Mattea Cussel (MC): We’ll begin by thanking CCCB for providing us with this space to talk about the work of Walter Benjamin and translation, and particularly we would like to thank Elisabet Goula, Head of Debates, and Maria Romero for helping us with the organization and logistics. Actually, CCCB is a fitting space for today’s debate since in the events that take place in this house, we can usually hear a plurality of languages and accents.
The lesser-known text of Benjamin, with the French title “La traduction – le pour et le contre”, is a draft aimed for a radio conversation, and actually, if we think about it there are other key texts of extreme relevance on the subject of translation that were also prepared as or from an exchange of ideas and questions between interlocutors: I’m talking about “The Misery and Splendour of Translation” by Ortega y Gasset and “The Politics of Translation” by Gayatri Spivak. Translation gives us a lot to talk about and helps us to get to know much more than it might seem at first sight, and especially if we think about it from the hand of Walter Benjamin.
Today’s discussion will revolve around the book Benjamin y la traducción (Benjamin and Translation), recently published by Ediciones del Subsuelo and for sale, by the way, right here in the hall, and we will be discussing it together with its authors, Antonio Aguilera and Esperança Bielsa, as well as Fruela Fernández, the author of the new translation of Benjamin’s texts that appear in the book. As Ortega y Gasset says: “When we converse, we live in society; when we think, we are alone” and this evening we’ll be doing both. That is to say, first we will listen to a brief intervention of each of our three speakers, as a result of their task of interpreting or translating Benjamin, and after that we’ll open a conversation between us and eventually with you, our audience. 
Before hearing from our speakers, I’ll introduce them very briefly. Antonio Aguilera, who’s been a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Barcelona and author of Paisajes benjaminianos (Benjaminian Landscapes) and Hombre y cultura (Man and Culture), as well as several texts on aesthetics and the Frankfurt School. Esperança Bielsa, Associate Professor of Sociology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and author of A Translational Sociology and The Latin American Urban Crónica. Her research focuses on sociology, critical theory and translation studies. Finally, Fruela Fernández, a translator of authors such as Franz Kafka and Peter Handke; poet, with four published collections, the most recent titled Corrige los nombres (Correct the names) and lecturer of English philology at the University of the Balearic Islands. 
Then let’s begin. First, I’ll invite Antonio Aguilera to take the floor.

