Walter Benjamin's Allegorical Translation Theory

German scholar Walter Benjamin, one of most influential western scholars in the 20th century, had made great achievements in such areas as philosophy, linguistics, history, sociology, literature and arts. In particular, his translation theory had exerted great influence upon deconstructionism. However, according to the review of domestic and foreign researches on Benjamin's translation theory, most of researches are introductions and reviews instead of elucidatory researches and focus on the textual analysis of The Task of the Translator regardless of the influence of Benjamin's other academic theories. It is certain that Benjamin's translation theory, unlike a river without a source, originates from Benjamin's philosophy and literary criticism theory. To trace the origin of Benjamin's translation theory not only helps to clarify the influence of his other academic theories but also benefits the elucidation of his translation theory.Either Benjamin's philosophy or literary criticism theory indicates a common central theme:allegory. Allegory used to be an ancient literary pattern in contrast to Symbol. It is characterized by that it conveys the intended meaning in an indirect way, or it uses other things to suggest a thing instead of referring to the thing directly. Benjamin gave it a new connotation and developed it into a pattern of modern arts, a pattern of social criticism and a kind of thinking pattern. Allegory means the non-identity of form with meaning, of material with spirit and of signifier with signified and reflects both the living state of human beings in the modern western society and the existence of modern arts.It is under the theme of allegory that Benjamin's philosophy is coherent. Benjamin criticized Kant's epistemology, because Kant's epistemology is based on the transcendental subject consciousness. Kant's so-called knowledge and experience are not so much the reflection of phenomena of the outside world as the production of human consciousness, namely, the production of subject construction. Benjamin called Kant's knowledge and experience "myth", suggesting human arbitrarily assumes occupancy of nature and makes claims on nature, which is the embodiment of allegory. Therefore, Benjamin intended to use "constellation", "monad" and "origin" to establish a metaphysical system and epistemological system free of the subject-object relationship to eliminate allegories and restore identity. According to Benjamin's view of language, as the original perfect and unified "pure language" is allegorized into various specific human languages, human languages are characterized by allegory:non-identity and polysemy. Benjamin used allegories to criticize modern structuralist linguistics and intended to restore pure language by eliminating allegories. Benjamin's allegorical salvation theory aims to use such allegorical images as ruins, disasters, dead bodies to unveil the discontinuity and non-identity of history and society. Benjamin figured out that only allegory can fight against allegory and eliminate allegory to realize the salvation and liberation of humans. The essence of his allegorical salvation theory is that hope lies in the ruins of desperation.It is under the theme of allegory that Benjamin's literary criticism theory is coherent. Benjamin's inner criticism theory demands people to get rid of the subject-object relationship and return to literary works themselves to guide and promote introspection of works to display truth, which embodies Benjamin's desire for identity. However, in the world of allegories, identity is always absent. Benjamin had to admit that modern arts had to be arts of allegory, which employed the allegorical non-identity structure to refer to the world of reification, to stress human's survival crisis and to present themselves as allegories to surpass themselves with the purpose of restoring identity. Therefore, the literary criticism must be allegorical and the task of literary criticism is to use non-identity to expose the illusion of identity caused by the subject-object relationship, promote and reinforce the non-identity of works to display themselves fully and to surpass themselves in order to present truth.It is also under the theme of allegory that Benjamin's translation theory is established. Benjamin not only thought over translation activity in the allegorical way, but also considered translation as an allegorization of language to expose and fight the world of allegory with the purpose of restoring identity and bringing about salvation. Benjamin highlighted that it was likely that the form of intention or non-identity of human languages could complement each other transcendently to restore pure language. Thus the task of translation is to fully present the non-identity of language of the original text by comparing with the non-identity of the target language to complement each other. This process is called allegorization, in which the complementation destroys the non-identity or the form of intention of the original language, brings the original text into a new non-identity relationship of the target language or re-allegorizes the original text. In other words, the pure language is allegorized into human languages, and then translation re-allegorizes the original text in the target language to form a new non-identity relationship, in order to surpass the original non-identity and to obtain the pure language from the complementation of the non-identity of all languages.Hence, through tracing the philosophical origin and literary criticism origin of Benjamin's translation theory, this dissertation clarifies that Benjamin's translation theory is an allegorical translation theory, with its gist of employing allegories to expose and demolish the allegory-like world in order to restore identity. His allegorical translation theory differs in the following five aspects from the deconstructionist translation theories represented by Derrida's translation theory which highlights difference and doubts identity:First, in terms of the originality of the original text, deconstructionism emphasizes the differance of meaning and uses "intertextuality" to deny the originality of the original text, but Benjamin's translation theory insists on the originality of the original text.Second, in terms of the creativity of the author, deconstructionism cancels the originality of the original text, in the meantime, it proclaims the "death" or non-existence of the author, but Benjamin confirmed the creativity of the author.Third, in terms of the creativity of the translator, deconstructionism doesn't distinguish the translator from the author and denies the creativity of the translator. However, Benjamin highlighted the creativity of both the author and the translator.Fourth, in terms of the status of the translation, deconstructionism annuls the difference between an original text and a translation and thinks that the original text and the translation complement and co-exist with each other, but as Benjamin considered a translation as the continued life of the original text, he refused the independence of the translation.Fifth, in terms of the translation method, deconstructionism advocates any translation method which conveys differance of meanings of the original text into the translation as much as possible without defining a concrete translation method, but Benjamin emphasized the word-for-word translation method.Consequently, the dissertation reaches a conclusion that Benjamin's allegorical translation theory can neither be categorized into decontructionism nor be considered as the forerunner of deconstructionism.Last but not least, the dissertation expounds Benjamin's translation theory in the scope of current translation studies and reveals that Benjamin considered translatability as the possibility of allegorization, defined "translation" as the realization and display of translatability or the possibility of allegorization and liberated the translator from the master-servant relationship through attaching importance to the subjectivity of the translator, while involving the translator in the inter-subjectivity relationship with the author. Hence, the dissertation highlights that Benjamin's allegorical translation theory benefits current translation studies in such three topics as translatability, the nature of translation and subjectivity of the translator, in the meantime, it points out the innate shortcomings of his translation theory:his theory is rooted in Jewish mysticism and he highlighted the metaphysical importance of translation but paid little attention to actual translation activities.