From Benjamin to the Classroom? Notes on Translating Nina Petrick’s “Ein Sonntag” in the Classroom

Abstract

The article begins with a series of prefatory remarks about translation, touching on issues of power and knowledge and the status of English as lingua franca. This is followed by Susanne Baackmann’s essay, which revisits Walter Benjamin’s classical text “The Task of the Translator,” and engages with Benjamin’s proposal that the “truth” contained within a text is only revealed over space and time through the act of translation and linguistic and cultural dialog. These notions are tested out in a case study of the translation of a German text, which itself articulates the tension and the dialog between the past and the present described by Benjamin as a potentially rich moment of insight set free by translation.

KEYWORDS:

• translation theory
• English as lingua franca
• language and power
• translation practice
• Walter Benjamin
• Nina Petrick
• German history
• Nazi history
• relations between past and present