Benjamin and the Eiffel Tower

Antonio Aguilera (AA): I want to attempt something which is not simple: to explain Walter Benjamin’s philosophical concepts with brevity and to situate translation within his particular manner of philosophizing. I want to do it in a somewhat indirect way, centring on The Arcades Project, which I consider to be the best point of entry to his thinking—much better than his earlier, more youthful writings in which mysticism and teleology are clearly present. I don’t mean to say that he lets go of these aspects, but that they become contextualized within very pertinent changes in terminology and theoretical formulations, and also in the “Theses on the Philosophy of History.”
I’ll start us off with a foray into “Convolute N” of The Arcades Project: “How this work was written: rung by rung, according as chance would offer a narrow foothold, and always like someone who scales dangerous heights and never allows himself a moment to look around, for fear of becoming dizzy (but also because he would save for the end the full force of the panorama opening out to him)”(Benjamin, 2002, p. 460).1
Benjamin says to move step by step, adjusting to the available handholds, without fearing the vertigo preventing him from throwing a premature glance at the landscape, but allowing anticipation of the joy of the panoramic view from the summit to grow. It’s a blind advance which staves off a more general view until he reaches the summit, where he can attempt to view the whole landscape. Benjamin doesn’t climb the Tower of Babel, which YHWH didn’t wish to be completed, thereby confusing languages; he climbs another route. His actions are better understood through the image of the Eiffel Tower; this modern Tower of Babel, which, according to its contemporaries, became a symbol of modern architecture, of iron construction. Benjamin addresses this tower in The Arcades Project, even though he omits the reference to Babel in a Parisian artists’ protest letter against the construction of this iron tower, to emphasize the success of the Eiffel Tower a few months later.
The Arcades Project can be seen as an unfinished Eiffel Tower where translation becomes a decisive element, especially, if one compares Derrida’s reflections on Babel, where translation appears as something important, to the first, earlier Benjamin, forgetting the final, later one. It’s this final Benjamin who philosophizes translation (and photography), grasping heterogeneous themes where he attempts to unearth encrypted social truths.
The landscape which one can contemplate from the Eiffel Tower is foreseen by Sigfried Kracauer, who himself refers to Giedion when he speaks of iron constructions and how they allowed people to see the urban environment and the city through them. Benjamin reformulates this as the land between prehistory and modernity. A panorama of human history seen as a continuous catastrophe and not as progress, the way the angel of history sees it. Through Benjamin, Paris appears as the land between prehistory and modernity, where many decisions forming our institutions, our habits, and our ideas were made. This implies entering a dream, a capitalist dream. Benjamin calls for a reckoning, which will dismiss these illusions. He describes these step-by-step as arcades, as world’s fairs, as interiors, as streets, and as barricades, to finally speak of the illusion of history ending in fatalism, or in the notion of progress in which humans run amok with the colossal energy of the manmade.
The role of language in this philosophy is decisive, even though Benjamin did not formulate a philosophy of language in the same style as other philosophers, modern or ancient. The peculiarity of Benjamin lies in how he treats language, evolving from a mystical to a more materialist position, centred on the sociology of language and on those aspects most closely related to linguistics. In an essay on Kraus, Benjamin shows this dimension of language, which permeates all his philosophy: how language has been converted into a material good and how this can be challenged, in the style of Kraus, using a strategy which invokes that which is not material in languages; the technique of quotation becomes key. Kraus appears as inhuman, like the angel of history who, instead of giving gifts, steals the vain beliefs upheld by languages, because he sees the crimes of society foretold in the crimes of language. The Arcades Project could be considered a book of quotes, albeit a strange one, as it delights in that which unites and orders the fragments, creating a theoretical display that harmonizes with linguistic material, to indicate a stoppage of history.
The concept of language is at the centre of this philosophy, just as iron is at the centre of the Eiffel Tower, with 12,000 pieces of metal and 2.5 million rivets. Benjamin not only makes the effort to climb to obtain the panorama of history, side-stepping destruction and danger, but he also highlights details which allow one to understand the structure of thousands of quotes and the plethora of theoretical observations. Thanks to this process, he constructs a sort of social physiognomy, trying to show—in a very graphic way—the face of capitalist society by embedding images in a theoretical context. In the way of an Arcade where urbanites stroll, as if in an aquarium, as if in a micro-world which makes society palpable. Benjamin’s material consists of fragments of language wrenched from their context in order to decipher the encrypted, quotes and annotations which find solutions to solve riddles, uncovering hidden truths. He pursues the unconsciousness of society through its crystallized symptoms, like language.
At first glance, the manuscript of The Arcades Project is a montage of quotes and linguistic fragments from the past, from the 19^th and 20^th centuries, in various languages, all united by the theoretical constructions which force their comprehension, articulating a heterogeneous mass where images and phrases sparkle like riddles or spider webs. Yet, when put into conversation with Benjamin’s finished texts, translation emerges as that which brings a modulation of language, where the profusion of languages rises beyond that of a single or ‘pure’ language. Translation appears not only as an object of study, which Benjamin follows throughout his life, always returning for further consideration, but translation becomes a decisive element for a philosophy which neither asks about being or life, nor about meaning or reason. Benjamin is concerned with more pressing issues which do not avoid a general perspective on human history. Translation recognizes this model for the way in which it considers the confusion of languages by connecting them without violence. The modern Tower of Babel appears like an Eiffel Tower, but an incomplete one. The Arcades Project shows this when there are multiple languages in play. It becomes clear in the image of the angel of history, visible as it remains hidden in theoretical discourse, within a series which contrasts dialectic images and discussions. And when we consider The Arcades Project not as a disastrous manuscript, but rather as one that highlights a generalization of this process in each projected element (streets, exhibits, interiors, political fights, illusions), creating a curious contemporary landscape. The extraordinary importance of language, not in the way of analytic philosophy or of hermeneutics, but rather as an embodied human tradition where the dead are invited to dine, allowing the past and the future to touch the profusion of languages mediated by translation. It points to a future in which the unsatisfied yearnings of the past are granted.
To conclude, I don’t want to neglect the fact that Benjamin introduces materialism in a unique reading of Marx, highlighting the theological fancies of materialism, or the spectres which Marx invokes, and which Derrida will later pick up. But Benjamin corrects this vision of Marx, which, from political economy, refers to a board which converses in order to reach the subject of this society: Capital. He does this by invoking culture, specifically a poet who speaks from the inside of this materialism: Charles Baudelaire. Through him, Benjamin reaches beyond, as if to the strength of a board which stands up and speaks about some macroeconomic critique, a lyric panorama of the world pierced by materialism, where languages are crying out for it.
Languages, dialectic images, and materialism are important elements in Benjamin’s developed philosophy, but it’s this model of translation, along with photography, that follows him through all his works, from beginning to end—penetrating entirely through the heterogenetic profusion of languages, of literature, of reproducibility, of magic, and of materialism.

MC: Thank you, Antonio. Let’s continue with Esperança.

