Jorge Luis Borges's Theory and Practice of Translation

Abstract

Chapter 10 rehearses Jorge Luis Borges’s views on literary translation as a process of recreation, and it explores Borges’s application of those views in a translation of Max Beerbohm’s “Enoch Soames,” which he published in the Antología de literatura fantástica, a collaborative project of editing and translation with Silvina Ocampo and Adolfo Bioy Casares. The chapter demonstrates that Borges and his collaborators transformed a satirical tale into a work of fantastic literature and uses Roberto Bolaño’s brilliant but misleading assessment of “Enoch Soames” as a foil of sorts to illustrate Borges’s theory and practice of translation. Bolaño called “Enoch Soames” a “perfect story” that could have been written by Borges because he read the translated story in the Antología de literatura fantástica. While the translation fits his analysis convincingly, the original does not.