direct consequence of
this task is that translation
transplants the original into
a more definitive linguistic
realm.
• Benjamin explains:
“Whereas content and
language form a certain
unity in the original, like a
fruit and its skin, the
language of the translation
envelops its content like a
royal robe with ample folds.”
• WHY?
Translation
- signifies a more exalted language than
its own
compared to its own content
- remains unsuited
- overpowering
- foreign
•signifying a more
exalted language
meaning of a translation
•lies less in its own
content than in the way
supplementing the original

• translation signifies the

pure language intended by
both
- why … language always
overpowers content
• an original can be translated
- Benjamin argues
“translation cannot be translated”
inability of a translation to be
translated - not just a matter of
redundancy
-a key concept introduced early in the
essay:

translatability
• links the ability of a work to be
translated
• “specific significance inherent in
the original”
• a specific meaning or object that
the translation is to restate
• aims at a significance that
makes translation possible in
the first place
significance
Compares the relation between language and content in the
original
to the relation between a fruit and its skin
Translation - possible

- the skin (language) is unable to communicate what it gives a

form to?
No need for translation if language
or the original work were able to
communicate its content
• “In all language and linguistic
creations, there remains in
addition to what can be conveyed
something that cannot be
communicated”.
• WHY?
language can only address:
“what is meant” by its “way
of meaning” or its intention
to convey that meaning
all that can be translated by
language is this intention –
to convey meaning
•What every
translation does?
•- to convey in varying
degrees a fundamental
condition of language
while remaining unable to
Benjamin points
• distinguishing between the presence
of form and content in different works:
• the lower the quality and distinction
of [an original’s] language …
• the greater the extent to
which it is information
• the less fertile a field it is for translation
•The higher the level of a
work, the more it
remains translatable
even if its meaning is
touched upon only
fleetingly.
intentional form basis - way of
meaning
an original work establishes its
translatability
characteristic accords precisely with
Benjamin’s theory of language
- by supplementing the original …
brings out the original work’s relation to
what is meant
• Benjamin asserts
“tremendous and only
capacity of translation” –
“to regain pure language”
•Translatability poses the
question of what is meant
by the language of the
• translation in the original - “what
is meant is bound to the way of
meaning of the individual word
• the language of the original also
belongs to pure language
• i. e. to a language which “no longer
means or expresses anything but is,
as expressionless and creative
Word, what is meant in all
languages”
• If the original were such a pure language,
translation could never exist because the original
work would have no need to be supplemented by
another language.
the purpose of translation - not to
reveal this pure language in the
original but rather to “allow [it] . . .
to shine upon the original more fully”.
• Translation supplements original for
the same reason one language
supplements another.
no single translation- capable of
realizing pure language
• Translation

- “atemporary and
provisional solution to the
foreignness of languages
•It is an equally
provisional solution
to the question posed
by the intention of
the original work.
•provisional status
accounts for:
- why there can be more than one
translation of a work
- why translation is an
index to the historical
afterlife of an original work
• Each historical context will
supplement the original in a
different way.
• Each historical context will
express the original’s relation
to meaning precisely because
language does not and
cannot decide this relation.
•inability - what
preserves the
language of the
original as a
language that
translation can never
complete
• We may say bread
• the French may say pain … in doing
so:
•We have not answered what
the French mean by this
word but have merely
repeated the intention
present in each language.
•The intention to
mean from which
Benjamin draws a
purity of language.
•THANK YOU!
 CRITIQUE OF VIOLENCE
• “All violence as a means is either law-making or law-preserving”

• Discusses why one’s individual right to violence became the responsibility of the Law.

• In the eyes of justice violence is a product of nature, not a problem unless misused.

• Belief in violence encouraging the assumption of power roles and for them to evolve, which in turn
causes an immediate increase in violence.

• Justice is the creation of ends, legality is that of means.

• Darwin’s biology regards violence as the only original means.

• Natural law regards violence as being natural, opposed to that of positive law, which sees
violence as a product of history.

• Natural law criticizes ends. Positive law can judge evolving law by only criticizing its means.

• Ends can be attained by justified means, justified means used for just ends.
 ON THE CONCEPT OF HISTORY/THESE ON THE
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
• Was to be his last piece of writing that he completed. Benjamin was in Paris, soon to be on the run from the Nazis heading f or the US.

• His thoughts on the philosophy of history came when the future looked extremely bleak as the war was starting. It echo’s many of his other writings that where influenced by the war.

• Consists of a series of meditations in the form of 18 ‘theses’, which are in the language of Messianism and invoke specifical ly Jewish themes such as that of remembrance.

