Walter Benjamin’s Translatability, Pure Language & Application to Literary Text

The aim of this paper is to explores some connotations of Benjamin s theory of the translation, translatability and pure language, concentrating on the illumination of “The Task of the Translator.” Then, to translate the translatability, Benjamin s three main categories of translation are applied to literary text, Deborah Smith s The Vegetarian. He claims that language does not communicate. Benjamin s translatability is an essential quality of certain works, which is not to say that it is essential that they be translate. Thus, the task of the translator is not to find the equivalence between two different languages in translation. This article demonstrates that literary translation can be another kind of creative activity carried out by a sincere understanding of the original work. Therefore, an ideal translator should express not only the equivalence of the meaning but also the literary feeling of the source language text naturally.