Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject Literature - Comparative Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Tubingen, language: English, abstract: In "The Task of the Translator", Walter Benjamin sets forth what he believes to be the true goal of any work of translation. Instead of conforming to the reader, a translation should conform to the source and target language of the work, the purpose of which is to expose the relationship between the two languages, how each complements the other in its use. But is there more to Benjamin's Task than that? Walter Benjamin is commonly thought of as a Neukantianer because of his influence by the Marburger school, especially Cohen. Little is known, however, about his influence by Husserl's school of phenomenology. In this paper, we will determine Benjamin's influence by phenomenology by first developing a concise conception of intentionality based on a close reading of Husserl's principle work Logische Untersuchungen, as intentionality is the key term linking Benjamin to the phenomenological tradition. We will then provide a novel interpretation of Benjamin's essay "Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers" by focusing on his use of the phenomenological term 'intention' and, with help of Benjamin's fragments on the philosophy of language—where he also used the term intention in the phenomenological sens, provide a novel understanding of what Benjamin means by "das Gemeinte" and "die Art des Meinens" with respect to his theory of translation.

This is a book-length commentary on Walter Benjamin’s 1923 essay "Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers," best known in English under the title "The Task of the Translator." Benjamin’s essay is at once an immensely attractive work for top-flight theorists of translation and comparative literature and a frustratingly cryptic work that cries out for commentary. Almost every one of the claims he makes in it seems wildly counterintuitive, because he articulates none of the background support that would help readers place it in larger literary-historical contexts: Jewish mystical traditions from Philo Judaeus’s Logos-based Neoplatonism to thirteenth-century Lurianic Kabbalah; Romantic and post-Romantic esotericisms from Novalis and the Schlegels to Hölderlin and Goethe; modernist avant-garde foreclosures on "the public" and generally the communicative contexts of literature. The book is divided into 78 passages, from one to a few sentences in length. Each of the passages becomes its own commentarial unit, consisting of a Benjaminian interlinear box, a paraphrase, a commentary, and a list of other commentators who have engaged the specific passage in question. Because the passages cover the entire text of the essay in sequence, reading straight through the book provides the reader with an augmented experience of reading the essay. Robinson’s commentary is key reading for scholars and postgraduate students of translation, comparative literature, and critical theory.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is widely known for his emphasis on embodied perceptual experience. This emphasis initially relied heavily on the positive results of Gestalt psychology in addressing issues in philosophical psychology and philosophy of mind from a phenomenological standpoint. Eventually he transformed this account in light of his investigations in linguistics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of history and institutions. Far less work has been done in addressing his evolving conception of philosophy and how this account influenced more general philosophical issues in epistemology, accounts of rationality, or its status as theoretical discourse. Merleau-Ponty's own contributions to these issues and, in particular, the theoretical status of the phenomenological account that resulted, have provoked varying responses. On the one hand, some commentators have understood his work to be a regional application of Husserl's foundational account of phenomenology. On the other hand, some commentators have questioned whether, in the final analysis, Merleau-Ponty was a phenomenologist at all. In In the Shadow of Phenomenology, Stephen H. Watson offers an in depth analysis of these responses and the complications and development of Merleau-Ponty's position.

The Age of Translation is the first English translation of Antoine Berman’s commentary on Walter Benjamin’s seminal essay ‘The Task of the Translator’. Chantal Wright’s translation includes an introduction which positions the text in relation to current developments in translation studies, and provides prefatory explanations before each section as a guide to Walter Benjamin’s ideas. These include influential concepts such as the ‘afterlife’ of literary works, the ‘kinship’ of languages, and the metaphysical notion of ‘pure language’. The Age of Translation is a vital read for students and scholars in the fields of translation studies, literary studies, cultural studies and philosophy.

Dissecting the radical impact of Walter Benjamin on contemporary cultural, postcolonial and translation theory, this book investigates the translation and reception of Benjamin's most famous text about translation, “The Task of the Translator,” in English language debates around 'cultural translation'. For years now, there has been a pronounced interest in translation throughout the Humanities, which has come with an increasing detachment of translation from linguistic-textual parameters. It has generated a broad spectrum of discussions subsumed under the heading of 'cultural translation', a concept that is constantly re-invented and manifests in often heavily diverging expressions. However, there seems to be a distinct constant: In their own (re-)formulations of this concept, a remarkable number of scholars-Bhabha, Chow, Niranjana, to name but a few-explicitly refer to Walter Benjamin's “The Task of the Translator.” In its first part, this book considers Benjamin and the way in which he thought about, theorized and practiced translation throughout his writings. In a second part, Walter Benjamin meets 'cultural translation': tracing various paths of translation and reception, this part also tackles the issues and debates that result from the omnipresence of Walter Benjamin in contemporary theories and discussions of 'cultural translation'. The result is a clearer picture of the translation and reception processes that have generated the immense impact of Benjamin on contemporary cultural theory, as well as new perspectives for a way of reading that re-shapes the canonized texts themselves and holds the potential of disturbing, shifting and enriching their more 'traditional' readings.

Translation often proceeds as if languages already existed, as if the task of the translator were to make an appropriate selection from available resources. Clive Scott challenges this tacit assumption. If the translator is to do justice to himself/herself as a reader, if the translator is to become the creative writer of his/her reading, then the language of translation must be equal to the translators perceptual experience of, and bodily responses to, source texts. Each renewal of perceptual and physiological contact with a text involves a renewal of the ways we think language and use our expressive faculties (listening, speaking, writing). Phenomenology and particularly the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty underpins this new approach to translation. The task of the translator is tirelessly to develop new translational languages, ever to move beyond the bilingual into the multilingual, and always to remember that language is as much an active instrument of perception as an object of perception. Clive Scott is Professor Emeritus of European Literature at the University of East Anglia, and a Fellow of the British Academy.

What is it about Walter Benjamin's «Task of the Translator»? As it is clearly seminal to Translation Studies, why is it rarely, if ever, taken seriously? A re-examination of Benjamin's text in a broader context sheds light on this question and finally reveals the true potential of this text for Translation Studies and beyond.