Translators and Their Tasks: On the Relationship Between Translation Theory and Practice in Franz Rosenzweig and Walter Benjamin

A year apart, Walter Benjamin and Franz Rosenzweig each published avolume of translated poems and included short but pivotal essays on translationtheory. The first is Benjamins Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers (The Task of the Translator,1923), which appeared as a foreword to his translation of a selection of CharlesBaudelaires poems. The second is Rosenzweigs afterword to his translation of 92hymns and poems by Jehuda Halevi (1924). This article seeks to examine the waysin which the theories presented in these two essays stand in relation to the translationsin the respective volumes. Through close readings of two translated poems -Rosenzweigs Die Liebenden (The Lovers), and Benjamins Einer Dame (For aLady) - this article traces how the translators reflected, neglected or modified theirconcepts in their translations and what this in turn reveals about their respectiveapproaches to language.