JOURNAL ARTICLE

Walter Benjamin as translator as John Henry: Competing with the machine.

  • Published In: Babel: International Journal of Translation / Revue Internationale de la Traduction / Revista Internacional de Traducción, 2023, v. 69, n. 4. P. 499 1 of 3

  • Database: Academic Search Ultimate 2 of 3

  • Authored By: Robinson, Douglas 3 of 3

Abstract

The article invokes John Henry's fatal competition with the rock-driving machine, a legendary exemplar of resistance to automation, as a speculative analogue of Walter Benjamin's 1923 essay "Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers," read as a metaphysical attempt to develop a workable alternative to the kind of mechanizable translating he hated. Benjamin's practical work with Baudelaire and Proust and the others is read tentatively as the forerunners to machine translation eighty-plus years later – working with the meanings of individual words in sentential chunks, striving to organize them along the lines of statistical usage in the target language, and incrementally learning with each translation job to assimilate actual reproductions of sentential meaning more and more accurately to statistical usage. "Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers" by contrast, read as his anti-MT manifesto, opens up to a somatic phenomenology of felt (super)human life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Additional Information

  • Source:Babel: International Journal of Translation / Revue Internationale de la Traduction / Revista Internacional de Traducción. 2023/07, Vol. 69, Issue 4, p499
  • Document Type:Article
  • Subject Area:History
  • Publication Date:2023
  • ISSN:0521-9744
  • DOI:10.1075/babel.00329.rob
  • Accession Number:172342109
  • Copyright Statement:Copyright of Babel: International Journal of Translation / Revue Internationale de la Traduction / Revista Internacional de Traducción is the property of John Benjamins Publishing Co. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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