Translation and our present

Esperança Bielsa (EB): Good evening. I would like to consider how Benjamin’s philosophy helps us think about translation and its present-day relevance, as well as the main challenges in understanding the contributions Benjamin makes to thinking about translation. 
The utmost difficulty I would like to mention is the common contempt that we feel for translation, an activity we do not consider important but that is present in our daily life. Because it’s not only about the fact that we don’t acknowledge the presence of translation in most of the texts we read (not only books, but technical manuals, commercials, web pages, or news too), but a clear contempt for the activity of translation that shows itself through everyday expressions, like the idea that something is always lost through the process of translation or the association of translators with betrayal (traduttore, traditore).
Benjamin is not only interested in the cultural phenomena that philosophers do not consider important, such as photography or translation, but in his approach to “The Task of the Translator”, he challenges a whole series of preconceived ideas on translation positioning them over creative writing. Benjamin says: “there is a philosophical ingenuity, of which the most intimate is the longing for this language that is revealed in translation” (existe un ingenio filosófico, del cual constituye lo más íntimo el anhelo de esa lengua que se anuncia en la traducción) (Benjamin, 1923/2024, p. 66, our translation).2 The connection between philosophy and translation is not that philosophy can help us think about translation, but precisely translation provokes a language that is closer to truth, a language that philosophy seeks and desires. Why? Benjamin finds his response in those aspects that we typically despise in translation, the fact that translation confronts work with words not to create but to re-create, to produce, as Benjamin says, an echo of the original in a new language. Those elements that we despise in translation are precisely what we perceive as copying, a simple reproduction of an original whose value is concealed in an essence prior to the translation, an authenticity that is questioned in the translation. And precisely, the paradoxical era we live in is characterized by the centrality of cultural processes like translation, re-creation, reproduction, and re-writing, and simultaneously by a worship of authenticity that does not value these processes of transmission. In this context, it’s important to remember what exactly these provisional and derivative procedures that we hold in contempt are, the ones that make possible the permanence and authenticity we tend to see as an intrinsic feature of the works that prevail in time. There is perhaps no other truth than this: what mobilizes our relationship with the world and with others is the constant confrontation and elaboration of language. 
The first and foremost challenge, as I have already stressed, is the common contempt for translation. The second challenge in appreciating Benjamin's contribution to translation has to do with interpreting “The Task of the Translator”, one of his most famous essays as well as one of the most cryptic by Benjamin. Firstly because, as I have already said, Benjamin challenges our usual way of seeing translation. What he prioritizes is not the fact that translation allows readers to access written works in languages they do not understand, but the existing bond between translation and the continuing life of these works, this task of transmission and deployment that I already mentioned. It deals with a perspective that Goethe also emphasized and that links translation with the maturation and regeneration of works, not with their impoverishment or decline. However—and here I would like to mark a second difficulty of interpretation— “The Task of the Translator” is one of his youthful essays and metaphysical thought about language that was radically transformed thanks to his later contact with the artistic avant-garde and with historical materialism. From our point of view, it’s Benjamin’s most mature work in which he gives us the key to a fruitful interpretation of “The Task of the Translator”. Thus, it is important to critique an instrumental vision of language centred around communication, a critique that Benjamin already formulates in his first essay on the topic of language (“On Language as Such and on the Language of Man”, 1916). Nonetheless, the metaphysical vision that makes Benjamin talk about a ‘pure language’ in “The Task of the Translator” is reformulated afterwards from a materialist perspective focused on language’s expressivity. From that point of view, Benjamin highlights the mimetic qualities of language and the non-sensorial resemblance. Translation involves the emergence of this non-apparent resemblance between languages, an idea that the first Benjamin already expressed as the original’s echo. It’s a resemblance that persists through difference and that's also connected with the physiognomy of language, which a more mature Benjamin seeks to fit into a materialist methodology. I insist, what Benjamin prioritizes is the expressive capacity of language and of translation, not its communicative or instrumental function. 
It is also important to add here that a particular difficulty when interpreting Benjamin has to do with the division of thought into disciplines, since Benjamin’s way of thinking has never fit in the existing academic disciplines; it’s genuinely adisciplinary. This fact particularly affects the interpretation of what Benjamin explains about translation, which as I’ve said requires referencing Benjamin’s mature thinking about other techniques of cultural production, something that has not been done since the creation of Translation studies. In this sense, it’s no coincidence that this debate and the book that spurns it are the product of a collaboration between a philosopher, a sociologist, and a translator and theoretician of translation.
My third and last point does not refer to difficulties anymore but quite the opposite, it refers to what makes Benjamin’s thoughts on translation even more relevant today than during his time. Benjamin was able to observe the cultural transformations of modernity that changed the meaning of art and emancipated it from traditional rites. He already remarked on the revolutionary character of this transformation that brings art closer to the masses and makes possible a constant and unconscious interaction of anyone with cultural products. Because of this he showed an interest in the new techniques of reproduction, photography, and cinema. But maybe the most radical transformation we can refer to has to do with old translation techniques and the absolutely central element of translation that had not been manifested before in the way it does now. There has been an exponential growth in translation, which has become a key aspect of globalization and cosmopolitan democracy, and which is indispensable to face the new risks and challenges of the present. There has also been a radical change in our relationship with translation, of which we are not only users and consumers, but also, we can easily become authors, through the dissemination of new technologies such as collaborative platforms or translation applications. Benjamin’s thought helps us to capture the social, cultural, and political importance of this moment.

MC: Thank you Esperança. And now we’ll hear from Fruela.