• Concerns the eventual significance, if any, of human history.

• Benjamin’s thinking of theology and historical materialism bounce off each other to create energy in the piece.

• In every ‘theses’ Benjamin gives the impression of struggling to define the true nature of the causes of developments and cha nges in human societies.

• It was in this piece that he made clear his life long commitment to a theological mode of thinking.
• This failed to earn Benjamin a place in the academic hierarchy, which led to his father refusing to
continue offering his support.
THE ORIGIN OF GERMAN TRAGIC DRAMA
•However it still became his most sustained and original work, and is now one of the main sources
of literary modernism in the twentieth century.

• Benjamin thought the insights into the nature of aesthetic interpretation of theorists were
essential to the true art of criticism. He talked about these in terms of the ‘digressive’ and ‘mosaic’
insights.

• He then considers the nature of the Baroque art of the 16 th and 17 th centuries, focusing on the
unusual stage-form of certain royal martyr dramas. He argues that Baroque tragedy was born from
classical tragedy due to its shift away from myth into history.

• A ‘political’ world is developed in German tragic drama, which touches on the quality of a
traditional tragedy, but without the transcendent meanings that Greek drama embraced.

• Benjamin states that emblems of Baroque metaphor point to the extinct values of a classical
world, that they now cannot themselves ever achieve or repeat.
 THE ARCADES PROJECT
• Was an encyclopaedic project on which Walter Benjamin worked on for thirteen years from 1927
until his death in 1940.

• The Arcades Project takes its name from a nineteenth century architectural form. It also borrows
its structure from that same architectural form. Arcades were passages through blocks of buildings,
lined with shops and other businesses.

• It never achieved a completed form. What remains are vast quantities of notes, images, quotes
and citations; capable of being ordered and reordered in endlessly different constellations.

• Arcades are ‘fluid’ places that he believes to resemble realities in our dreams, as their meaning is
always scattered like a montage which can never be seen in full.

• The subject of dreams are key throughout this project, as Benjamin’s dream is always just under
the surface of his ideals. Dreams are a symbol of freedom; our social dreams are a direct
representation of our individual utopia.

• Historical awakening is also key to understanding and progressing in the present. He believes
that to experience the world as a whole the spirit needs to develop through dreams.

• Historical awakening appears to be the main aim of the project as a whole, even though the
eclectic manner in which his thoughts have been recorded may sometimes be misleading.
 THE WORK OF ART IN THE AGE OF MECHANICAL
• Reproduced art lacks presence in time and space. Its lack of history means it lacks authenticity and is seen
as a forgery.

REPRODUCTION
• However this is not the same for art that has been technically reproduced i.e photography.

• Art has an “aura”, this is created through its place in time and space, its history. The technique of
mechanical reproduction shatters this “aura”

• The “authentic” work of art has its basis in ritual. Mechanical reproduction frees the work of art from its
dependence on ritual. The idea of authenticity is not applicable to mechanically reproduced art such as
photographs – when authenticity stops being applicable the function of art is reversed.

• Instead of being based on ritual it begins to be based on politics.

• Art is valued for different things
- cult value
-exhibition value

• The phrase “cult value” applies to ceremonial objects destined to serve in a cult, it’s the fact that they exist
that is important, not their being on view. In fact cult value almost seems to demand that the work of art
remain hidden.

• The technical reproduction of art makes it easier and more accessible to exhibit.

• In photography, exhibition value displaces and becomes superior to cult value. Photographs can be seen as
evidence for historical occurrences and acquire a hidden political significance.

• With the medium of film, it is the camera that presents the performance of the film actor to the public.
 THE WORK OF ART IN THE AGE OF MECHANICAL
REPRODUCTION
• Through the editing and camera positioning the performance of the actor is subjected to a series of optical tests. Also the performe r is unable to adjust to the audience during his performance. This allows the audience to take the position of

CONTINUED…
critic. The audience’s identificati on with the actor is really an identificati on with the camera. Consequently the audience takes the position of the camera; its approach is that of testing. This is not the approach to which cult values may be exposed.

• There is no greater contras t than that of a stage play to a work of art founded in mechanical reproducti on, such as film. Ex perts have long recogni zed that in the film “the greatest effects are almost always obtained by ‘acting’ as little as possible
... ”. The stage actor identifies himself with the characte r of his role. The film actor very often is denied this opportuni ty.

• Film enables art to be accessibl e to the public.

