Jameel Library | Open Call: The Task of the Translator with Sarasija Subramanian

In the essay The Task of the Translator , Walter Benjamin writes of how there was a singular, “pure” language in the beginning, likened to a flower vase. When this vase broke, its shards became each of the languages we speak today. If this metaphor is considered in the context of translation, then two pieces inherently cannot be identical; they are instead meant to be complementary—matching at an edge, fitting together perfectly, but never the same.