The Task Of The Translator

"The task of the translator consists in finding that intended effect upon the language into which he is translating which produces in it the echo of the original. This is a feature of translation which basically differentiates it from the poet's work, because the effort of the latter is never directed at the language as such, at its totality, but solely and immediately at specific linguistic contextual aspects. [. . .] The traditional concepts in any discussion of translations are fidelity and license -- the freedom of faithful reproduction and, in its service, fidelity to the word. These ideas seem to be no longer serviceable to a theory that looks for other things in a translation than reproduction of a meaning."

The Task Of The Translator, Walter Benjamin taken from the anthology, The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti (London: Routledge, 2000).