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Jorge Luis Borges is one of the most acclaimed authors of the twentieth century, and as such his work has been translated to a vast number of languages around the world. Borges was himself a translator, and wrote some important essays on translation. In these, he challenged the notion that translations are necessarily inferior to the original and suggested that there are no “definitive texts”. Moreover, some of his short stories convey insights into the nature of language and translation. For instance, Steiner (1975, p. 70) rates “Pierre Menard, author of Don Quixote” (1939) as “the most acute, most concentrated commentary anyone has offered on the business of translation.”
The present article draws on translation studies, with their strong tradition of paying attention to how texts are modified in translation. We focus on how translators from Spanish to the other five major Western languages have reacted to three possible typos in Borges’ revised (1974) version of his short story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” (henceforth “Tlön”). We pursue two different but related goals: 1) to assess, with the help of translations, whether those textual changes are typos or deliberate amendments; and 2) to assess translators’ reactions themselves. In order to achieve our goals, we also consider other textual details of “Tlön” changed in 1974.
Although our focus is rather narrow, the examples under consideration will suffice to indicate that translators have taken Borges along many different paths, some of which are irreconcilable with one another. This conclusion is in line with how Alvstad (2019) discusses translations of Borges’ short story “The garden of forking paths” (1941). We understand that the differences between translations of “Tlön” are more substantial than those identified by Alvstad. Translation studies scholar Gentzler (2008, p. 117) has likened the labyrinth presented in “The garden” to translation work:
so too does translation involve forking paths, opening up often infinite creative opportunities based upon initial decision. If one decides to translate a word or a sentence in one fashion, that decision sets up a paradigm for the rest of the text; however, if that same word took an even slightly different turn, the resulting text would be correspondingly different.
Given that we cannot know if Borges actually incurred in the three typos, the various translations of “Tlön” will be indirectly assessed on the basis of what they imply for the story’s plot. It is in connection with the story’s plot that we shall refer to some earlier research; instead, we lack published studies about post-1974 translations of “Tlön.” Wherever relevant, we shall also pay attention to whether translators have provided explanations for their decisions.1
Before comparing them, we shall analyse the translations one at a time, which seems adequate in light of the variety shown by translators’ reactions.2 Future research may broaden the scope by studying whether some translators were – say – more likely to consider Borges’ textual changes as typos after seeing previous translators (including to other languages) reach the same conclusion. Such extension would benefit from examining the translations of “Tlön” and other stories included in the relevant collection, looking for possible influence in terms of translation archaeology (Pym, 1998, p. 5) and exploiting the methods developed to assess indirect translations and retranslations (Alvstad and Assis Rosa, 2015; Assis Rosa et al., 2017).
The structure of this article is as follows. We start by describing the three possible typos found in “Tlön.” We then describe how translators reacted to these and other textual changes also dating to 1974. Our preliminary assessment is enhanced by looking at the impact translators’ decisions have on the plot.3 Finally, we summarise our conclusions about the textual changes and the translations thereof.