[Skip Dewahl]

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.

[Roger Slater]

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.)