Henri Bloemen states by referring to de Man’s remark ‘that in the profession you are nobody unless you have said something about this text’, that Benjamin’s The task of the translator has become something of an ideological shibboleth for translation studies. The owners of the shibboleth look down on those who have not read the text and very often even refuse to read it. Furthermore it is an important fact that the text requires translation and reflection on translation to coincide, which makes Benjamin a person searching for tools to test the ‘truth’ or ‘value’ of translation. To avoid falling into the ideological trap, Bloemen stresses the importance of reading Benjamin’s text in an apathetic way and describes what he has found in the text by reading it in a way that Nietzsche has described as ‘ohne eine Interpretation dazwischenzumengen’.