Lo “popular” de la biblioteca

Who does not recall the poem by Robert Graves in which it is dreamt that Alexander the Great did not die in Babylon but that, having strayed away from his army and gotten lost, he penetrated ever deeper into Asia? After wandering about that unknown geography, he came upon an army of yellow men and, since his trade was warfare, he joined their ranks. Many years passed, and, on a certain pay day, Alexander gazed with some astonishment upon a gold coin which had been given him. He recognized the effigy and thought: I had this coin struck, to celebrate a victory over Darius, when I was Alexander of Macedon.

Adrienne Bordenave, La modification du Passé ou la seule base de la Tradition (Pau, 1949)1

‘An Alexandrian Myth’ appears in a collection of literary fragments translated as Extraordinary Tales by Anthony Kerrigan in 1973. The Spanish version, Cuentos breves y extraordinarios (1953), edited by Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares, contains collected and selected short texts from over many centuries by a multitude of authors, some known, many unknown, just like Adrienne Bordenave. The author of this text appears to be a French writer, not very well known so that internet searches of the name ‘Bordenave’ only tell us, for instance, that the name originates in southern France and that there is a province in Buenos Aires of 852 inhabitants bearing the same designation.2

1

Adrienne Bordenave, ‘An Alexandrian Myth’, in Extraordinary Tales, ed. by Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares, trans. by Anthony Kerrigan (London: Souvenir Press, 1973), p. 59.

The Spanish version reads as follows: ‘Un mito de Alejandro’

¿Quién no recuerda aquel poema de Robert Graves, en el que se sueña que Alejandro el Grande no murió en Babilonia, sino que se perdió de su ejército y fue internándose en el Asia? Al cabo de vagancias por esa geografía ignorada, dio con un ejército de hombres amarillos y, como su oficio era la Guerra, se alistó en sus filas. Así pasaron muchos años y en un día de paga, Alejandro miró con algún asombro una moneda de oro que le habían dado. Reconoció la efigie y pensó: yo hice acuñar esta moneda, para celebrar una Victoria sobre Darío, cuando yo era Alejandro de Macedonia.

Adrienne Bordenave, La modification du Passé ou la seule base de la Tradition (Pau, 1949); Adrienne Bordenave, ‘Un mito de Alejandro’, in Cuentos breves y extraordinarios, 3rd edn, p. 55.

2

‘Bordenave Family History’, Ancestry, 2013 <http://www.ancestry.com/name- origin?surname=bordenave> [accessed 20 October 2014].

The text appears as a translation from French into Spanish, which we are reading in a translation into English. Daniel Martino assumes, however, that this text is not what it makes believe it is: it is a pseudotranslation, a text pretending to be a translation but which was really written by the author, in this case the authors, Borges and Bioy Casares.3 _{Both pseudotranslation and}

collaboration are designated as marginal cases of literary theory, barely discussed as they can be associated with hoaxes, uncertainty and fakes. A pseudotranslation is not quite a translation, not quite an original text. A collaborative text questions whether a text needs an author, and whether it is still original and authentic if it cannot be derived from one single source. The author as guarantor of originality and authenticity is challenged by texts written in collaboration, even more so if the text’s genre is simultaneously unsettled.

Definitions of what makes a good translation are manifold and vary from period to period, from one political view to the next, from country to country, as the plethora of Translation Studies text books and their focus on historical perceptions exemplifies.4 _{Defining what a translation is, however, seems to be}

clear: the transposition of an original text into a target language. The definition by negatives adds to this criterion that it is not an original text and not written by an author. As clear and strict as this may seem, the borders are often fuzzy: self-translations written by authors, back-translations (from a translated text in a target language back into the source language), relais-translations (a translation of a translated text), and pseudotranslations (translations without an original source text) do not conform to this definition and are yet called ‘translation.’ Susan Bassnett even argues for an expansion of the term to include non-literal forms of translation, as ‘translation can be a metaphor.’5 _{Drawing a}

definite line between original and translation becomes difficult, especially in relation to these marginal cases. A case that I would like to focus on in

3

Daniel Martino, ‘Bibliografía de Adolfo Bioy Casares’, Borges de Bioy Casares, 2010, p. 15 <http://www.borgesdebioycasares.com.ar/images/02_bioy.pdf>.

4

See for example Daniel Weissbort and Ástráður Eysteinsson, Translation Theory and Practice: A

Historical Reader (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Lawrence V enuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation, 1st edn (London and New York: Routledge,

1995); Susan Bassnett, Translation Studies, New Accents, 3rd edn (London and New York: Routledge, 2002).

