Comments for Anagrammatically

Comment on Borges and I, Borges Y Yo by Face To Face – Karl Lagerfeld | Fashion Salad

Face To Face – Karl Lagerfeld | Fashion Salad — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:07:42 +0000

[...] in the early 60s, the Argentinian author J.L.Borges had published a short story entitled “Borges and I“. In doing so, he introduced the concept of Self as being separate from the public persona [...]

Comment on Translated: La Casa de Asterión becomes The House of Asterion by Antonios

Antonios — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 03:46:55 +0000

Nice point there, pat.

There’d be no need for the minotaur to count any further than fourteen.

Comment on Translated: La Casa de Asterión becomes The House of Asterion by pat

pat — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 19:55:43 +0000

Thanks for this translation!

On the number fourteen: I wonder whether it is an allusion to the Greek version of the myth in which the number of victims (young men and young women from Athens) is seven + seven = fourteen (Apollodorus, Library 3.15.8).

Comment on Hurley’s Inelegant Borges: An Exegesis (Part I of II) by David Auerbach

David Auerbach — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:04:53 +0000

By the way, the date error in Hurley’s translation has not been mentioned here. “La tipografía del siglo XVII, ” was rendered by Hurley as “eighteenth-century typefaces.” Translations are only versions, reperformances of an original performance. Di Giovanni’s version, for me, is actually a bit stiff and even inept in places, and also misses the projection of existential “otherness” that is very present in the original. There are also a few mistranslations: “rasgueo de una guitarra” becomes “tuning of a guitar,” “mi vida es una fuga” becomes “my life is a running away.” The very unfortunate thing in losing Di Giovanni’s translation is that it also represents a collaboration with other renowned authors of the time whose versions of Borges’ poetry are in fact quite magnificent. Hurley will never be able to compare with the likes of M.S. Merwin , Alastair Reid or John Updike.

Comment on About by Frank

Frank — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:04:28 +0000

OK, Btw you spelled the town of Chacabuco incorrectly as “Chabachuco”. Otherwise excellent translation.

Comment on About by Antonios

Antonios — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 04:23:47 +0000

Sure, no problem.

Just attribute me as the translator and/or link to this blog.

Comment on About by Frank

Frank — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 00:08:57 +0000

I’d like to use your translation of Borges’s El Evangelio según Marcos. OK? I’ve translated Borges myself, so I appreciate the work that goes into it.

Comment on The Book of Sand (El Libro de Arena) by Jorge Luis Borges, Translated by Antonios

Antonios — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 02:36:43 +0000

Now I can comment further:

- you’re right: I looked it up and Hurley made a howler by translating matear as butchering rather than something like passing the bombilla around drinking mate (it’s specifically mate they’re drinking in the social way that it’s done over there rather than the tea-drinking style of others around the world). Hurley must have missed the e in matear and read it as matar.

One of the worst howlers, though, was committed by Anthony Kerrigan, I think it was. The translation of the The Lottery of Babylon made reference to the race between the tortoise and the hare when it should have been a reference Zeno’s paradox and the race between the tortoise and Achilles!

- Guillermo Martinez’s books look like exactly the kind I’d love. Will definitely have to read some of his works. He does make reference to Wittgenstein’s rule-following paradox it seems, at least according to this review: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/feb/05/featuresreviews.guardianreview13

- I’m more familiar with the rule-following paradox in relation to Quine’s work, i.e. for a set of data, there are countless explanations or theories that can account for the data. The only way we decide between the theories is via judgement, which, fortunately or unfortunately, is not deteministic.

And I love Wittgenstein’s quip when asked about how natural it seems that the sun revolves around the earth given what we see: “And how would it look if the earth revolved around the sun”?

Comment on The Book of Sand (El Libro de Arena) by Jorge Luis Borges, Translated by Antonios

Antonios — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 07:49:16 +0000

Glad you enjoyed it, Curtis.

My From the nineteenth century I’d hazard is a translation of Será del siglo diecinueve. By my understanding, the use of the future tense, i.e. será instead of es, can be used to indicate uncertainty or probability, which is why I added the I’d hazard.

On the sentence starting Acaso para dar a entender que los términos…, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a reference to something else. What I would be surprised about, however, is that it was a reference to Wittgenstein. I’ve never read anything to indicate that Borges read Wittgenstein — or any other 20th-century philosopher for that matter. I remember reading that he couldn’t be bothered with Heidegger because his prose is so abstruse and inelegant, and that’s the only example I remember of Borges referring to a 20th-century philosopher. I’d love to know if that’s not the case, though.

As for Guillermo Martinez and the Hurley’s translation of the History of Eternity, I’ll have to get back to you on that: I’ve not heard of Guillermo Martinez and the History of Eternity is not something that immediately springs to mind.

Having said that, I wouldn’t be surprised if Hurley had mistranslated Borges. I’m no fan of Hurley’s, and here’s where I explain why in more detail:

Comment on The Book of Sand (El Libro de Arena) by Jorge Luis Borges, Translated by Curtis Tuckey

Curtis Tuckey — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 21:40:01 +0000

About the sentence “Acaso para dar a entender que los términos de una serie infinita aceptan cualquier número.” It appears to be a rather obscure reference—of the kind that Borges was so fond of tossing out—and none of the translations (or the original) make much sense to me. But it might be a reference to “Wittgenstein’s rule-following paradox,” which in some versions says that a series, whatever rule it might appear to follow in any initial sub-sequence, can be continued in any other arbitrary, rule-breaking way. (Shades of Hume, but Kripke found it more profound.) Borges liked to mangle quotes slightly. A challenge to the able translator: find something similar in Wittgenstein. (Now that I think of it, there might be something on this in Guillermo Martinez’s Los crimenes imperceptibles, but I don’t have a copy handy.)