Thinking Benjamin from translation

Fruela Fernández (FF): Thank you, very much and good evening. My contribution to this book is the translation of Benjamin’s texts. There are three texts on the topic of translation that had been translated into Spanish before, but that had never been translated by the same person, the same translator. In this manner, my task—never better said in this context—has been the one of granting a unifying voice, a kind of harmony. My contribution will now be limited, hence in thinking about this translation process, from my experience translating Benjamin, because I think it is the most appropriate thing to do. As I said, there are three texts; Esperança and Antonio have already commented that they belong to different periods: the first two are closer in time and the third, which is a draft for a radio conversation that Benjamin had planned with Günther Anders—Hiroshima’s thinker, of the atomic bomb and of the ‘promethean shame’ despite the fact that he is better known as the first husband of Hannah Arendt: at some point in the history of thought there should be someone known as “the husband of” and not only as “the wife of”...—well, this text is, as I say, very interesting, but it has only come to us as a draft.
The most well-known text is obviously “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers,” that is to say “The Task of the Translator” or in Spanish “La tarea” of the translator. It’s this text that we’ve spoken about the most in translation studies and in philosophy. It’s also clearly the most difficult one out of the three texts for a translator; I have to say that it is probably one of the hardest texts I have ever translated; it’s a really demanding text. And I have been reflecting these days on why that is. What is the existing relationship between the complexity of the translation process and Benjamin's way of thinking, Benjamin’s thought. George Steiner in his book Antigones refers to a quite interesting idea when he states that Hölderlin’s Antigone is crucial to understanding “The Task of the Translator”. Since I don’t know if you are familiar with this text, I will comment on it very briefly. You may know that Hölderlin is one of the greatest German poets of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; passionate and fascinated by classical Greece, in the last stage of his literary work he translates a series of classical Greek texts, the best known of which is Sophocles’ Antigone. In this translation he did an exercise of, what we could consider, brutality against the German language, which consists in forcing the language into a literalism that goes on to emulate the structures of classical Greek. This generates what has sometimes been described as a linguistic “monster” and which, at the time in fact, even caused the laughter of Goethe and Schiller: a contemporary text comments how Goethe and Schiller read aloud a fragment of the Antigone and laugh at it; they laugh at it and even begin to say that Hölderlin has surely lost his mind, his sanity. And actually, some time later, it was the case: this issue is quite disputed, but it is true that Hölderlin had a mental illness.
Why is Hölderlin’s Antigone important to understand Benjamin’s work then? As Steiner says, what occurs with Antigone is that Hölderlin takes the rupture between word and meaning to an extreme insofar as it forces the German language to follow a structure that is not its own, the meaning—which we have associated with the structure of the sentence, the syntax, and also the words—is violent; new meanings are generated while losing or obscuring the meanings that we would think are primary. I believe that this is interesting to understand not only the claim that Benjamin makes of Hölderlin being among the great German-language translators in “The Task of the Translator”, but also how the same “Task” works. Because in reality it’s a text where I would say the language is forced—not due to the structure being particularly complex, even though it is very much complex sometimes—but especially because language functions not mainly from a given or prefixed meaning, but in a generative way. That is to say, how words can begin to connect themselves through phonic associations, through sounds and echoes, by suggestions that make one word take us to another... And other strategies of this sort. For instance, the title itself, “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers.” Aufgabe connects with a word that is key and out of which emerges the first text of the ensemble, “On Language as Such...”: Gabe. In this text, Gabe means a “gift,” something that has been given to us. And Benjamin says that language is a “gift” of God to humans. Aufgabe means “task,” “responsibility”. Therefore, we go from a Gabe, from a “gift,” which is the language, to an Aufgabe, to a “task,” which is that of the translator. Nevertheless, Aufgabe also connects with the verb aufgeben, which can be related to the idea of “renunciation,” to the idea of giving up. And that is why, in fact, there are translations —in French and also in Spanish, in Latin America— where “Die Aufgabe” has been translated as “the resignation” or “the abandonment” of the translator, with this double meaning. What's going on here? Obviously, if we translate “Die Aufgabe” as “abandonment” we make something visible that is implicit in Benjamin’s text, but we also overcomplicate the understanding because it leads us in another direction.
How should a translator, such as myself, proceed? What can they do in this situation? And here is when my own thoughts come into the discussion on how to translate Benjamin. What I have done, as you can see if you read the book, is to utilize many footnotes and to conserve, in brackets, certain words in German, so that even the people who do not know German could see that there is a link, a repetition, that there are echoes between words throughout the three texts. In other words, it’s a translation that does not seek to substitute or replace the original texts, but in any case, to accompany them. These are translations that should be a first step of approaching Benjamin and his thought; not a stopping point, but a first step in this process of accompaniment. And here, for instance, I believe that there could be a connection with Aida Míguez’s approach to translations of Classical Greek; when she says that a translation of the Iliad should never be a stopping point, but should always be a part of a broader network of techniques that help to understand a text. And this also has a connection, to conclude, with what Benjamin defends precisely in this last text, which came to us as a draft “La traduction — le pour et le contre”, where he says that translation is “a technique”. And that precisely, because it is a technique it can or should be used in combination with other techniques; for example, he says, “commentary.” It is a very interesting idea that, unfortunately, arrives to us only as a fragment; but, as a translator, I wanted to work in harmony with this idea of a translation that accompanies and that, at the same time, is accompanied by other techniques. And in this manner, you could learn from Benjamin at the same time as you translate Benjamin.

Colloquium

MC: Thank you, Fruela. The first question that I want to examine is a basic one. I want to ask you where you got the idea to write about Benjamin and translation, and about the process of creating a book like this one, which has so many layers: translations of Benjamin’s texts, critical interpretations of Benjamin, even a thesis on translation. What inspired this project?

EB: Pinpointing an origin is difficult. I’ll see what I can remember about it. Maybe the start was the publication of Antonio’s earlier book Paisajes benjaminianos (Benjaminian Landscapes), with the same publisher, Ediciones del Subsuelo. Antonio was very happy with this process, and later we began to talk because he had materials which he had been thinking about and sketching ideas about for a long time. For my part, I had material on Benjamin that I had developed in the context of another earlier book about cosmopolitanism and translation, where I discussed Benjamin’s role in the politicization of art. That’s one part of it. Then several collaborations appeared, also from earlier. Clearly, the first text that we wrote, co-wrote, for this book is chapter 8: “Política de la traducción: una perspectiva cosmopolita” (Politics of Translation: a cosmopolitan perspective). The politics of translation is a theme that both of us have been working on for years. The project of this book was to bring these distinctive texts together, to complement them with other texts that we hadn’t even written about, and also to link for the first time these three texts by Benjamin on translation, which are never read together. Two of these texts are in fact read together: the first, “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man” from 1916, with the second, “The Task of the Translator,” the most well-known text, published in 1923. Yet the last one nearly nobody knows about “Translation – For and Against.” This text is a very short draft, but it is very interesting because it’s written by a mature Benjamin. It’s from 1936, written fifteen years after “The Task of the Translator,” where Benjamin modifies key aspects of what he said in the earlier essay, his most famous one. One of these aspects, which Fruela already addressed, is translation as a technique. In “The Task of the Translator,” Benjamin said that translation is a form, something very different. That’s all I remember for now. I don’t know if you, Antonio, want to add anything else.

