Dear Mr. Borges, Which Translation Should I Read?
Look closely: you’ll see he left us an answer.
Jorge Luis Borges’ mind-bending subject matter and short-story format are perfect for today’s reading tastes. To anyone just discovering him: getting interested in his work will be easy.
Some of his pieces read like fictional autobiography, accounts from an imaginary life. Like the one where he tells of an obscure encyclopedic volume, found in his newly-acquired home, containing a geographic entry not found in any other version — chasing its origin uncovers the lost conspiracy of a parallel world. Or the one where he visits an aspiring poet, whose irritating compositions are inspired by a corner in his basement — one that shows you all of time and space simultaneously, within a single glance.
Reading these stories, it’s almost as if we’re hearing the author himself — or rather, getting a ‘sound’ we might imagine as Borges speaking. When it sinks in that these stories were originally in Spanish though, questions come to mind:
How faithful are these translations to his original tone?
Is there anything I’m missing out on? Are there any errors that Borges would totally condemn?
For an author who’s rather contemporary, it’s interesting that several different translations of Borges into English are already ‘out there’. Generally, forum discussions will tell you that any version is ‘good’ — as in, any version that exists so far is an enjoyable read. Speaking subjectively, I don’t feel this to be wrong: to date, Borges’ legacy on English shelves is in no danger of diminishing from a ‘bad version’.
Not everyone agrees, of course. The more you search, the more you’ll find those who condemn one in version favor of another, pointing out tonal fallacies, disagreeing with word choices. Look a bit further, and you’ll learn about the unfortunate story of a version that has been pulled from publication, seemingly now suppressed. [1]
Then you discover that Borges himself was fluent in English, and was prolific in translating English works into Spanish: he translated The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde when he was around ten years old, published in the metropolitan newspaper El País. Signed “Jorge Borges”, people thought it was his father’s work [2]. He contributed to William Faulkner’s popularity in Latin America with his translation of The Wild Palms [3]. He translated English, French, and German poetry into Spanish while living in Spain; he translated works of Kipling, Poe, Kafka, and others.
Now we wonder:
Why didn’t he translate his stories on his own?
When trying to determine which translation is ‘best’, more insight into Borges’ mind is found than was bargained for — a rabbit-hole pursuit, uncovering discovery after discovery that surprises us with his tastes and his views. In a way that is perhaps typical of Borges, he provided an answer before many of us even came to ask the question.
‘The Circular Ruins’: Four Versions
For the English reader, Borges’ fiction has been translated by over a dozen professional translators. Include his poetry, and the number of translators are close to twenty. For the purposes of this article, we will focus on the fiction translations, which can be categorized into four groups:
1. The Ficciones Group
2. The Labyrinths Group
3. The Di Giovanni Group
4. The Hurley Group
The selection and number of stories vary in each. The first three were composed during Borges’ lifetime; Hurley’s is the only posthumous effort so far, and includes more of Borges’ short fiction than the others.
A story found in all four is ‘The Circular Ruins’, ‘Las Ruinas Circulares’ en Español, about a man who travels deep into a forest into find a ruined temple. There, he seeks to focus his imagination with enough intensity to manifest a new human into reality.
Let’s compare each group’s version of ‘The Circular Ruins’ opening sentence.
Here it is in the original:
Borges: Ficciones, 1944
(Reprinted in Borges Esencial, 2016)
Nadie no vio disembarcar en la unánime noche, nadie vio la canoa de bambú sumiéndose en el fango sagrado, pero a los pocos días nadie ignoraba que el hombre taciturno venía del Sur y que su patria era una de las infinitas aldeas que están aguas arriba, en el flanco violento de la montaňa, donde el idioma zend no está contaminado de griego y donde es infrecuente la lepra.
We immediately get a sense of mystery — of this man who arrived in secret, who comes from a distant population, large in number, isolated from the rest of the world and its ills. He speaks the Zend tongue, from Zoroastrian tradition, suggesting that: 1. this story ‘comes from’ a time long past; and 2. there’s an esoteric quality in what is about to happen.
