I hope this wasn't already said

There doesn't seem to be any middle ground in the translation articles. By which I mean there is nobody that seems to be directly arguing for a synthesis of literal and radical translation in those terms. People have sort of wishy-washily approached the topic, but they have either been unaware of the two camps or have skirted around mentioning them. And when they have been mentioned it is because the person strongly believes in one methodology. Is it because people believe that the two are simply incompatible ideologies, or because there has yet to be anyone to posit a separate theory in as eloquent and insightful a way as Benjamin ?

I think both methods are utterly broken in their pure forms, as they both take a highly academic approach to translation. Literal has, inevitably, mounds of footnotes that only a scholar would wade through. Meanwhile, Radical seems more like the ultimate comeuppance thesis paper. Rather than taking an interpretation from a text containing multiple possibilities and arguing it, one takes the work and rewrites it to better prove their point. Maybe Radical translation's caveat about the afterlife of a work, which to me has always seemed more like Benjamin saying “Well, even though it isn't going to be a perfect translation we should still try as best we can because the end product will still hold meaning,” is more of a guideline than an impetus to promote the afterlife. Yet it always seems that radical translationists inevitably refer back to the death of the author, as a sort of defense of changing the mood of the work as a result of language difficulties. There seems to be a problem where radical translation risks not bringing enough of the original culture into the piece while literal translation overloads the reader with it. And if one just goes one direction and then takes, say, three steps back from the pure form, while still trying to engage that form, then they stop making sense as cohesive philosophies. It's like Radical Translation Lite and Literal Translation Lite: they are inevitably marketing ploys. A Radical translation is too radical so steps are taken back to avoid simply writing a new book, a literal translation is too difficult to parse and so steps are taken back, and so neither philosophy is really enacted. Maybe I've overstated the impact of radical translation (how often does it really, really come up outside of, say, Onegrin? (probably pretty often in a sufficiently complex piece)) but it still seems that both theories are functionally broken in key parts, though they have very useful components.