senior thesis · fw 2026
Speak Nearby
~ translation is a fantasy
"Whereas content and language form a certain unity in the original, like a fruit and its skin, the language of the translation envelops its content like a royal robe with ample folds. For it signifies a more exalted language than its own and thus remains unsuited to its content, overpowering and alien."— Walter Benjamin, The Task of the Translator
concept
Inspired by Walter Benjamin's essay The Task of the Translator, Speak Nearby visualizes translation through the metaphor of fruit and skin, where meaning is peeled from its original language and layered with a foreign one. Although the fruit's essence may remain, the new skin will never fit the same way as its former. Each act of translation coexists with subtle displacement, creating something new and hybrid, rather than perfectly transferring it.