The Shades of Babel in Walter Benjamin’s “The Task of the Translator”
A brief glance at the very word language from a contemporary perspective indicates a certain state of disarray. On the one hand, there is the certain hegemony of the English language all around the world, and on the other, there are languages which strive to preserve their own identities under the dominance of one particular language. Yet, when the notion of that “one particular language” is traced through mythology –or to put it in more clear terms, through the myth of Babel– one can find the signs of the so-called curse imposed upon mankind: “Some awful error was committed, an accidental release of linguistic chaos, in the mode of Pandora’s box. Or, more commonly, man’s language condition, the incommunicados that so absurdly divide him are a punishment. A lunatic tower was launched at the stars; Titans savaged one another and of their broken bones came the splinters of isolated speech; eavesdropping, like Tantalus, on the gossip of the gods, mortal man was struck moronic and lost all remembrance of his native, universal parlance” (Steiner 1977: 57). The universal parlance mentioned in George Steiner’s retelling of the Babel myth connotes the notion of pure language which the prominent thinker of the twentieth century Walter Benjamin dwells upon in his essay entitled “The Task of the Translator”.
A brief glance at the very word language from a contemporary perspective indicates a certain state of disarray. On the one hand, there is the certain hegemony of the English language all around the world, and on the other, there are languages which strive to preserve their own identities under the dominance of one particular language. Yet, when the notion of that “one particular language” is traced through mythology –or to put it in more clear terms, through the myth of Babel– one can find the signs of the so-called curse imposed upon mankind: “Some awful error was committed, an accidental release of linguistic chaos, in the mode of Pandora’s box. Or, more commonly, man’s language condition, the incommunicados that so absurdly divide him are a punishment. A lunatic tower was launched at the stars; Titans savaged one another and of their broken bones came the splinters of isolated speech; eavesdropping, like Tantalus, on the gossip of the gods, mortal man was struck moronic and lost all remembrance of his native, universal parlance” (Steiner 1977: 57). The universal parlance mentioned in George Steiner’s retelling of the Babel myth connotes the notion of pure language which the prominent thinker of the twentieth century Walter Benjamin dwells upon in his essay entitled “The Task of the Translator”.
Even though the title of Benjamin’s piece reads as “The Task of the Translator”, the essay itself is chiefly focused on the notion of pure language, translatability of an artistic work, the literal translation of syntax, re-translations; Benjamin refers to the “task” of the translator barely throughout his study (cf. 2000: 15-23). Therefore, Benjamin’s “The Task of the Translator”, achieves the status of a philosophical writing on language rather than one on translation. Still, when Benjamin’s essay is taken into consideration from the vantage point of contemporary translation theories, one can see how some of the crucial argument points of (post)colonial approaches to the study and practice of translation, such as keeping the foreigness of the ST, holding back from communication, coming to terms with the foreigness of the languages, and so forth have their very roots in Benjamin’s essay which is heavily influenced by Holderlin’s translations from Sophocles and Goethe’s notes on Western-Eastern Divan (cf. Steiner 1977: 63).
Indeed, Benjamin is in search for the pure language, that is to say, mankind’s universal parlance. In this journey, Benjamin regards translation as the ultimate way of reaching the pure language. According to Douglas Robinson, in Benjamin’s essay, “the source language has taken pure language prisoner, put her under a spell, and only the translation with the help of the intentions in both the source and the target languages, can free her” (1996: 201). Benjamin’s approach to translation takes a different turn when it is re-evaluated from the “taking the original captive” metaphor since from that standpoint it becomes feasible to comprehend the hidden “task” of the translator embodied in Benjamin’s work. In this metaphor, “the translator, rather than letting himself be ‘bound’ or chained by the original author through literal or ‘slavish’ or ‘servile’ translation, seizes the control of the text and its meaning, and thus of the original author and source culture, and enslaves them” (Robinson 1997: 55-56). Nevertheless in Benjamin’s essay, this metaphor works the other way around and becomes an image metaphor (Boase-Beier 2006: 97) in which pure language is sought. In the light of these remarks, Benjamin’s opinions on re-translations, continuous changes in the languages, and the like can be considered as an endless search for pure language. For Benjamin, translation is a higher form of life in which a new process takes place with the purpose bringing something new to the realm of languages.
All in all, Walter Benjamin’s philosophical essay on language becomes one of the key texts from the point of view of contemporary translation theories. However, when the entire work is taken into consideration in terms of the Babel myth, one wonders why Walter Benjamin does not mention it at all in his essay. When “The Task of the Translator” is re-thought in the light of the Babel myth, this remarkable essay would surely lead one to another philosophical dimension. Furthermore, such a reading would allow the chance for a student of translation to analyze one of the key works of translation, namely George Steiner’s After Babel in which Steiner sheds light on the study and practice of translation from the perspective of philosophical thought.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Benjamin, Walter, “The Task of the Translator” [1923], in Venuti, Lawrence (ed.), The Translation Studies Reader, London-New York: Routledge, 2000, pp. 15-23
Boase-Beier, Jean, Stylistic Approaches to Translation, St. Jerome, UK, 2006
Robinson, Douglas, Translation and Taboo, Northern Illinois University Press, 1996
Robinson, Douglas, Translation and Empire, Manchester: St. Jerome, UK, 1997
Steiner, George, After Babel, Oxford University Press, [1975], 1977
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