/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13484618]

BORING

[Anonymous No.13484658]

>muh fun
You need to be 18 to post here, pleb.

[Anonymous No.13484989]

You picked the shitty translation you mong, of course it's boring

[Anonymous No.13485000]

>>13484989
is the other one even in print anymore?

[Anonymous No.13485007]

Come on guys, you know better,

[Anonymous No.13485057]

>>13484618
Don't bother with the collected non-fictions then.

[Anonymous No.13485110]

>>13484618
Well, that’s just like your opinion, man.

[Anonymous No.13485914]

>>13484989
this - it was a despicable cash grab by Borges' widow Maria Kodama, because the best translations Norman Thomas di Giovanni had collaborated personally with Borges on had impressed him so much (even claiming some of the stories were better in English than Spanish) that he cut a 50/50 deal on the profits between them. it was unheard of for a translator to receive so much.
so now Borges' widow is degrading the artistic legacy of one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, by commissioning a horrible, rushed translation - cutting the best Borges English translations out of the market entirely - just to milk more money from her dead husband's name.
>>13485000
no, but it's available for a decent price
search Borges and Giovanni in amazon or wherever and you'll find The Aleph and Other Stories for less that 20 bucks

[Anonymous No.13485918]

>>13485914
>Borges on had impressed him so much (even claiming some of the stories were better in English than Spanish) that he cut a 50/50 deal on the profits between them
source for all those claims?

[Anonymous No.13485936]

>>13484658
fpbp

[Anonymous No.13485957]

>>13485918
they're facts, not claims.
it's all in the the translator's wikipedia article, with links supporting each "claim":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Thomas_di_Giovanni
>After Borges's death, his widow Maria Kodama renegotiated the English translation rights for his works. In particular, she terminated a longstanding agreement between Borges and di Giovanni under which royalties for a number of translations on which they collaborated were divided equally between author and translator. New translations by Andrew Hurley were commissioned and published to replace the Di Giovanni translations, which were allowed to go out of print.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/feb/19/jorge-luis-borges-di-giovanni
>When Borges died in 1986, his second wife María Kodama arranged with his publishers and agents to rescind all publishing rights and agreements on works that di Giovanni had either collaborated on or translated, including a 50-50 royalties deal. This prose hasn't been reprinted since.
also, his website has entries that describe what happened:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090704140456/http://www.digiovanni.co.uk:80/borges/the-lesson-of-the-master/in-memory-of-borges.htm

[Anonymous No.13486022]

>>13485957
>Borges would go on to support Generals Videla and Pinochet.
Borges literally never supported Pinochet. All he did was received a prize from some Chilean institution so of course he had to shake hands with the president. That's a neutral action not "supporting". Fucking The Guardan, spreading lies.
However I was more interesting in your claim about Borges saying some were better in English since in "Borges" by Bioy Casares he implies Di Giovanni, although charming, was a pleb.

[Anonymous No.13486030]

>>13486022
interested*

[Anonymous No.13486058]

>>13485914
The personal comments no the storys are great and the eses on his life is amazing. Truly the aleph and other stories is worth a read.

[Anonymous No.13486173]

>>13486022
I have a book co-written by Borges and Bioy-Casares - translated by di Giovanni. perhaps that dig against di Giovanni was due to professional or personal jealousy? or maybe it had to do with him just not being an artist, instead of being a slight against his abilities as a translator...
in any case, I can't recall where I'd read that description of Borges' opinion of some of their collaborative translations exceeding the Spanish originals, though I certainly read that somewhere in an official source.
>>13486058
>Truly the aleph and other stories is worth a read.
that and Ficciones. the translations the Everyman edition of that collection are every bit as good as di Giovanni's translation of The Aleph collection

[Anonymous No.13486905]

>>13485057
This, is even shittier.

[Anonymous No.13486933]

[Anonymous No.13487264]

>>13484989
Came here to post this, I own all three of these blocks for their relative completeness but they're still the worst translations and Hurley is a hack.

[Anonymous No.13487274]

>>13486022
>Fucking The Guardan, spreading lies.
It's the Guardian, they still defended Stalin in the 60s when fucking Khrushchev had repudiated him. Lies and tendentious bullshit are their whole stock in trade.

