[mignon ledgard]

Glenn,

Belated welcome to Eratosphere and many thanks for starting this promising thread. You have chosen quite a complicated piece of Borges’s for a first translation.

Your first mention and link says something about the importance of prepositions and of Borges’s choice of words. This piece is perfect to see exactly what this means. I hadn’t translated anything in a long time, but I’m having fun with this out of the ordinary experience. I had already noticed B’s play with prepositions, and the closing is the toughest, so I’m stuck there a little longer. I won’t invade your thread with it, but I may use parts of it in comments. This piece of B’s made me think of the contrast between his gentle, smiling, soft-spoken, modest persona and the one who enjoys to hold his readers hostage—ha.

It took a while before I started liking Borges’s poems, but I was very interested in his process. I never imagined I would get hooked. I look at anything of his or about him that comes my way and love his interviews and lectures I find via YouTube. My favorite living philosopher got hooked on Borges at the age of fourteen and he sees Borges as a philosopher. I’ll post the link to him/it later, though it’s in Spanish and has no subtitles.

About Martina DeRobertis, I was enjoying her initial comments and ended up befuddled by her translation.

About your trouble posting and your vanishing window, this is what I try to remember to do: I use RTF (Rich Text Files) and then copy and paste to the Eratosphere window. If you have Text File, you have RTF - ‘convert to RTF’ or ‘save as’ — it is compatible with many processors and easy to use. It also uses less space than Word Docs. A product of Microsoft:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format

Thank you, thank you, for starting this thread,
~mignon

[Glenn Wright]

Thanks for your thoughtful remarks and useful computer tip, Mignon. Nice to meet you. I have enjoyed your posts in the poetry and fiction sections.
I will go through the piece again, making special note of the use of prepositions. As a non-native Spanish speaker, preposition use is one of the hardest thing for my ear to pick up.
I have to agree that DeRobertis’ translation was pretty eccentric. I think she was trying, with very limited success, to capture Borges’ idiosyncrasies and transfer them into English. I’m learning that that doesn’t work. The subtle effect of a non-standard syntactic, grammatical, or dictional choice can really only have its desired effect in the language/culture in which it was original written. I’m not fond of them, but I guess that’s what footnotes are for.
Glenn

[mignon ledgard]

Originally Posted by Glenn Wright

Thanks for your thoughtful remarks and useful computer tip, Mignon. Nice to meet you. I have enjoyed your posts in the poetry and fiction sections.
I will go through the piece again, making special note of the use of prepositions. As a non-native Spanish speaker, preposition use is one of the hardest thing for my ear to pick up.
I have to agree that DeRobertis’ translation was pretty eccentric. I think she was trying, with very limited success, to capture Borges’ idiosyncrasies and transfer them into English. I’m learning that that doesn’t work. The subtle effect of a non-standard syntactic, grammatical, or dictional choice can really only have its desired effect in the language/culture in which it was original written. I’m not fond of them, but I guess that’s what footnotes are for.
Glenn

Glenn,

Thank you for the greeting and I hope it’s alright to expand on this Borges excursion. Also, please pardon my tardiness; I'm not good at multi-tasking these days, but Borges y Yo is a journey of discovery and it's lots of fun.

I hope you won’t mind my quoting—I want to remember your observations. Eratosphereans at large don’t like my close to the original translations, but I still prefer them. I also find that I don’t agree with the explaining that happens in translations when the original clearly chooses to leave them for the reader to figure out.
I think there’s a little of this in this poem of Borges’s.

There’s really no better way to understand a poem than to ‘get inside of it,’ and, for me, translating it is the most thorough way to find myself remounted and wide-eyed with the discoveries, both of content and how the language is used.

Working on translating this poem has also caused me to be curious enough to want to know where did Borges go for walks. Maybe I’ll find THE portal (zaguán) around the square, or maybe he had breakfast (coffee) some place nearby. Most buildings and houses have portals, but if he stopped to look at it, it must be monumental. Or is it the Post Office’s portal?

