The translators of The Thousand and One Nights

Abstract

In Jorge Luis Borges’s 1935 essay, literary translations are seen as producing varying representations of the source text and culture, and their “veracity” or degree of equivalence is always in doubt, regardless of their impact or influence. In discussing different translations of The Thousand and One Nights, Borges performs ideological critiques that expose their investment in various cultural values and political interests. He analyzes the textual features of these translations and explains them with reference to the translator’s “literary habits” and the literary traditions in the translating language. Borges most appreciates translations that are written “in the wake of a literature” and therefore “presuppose a rich (prior) process.” This leads him to value “heterogeneous” language, a “glorious hybridization” that mixes archaism and slang, neologism and foreign borrowings.