This is a book-length commentary on Walter Benjamin's 1923 essay "Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers," best known in English under the title "The Task of the Translator." Divided into 78 passages, it is key reading for scholars and postgraduate students of translation, comparative literature, and critical theory.

Douglas Robinson is Professor of Translating Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and author or editor of 12 other Routledge books, including the recent Critical Translation Studies, Translationality, Priming Translation, and The Behavioral Economics of Translation, as well as the textbook Becoming a Translator and the anthology Western Translation Theory: From Herodotus to Nietzsche.

Introduction

Passages, titles, and sections

Interlinears and paraphrases

Commentaries

Previous English translations

Commentary

References

Index