[Glenn Wright]

I read two articles about translating this famous piece by Borges. I learned a lot about styles and philosophies of translation. The articles are both available online.

1. Hurley, Andrew. “What I Lost When I Translated Jorge Luis Borges.”
Inverse Journal. Feb. 1, 2019.

2. DeRobertis, Martina. “Borges and I: Comparing English Translations of ‘Borges y yo’.”
Columbia Journal of Literary Criticism. Essays, 2019.

I studied the translations of Andrew Hurley, Martina DeRobertis, James E Irby, and Kenneth Krabbenoft. Here is my translation:

Borges and I

Jorge Luis Borges

The other one, Borges, is the one that things happen to. I stroll through Buenos Aires and linger, perhaps mechanically now, in order to look at the arch of an entryway and the inside door. I see news about Borges in the mail, and I see his name on a short list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth century typography, etymologies, the taste of coffee, and the prose of Stevenson; the other one shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the affectations of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that our relationship is hostile; I live, I allow myself to live, so that Borges might be able to plot out his literature, and that literature is my reason for living. It costs me nothing to confess that he has achieved certain worthwhile pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because the good no longer belongs to anyone, not even to the other one, but rather to language or to tradition. Besides, I am destined to be lost, most certainly, and only some instant of myself will be able to survive in the other one. Little by little I am going to give everything up to him, although I know his perverse habit of lying and glorifying. Spinoza understood that all things want to continue to be what they are. The stone eternally wants to be stone and the tiger a tiger. I have to stay in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the painstaking strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and I passed from the mythologies of the slums to games with time and the infinite, but those games belong to Borges and now I will have to think up other things. So my life is a running out and everything I am losing and everything belongs to oblivion, or to the other one.
I do not know which of the two is writing this page.

—————————————
Edits:
L2: I get news reports about Borges from the mail > I see news about Borges in the mail
L3: bibliographical > biographical
L11: exaggerating > glorifying
L17: So my life is an escaping > So my life is a running out
L19: which of the two of us > which of the two

—————————————
Original
From Biblioteca Digital Ciudad Seva

Borges y yo

Jorge Luis Borges

Al otro, a Borges, es a quien le ocurren las cosas. Yo camino por Buenos Aires y me demoro, acaso ya mecánicamente, para mirar el arco de un zaguán y la puerta cancel; de Borges tengo noticias por el correo y veo su nombre en una terna de profesores o en un diccionario bibliográfico. Me gustan los relojes de arena, los mapas, la tipografía del siglo XVIII, las etimologías, el sabor de café, y la prosa de Stevenson; el otro comparte estas preferencias, pero de un modo vanidoso que las convierte en atributos de un actor. Sería exagerado afirmar que nuestra relación es hostil; yo vivo, yo me dejo vivir, para que Borges pueda tramar su literatura y esa literatura me justifica. Nada me cuesta confesar que ha logrado ciertas páginas válidas, pero estas páginas no me pueden salvar, quizá porque lo bueno ya no es de nadie, ni siquiera del otro, sino del lenguaje o la tradición. Por lo demás yo estoy destinado a perderme, definitivamente, y sólo algún instante de mí podrá sobrevivir en el otro. Poco a poco voy cediéndole todo, aunque me consta su perversa costumbre de falsear y magnificar. Spinoza entendió que todas las cosas quieren perseverar en su ser; la piedra eternamente quiere ser piedra y el tigre un tigre. Yo he de quedar en Borges, no en mí (si es que alguien soy), pero me reconozco menos en sus libros que en muchos otros o que en el laborioso rasgueo de una guitarra. Hace años yo traté de librarme de él y pasé de las mitologías del arrabal a los juegos con el tiempo y lo infinito, pero esos juegos son de Borges y ahora tendré que idear otras cosas. Así mi vida es una fuga y todo lo pierdo y todo es del olvido, o del otro.
No sé cuál de los dos escribe esta página.

