Cohen discusses the use of the Digital Archive for translating Whitman’s works. Since one of our tasks is to do a translation, I decided to review this article (http://www.whitmanarchive.org/about/articles/anc.00165.html). Cohen focuses on Whitman’s poem Eidólons and the problems with translations. He refers to Jerome McGann’s work Radiant Textuality views on translation and his emphasis on the use of the Digital Archive.

Main point of the article is that there is a transgenic deformation of works which were not first created for the digital era. The influence of this digital era on Whitman’s poems is the gist of the article. Moreover, the advantages and flaws of the tool.  The deformance tool TokenX is greatly discussed by the author. There are obvious problems with translating into foreign languages which use special characters.

Cohen poses a crucial question at the beginning of his article:

What should be the nature and end of our mediation?

Cohen, Matt. “Transgenic Deformation: Literary Translation and the Digital Archive.” Walt Whitman Archive.  Web.  2 October 2009.