At the time of publication, English readers wouldn’t have had much opportunity to be exposed to this story. Borges noted he wasn’t even very popular in his native Buenos Aires at the time, either. It wasn’t until 1951, when Ficciones was translated into French under the title Fictions[4], that attention was brought to his work in Europe. With the first English version of Ficciones five years after, he was introduced to the Western World in general.
In the first English Ficciones, published by Grove Press, Anthony Bonner was the translator for The Circular Ruins:
Bonner: Ficciones, 1956
(Reprinted by Everyman’s Library, 2007)
No one saw him disembark in the unanimous night, no one saw the bamboo canoe sink into the sacred mud, but in a few days there was no one who did not know that the taciturn man had come from the South and that his home had been one of those numberless villages upstream in the deeply cleft side of the mountain, where the Zend language is uncontaminated by Greek and where leprosy is infrequent.
Bonner’s version is fairly straightforward translation at the onset. An interesting note: Zend is actually a term that refers to commentaries of Zoroastrian religious texts, and in the eighteenth century was commonly mistaken to be ‘a language’ in and of itself. Whether including that error was also Bonner’s mistake, or if he was deliberately including the error to further suggest this story comes from a distant past which held that misunderstanding, I’m not sure.
Infinitas aldeas is translated as numberless villages, suggesting that the villages in the South are so similar as to be almost indistinguishable when looked at collectively.
Readers of this version may pick up on an authoritative tone, almost biblical in its rendering. This is cemented when we come to the point where the man is described as having an invincible intent: the original describes him as having ‘su invencible propósito’. Propósito is one of those words that be interpreted in different ways — Irby’s later translation will call it an invincible purpose; Hurley goes so far as to change it to unconquerable plan — just one example of how variation of a key phrase can affect how the story is received.
In 1961, Borges won the first Formentor Prize, sharing it with Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot). As Borges put it, people’s interest in his work “mushroomed overnight” and, in 1964, New Directions Publishing brought more of Borges’ stories into English, and also gave new takes on some from Ficciones.
Labyrinths was published, a curated edition exclusive to English. Its distinct, out-of-focus cover graphics suggested a sci-fi element, compared to the sun god Inti on the original Ficciones cover, which gave more of a cultural feel.[5] In it, James E. Irby’s version of ‘The Circular Ruins’ starts with:
Irby: Labyrinths, 1964
(From the Thirty-First Printing)
No one saw him disembark in the unanimous night, no one saw the bamboo canoe sinking into the sacred mud, but within a few days no one was unaware that the silent man came from the South and that his home was one of the infinite villages upstream, on the violent mountainside, where the Zend tongue is not contaminated with Greek and where leprosy is infrequent.
Irby’s version is slightly more cinematic. We get a different sense of immediacy: to say sinking instead of sink gives an image of it happening in-progress, placing us more inside the action. The man is silent so as not to draw attention to his arrival: this paints him differently — taciturn would suggest he’d be uncommunicative even if there were people in front of him.
We also get a different impression of his origin versus Bonner: coming from one of the infinite villages instead of one of those numberless villages suggests that he comes from a sprawl of a place, rather than one of village among many. Directly translating flanco violento de la montaňa to violent mountainside can suggest that his home land is in turmoil.
Let’s skip ahead to Hurley’s translation before looking at Di Giovanni’s. After Borges passed in 1986, his widow, Maria Kodama, sought to commission a definitive collection of Borges work for the English-reading world. Huxley’s Collected Fictions is a part of that effort, published in 1999 by Penguin Classics. Its scope has been part of its continued appeal, and it’s kept a healthy presence on store shelves since then. For many readers in the 21st Century — including myself — it’s the first introduction to Borges’ work.
