![]() ![]() 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” (“The Task” 257). Benjamin also terms this a “suprahistorial relationship between languages” that consists in the fact that “in every one of them as a whole, one and the same thing is meant. Rather the translator’s work should “ultimately serve the purpose of expressing the innermost relationship of languages to one another” (Benjamin, “The Task” 255). Therefore, no translator needs to concern himself very much with what the original means, or so Benjamin claims. ![]() Translation should not seek to communicate the meaning of the original because the communication of its content is not in the least essential to our appreciation of it. More or less all previous theorization of this task has been directed towards establishing how the translator best communicates the original’s meaning in the receiving language, be it word-for-word or sense-for-sense this is, in Benjamin’s eyes, a futile procedure whose best possible outcome is the “inaccurate transmission of an inessential content” (“The Task” 253). His second step is an exploration of the repercussions that viewing translation as an art has for our conception of the translator–whose task Benjamin is out to define: “Just as translation is a form of its own, so, too, may the task of the translator be regarded as distinct and clearly differentiated from the task of the poet” (“The Task” 258). The counterintuitive argument that the translation does not exist for the sake of the reader who does not read the original language is Benjamin’s first step in establishing translation as an art in its own right. Only after this overture into non-intentional aesthetics do we encounter translation proper: “If the original does not exist for the reader’s sake, how could the translation be understood on the basis of this premise?” (Benjamin, “The Task” 254). While art is clearly meaningful for the person enjoying it, its primary intention is not to inform, instruct, or even delight this person. Art is not primarily about communication: “No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the audience” (“The Task” 253). Benjamin’s main argument is that the appreciation of art does not rest on interpreting its content to derive a moral or lesson from it. “The Task of the Translator” opens with a discussion of “the appreciation of a work of art or an art form” (253). If we merge Benjamin’s contention that translation is an art form with his later argument that the history of art forms cannot be separated from the technical standards of their time, the question arises whether the introduction of machine translation, a radically changed technical standard for the practice of translation, creates what is, in effect, a new linguistic art form. ![]() “Translation is a form” is the founding premise of Benjamin’s essay (254), by which he means to say that translation is form of artistic writing alongside poetry rather than a secondary derivative of literary art. His 1921 essay “The Task of the Translator” is an attempt to conceive of translation as a form of art an art form, moreover, whose unique concern is what happens when one language passes into another. But before he starting thinking about art forms and technology, Benjamin was thinking about art forms and language. Technological innovation does not simply improve on existing art forms, but is capable of generating new art forms by offering new media for artistic creation. Walter Benjamin once proposed that the “history of every art form has critical periods in which the particular form strains after effects which can be easily achieved only with a changed technical standard–that is, a new art form.” (“The Work of Art” 118). ![]()
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