The Afterlife of a Text in Walter Benjamin’s Theory of Translation

Walter Benjamin proposes that a work of art does not belong to a specific time; rather it is transient. A work of art has a 'temporal effect' which is considered as the 'context' of the work in which it has been written. The 'context' cannot be reconstructed to be the same as what once existed;it is constructed.Translator's job is to recreate the life of the original work from one language to another.Every work enters into relation with its translation and is constructed anew. The priority of translation over work of art for Benjamin is due to the fact that the ‘linguistic creation’ in translation is the only thing that can represent the truth content of the work or its afterlife.This paper tries to apply Benjamin’s theory of translation to Maurice Blanchot's “Madness of the Day”.