————————————-
Crib:

To the other one, to Borges, is to whom things happen. I walk through Buenos Aires and I slow down/pause/linger, perhaps mechanically now, in order to look at the arch of an entryway and the inside door; I have news reports about Borges from the mail, and I see his name on a short list of professors or in a bibliographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth century typography, etymologies, the taste of coffee, and the prose of Stevenson; the other one shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be exaggerated to affirm that our relationship is hostile. I live, and I allow myself to live, so that Borges can contrive his literature, and that literature justifies me. It costs me nothing to confess that he has achieved certain valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because the good does not any longer belong to anyone, not even to the other one, but rather to language or to tradition. Besides, I am destined to get lost/to lose myself, definitively, and only some instant of myself will be able to survive in the other one. Little by little I am going to cede everything to him, although I know his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying. Spinoza understood that all things ant to persevere in their state of being. The stone eternally wants to be stone and the tiger a tiger. I have to stay in Borges, not in myself (if it is that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others, or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and I passed from the mythologies of the surrounding slums to the games with time and the infinite, but those games belong to Borges and now I will have to think up other things. So my life is an escaping and everything I lose and everything belongs to oblivion, or to the other.
I don’t know which of the two is writing this page.

[Carl Copeland]

Hi, Glenn. This is a tough one for me to critique, but I looked at the articles and the other translations and have a few tentative thoughts:

I wonder if you aren’t being too literal with the second sentence:

… de Borges tengo noticias por el correo y veo su nombre en una terna de profesores o en un diccionario bibliográfico.

• “I get news reports about Borges from the mail” gives me the idea that he reads about himself in newspapers delivered by mail. Maybe that’s the case, but other translators have given it a more general sense: “news of Borges reaches me by mail” (Hurley), “I know of Borges from the mail” (Irby), “I hear about Borges in letters” (Krabbenhoft) and DeRobertis’s awkward “of Borges I get news over the mail.”

• Google Translate is unhelpful with “terna,” but most translators have rendered it simply as “list.” A “short list” makes me wonder what they’re shortlisted for.

• For some reason all translators have rendered “diccionario bibliográfico” as “biographical dictionary.” Could they know something I don’t?

As a native speaker, DeRobertis hears the Spanish as we never will, but I find her article quirky and nitpicky and her translation useful, at best, as a crib. Curious that she has “I allow myself to be lived.” Is that a possible understanding of “yo me dejo vivir”? Why wouldn’t she mention such an important possibility in her article?

Hurley translates “magnificar” as “magnifying,” and I suspect it’s one of those words whose oddness he feels should be respected in translation. (Note that you’ve already used “exaggeration.”)

DeRobertis makes a big deal about how others have mistranslated the second to last sentence:

Así mi vida es una fuga y todo lo pierdo y todo es de olvido, o del otro.

But is “todo lo pierdo” a relative clause, as she translates it (“everything I lose belongs to oblivion”), or does it mean “I lose everything,” as Irby and others have it? Your “everything I’m losing” also sounds like a relative clause and a complement of “is”: my life is 1) an escaping and 2) everything that I am losing.

That’s all for now. I hope Julie will check in; she’s done some beautiful translations from the Spanish.

[Julie Steiner]

Hi, Glenn and Carl!

I feel certain that "Así mi vida es una fuga" should be translated "So my life is a fugue state," given that the narrator has been describing symptoms of a dissociative fugue throughout the whole passage.

See
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/healt...ociative-fugue

Borges builds up to a conclusion in which he is losing his grip on his bodily identity, in addition to his already-lost grip on his famous persona identity. So I also think it's unhelpful in the last line to amend "which of the two" to "which of the two of us." That possessive, first-person "of us" completely undermines the intended distance and lack of connection/belonging that Borges has been describing.

"magnificar" might be translated as "aggrandize":
https://www.wordreference.com/es/en/...pen=magnificar

"terna" refers to a very short shortlist, indeed:
https://www.wordreference.com/es/en/...asp?spen=terna

[Roger Slater]

Originally Posted by Julie Steiner

Hi, Glenn and Carl!

