Invisible Work : Borges and Translation

Efrain Kristal

ISBN 10: 0826514081 / ISBN 13: 9780826514080

Published by Univ Of Chicago Press Behalf Of Vanderbilt Univ. P Mai 2002, 2002

About this Item

Neuware - It is well known that Jorge Luis Borges was a translator, but this has been considered a curious minor aspect of his literary achievement. Few have been aware of the number of texts he translated, the importance he attached to this activity, or the extent to which the translated works inform his own stories and poems. Between the age of ten, when he translated Oscar Wilde, and the end of his life, when he prepared a Spanish version of the Prose Edda, Borges transformed the work of Poe, Kafka, Hesse, Kipling, Melville, Gide, Faulkner, Whitman, Woolf, Chesterton, and many others. In a multitude of essays, lectures, and interviews Borges analyzed the versions of others and developed an engaging view about translation. He held that a translation can improve an original, that contradictory renderings of the same work can be equally valid, and that an original can be unfaithful to a translation. Borges's bold habits as translator and his views on translation had a decisive impact on his creative process. Translation is also a recurrent motif in Borges's stories. In 'The Immortal,' for example, a character who has lived for many centuries regains knowledge of poems he had authored, and almost forgotten, by way of modern translations. Many of Borges's fictions include actual or imagined translations, and some of his most important characters are translators. In 'Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote,' Borges's character is a respected Symbolist poet, but also a translator, and the narrator insists that Menard's masterpiece-his 'invisible work'-adds unsuspected layers of meaning to Cervantes's Don Quixote. George Steiner cites this short story as 'the most acute, most concentrated commentary anyone has offered on the business of translation.' In an age where many discussions of translation revolve around the dichotomy faithful/unfaithful, this book will surprise and delight even Borges's closest readers and critics.

Seller Inventory # 9780826514080

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Invisible Work : Borges and Translation
• Publisher: Univ Of Chicago Press Behalf Of Vanderbilt Univ. P Mai 2002
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0826514081
• ISBN 13: 9780826514080
• Binding: Taschenbuch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 215W x 141H x 16D millimeters 215 millimeters width by 141 millimeters height by 16 millimeters depth
• Weight: 336 grams

About this title

Synopsis

It is well known that Jorge Luis Borges was a translator, but this has been considered a curious minor aspect of his literary achievement. Few have been aware of the number of texts he translated, the importance he attached to this activity, or the extent to which the translated works inform his own stories and poems.

Between the age of ten, when he translated Oscar Wilde, and the end of his life, when he prepared a Spanish version of the Prose Edda , Borges transformed the work of Poe, Kafka, Hesse, Kipling, Melville, Gide, Faulkner, Whitman, Woolf, Chesterton, and many others. In a multitude of essays, lectures, and interviews Borges analyzed the versions of others and developed an engaging view about translation. He held that a translation can improve an original, that contradictory renderings of the same work can be equally valid, and that an original can be unfaithful to a translation.

Borges's bold habits as translator and his views on translation had a decisive impact on his creative process. Translation is also a recurrent motif in Borges's stories. In "The Immortal," for example, a character who has lived for many centuries regains knowledge of poems he had authored, and almost forgotten, by way of modern translations. Many of Borges's fictions include actual or imagined translations, and some of his most important characters are translators. In "Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote," Borges's character is a respected Symbolist poet, but also a translator, and the narrator insists that Menard's masterpiece-his "invisible work"-adds unsuspected layers of meaning to Cervantes's Don Quixote. George Steiner cites this short story as "the most acute, most concentrated commentary anyone has offered on the business of translation."

In an age where many discussions of translation revolve around the dichotomy faithful/unfaithful, this book will surprise and delight even Borges's closest readers and critics.

About the Author

Efrain Kristal is professor of Spanish and comparative literature at UCLA and author of Temptation of the Word: The Novels of Mario Vargas Llosa, also published by Vanderbilt University Press.