Walter Benjamin and Cultural Translation

Abstract

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. Divided into three parts, this book first considers Benjamin and the way in which he thought about, theorized and practiced translation throughout his writings; the second part explores ‘cultural translation’, its theoretical, disciplinary and historical genesis, as well as the ongoing critical discussions about its viability. The book’s third and final part brings the first two together, using case studies to trace various paths of translation and reception, as well as to tackle 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.