Hurley: Collected Fictions, 1999
(From the 38th Printing)
No one saw him slip from the boat in the unanimous night, no one saw the bamboo canoe as it sank into the sacred mud, and yet within days there was no one who did not know that the taciturn man had come from the South, and that his homeland was one of those infinite villages that lie upriver, on the violent flank of the mountain, where the language of the Zend is uncontaminated by Greek and where leprosy is uncommon.
Hurley gives a very noticeable change, choosing to say slip from the boat rather than disembark, adding more ‘stealth’ in the man’s movements than the other versions do. He also gives specific distinctions: the language of the Zend, identifying Zend as a collective rather than a language, and the violent flank of the mountain rather than the violent mountain, making it clear that the harshness is of the terrain, not the people there.
It’s arguable that this version deviates too far from the original, changing the sentence rhythm. That said, the additions do give more clarity while retaining the rest of what Borges originally used. As we learn more of the man in the story, we find he keeps his own council, staying away from the locals and conducting his practice in secret sleep. Though Hurley makes this apparent earlier — adding a flourish for stealth — it doesn’t deviate from the story’s traits overall.
Looking at Di Giovanni’s version now. From The Aleph and Other Stories, released in 1970 by E.P. Dutton. Here’s the first sentence of ‘The Circular Ruins’ from that version:
Di Giovanni: The Aleph and Other Stories, 1970
(From the first edition)
Nobody saw him come ashore in the encompassing night, nobody saw the bamboo craft run aground in the sacred mud, but within a few days everyone knew that the quiet man had come from the south and that his home was among the numberless villages upstream on the steep slopes of the mountain, where the Zend language is barely tainted by Greek and where lepers are rare.
More emphasis is given to ‘entering’ the place with come ashore instead of disembark. The night is described as encompassing rather than unanimous — which may be more fitting for English sensibility. ‘Bamboo canoe’ is made more ambiguous by referring to it as a craft, and we get the image that it’s stuck on the shore — run aground, rather than of it sinking. The man is quiet, a direct and more widely used word choice than taciturn, but removes suggestion of his silence being a brooding one.
Where he came from — the south — is not capitalized, suggesting it as more a direction of origin than a region. He comes from any one of any of the pockets of civilization from there –the numberless villages upstream; the mountain is clarified to have steep slopes, which suggests no more than what’s written. We’re back to referring to Zend as a language. In his place of origin, lepers — people afflicted with the disease, rather than the disease itself (leprosy) — are rare to find (rather than uncommon): this might suggest that wherever he comes from, there is an effective a cure for it.
Overall, word choices here make the prose more direct. Its composition is the shortest of the four. Much of the mystery surrounding the man’s character is removed, replaced with emphasis on the mystery of where he comes from.
This version, without question, deviates the most from the original. For anyone reading Di Giovanni’s version for the first time, would it surprise you to find out that Borges was involved in this translation more than any other?
Does that mean this whole thing could have been TL;DR as ‘Answer: This one’?
Not at all.
BORGES AS A TRANSLATOR OF BORGES
When asked why he didn’t translate his own works, Borges once replied:
“I respect the English language too much. I wouldn’t dare do that by myself.” [6]
Borges held English language structure in high regard, perhaps because of the way he learned — and preferred — to wield English.
“Naturally,” he said, “I’m apt to be old-fashioned; I’m quite Victorian… I prefer “lift” to “elevator,” and I’m not tempted to speak of “garbage cans” instead of “dust bins… If I could write eighteenth century English, that would be my best performance… I wonder if it’s important to be modern.” [7]
There were physical considerations as well. Borges’ eyesight was affected by myopia from an early age, and by 29 he developed cataracts [8]. According to Ana Maria Barrenchea’s biography in Borges: The Labyrinth Maker (in which Borges provides the forward), by the time he won the Formentor Prize,
“Borges has ceased to write lengthy stories and essays. He has been blind since 1955 and his mother, Leonor Acevedo, has been his constant companion, reading to him in French, English, and Spanish, and taking his dictation. Not seeing what he writes, it’s difficult for him to create a work of any extension.” [9]
Borges stuck to short prose and poetry since it was easier for him to memorize passages he was working on: he could refer from memory during each writing session.