AA: There is one thing missing that we weren’t able to finish. This reflection on Benjamin and translation remains unfinished. It might be interesting to note this: it’s not something complete; rather, many questions remain open. Specifically, I didn’t have the time to develop a text in which I could try to put Benjamin’s approach into conversation with that of Derrida in “Des Tours de Babel,” which relies heavily on the interpretations—clearly sophisticated ones—of Benjamin, but which I believe does resolve everything. Among other things, because, if I’m not misremembering, Derrida does not take into account issues which would compel him to contemplate the Bible as a whole and not only to focus on Genesis. This would consist of examining the Acts of the Apostles, where the confusion of languages is solved by the gift of tongues, by speaking with the tongues of men, as it’s often translated. And this leads us to see the ancient position with respect to modernity, which Benjamin himself proposes. This is why I was saying that the Eiffel Tower is endless, because it makes something more pressing visible, while it seems that the Tower of Babel in some ways pities itself and finally solves the problem with the gift of tongues, so that all can really understand each other without having studied language or various languages, with the marvelous fluency which has to do with the Holy Spirit, which comes to one who can speak multiple languages at the same time. I think that this would be an interesting topic.

MC: Now that you’ve mentioned the topic of the gift of tongues, I have another question about Fruela’s translations. You explain very clearly that the word Sprache in Spanish designates both lengua and lenguaje, and you thought that you had to choose between them. When we read these translations, we come across concepts such as “pura lengua” (pure language) and “confusion de lenguas” (confusion of languages), and in other places “el movimiento del language” (the movement of language) and many others. I wanted to ask how you made these decisions; did you simply base them on the usual Spanish-language distinction between lengua and lenguaje, or did you have to think beyond that? I’m asking, and I’m not sure if Esperança and Antonio have something to say, because maybe this problem of translation can also represent a guide to interpret Benjamin’s philosophy of language.

FF: Exactly, as you said, Sprache is what in Spanish would be lenguaje (communicative skill) and lengua (a language or tongue). And from Sprache we have sprechen, talk, speak and a whole series of associations of words that are linked with which Benjamin plays around. That is why I say that one makes choices as a translator, because otherwise a text could not be understandable, if one did not make the exact choices that have to be taken, we would reach, I believe, a misunderstanding of Benjamin’s text. But this means that one must also make it clear that this choice responds to something that in German does not imply a choice, but that involves a uniqueness to it. This is also the case in the first of the texts between Mittel and Medium. It would be the opposite case: Mittel and Medium are two words in German that designate a different kind of medium, and conversely in Spanish we use medio (middle) in both cases. That is why Benjamin’s translation must be one in which the traces of the process can be seen, meaning not one that arrives polished and finished, or with that feeling of being polished and finished, but one that exposes the finished text and also its constituent parts. And of course, I agree with you that this helps us to understand what Benjamin’s work process is, which is the process of association, of generation, of creating symbols. Because I believe that Benjamin, particularly in “The Task of the Translator,” is not as interested in reasoning as in the fact that the text is an association of occasions to generate a symbol, to generate an image. And that's very much related to the same image or symbol you use, Antonio, when you talk about the idea of the iron fragments around which you spread mortar. That is to say, I think that fragments are as important in Benjamin’s case as a whole, and we cannot lose sight of the fact that these fragments must be visible. 

MC: I simply want to say that your translations of these texts have permitted me to see these associations, which I didn’t know existed from reading other translations of Benjamin in English, because normally they are not indicated in such a nuanced way.

EB: That comment reminds me of something which Benjamin writes in “The Task of the Translator” about the fragments of a vase. The original and the translation can join themselves like the broken fragments of a vase; they can’t fill every gap, but they have a certain correlation. It’s an image, which I’m not remembering fully – it’s much more beautiful how Benjamin describes it. This is the image Antonio references when speaking of the rivets which join the iron of the Eiffel Tower.

AA: I think it’s important to dig deeper into one more issue. It’s the first Benjamin who invokes a dimension of ‘pure language’, and he’s playing with this. And even in the impressive essay on Kraus, he speaks about the language of the angels. You go try to figure out what the language of the angels is! Well, it’s something like the Adamic language, the one spoken before the confusion of languages. While the Benjamin who becomes more materialist would dare to say that it’s impossible to reconstruct the vase, what needs to be done is to break it into even more pieces, so that many more differences emerge. This is why our theses often remark on this marvellous matter: that there are thousands of languages and that it would be delightful to have more, because this would show the immense richness of humanity, and that is key. Benjamin makes this much more visible in his later writings, and this can even be seen in the composition of The Arcades Project, which has an unfinished character: French, English somewhere in there, German—of course—which make up the mortar, the bricks… This image is put forward by Tiedemann, the student of Adorno, who recopied these manuscripts and dedicated himself to reconstructing all of this, and who was able—by the middle of the 1980s—to make available The Arcades Project to the interested public. One needs to remember that at that time, all critics of Benjamin—who were numerous as he was already quite famous—had not seen how his last projects developed. The only one who knew was Adrono, who wasn’t very interested in it because he thought the task was impossible. He says this in his characterization of Walter Benjamin. Well, what’s there is a mess of quotations combined with interpretations which recontextualize, as I said earlier, everything in there; well-defined ideas of architects, of historians, et cetera, about all entities as groupings of words, of signifiers, which are recontextualized and acquire new meanings; they are decoded, like by psychoanalytic techniques. There is something else which Benjamin has in mind, for example, in analyzing Baudelaire and some of the first students of Freud, like Reik and his reflection on memory. I think this little detail is significant.