I feel certain that "Así mi vida es una fuga" should be translated "So my life is a fugue state," given that the narrator has been describing symptoms of a dissociative fugue throughout the whole passage.

See

I don't see that. He's just finished saying how he has to free himself from himself, which is the context in which he says his life is a "fuga," a word that is most commonly used to mean an escape. (Also, though I'm not sure of this, I believe that "fuga" would be preceded by an article if it meant a fugue state).

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Carl, Julie and Roger—
Thank you all for being so generous with your time and thoughts to help a fledgling translator. I chose this piece, which has clearly been translated almost to extinction, as an exercise in working with prose and poetry. Some translators approach it as a prose poem; others see it as a microcuento or piece of flash fiction. To a casual reader, this may seem like a distinction without a difference, but to a translator, this decision requires adopting different goals, priorities, and protocols. This is most obvious in the last sentence of the piece, which I approached as a prose poem.

Carl, let me address your points in order:
1. The choice of tengo instead of obtengo or consigo suggests that the speaker is not making any effort to seek out news about the famous, public Borges. (Do we believe him?) I decided to use “I see news about Borges” since “I have news about X” is not idiomatic in contemporary American English.
2. Julie’s link on terna was helpful. Interesting that it derives from “a list of three.” In Latin, terna is a distributive number meaning “three at a time.” As a noun, it apparently has ecclesiastical origins, meaning a list of three nominees presented to a pope or cardinal for promotion. In Spanish, it is a short list of names of people being considered for awards, promotions, or employment. English has the verb “to shortlist,” but not the corresponding noun.
3.I’m having difficulty imagining what kind of information about Borges might be in a “bibliographic dictionary.” He was a librarian, so his name might have been included as an editor or contributor, but not as a subject. I suspect either that bibliográfico was an editor’s error silently emended by the translators or possibly a Spanish usage that I am unfamiliar with. I emended it.
4. DeRobertis has apparently construed “yo me dejo vivir” as containing a reflexive verb, vivirse, which, as far as I know, doesn’t exist in Spanish. If it did, it would mean “to live oneself.” Very poetic, but I chose to construe me as the direct object of dejo.
5. I suppose that magnificar has a connotation of over-dramatization. I like Julie’s suggestion of “aggrandizing” because it carries this nuance. “Exaggerate” connotes undue importance more than drama. I chose “glorifying,” which was in Julie’s link, because it has the over-dramatizing connotation and also to avoid repeating “exaggeration,” which appears in line 5, as you noted.
6. I thought long and hard about the last sentence. Up to that point, the speaker’s tone has tried to seem Devil-may-care, even indifferent to public Borges, assisted by what Hurley identifies as the paratactic syntax—semicolons and coordinating conjunctions linking mainly independent clauses—presenting a Hemingwayesque, stoic, guarded, not overly intellectual persona. In the last sentence this syntax is replaced by a garbled run-on. In a prose translation, my priority would be to focus on clearly revealing character and events. As a prose poem, the language—its rhythm, images, connotations—is my priority. I decided to reproduce the speaker’s panicky loss of control in the admittedly confusing syntax, omitting commas that might have made it clearer.

Julie, I liked your suggestion of “fugue state” for fuga. It precisely describes the speaker’s psychological state, but felt that it had a clinical ring to it that seemed at odds with the speaker who has presented himself as more artistic than scientific. Would he have knowledge of the DSM4? Some of the translators liked “leak” as a translation, hanging that choice on the observation that the “flight” is not planned or careful. Your “fugue state” captures that. I chose “running out” to replace “escaping,” because of the speaker’s realization that his inevitable, imminent erasure is happening gradually. It also plays off the “leak” idea, since one may “run out of a room” or “run out of time,” picking up the mention of hourglasses (relojes de arena) in line 4. As Roger notes, fuga is a toughie to translate. I’m still not sure I have Borges’ intent clear in my mind.

I think you’re right about deleting “of us” from the final sentence. It is not in the original, is not needed for clarity (who else could it be?) and might suggest a closeness that the speaker has made a point of denying.