For help, his mother would read to him. His mother was also a writer and translator [10]. Indeed, this probably had an influence on Borges’ interests, to write and translate literary works himself. It’s also likely that with those shared interests, she had a special understanding of how blindness would affect her son.
As they grew older, Borges was concerned that he was taking too much time away from his mother for his reading. One day, he ordered an annotated copy of Battle of Maldon at a local bookshop. When he went to pick it up, a young boy named Alberto Manguel was working. At the time, Alberto was familiar with the popularity of the man, but not his work specifically. Manguel would later go on to become an editor and author himself, and recount in his History of Reading:
“… as he was about to leave, he asked me if I was busy in the evenings because he needed (he said this very apologetically) someone to read to him, since his mother now tired very easily, and I said I would.
Over the next two years, I read to Borges, as did many other fortunate and casual acquaintances, either in the evenings or, if school allowed it, in the mornings.” [11]
So, by the time he received international fame, if Borges did attempt to translate on his own, he’d have a difficult practical challenge from the onset. At the very least, there would need to be someone to read his original words back to him, and take down his thoughts.
From the above, it’s evident that Borges was a man who valued relationships, and as such, he’d undoubtedly engage whoever assisted him in such an effort — with questions of opinion, and of literature in general. There needed to be a sense of compatibility between him and his future collaborator. In 1967, during a six month lectureship at Harvard, Borges received a letter from a student asking to meet. Borges decided to reply, which was a rarity — by this time, he rarely replied to new correspondence.
Norman Thomas Di Giovanni started a new friendship with Borges from that letter. We’d later learn that Di Giovanni’s interest in Borges’ poetry is what impressed him: at the time, Di Giovanni was one of a very few that took Borges’ work as a poet seriously.
When preparing to return to Buenos Aires, he invited Di Giovanni to join him.[12] Di Giovanni arrived half a year later, and stayed for three years. All the while, he and Borges worked closely on new translations of his fiction to English.
In the preface to The Aleph and Other Stories, Borges writes: “Working closely together in daily sessions, we have tried to make these stories read as though they had been written in English. We do not consider English and Spanish as compounded sets of easily interchangeable synonyms; they are two quite different ways of looking at the world, each with a nature of its own. English, for example, is far more physical than Spanish.” [13]
A background: Borges’ first exposure to Cervantes’ Don Quixote was in English. When he discovered it was originally in Spanish and read it again, he (somewhat famously) said: “It sounded like a bad translation to me.” [14]
As with most bibliophiles, something about the ‘first version’ we’re exposed to informs how we remember a work.[15] Even if we obtain the ‘first printing, first edition’ later on, that relatively random 38th printing of the fifth edition paperback where we first discovered that story will always feel like the ‘original’ in a personal sense.
Perhaps that had an effect on his opinion. But that experience was the foundation for how he views translation work in general. He’d express this in his essay ‘The Homeric Versions’.
To Borges, a translation can become something just as compelling as it was in its original language, perhaps even in new and slightly different ways.
Looking at their considerable changes in ‘The Circular Ruin’s’ first sentence, the ‘physicality of English’ that Borges spoke of is evident in their word choices. “Come ashore” is a more solidly defined action than the ‘process’ of disembarking; “steep slopes” showcase the mountain’s physical trait, rather than referring to it metaphorically, as “violent”. The reference to “lepers” gives reference to the physicality of leprosy versus the disease itself.
When translating The Aleph and Other Stories, “Borges [was] here and he’s contemporary,” Di Giovanni says. “I [could] always ask him “did you mean ‘gaze’ or ‘look’?” [16] Sometimes, Borges would provide his original intention; others, he’d renew his preference.
But in their process, some might want to know: Were any choices exclusively Di Giovanni’s, and not Borges’?