But first, I should point to three errors in the original Spanish version posted. (Maybe it was typed out the old-fashioned way?)—I didn’t correct of my own accord; here is the link to the PDF file with the poem:
https://www.ingenieria.unam.mx/dcsyh.../BORGES/yo.pdf

"...yo vivo, yo me dejo vivir, para que Borges puede tramar su literatura y esa literatura me justifica."
"puede" should be 'pueda'

"...yo estoy destinado a perderme, definitivamente, y solo algún instante de mí podrá sobrevivir en el otro."
"solo" should be 'sólo'
Solo has no accent when it refers to a male's condition of being alone. It has an accent when it is used in place of 'solamente.'

The following is the one that causes a dilemma for translation because the meaning could fit, though with extraordinary challenge. It was what prompted me to search, because ‘de olvido’ means due to forgetting, as a result of ..

"...y todo es de de olvido, o del otro."
"de olvido" should be 'del olvido'

This search took me elsewhere and I found something quite useful. The poem opens saying, "Yo camino por Buenos Aires.." 'I walk around Buenos Aires..' This is what I found and translated to English:

"The square is in the center of the city [of Buenos Aires]. There is a park that is near the library. There is a museum between the bank and the post office."

In Spanish we refer to the post office as EL CORREO. (Example: Voy al correo - I go to the post office. Vengo del correo - I come from the post office).
I think this is how it is meant in the poem.

"...por el correo" could be translated as ‘owed or owing to the post office’. Not likely.

It also seems to me, because of the nature of items liked or enjoyed, mentioned at the beginning of the poem, that these may be in different nearby buildings.

An extra note:

Today, I realized that almost everything in this poem, including the expressions, walks and likes, so very like my dad, and Buenos Aires was his favorite city. My dad also wrote poems, taught Modern Literature at a university, loved and wrote tangos, played the guitar and sang them—at the piano, too. Nothing was better than Argentinian beef with salsa de chimichurri. I’ve never been to Argentina.

But, Glenn, unbeknownst, you are sending me on a virtual tour..
Thank you!
~mignon

Addendum:
I don't know if it's too late, but I wouldn't mind posting the translation I worked on, if you think you may be able to use it.

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, mignon—
Wow! Thank you so much for all the time and effort you put into your post. I am touched by your generosity and really appreciate the helpful information you provided. I corrected the original Spanish text according to your copy. The only change I made in the English translation was the result of changing puede (indicative) to pueda (subjunctive). I changed “so that Borges can plot out his literature” to “so that Borges might be able to plot out his literature.” The other two corrections didn’t seem to require any changes in the English. I am not a native Spanish speaker, so I’m apt to miss nuances—especially in informal usage. I have heard los correos in the plural to mean “post office,” but not in the singular. My schooling in Spanish used the Mexican standard dialect, and my only other experience is with the Colombian dialect of my daughter-in-law, so Argentinian expressions are unfamiliar to me.

I wonder if you can help me with a mystery. Is diccionario bibliográfico a common Spanish expression for what English calls a “biographical dictionary” or a “who’s who?” I could not understand why it wasn’t a diccionario biográfico.

Your information about Buenos Aires is wonderful! I have never been to Argentina, either. You helped my imagined image of the city to take on texture and vividness. I am new to translating, so I really appreciate your help.
Thanks again!
Warmly—
Glenn

[mignon ledgard]

Hello, Glenn,

You are welcome; it’s my pleasure. The more I delve into it, the more it yields. But I think you had it right before, “so that Borges can plot out his literature”is correct, checked and double checked. ‘Might’ is iffy, not a certainty; you could replace ‘might’ with ‘may.’ But I like and had ‘can’ exactly as you did, even though I kept wanting to get even closer and ended up with “so that Borges may plot his literature.” A fine and not so sly way to say, ‘I am the enabler.’

