Borges and translation
Translation – like any act of writing – is always under some influence: the translator’s language, cultural and socio-historical context in which the translator performs his task. Translation is a rewriting of a text from one literary system into another, from the source language and context into the target language with its specific time and place. This implies for the translator using all his knowledge, creativity and leads Borges to say that translations have as much a value as the originals. This article means to show that every translation is a work of art in itself relying on what Borges said at the begin of the last century.
Keywords: translation, Borges, creativity, source language, target language
1. Panter 1929, pag. 459
2. Técnica Literaria: Internet http://www.tecnicaliteraria.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=1136
3. Waisman 2005, pag. 44 It is often presupposed that any original text is so purely good that it is not correctable, and that translators are an irreplaceable bunch of bunglers, fathers of cattle feed and lies. They are indicted with the Italian sentence traduttore traditore and that joke is enough to condemn them.
4. Waisman 2005, pag. 50-51 To presuppose that every recombination of elements is necessarily inferior to its original, is to presuppose that draft 9 is necessarily inferior to draft H – as there can be only drafts. The concept of the definitive text corresponds only to religion or fatigue.
5. Waisman 2005, pag. 55
