“It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language that is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work.”

Source: Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language that is under the spell of another, …" by Walter Benjamin?
Walter Benjamin photo
Walter Benjamin 70
German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892… 1892–1940

Related quotes

Suman Pokhrel photo

“On translating text into the new language as it is in source language, there is a chance of it being emerged as an absurd sentence in the target language making no sense at all. In the attempt to make the translation meaningful to the target language, there exists a risk of the original work getting meddled by the translator’s style.”

Suman Pokhrel (1967) Nepali poet, lyricist, playwright, translator and artist

<span class="plainlinks"> Foreword, 'Tales of Transformation: English Translation of Tagore's Chitrangada and Chandalika', Lopamudra Banerjee, (2018). https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07DQPD8F4/</span>
From Prose

François-René de Chateaubriand photo

“In living literature no person is a competent judge but of works written in his own language.”

François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) French writer, politician, diplomat and historian

Sketches of English Literature, Vol II, p. 36 http://books.google.com/books?id=V9AtAAAAYAAJ, as translated by Henry Colburn
Context: In living literature no person is a competent judge but of works written in his own language. I have expressed my opinion concerning a number of English writers; it is very possible that I may be mistaken, that my admiration and my censure may be equally misplaced, and that my conclusions may appear impertinent and ridiculous on the other side of the Channel.

Bernard Lewis photo

“The surest test of one's understanding of a text in another language is translating it into one's own.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, From Babel to Dragomans (2004)

Rudolf Pannwitz photo

“Translations [into the German language], even the best ones, proceed from a mistaken premise. They want to turn Hindi, Greek, English into German instead of turning German into Hindi, Greek, English. … The basic error of the translator is that he preserves the state in which his own language happens to be instead of allowing his language to be powerfully affected by the foreign tongue.”

Rudolf Pannwitz (1881–1969) German writer and philosopher

Unsere übertragungen, auch die besten, gehen von einem falschen grundsatz aus, sie wollen das indische, griechische, englische verdeutschen, anstatt das deutsche zu verindischen, vergriechischen, verenglischen. ... Der grundsätzliche irrtum des übertragenden ist, daß er den zufälligen stand der eigenen sprache festhält, anstatt sie durch die fremde gewaltig bewegen zu lassen.
Die Krisis der europäischen Kultur (1917), as translated in Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings: Volume 1, 1913-1926 (1996), pp. 261-262

William Carlos Williams photo

“The job of the poet is to use language effectively, his own language, the only language which is to him authentic.”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

From A Note on Poetry (circa 1936) quoted in Modern American Poetry (1950) by Louis Untermeyer
General sources

Alain Daniélou photo

“The creation of Sanskrit, the “refined” language, was a prodigious work on a grand scale. Grammarians and semanticists of genius undertook to create a perfect language, artificial and permanent, belonging to no one, that was to become the language of the entire culture.”

Alain Daniélou (1907–1994) French historian, musicologist, Indologist and expert on Shaivite Hinduism

Alain Danielou in: A Brief History of India https://books.google.co.in/books?id=Kwnv3I6qIosC&pg=PA58, Inner Traditions / Bear & Co, 11 February 2003, p. 58.

Duke Ellington photo

“Every man prays in his own language.”

Duke Ellington (1899–1974) American jazz musician, composer and band leader

Section title and eponymous song of A Concert of Sacred Music (1965).

George Gilfillan photo
Primo Levi photo

“Translation is difficult work because the barriers between languages are higher than is generally thought … knowing how to avoid the traps is not enough to make a good translator.”

Primo Levi (1918–1987) Italian chemist, memoirist, short story writer, novelist, essayist

As quoted in "Primo Levi and Translation" http://www.leeds.ac.uk/bsis/98/98pltrn.htm by David Mendel http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20070320/ai_n18738601/print, in Bulletin of the Society for Italian Studies (1998)
Context: Translation is difficult work because the barriers between languages are higher than is generally thought … knowing how to avoid the traps is not enough to make a good translator. The task is more arduous; it is a matter of transferring from one language to another the expressive force of the text, and this is a superhuman task, so much so that some celebrated translations (for example that of the Odyssey into Latin and the Bible into German) have marked transformations in the history of our civilisation.
Nonetheless, since writing results from a profound interaction between the creative talent of the writer and the language in which he expresses himself, to each translation is coupled an inevitable loss, comparable to the loss of changing money. This diminution varies in degree, great or small according to the ability of the translator and the nature of the original text. As a rule it is minimal for technical or scientific texts (but in this case the translator, in addition to knowing the two languages, needs to understand what he is translating; possess, that is to say, a third competence). It is maximal for poetry...

Umberto Eco photo

“The language of Europe is translation.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

Statement in a lecture at the Assises de la Traduction littéraire in Arles (14 November 1993) http://www.eutrio.be/language-europe-translation

Related topics