The book is divided into 78 passages, from one to a few sentences in length. Each of the passages becomes its own commentarial unit, consisting of a Benjaminian interlinear box, a paraphrase, a commentary, and a list of other commentators who have engaged the specific passage in question. Because the passages cover the entire text of the essay in sequence, reading straight through the book provides the reader with an augmented experience of reading the essay.
Robinson’s commentary is key reading for scholars and postgraduate students of translation, comparative literature, and critical theory.
Douglas Robinson is Professor of Translating Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and author or editor of 12 other Routledge books, including the recent Critical Translation Studies, Translationality, Priming Translation, and The Behavioral Economics of Translation, as well as the textbook Becoming a Translator and the anthology Western Translation Theory: From Herodotus to Nietzsche.