Of the three corrections, the impossible one was the third one; it is the one that sent me on a safari because ‘de olvido’ could even mean ‘to neglect,’ as in ‘forgetting to turn off the stove before leaving on a two-week vacation.’ I couldn’t make sense of it in context and, after too long a truncated effort, because of the previous typos, I thought it might also be a typo, a crass one that caused me to imagine that the ‘other side’ of Borges was a prankster.

You ask about ‘los correos’—I had not heard that, but I found this:

post office: oficina de correos (one office building: oficina, singular)

the post office: el correo

‘Correos’ is a shortcut not used by everyone, but those who do use it are from Spanish speaking countries; this means they speak Spanish from Madrid. Some of us speak Castellano (Castilian), and, because it is easier, we say we speak Spanish from Castilla (Castile.) I believe there is a fair number of ‘other’ ’Spanish’ languages, I imagine that, as does Castellano, they all fall under the Spanish umbrella, since the differences are not readily noticeable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Castile

I found this online and I will translate here:

“Una bibliografía es una lista de recursos tanto impresos como electrónicos que puede organizarse en orden alfabético por autor (apellidos primero) y título (de no conocerse su autor). También se pueden organizar por orden cronológico, por materia o temas y por tipo de publicación. Feb 19, 2021”

A bibliography is a list of means both in print and electronic that can be organized in alphabetical order by author (last names first) and by title (if the author is not known). It can also be organized by chronological order by matter or theme and by type of publication. Feb 19, 2021”

In contrast, from wikipedia, “A biographical dictionary is a type of encyclopedic dictionary limited to biographical information.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biographical_dictionary

My understanding is that a bibliographical dictionary consists of references << key word—about many kinds of written matter, including fictitious, non existent persons, (therefore not biographical, not like Who’s Who). It contains cross-references, explained passages, quotes. . (I cannot find the link, but I read that Google had purchased an old, not subject to copyrights, bibliographical dictionary that they used for its search system, maybe to incorporate it or use it as a model. Bibliographical dictionaries were widely used at libraries and universities, where Borges must have spent long hours, with no personal computers in his time, to work on researches and such.
**(Parts of ‘my understanding’ include poorly paraphrased content I found online—links lost.)

I also found out that ’terna’ is specific to three (triple, trío): “del lat. terni ‘de tres en tres’, / tres cada uno’. So I translated:

. . . of Borges I have news via the post office and I see his name on a shortlist of three professors or in a bibliographical dictionary.

I am presently using ‘via the post office’ because I think it covers both meanings: around the post office, inside or nearby, and through it. In short, I don’t think it is delivered. But I am still looking for a term that more clearly indicates ‘nearby’. More and more, I notice the implied importance of the Library via the liked objects mentioned: sandglasses (hourglasses of different sizes depending on time limits), 18th century typography. . . (My dad used an etymological dictionary—I imagine they followed the same fate as bibliographical ones).

I’m still ‘readjusting’ the translation. I’ve been thorough, but had never felt compelled to scrutinize this way. I may try to put the findings together more cohesively—I don’t want to forget the experience.

Trying to remember a song about “taking a trip without leaving the ground”.

Thanks to you,
and thank you,
~mignon

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, mignon—

I am enjoying researching Borges with you, and I made a few tweaks based on the information you provided. I particularly appreciate your research on the expression “diccionario bibliográfico.” All of the translators rendered it as “biographical dictionary,” but I think that “bibliography” makes the best sense. As a writer and librarian, it is clear that Borges’ name would appear in such a reference book, and “bibliographical dictionary” is a nonsensical expression in English, combining two completely different kinds of reference books.

As I noted in an earlier post, “terna” is a term that originated in the Church. It originally meant a list of exactly three names submitted for promotion or honors, but when used in a sense not specific to the Church, it came to mean any such list with very few names on it.

Thank you again for investing your time and effort in this project.
Warmly—
Glenn