• Anyone may now find themselves part if a work of art. Passer by becomes film extra. This is particul arly relevant to Russia. In a lot of Russian films the characte rs are not always actors in the traditional sense, but rather ordinary people portrayin g
themselves and primarily in their own work process.

• The representati on of reality by film is more significant than that of painting as it assembl es multiple fragments of reality .

• Mechanical reproducti on of art changes the reacti on of the masses toward art.

• Behaviour items shown in a movie can be analyzed much more precisely and from more points of view than those presented on pai ntings or on the stage. As compared with painting, filmed behaviour lends itself more readily to analysis because of
its incomparably more precise statements of the situation. In compari son with the stage scene, the filmed behavior item lend s itself more readily to analysis because it can be isolated more easily.
 A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WORKS ABOUT OR IN RESPONSE TO YOUR
THEORIST.

ONE WAY STREET WAS WALTER BENJAMIN'S FIRST EFFORT TO BREAK OUT OF THE NARROW C ONFINES OF
THE ACADEMY AND APPLY THE TECHNIQUES OF LITERARY STUDIES TO LIFE AS IT IS CURRENTLY LIVED. FOR
BENJAMIN CRITICISM SURROUNDS THE ORDINARY OBJECTS OF LIFE, THE T EXTS OF THE TIME, FILMS THAT
ARE IN CURRENT RELEASE, AND THE FLEETING CONCERNS OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE.

THE AUTHOR AS PRODUCER REPRESENTS ONE EXTREME OF THE SPECTRUM OF BENJAMIN’S POSITIONS.
BENJAMIN ATTEMPTS TO USE HIS KNOWLEDGE DEVELOPED IN THE CONTEXT OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH TO
ENTIRELY CREATE A NEW POLITICAL RELATIONSHIP OF AUTHOR – WORK – AUDIENCE.

EDWARD FUCHS: COLLECTOR AND HISTORIAN DOCUMENTS BENJAMIN’S PARTICULAR ATTITUDE TOWARDS
THE PAST. FOCUSING ON SPECIAL DETAILS FOR A PROJECTED FUTURE INC LUDING EVENTS, PRODUCTS AND
LIVES THAT RUPTURE THE LINE OF PROGRESS. HE USED THIS PIECE TO A DVERTISE THE PRINCIPLES OF HIS
PROJECT OF THE HISTORY OF MODERNITY. THE ESSAY CLEARLY ADVOCATES THE PRACTICE OF HISTORICAL
MATERIALISM.

THE ORIGIN OF GERMAN TRAGEDY FAILED TO EARN BENJAMIN A PLACE IN THE ACADEMIC HIERARCHY.
HIS FATHER THEN REFUSED TO CONTINUE SUPPORTING HIM.
IT STILL BECAME BENJAMIN'S MOST SUSTAINED AND ORIGINAL WORK AND IS ONE OF THE MAIN SOURCES
OF LITERARY MODERNISM IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. ITS ABOUT THE TH EORETICAL NATURE OF ART IN
 Bibliography

Walter Benjamin was the author of many works of literary and cultural analysis.

Critique of Violence 1921.

Goethe's Elective Affinities 1922.
Origin of German Tragic Drama [Mourning Play] 1928.
One Way Street 1928.
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction 1936.
Berlin Childhood around 1900 / 1950.
On the Concept of History / Theses on the Philosophy of History 1939.
The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire 1938.
Illuminations 1968
Reflections 1978
Moscow Diary 1986
The Arcades Project 1999
Edward Fuchs: Collector and historian
On Hashish
The Author as Producer
The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin 1994
Understanding Brecht 1983
Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism
Selected Writings, Vol. I: 1913-1926
Selected Writings, Vol. 2: 1927 – 1934
Selected Writings, Volume 3: 1935-1938
Selected Writings, Volume 4: 1938-1940
 Bibliography
Books Used:
•The Essential Frankfurt School. Edited by Andrew Arato & Eike Gebhardt.
Urizen Books, New York. 1978.
• Modernism and Marxism, An Historical Study of Lukacs, Brecht, Benjamin and Adorno. Eugene Lunn.
University of California Press. London. 1982.
•The Dialectical Imagination, A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research 1923
1950.
Martin Jay. Boston. 1973.
•The Origin of Negative Dialectics, Thodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt Institute. Susan
Buck-
Morss. Sussex. 1977.
•The Frankfurt School, The Critical Theories of Max Horkheimer and Thodor W. Adorno. Michael Landmann.
Canada. 1977.
•The Frankfurt School. Tom Bottomore
Sussex. 1984.

Websites:
www.wikipedia.com