In 2008, French theorist Antoine Berman wrote a commentary on Walter Benjamin's seminal essay `The Task of the Translator'. The commentary is an erudite and witty performance of scholarship, which not only offers a very detailed reading of Benjamin's text, but also engages with the very nature of theoretical writing on the practice of translation. This is the first English translation of Berman's commentary. Including an introduction which positions the text in relation to current developments in Translation Studies and annotations, explaining linguistic issues arising from the interplay of German, French and English, this is a seminal text for all MA and Phd students of translation theory.