I see I'm very much in the minority, but I'd like the translator to know that at least one reader sees some value in this way of handling a crib. It's true that it doesn't allow for as smooth a reading of the original, and it's true that it doesn't render a fully finished prose version of the English. But it does try to convey the questions and choices about diction that confronted the translator, so that we know something more of what had to be discarded than with the "smoothly finished" method.

I wish you could have kept the evocative juxtaposition of "night and day"

That we call history is too plain a translation to express the musicality of

Que es la historia del mundo

The unnamed lies behind the name for the crib's Behind the name is that which isn't named; spells it out more than the author might have wished, I think.

The filling in of the line with feel it sway, should have been avoided.

Believe me, that's not many objections for what I otherwise consider a good translation.

Apropos the last line, I think it changes and unduly poeticizes a line that in Borges is far more straightforward. The line doesn't say that the bird is "moving in sleep," as if it sleep were the space in or through which the bird were moving. The line simply says "and something of a sleeping bird that moves."

Eric, I don't agree with you that él refers to idioma. It seems to me the translation gets it right as "he," though even if we substituted "it" in place of "he" (a plausible substitution) I don't think it would be understood as referring back to idioma. It would be just like tú,referring to no one in particular. (By the way, not that it matters, but idioma isn't the only masculine noun preceding él. We also have tropel.)

Despite the few flaws and the comparison with the Wilbur (who was it that said comparisons are odious?) I find this very appealing. I assume a typo in a missing article in the final line, and rate this quite highly. The translator has faced the challenge of finding rhymes which has influenced some choices, such as "vernacular," but I think it's a worthwhile trade-off. Well done.

Thanks, all, for the thoughtful comments.

All Best,

TB