THE TASK OF THE TRANSLATOR BY WALTER BENJAMIN

Carolina Amaro

Helena Gato

BIOGRAPHY

• Born in Berlin in 1892;

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• Philosopher, essayist, cultural critic, and translator;

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• Committed suicide by overdose in 1940.

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THE TASK OF THE TRANSLATOR

TRANSLATION IS ART

The author belives that translation is not a secundary form of art.

BUT WHAT IS ART?

• According to Walter Benjamin:

WHAT'S THE TASK OF THE TRANSLATOR?

• Find the intention hidden in the original work and try to reflect it upon the target language and express the relationship between these two languages
• Source Language+ Target Language= what's closer to the definition of a Pure Language

To accomplish this the translator must use the Foreignization

PURE LANGUAGE

1 LANGUAGE

MULTIPLE LANGUAGES

Then                 Now

• This idea started with the myth of the Tower of Babel
• Invokes an amalgam of all the languages of the world, and it is precisely this aggregate language that is the medium in which the translator should work

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TRANSLATABILITY

• This concept revolves around the quality that some texts have of being more easily translated that others
• In his opinion only works of art considered classics should be translated that are at what he calls Age of Fame/The After Life

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Birth

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• Even those texts who have the quality of translatability might not find a suited translator

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Growth

Age of Fame

The life of a text

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• https://openhumanitiespress.org/feedback/literature/pure-language-2-0-walter-benjamins-theory-of-language-and-translation-technology/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Benjamin
• Inês Paixão Lopes and Tiago Ferreira

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QUIZ TIME

https://create.kahoot.it/details/ec91adbe-106b-47ab-89fb-1792f5d62f41

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