“We don’t think of ourselves as two men when we are working,” says Borges. “We are two minds working towards the same goal.” [17]
Borges and Di Giovanni would record every session they had on tape. In a sampling of these sessions, we can hear that every sentence, every key word was picked at. Particular words are debated — sometimes across hours. Sometimes, they would stay with a paragraph for an entire session. With that amount of rigor, it would seem unlikely.
Overall, the collaboration aimed to achieve what was intended —
— to give Borges’ English version the contemporary sound he wanted.
In the same lecture referenced earlier, Di Giovanni was also in attendance. It was a seminar to Columbia University students looking to enter the translation field. Borges and Di Giovanni define their preferences further:
DI GIOVANNI: Many of Borges’ translators, incidentally, have tended to be literal, taking the first English word suggested by the Spanish…
BORGES: Yes, and when I say “dark”…
DI GIOVANNI: They always say “obscure.”
BORGES: Instead of a “dark room” for “una habitacíon oscura,” you get “an obscure habitation.”
DI GIOVANNI: But the trick is to get that “tenacious nightmare” of the original to “bad nightmare” or “bad dream” of the rough draft to the final “haunting nightmare.” And, of course, that boils down to a writing problem. [18]
Borges’ belief was that a literal translation of words and structure isn’t near as important as capturing the essence of the story — the feel, the tone, the ‘character’ it conveys.
What’s funny, though, is that further along in the lecture, the two of them were asked if they’ve read any of the other translations done of Borges’ work.
While the tone of speech from that seminar has unfortunately been lost to time, the pair — somewhat sheepishly — identified a particular translator’s work to be better than theirs.
“Far better than our own,” they both said.
The transcript hides the name. But as they go on providing their opinion, it’s evident that the comment was made with sincere humility.
It’s also evident that the two were accepting of translation work outside of theirs — Borges wasn’t trying to ‘outdo’ other translators when it came to his work; he welcomed the variety they resulted in. What he and Di Giovanni were doing was adding a Borges version to the oeuvre, all the while acknowledging that other versions hold validity in their own rights.
With that in mind, we can better appreciate where each translator decided to place attention. For example, in Hurley:
“I had promised myself that as the single translator of the fictions (this time around, I mean), I would try as hard as I could to give English readers the same sense of words repeated throughout the career as Spanish language readers got. (Heretofore, Borges had had almost twenty separate translators, and they did not consult with one another about which words to use). Those words that Borges used over and over again — laberinto, atroz, tigre, etc. — I attempted to repeat, as well. It was part of my strategy of reenactment.” [19]
Another example, in Irby’s variation of ‘The Circular Ruins’, gives a different engagement to the passage of time. There’s a recurring reference of a horse, and Irby gives it the same label (‘horse’) throughout. In all other versions, Borges’ original included, ‘horse’ is interchanged between ‘horse’ and ‘stallion’. Subjectively speaking, I found Irby’s version to be the most poignant: an effective trigger for the reader’s imagery recall as time passes in the story.
Our position as the audience of Borges in English, perhaps, is not to critique the work of translators with a sense of bias; but rather, to point out the differences in creative choices and note their effects across the story.
In accepting these creative variations as much Borges himself might have, we just might find ourselves enjoying the same story in different ways, as it’s told four times over.
Because for Borges, there is no such thing as a definitive version.
THE ONE UNTRANSLATABLE EFFECT / THE EFFECT ABSENT FROM THE ORIGINAL
Even in accepting this degree of creative liberty, something still stands from the original questions posed: is there anything I’m missing out on?
Inevitably, yes there is. But the loss isn’t suffered through dilution of story; rather, it’s in our practical inability to experience Borges’ literary context with respect to Latin American literature, specifically at that time.
