Abstract
The paper aims to examine Benjamin’s philosophy of language and translation from a close reading of his essay The task of the translator (1921) and to point out his significant contribution to the interdisciplinary sector of Translation Studies. Benjamin innovatively reconsiders the key concepts that are common to all theories of translation: faithfulness vs. freedom, resemblance and common origin of languages, understanding vs. ways of understanding (more commonly defined as signified and signifier). The translation emerges as going beyond a logic that contrasts original languages to languages of translation with the trend of taming one with respect to the other. The proposal of the paper is to consider the language of translation as the outcome of a “shaking” produced by a foreign language on the translation language. This leads to the original dimension of language, where word, image and sound coexist, beyond any particularism. The guiding idea of the essay is the metaphor of echo, from which a translation’s concept emerges as permeated with orality.
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