The Practice of Translation as a “Weak Messianic Force”
Proceeding with the examination of Franz Rosenzweig’s assumptions on the theory and practice of translation already initiated in a former paper, this article intends to scrutinize the import of the eschatological dimension guiding the elaboration of this subject matter at every stage of its development. The paradigmatic tenet of this speculative endeavor, that there exists One and only language–Es gibt nur Eine Sprache–running through the manifold human idioms, far from vindicating the fanciful quest for a pristine, idyllic language, advocates that every one of all the languages used by human communities endorses in its proper fashion the longing for messianic peace. For that reason, this eschatological scenario should be read against the background of human finiteness, acknowledging the historical horizon towards which the whole range of human experience is projected and found liable by an ontological bond. The burden of responsibility towards the other man, the foreigner, becomes then an implicit condition of the practice of translation and its ethical commitment, ascribing to its inner dynamics what Walter Benjamin called a « weak Messianic force ».