MC: Now that all three of you are here, I think it would be interesting to turn to the topic of collaboration. Esperança, you, for example, have written about the politics of translation in which the translator can become a sort of collaborator or co-creator, through this very interesting example of the Kurdish-Iranian author Behrouz Boochani and his translator Omid Tofighian. Clearly, this is a very different case from yours, where you, as the authors of this book, put Fruela in charge of the translations of Benjamin’s texts. However, I’m curious if there were any moments of collaboration while Fruela was translating the texts. Did you have any debates about problems of translation? About any specific concepts? Did you have any discussions?

FF: We didn’t get into an argument, but it was a very interesting debate, especially regarding “Die Aufgabe,” which as I said before is by far the most difficult text of all three, and one of Benjamin’s most difficult texts. Since Esperança, who was a speaker in this communication, as well as Antonio, have long studied Benjamin’s work and in particular its application to translation, it was truly interesting to translate and offer the text to two very specialized readers like them. Here we did very interesting work, not only to see which choices could be better, but also to discover choices based on other texts, translations into other languages that are not quite fitting, for example the English translation of Zohn, which is frankly improvable despite being the official one (or is the official one so far, because now that Benjamin’s copyrights are ending, I assume that other translations will be published in English). But it was indeed a very enriching process of reflection on the appropriate word and also on the implications of each choice. We also talked a lot, for example, about the idea of transparent, once when Benjamin says that the best translation is transparent, it means something like that. And we talked about it a lot because, clearly, in translation studies the idea of a transparent translation is one of the worst things that can be said. And we assumed that this choice could not be the one that was appropriate in this particular case. So, we also gave it another thought. 

EB: In the end diaphanous prevailed over transparent. I wanted to comment that there has been a collaboration to a more general extent in the sense that the translation done by Fruela is in tune with the ideas in the book on translation. One of the chapters of the book defends, inspired by Benjamin, the politicization of translation, a form of translation, which, as presented by Mattea, is a reflective translation, a more collaborative translation, where the decisions and strategies of the translator are not only the responsibility of the translator but are communicated to some of those users interested in the translation. In the case of authors, this is very important and it’s what’s been done in this book and also in Boochani’s; sharing some of these strategies for thinking about translation and translating between authors and translators. And in this sense, beyond some specific problems of translation, the whole task of translation is in line with the ideas set out in the book, stemming from an interpretation of Benjamin that permits the translation politics to be updated.

MC: I want to add another element here, which came out of Antonio and Esperanza’s comments: the theme of photography. Antonio, in a type of photographic philosophy, you trace very intriguing connections between the task of translation and the task of photographic reproduction. Do you find much value – I think the word you use is elegance – in pre-photographic reproduction? This is to say, in reproductions rooted in engraving. I want to ask you: What echoes do you discover in these old engravings? What do they tell us?

AA: This text strategically shows us something which appears even simpler than translation, photographic reproduction, which the photographer brought into being under the guidelines established by the museum, by techniques of reproduction. It seems that this is even more transparent than translation, because there is a complication with language and with the difficulties of languages themselves. I’m hoping to make this connection by drawing on Benjamin, with an unusual strategy of working in parallel: “The Task of the Translator,” but in reverse. It’s a matter of form, of construction, which attempts to show in its conclusion that what appears at the beginning of “The Task of the Translator.” In reality, what he is pointing to is that translation is something very elaborate, and that one needs to remember that this does not excuse one from reflecting on the text. I think that Fruela has already addressed this sufficiently, that it’s something that supports interpretation and other ways of uncovering the meaning of a text. A text has its own fame, its own importance, which unveils something relevant to us. Translation is an aid, but there are many more things which can aid this as well, and it’s not completely transparent; one cannot forget what it intends to show in some way. Neither does one need to forget that certain reproducers do things which appear more modest, but which are really the same. When an art professor chooses and reproduces art books in an institute, for example, they need to be very conscious that they have produced something; they have packaged a work of art, reduced its colours, changed its definition, made it larger or smaller than what it actually is. This is to say, to pay attention to the fact that they have produced relevant transformations.
In the introduction, we note how “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quijote” by Borges shows that not even he, who copies a book letter-for-letter, frees himself from the issue that this text enters a new context, which compels it to be interpreted in a new way. Pierre Menard is a mannerist because he writes the same way as Cervantes, but in a context so different that everything seems very old, very strange. It’s an impressive story of Borges on this theme, which he illustrates so well. As can be read, the story is very clear on this topic, and because of this, there is no need—at least in the context of this book—to elaborate further in a chapter or anything like that. But it’s necessary for reproduction because it has to be shown that there are processes of reproduction which are very different from those of the old engravings. Xylography, lithography, all of these kinds of techniques, which transform the photographic gaze with their fine lines, often parallel, which ruin, in a manner of speaking, the original in a way. And one cannot be fooled. And if Goethe believed this when he copied engravings of Laocoön, he had a very strange way of seeing or recording the trip to Italy. Well, old engravings speak, and they are noble in this way, and those who want to see it do. But photographs, reproductions, seem to us to be exact copies.
Look carefully, this is very relevant, and this is what Benjamin saw very clearly, because the internet is full of reproductions. And make purchases via these reproductions. If you reflect on these kinds of mistakes we make when we buy things online, things which seem very appealing, or very interesting, or very good, often are not. And it’s because of this, because photography creates an artificial world in which the photographer can control many things—they know how; with the lighting, with the definition, with all kinds of techniques—and can give rise to something. Like what we already know about movie stars, which Benjamin talks about. Engraving shows something a priori, which does not hide anything, while photography fools us in this way. Like translation, when someone believes that the person who did it was a fool who does things automatically, as if they were an artificial intelligence. No, to do it well, like Fruela has done, you really need to think things through, make choices and show these choices, if possible, so that a perturbed reader can follow your logic. To me, it seems that this technique, which I also use, to sometimes use the German term, is convenient because it rings as other. That which Adorno called the “Jews of a language,” the outsiders. Maybe this metaphor doesn’t make much sense anymore; maybe we could say the “Palestinians of language” in this context. This allows us to understand the role of the translator in contrast to other techniques, like the reflection on Kafka, which would show the potential of language, the capacity of language to create a vision of things, a sensitivity towards things, which is rich. For many people of letters, Kafka’s aesthetic in particular, which has a few strict methods, shows this very well. This, too, moves translation.

