"Suppose that the unhinged flights of Babelfish at its nuttiest are in some sense very much what Shakespeare is about -- or at least what translations of Shakespeare ought to be about. Suppose, that is, that Walter Benjamin in fact had something very much like Babelfish in mind when he wrote that translation has but one true task: to catch a fleeting glimpse for us of that "higher and purer" language of which all languages, after Babel, are mere fragments."