[Anonymous No.13487282]

>>13485000
The Irby/Yates Labyrinths collection is also much better than Hurley and AFAIK it's still in print.

[Anonymous No.13487320]

>and theeennn...
>he stabbed him with the knife in the Argentinian south!! lmaooooo

[Anonymous No.13487387]

>Bought this edition the other week because it was the most complete

Great...

[Anonymous No.13487406]

WHICH TRANSLATION DO I BUY THEN? SOMEONE HELP!!!!

[Anonymous No.13487450]

>doesn't like Circular Ruins

[Anonymous No.13487475]

I feel like Borges whole oeuvre, with some exceptions (Pierre Menard, Tlon, The Writing of the God), can be found in Kafka's short story "The Great Wall of China".

[Anonymous No.13487487]

>all these plebs complaining about the Hurley translation.

I've read Hurleys and di Giovanni's, and they're both perfectly fine. Other than Borges personal predilection for the latter, and the politics going into the translation posthumously, there is little that differentiates the prose of the two. Hurley is more accurate, di Giovanni a little more colorful I suppose. But I'm not a native speaker of borges language so what do I know

[Anonymous No.13488150]

>>13486173
>perhaps that dig against di Giovanni was due to professional or personal jealousy?
I don't think so. Di Giovanni was a relatively young man of 34 when he was translating Borges, who was in his early 70s or so. Here's the bit I was referring to from "Borges" (translated by myself):
Borges to his friend Bioy "This kid doesn't understand absolutely anything. Without our help this translation would be worse than the French or the German one. But it's going to be good... because we* are doing it. The fact that he had never seen phrases like 'ab initio' and 'cum grano solis' says a lot about his culture**. I don't think he has that great sense of style which he boasts about all the time. Generally, those who have a great sense of style give some proof of it."
*It's unclear whether "we" refers to Borges and Bioy, or Borges, Bioy, and di Giovanni. But it's certain Borges and Bioy took part in the translation. All the entries suggest they did a lot of translating at Bioy's house.
** He means the man's cultural knowledge, not American culture.

Some of the entries give me the vibe that it was mostly Borges and Bioy's work and that di Giovanni mostly participated to say things like "You can't say it like that in English" and to make the deals with the American publishers. So, there you have it. the Di Giovanni translation is actually Borges and Bioy's. Borges translated himself to English via Di Giovanni. Can't get any more Borgesian than that.

[Anonymous No.13488158]

>>13486173
>perhaps that dig against di Giovanni was due to professional or personal jealousy?
I don't think so. Di Giovanni was a relatively young man of 34 when he was translating Borges, who was in his early 70s or so. Here's the bit I was referring to from "Borges" (translated by myself):

Borges to his friend Bioy "This kid doesn't understand absolutely anything. Without our help this translation would be worse than the French or the German one. But it's going to be good... because we* are doing it. The fact that he had never seen phrases like 'ab initio' and 'cum grano solis' says a lot about his culture**. I don't think he has that great sense of style which he boasts about all the time. Generally, those who have a great sense of style give some proof of it."

*It's unclear whether "we" refers to Borges and Bioy, or Borges, Bioy, and di Giovanni. But it's certain Borges and Bioy took part in the translation. All the entries suggest they did a lot of translating at Bioy's house.
** He means the man's cultural knowledge, not American culture.

Some of the entries give me the vibe that it was mostly Borges and Bioy's work and that di Giovanni mostly participated to say things like "You can't say it like that in English" and to make the deals with the American publishers. So, there you have it. the Di Giovanni translation is actually Borges and Bioy's. Borges translated himself to English via Di Giovanni. Can't get any more Borgesian than that.

[Anonymous No.13488218]

>>13488158
update I got to a part where Bioy mentions that di Giovanni brought a draft to a story and they all three worked on it, so it's team work after all.

[Anonymous No.13489214]

>>13488158
interesting - thanks for the translation
I almost never encounter simple Latin phrases like those in almost anything I read, but I could translate them on the spot only because of my high school Latin courses.
it makes me distraught to think that di Giovanni's cultural knowledge almost certainly outstripped mine, and I tend to have the most cultural knowledge one gets from "old books," in almost any room I happen to find myself in. where is this culture today?
>>13488218
I figured as much

[Anonymous No.13489344]

>>13484618
N-NO!