MC: Would any member of the audience like to pose a question to our speakers, to bring more voices into this conversation?

Audience Member: Firstly, congratulations on tackling this very difficult topic. I don’t know Benjamin’s works very well, and I’m no polyglot, but I’ve been a reader of poetry since I was very young and even write some. I have constantly been faced with the problem of translation in reading the Great Poets, Rilke, for example, in German, Vladimir Holan, Pessoa, and others. It’s a shortcoming of mine not to know these languages, and something as difficult as translating poetry made me reflect for a time. For example, I noticed this several years ago when reading Huesos de sepia (Cuttlefish Bones) by Montale, the translation from the Visor de Poesia collection, a terrible book. However, I read its translation by Armani, which makes it seem as though Montale read Spanish, and they showed it to him, and he said that maybe he would have written it like that; it was so exquisite. So, translation, as you all have said, is a technique and a form. But I am under the impression that—since I don’t know the German when I read Rilke, or Pessoa’s Portuguese—I notice the good translations, yet as the creative potential of language, the imagination of language is impossible to transfer to another language, I have arrived at one conclusion—and I’m not sure if you agree with it—that even the best translation is corrupted. I believe that the translator, despite their noble intentions, cannot be objective; they are subjective. They are subjective because translation is an impossibility, therefore they can only get close to it, technically and formally. Some prioritize the form, some prioritize the content and create a reinterpretation. But I continue to believe that, because it’s an impossibility (and one needs to forgive the translator), it’s corrupted. What do you, as a translator, think?

FF: Well, in reality, what you have just said, that a translator is always subjective, is that it’s inevitable. Translation is always a compromise. I’ll propose an analogy that I think will help us see this more clearly. A person who listens to music, classical music, for example, knows that some recordings of the same score, of the same composition, are preferable to others. They know that there are certain conductors that bring more life to the composition, and others which are more critique-worthy because they mute it or because they are not in consonance with its spirit. There are symphonies more appealing than others. This is clear to anyone who knows music. On the other hand, when we look closely at translation, with the exception of a few specialists and some very loyal readers, it seems that a translation is the same if it has been translated by person x or by person y. And it’s not like that, because each translator brings and takes something. I’m saying “brings and takes” because it’s not a contradiction. Translation is not impossible, because we have been translating for centuries, which in and of itself demonstrates that it’s possible. What is impossible is thinking that a translation will be the same as the original. And it never will be, nor is there a reason for it to be that way, because then it would not be a translation. It’s the same issue that Antonio remarks about photographic reproduction. It will never be the same, and that isn’t a big deal; it’s what needs to be. Ok, now, when considering what is an ideal translation, it has much to do with the culture in which we find ourselves, as the time period—some periods prefer certain types of translation, others another. Each reader also has their preferences. And in the background is this issue: that translation is a compromise, as it always brings something—it always brings and always takes. Again, the fragments; we break and we function in these ruptures. I believe that you also don’t need to feel guilty for this loss, which allegedly existed in the beginning, according to this myth of linguistic unity. You need to throw off this guilt because there was no moment of unity; everything has been a rupture and a fragment, and we live in this gap.

MC: I think we have time for one more question. Here, in the second line.

Audience Member: Thank you very much. I truly have many questions on the topic of Benjamin, who, of course, was also a translator. It hasn’t come up, but he translated Proust and Baudelaire. I wanted to ask Professor Aguilera to what extent Benjamin’s initial conception of translation is influenced by the German romantics, Novalis, Schleiermacher, and all of those authors who, in some way, develop a vision of the translator-poet?

