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Efraín Kristal. Invisible Work: Borges and Translation, Vanderbilt University Press: Nashville, 2002. Pp. 213.
Sergio Waisman. Borges and Translation: The Irreverence of the Periphery, Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory Series; Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2005. Pp. 267.
Questions about translation represented a life-long preoccupation for Jorge Luis Borges. His first foray into the practice of translation, as recounted by his mother, was a version of Oscar Wilde's "The Happy Prince" published in the Buenos Aires newspaper El país when Borges was nine years old. However, it was not until very recently that scholars began to acknowledge the importance of translation for a broader critical understanding of both Borges's career as a writer and of his contributions to literary modernity. Efraín Kristal's Invisible Work: Borges and Translation (Vanderbilt University Press, 2002) and Sergio Waisman's Borges and Translation: The Irreverence of the Periphery (Bucknell University Press, 2005) are the first book-length studies of Borges and translation, and as such they represent much-needed contributions to Borges criticism. Waisman's book is part of the "Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory" series, edited by Aníbal González, which has made a number of important contributions to rethinking the relation between Latin American literature and literary theory in recent years.
Kristal and Waisman share the premise that translation represents more than just one literary activity among many, and both view Borges as dispelling the common view of translation as an inferior form of production. In Novalis's praise for August Schlegel's translation of Shakespeare, Kristal locates what could serve as a shared epigraph for these two studies: "To translate is to produce literature, just as the writing of one's own work is-and it is more difficult, more rare. In the end all literature is translation" (as quoted in Kristal, p. 32). This statement presents a counterpoint to the oft-repeated warning "traduttore traditore" and a counterpoint to the idea that translation should be judged according to the fidelity it maintains (or fails to maintain) to the original. If Borges helps us to see that, when everything is said and done, all literature is in fact translation, then it would seem that Borges also obliges us to reexamine what we understand by "literature" and "translation"...
