Burton Pike bemoans the state of literary translation, claiming its decline has rendered language “simply instrumental, a medium of communication” and that “a creeping homogenization is developing in prose fiction”:
Certain canonical texts about translation now seem out of date. Walter Benjamin’s tragic view of history included a tragic view of translation. His famous 1923 essay “The Task of the Translator” rests on the notion of the sacredness of the word, and insists on a translation that will recreate the sacred spirit of the original in another language. But what if writers and readers no longer think that the surface of a literary text conceals layered depths that the translator must labor to transmit? What if translation is no longer thought of as an art but as piece-work?
The Dish 