AA: I think it was, he even has important work about romantic criticism. It’s a key part of his development. And one cannot forget that the German Romantics worked a lot on these issues concerning language. But I believe that there is an additional element, which has to do with Judaism, Jewish mysticism. This should never be forgotten. For this reason: something which was very hidden, in the end, emerges as the entrance to the story of the Messiah. This illustrates very well that Benjamin did not want to distance himself from this question in its entirety. It keeps coming and going, submerging itself in the deep but continuing to reemerge. And in some way, this guides his conception of language. It’s a theological, mystical conception of language, the language that was circulating at the moment of the formation of translation and knowledge. Something in this vein can be seen in the preface of The Origin of German Tragic Dramas. What happens is that later, with his connection to surrealism, with the vanguards of the time, his relationship with Asja Lacis—the Russian cinematographer—many things change. Apart from his only disciple—Theodor Adorno—who rebuked that same Benjamin. And he goes on guiding him in another direction. In this way, I would say that Benjamin needs to be read like a Gordian Knot, which has many threads tied up and, unless one is Alejandro Magno and one wants to cut it with a dagger, one needs to take it as nearly impossible. In respect to Benjamin, one does not need to ask what really happened or what he means to say, but rather to update it. This is what I defend in my book Paisajes benjaminianos (Benjaminian Landscapes); what is key is how we can update some of the things he said for ourselves, some other things won’t be useful. This is something Benjamin puts in focus: updating as opposed to progressing. Progress cannot exist until we reject the notion of progress and move on to a humanity which develops from within. Meanwhile, there are only technological advances, like the atomic bomb, which also has a connection to Anders. Benjamin comes to see this, and it appears again in the discussion with Adorno. Updating, in my opinion, is the form which we should approach, including the conception of language, the concept of translation. And I believe, largely, this book has attempted to update, leaving some things aside, Benjamin’s conception of translation, which drives this thinking.

Theses on Translation3

1. The loss of a universal or pure language—the Adamic one, or the closest to the truth, if it ever existed—is a blessing thanks to the richness of the thousands of languages across the Earth, but which require translation to propel themselves out of their own self-absorption.
2. It is this same multiplicity of languages, free of unification or hierarchy, which allows one to ascend to the top of the Tower of Babel, whose steps are those of translation. No Esperanto or predominant language affords what translation finds in the contact between this multiplicity of languages. Not even the language of science or a refined understanding of the confusion of words and languages has managed to achieve a universal language, a metaphysical dream dating back to the Cartesian and Leibnizian project, which is still weakly alive, continues to appear as a metaphysical dream. No metaphysical language can possibly eliminate translation. That longed for fluidity, clarity, and transparency cannot help but imply a radical distancing from experience, impoverishing it so as to seek dominion over the world, which could destroy that which is human.
3. Translation is as much the work of capturing the meaning conveyed by the source text as it is the transformation that takes place in another language, but it does so by grouping words and not meanings. To translate is to place one signifier after another, mirroring the signifiers of another language; it is never the transfer of meaning. It is to fearlessly say what it does not allow itself to say, while persisting in failing to unite what cannot be joined with the glue of meaning.
4. Translation brings forth a textuality or orality that springs from itself, as if letting it be the one to speak or write. It is what connects it to photography and what separates it from drawing or painting, or from literature, too. Because translation is not merely literature, although like literature it demands that you breathe with language, it generates, with limitless effort, to allow the production of words to beat in the rhythm of what is translated.
5. Even the most codified translations—both through habit and through established knowledge—require a subject which permits the confrontation of signifiers, one after another, and not of meaning. Going beyond that automatization of artificial intelligence, which stitches together millions of signifiers to find an acceptable utterance, translation requires the speaker or writer to search their own linguistic corpus and experiences for the best sequence of words, which they continue to stitch together until the end.
6. Translation is neither reproduction nor a mere impetus for improvisation. A close translation is not one which is reduced to replacing one word with another using dictionaries and databases. Nor does it do justice to the translated text to treat the original as a mere pretext and then rewrite it, taking all liberties as if the original had already ceased to exist or can only be vaguely remembered. It is neither fidelity nor discretion but the care which allows the thing itself to be expressed in that which is translated, that moves translation.
7. Translation puts living and dead generations into contact, the traces of which can be seen inscribed in the language of the living, in living and dead languages. Because of this, translation contains as much history as it does truth or knowledge. It is that history that penetrates it to the core, but not without it updating day by day, even if microscopically.
8. Translation is as imbued with sexuality as language or culture are on the whole, as if they were forms of sublimation. It’s in the spark which springs from the collision of different languages where joy, as well as new life, can emerge.
9. Translation intertwines the love and the hate of at least two languages as lovers respond to the cries and caresses of each other, each still seeking their own exaltation. It is neither onanism nor a loss of speech, for it demands careful attention to that which is other, to the other language, to answer with one who translates. Translation would allow us to make love instead of war, and even when made possible, without fear, a lack of passion. Translation is a matchmaker for those repressed by monolingual narcissism. For this reason, it opens up the confrontations between languages in a war for eternal peace.
10. Translation grasps the non-language of things, the voicelessness of nature. It does so in the relationships between languages and, therefore, grasps the Adamic language, which never existed outside of myth. It points to paradise, which is always lost and always under construction, seeking the happiness of mortal beings. With it, translation replaces the impossible dream of a universal language with a tradition that supports the successions of generations in search of a humanity which does not yet exist, and which could achieve the dream of enduring through immortality, bypassing individual mortals.
11. Only translation allows one to create a fertile relationship between the dead and the living, and nature, through the multiplicity of worlds which open human languages, perhaps could introduce a new kind of politics, one supported by radical democracy, which cares for translation and respects that which it translates.