德国哲学家本雅明（Walter Benjamin）对语言、翻译和现代性都做过深入的思考，本书即是对他的这三个主题的综合研究。作者认为，本雅明把语言和翻译看作是对现代性哀悼的隐喻，资本主义现代性的生活日益碎片化，并由商品文化所标识。本雅明试图从语言、翻译中寻求本原，并由此重建原初的完整的世界，使之从人类的欲望、贪婪和愚昧中得到拯救。

Abbreviations
Chapter One Introduction
Chapter Two A Plurality of Benjamin's Texts： From Kabbalah to Deconstructive Reading
Chapter Three Critique of Language
3.1 The Resources of Views of Language： German Romantic Tradition and Jewish Kabbalistic Theology
3.2 Critique of Bourgeois View of Language
3.3 Critique of Kantian Philosophy on Experience
3.4 Language， Materialism and the Mimetic Faculty
3.5 Three Languages： Language of Man， Language of Things， Language of God
3.6 Benjamin's Semamic Triangle： Word， Name， and Object of Intention； Naming Language/Sign Language； Nominalism/ Realist
3.7 Language and Mind
3.8 Degeneration of Language
3.8.1 Internality and Externality of Langauge
3.8.2 Degeneration of Language and Origin of Modernity
3.8.3 Translation： Rescuing the Sacred Anamnesis
Chapter Four Critique of Translation
4.1 "The Death of the Reader"
4.2 Translatability/Untranslatability
4.3 The Forerunner of Post-moderu View of Translation
4.4 Hermeneutics： The Whole and the Part
4.5 Affinity Between Pure Language and Universal Grammar， and the Kinship of Languages
4.6 Demarcation Between Ontology/Epistemology； Science/ Humanities； The Tree of Life/The Tree of Knowledge
4.7 Translation as a Metaphor
Chapter Five Critique of Modernity
5.1 Origin of Benjamin's Modernity
5.1.1 Charles Baudelaire
5.1.2 Marx
5.1.3 Nietzsche
5.1.4 Georg Simmel and Siegfried Kracauer
5.2 Modernity of Art and Its Cost
5.2.1 The Age of Mechanical Reproduction
5.2.2 The End of the Storytelling
5.3 Prehistory of Modernity
5.3.1 Methodology of Constructing Prehistory of Modernity： Archaeological Monadology
5.3.2 Modernity of Paris in the 19th Century： Illusion and Disillusion
Chapter Six Theological Dimension： Traces of Messiah
Chapter Seven Conclusion
Bibliography