Borges's Creative Infidelities

Using comparative analyses of source and target texts, Leone Anderson examines Jorge Luis Borges's residual presence in his Spanish-language translations of works by James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner.

Largely considered the most important Hispanic writer of the 20th century, Borges's revolutionary use of the Spanish language and irreverent approach to literature paved the way for a generation of Latin American authors. In this study, Leah Leone Anderson offers new perspectives on his translation theories and translations from English into Spanish, which play a major role in the author's legacy and are credited in part with spurring the "Boom" in Latin American literature.

Famous for his celebration of "creative infidelity" and his claim that "the original is unfaithful to the translation," Borges is widely assumed to be as iconoclastic a translator as he was an author, with an ability to faithfully recreate other authors' styles in Spanish. This book puts the English sources and Borges's Spanish translations side by side to examine the mark he left on narrative texts including Faulkner's The Wild Palms (1939), Woolf's A Room of One's Own (1929) and Orlando (1928), and Joyce's Ulysses (1922).

Anderson reveals significant transformations to these texts, such as characterization, point of view, narrative time, author-narrator dynamics, and most notably, gender and sexuality. She sheds new light on Borges both as translator and writer and on the work of some of the English language's most influential writers, showing to what extent translation practice can stem from a translator's approach to and understanding of literature, and importantly, making a strong case for the study of translated literature and its impact.