I appreciate your helpful comment. Thanks again.
Glenn

[Roger Slater]

But a fugue state in Spanish would be "estado de fuga," not just "fuga." I really don't see any justification for translating it as a fugue state, especially in the context where he is explicitly describing an escape of the self from its self.

[Julie Steiner]

The notions of an escape, a jailbreak, an elopement, a leak, a drain, etc., are more common uses of "fuga," but it's also used for the musical sort of fugue, which is the metaphor that inspired that the term "fugue" in a psychiatric context:
https://www.wordreference.com/es/en/....asp?spen=fuga

Rogerbob is correct that the term "fuga" does not seem to be used alone when describing a fugue state, though, although in English "fugue" can be. See definition 2:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fugue

a disturbed state of consciousness in which the one affected seems to perform acts in full awareness but upon recovery cannot recollect the acts performed

There's no way to keep all the ambiguity in the original, and all the possible meanings, so one of the more common meanings would be the safer way to go. I'd still be inclined to stick with "fugue," myself, to get the musical possibility and the psychiatric one, rather than using something like "jailbreak," which has only one meaning (although that's a pretty dramatic option).

He did say "I tried to free myself from him" a bit earlier, though. Dammit. I dunno.

[Edited to add: I was wrong about the musical fugue's having inspired the name of the psychiatric condition. Further reading shows that it's called a "fugue" mainly because the sufferers tend to flee familiar surroundings, because they don't recognize them, and are trying to get "home". So you can pretty much ignore everything I said about "fuga."]

[Orwn Acra]

So my life escapes me and I lose everything to oblivion or the other.
I don't know which has written this page.

A weird thing about the original last line is that it implies a third presence (which of the two rather than which of us). Irby, whose translations are close to my heart, writes "which of us" and Hurley, whom I think a rather terrible prose stylist, writes something similar.

Unless "cuál de los dos" refers not to Borges1 and Borges2 but to the other and oblivion, the objects from the previous sentence.

[Rick Mullin]

There is a new anthology of Stevenson's personal essays.

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Orwn—I like “So life escapes me” as a way of finessing “Así mi vida es una fuga” in the the next-to-last sentence. A rather relativistic solution making the life the one in motion instead of the speaker. Thanks for weighing in.

I was looking into the publication history of the piece and wandered into a bibliographic labyrinth—appropriate metaphor for Borges. “Borges y yo” was first published in 1960 in a collection of stories and poems called El Hacedor, retitled Dreamtigers in the first English translation. It was reprinted in 1962 in Labyrinths, a collection of 23 stories, 10 essays, and 8 “parables.” It was put in the Parable section, suggesting, perhaps, an allegorical intent. This collection was written in Spanish, but the English translation by Yates and Irby appeared first—hence its English title.

Labyrinths and the myth of the Minotaur are a recurring symbol in Borges’ work, and vestiges of them appear in “Borges y yo.” The speaker wanders the streets of Buenos Aires, stopping to examine entryways and doors. He likes maps, etymologies with complex branching diagrams , and eighteenth century typography with curlicues and serifs. Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is about a doppelgänger, or a monster like the Minotaur who haunts the maze of Soho’s streets. In the phrase, “estoy destinado a perderme,” we feel the speaker getting lost in a maze. The speaker foresees his own destruction, suggesting that he is the Minotaur. He allows himself to live “para que Borges puede tramar su literatura.” The verb tramar means to hatch, contrive, engineer, or figure out, suggesting that the other one is Daedalus (or Theseus?). I think labyrinths in Borges represent literature and the creative imagination, but they contain danger and one can get lost in them, or lose oneself. Considering Borges’ blindness, I think labyrinths and mazes would have a special resonance for him. A blind person in a maze could use his sense of touch almost as efficiently as a sighted person could use vision, perhaps more efficiently.

Borges also uses references to tigers, jaguars, and other large cats to suggest this danger. A tiger is mentioned in “Borges y yo.”

Thanks to you, too, Rick for the tip on Stevenson’s essays.
Glenn