'The Task of Walter Benjamin's Translators: Reflections on the Different Language Versions of "The Arcades Project"

On-line at:
www.geocities.com/christopherrollason/BenjaminTR.pdf is my new article
on:
'The Task of Walter Benjamin's Translators: Reflections on the
Different Language Versions of
"Das Passagen-Werk" ("The Arcades Project")'
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Extract:
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It is somewhat paradoxical that Walter Benjamin, who is by now all but
universally recognised as one of the greatest philosophers of the
twentieth century, is also a name cited with reverence in the academic
field of Translation Studies - even though he produced only a sliver
of reflections on the subject. There are, indeed, only two frequently
cited texts in which Benjamin considers the subject: the early,
esoteric essay 'On Language as Such and on the Language of Man' ('Über
die Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen', 1916), and
the very well-known piece 'The Task of the Translator' ('Die Aufgabe
des Übersetzers', 1923). From these two slim texts comes Benjamin's
surprising fame as a theorist of translation, concerning which we may
note two interesting points: first, that the later essay is actually
linked to the practice of translation, since it was originally
published as Benjamin's preface to his own translation into German of
Charles Baudelaire's poem-sequence Tableaux Parisiens ); and second,
that since by no means all those who write on Walter Benjamin know his
native language, German, his writings on translation are more often
than not quoted in translation (English, Spanish, Italian or
whatever). All this may usefully alert the readers of his work to the
importance of translation, as an indispensable means of communication
of ideas, and, at the same time, to the need for theoretical
reflection on what is in no sense an unproblematic or value-free
activity. In this brief study, we shall first examine the key elements
of Benjamin's concept of translation, and then look in detail at
certain aspects of the different language versions of his posthumous
masterpiece, the study of nineteenth-century Paris centring on the
arcades that is Das Passagen-Werk.

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