Mario Vargas Ilosa commented on Borges’ impact in Spanish prose in A Writer’s Reality. As it comes from one important author commenting on another, it’s an oft-quoted statement when referring to Borges in a critical sense:
“Borges’s prose is an anomaly, for in opting for the strictest frugality he deeply disobeys the Spanish language’s natural tendency toward excess… Borges made a radical innovation in the stylistic tradition of Spanish. By purifying it, by intellectualizing and coloring it in such a personal way, he showed that the language… was potentially much richer and more flexible than tradition seemed to indicate…” [20]
Indeed, this likely comes from Borges’ wide exposure to English prose from a young age. In the Columbia University seminar, he says:
BORGES: I don’t think I have a Spanish way of looking at the world. I’ve done most of my reading in English.
After which, Di Giovanni adds:
DI GIOVANNI: Borges’ Spanish is already much more specific than anyone else’s. That’s one of the reasons it is a delight to translate him into English and why he loses so little in translation. I listen to a sentence of his and I can hear the English sentence beneath it. As I’ve said, many times his syntax isn’t really Spanish. And he has introduced verb forms seldom used before in the language — the perfect present tense. He has revitalized the language. [21]
Imagine being someone of that time — in the mid 1940s to the mid 1950s — as a Spanish reader who encounters Borges’ stories for the first time. In order to imagine that fully, we would need to be equipped with some significant context going in; that is, a background in Latin American literary prose prior to Borges.
Borges may not have had a Spanish way of looking at the world, but the Spanish world unavoidably had a particular way of looking at his work.
For Spanish readers then, the closest comparison of Borges’ prose effect would perhaps be how English prose was affected by Hemingway.
As readers in the English language, this would elude us greatly. The ‘Spanish Borges effect’, dependent on time, language, and even geography, can never be translated, no matter how good the version.
Despite this, Borges’ themes and ideas have proven more than enough to keep readers — in any language — engaged to this day. And as English readers, for all that we lose in want of experiencing Borges’ Spanish intent, we gain something new. In his own contribution to English efforts through his collaboration with Di Giovanni, we get his version. Then, in understanding what their intent was in creating it, we’re encouraged to see all versions as valid.
For the English reader, Borges might very well feel that we benefit from having variations allowing for discovery and rediscovery of his work. The question, then, isn’t Which translation is best? But rather, Which one is your favorite?
Approaching it that way, we get more than just the ‘sound’ of the man; we get an essence of how he engaged reading.
Sources:
[1] https://www.theage.com.au/national/writing-with-borges-20030712-gdw1a9.html
[2] Borges, Di Giovanni: The Aleph and Other Stories. E.P. Dutton, 1970, p. 207
[3] Di Giovanni, Halpern, and MacShane: On Writing. Eco Press, 1994, p. 136
[4] In the French translation that launched him onto the world stage, what did that look like?
Fictions, 1951
(Reprinted by Collection Folio, 1983)
Nul ne le vit débarquer dans la nuit unanime, nul ne vit le canot de bamboo s’enforcer dans la fange sacrée, mais, quelques jours plus tard, nul n’ignorait que l’homme taciturne venait du Sud et qu’il avait pour patrie un des villages infinis qui sont amont, sur le flanc violent de la montagne, où la langue zende n’est pas contaminée par le grec et où la lèper est rare.
[5] It’s perhaps fitting, then, that William Gibson provides a forward to the current edition.
[6] On Writing, p. 107
[7] ibid, p. 108–109
[8] https://www.benjamineye.com/blog/why-did-borges-go-blind/
[9] Barrenechea: Borges: The Labyrinth Maker. Gotham Library, 1965, p. 137
[10] Aleph, p.207
[11] Manguel: A History of Reading. Vintage Canada, 1998, p. 17
[12] http://www.digiovanni.co.uk/borges.htm
[13] Aleph, p. 9
[14] ibid, p. 209
[15] Borges was indeed a bibliophile. Aside from his biographical essay, one only needs to look as his description of books in The Approach to Al-Mu’tasim or in Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.
[16] On Writing, p. 111
[17] ibid, p. 107
[18] ibid, p.132
[19] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/25683993.pdf
[20] Ilosa: A Writer’s Reality. Faber & Faber, 1991, p. 7–8
[21] On Writing, p. 137
