The Task of the Translator after Google

The talk will consider again  ― proceeding upon the increasing  'searchability'  of literary corpora that the Web will presumably allow ―  the special task assigned the translator by Walter Benjamin: which was the  'restitution'  of  'originals'  through the  'afterlives'  given them by their  'traducings'  into other languages. A reformulation of that task will be attempted: but the exercise will be conducted in an illustrative way, in the course of examining the approved translation into English of El Aleph, one of the more famous among the early ficciones of Borges.

Hans Varghese Mathews

Hans Varghese Mathews read philosophy as an undergraduate, at the University of Southern California, studying logic and aesthetics; and went on to obtain a doctorate in mathematics, from the University of Wisconsin, studying algebraic topology primarily, with mathematical logic and philosophy as subsidiary subjects. He has been a research associate with the Indian Statistical Institute, and has written extensively on visual art for Frontline; he currently directs mathematical modelling for an analytics firm, and is a contributing editor to the online journal Phalanx. He has an abiding interest in the formal understanding of painting and poetry; and a more recent and dominating interest in the mathematisation of the social sciences.

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