5

Susan Bassnett, ‘Translation Studies and Postcolonialism’ (unpublished lecture, BCLA Postgraduate Conference: Comparing Centres, Comparing Peripheries, SOAS and UCL, London, 2012).

particular is the pseudotranslation as it constitutes not only a marginal case of translation but also questions the very core of what an original is. A second case study will focus on the distinction of author and translator as the source of a hierarchy between original and translation and which becomes unsettled in cases of self-translation.

The prefix ‘pseudo’ implies falsity and the act of pretending to be something or someone else, while the related noun can even refer to a false apostle, a heretic and hypocrite.6 _{If something is ‘pseudo,’ it is furthermore}

modelled after something else and is a copy or representation of it. Maybe the most famous case in literature is Homer: many writers adopted his style, or rather, many writers are Homer, since Homer was himself an oral poet and his writings are mere transcriptions, potentially written by multiple people.7 _The

body of Homer’s work as it has been passed on to us today, is not the effort of a single person but of multiple, citing and reciting the oral poetry over generations, produced by a heterogeneous conglomerate of authors who only have in common that they are not Homer. Hence Borges’s argument in ‘Las versiones homéricas’ that the heterogeneous richness of the text lies in ‘la imposibilidad de apartar lo que pertenece al escritor de lo que pertenece al lenguaje.’8 _{Similarly, pseudotranslations are diverse texts that only have in}

common that they are not translations. But also that they share something with translations which makes readers take them to be translations.

In practical terms, a pseudotranslation can be a text which is published and marketed as a translation, that is, it would have metatextual addenda stating an author and a translator, a source language, and maybe a translator’s note, a glossary, and explanatory footnotes; or it is a translation which is perceived as an original, not indicating a translator or that a language transfer has happened. Douglas Robinson defines the term ‘pseudotranslation’ as follows:

6 _{‘Pseudo, N. and Adj.’, Oxford English Dictionary Online (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)}

<http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/153741?rskey= vtG3Da&res ult=1&isAdvanced= false> [accessed 4 March 2014].

7

Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 18–20.

8

not only a text pretending, or purporting, or frequently taken to be a translation, but also […] a translation that is frequently taken to be an original work.9

The former case, a pseudotranslation that is assumed to be a translation, is more common in literary practice and most definitions refer to this kind. This might have to do with codes of practice and copyright laws as authors and publishers of original texts mostly hold the rights to their texts as well as translations thereof and publishing a translation without the rights holder’s approval would constitute an infringement to the law.10 _{I will therefore also}

concentrate on a definition of pseudotranslation as a text received as a translation although no language transfer precedes it. Even if we narrow our perception of what a pseudotranslation is down to ‘a text […] taken to be a translation,’ it remains difficult to judge what this text actually is. A pseudotranslation is, de facto, an original text: it does not derive from one source text; it did not undergo the process of linguistic transfer, from one language to another; it was written by an author and not by a translator. However, it shares characteristics of translations: the text choice often appears ‘foreign’ to the reader, linguistic incongruences might be forgiven, and it bears the title pseudotranslation. In order to investigate further where pseudotranslations lie in the network of originals and translations, I will look at the extraordinary case of Cuentos breves y extraordinarios.

9

Douglas Robinson, ‘Pseudotranslation’, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, ed. by Mona Baker and Kirsten Malmkjær (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), pp. 183–95 (p. 183).

10

Lawrence Venuti describes the dilemma as follows: ‘In current copyright law, with international treaties that extend the rights of nationals to foreigners, authors worldwide enjoy an ex clusive right in any translation of their works for a term of the author's life plus fifty years – unless the translation was made in the service of an employer or on a work -for-hire basis, in which case the employer enjoys an exclusive right in the translation […]. Although the provisions of actual publishing contracts can vary widely, in principle copyright law places strict limitations on the translator's control of the translated text’; Lawrence Venuti, The Scandals of Translation:

Towards an Ethics of Difference (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), p. 47.

See also Venuti on copyright laws on the UK and US market in his earlier work; Venuti, The

Translator’s Invisibility, pp. 8–12. And the advice given by the Translator’s Association’;

‘Translation FAQs’, The Society of Authors <http://www.societyofauthors.org/translation-faqs> [accessed 20 October 2014]; ‘Guides and Articles: Quick Guide to Permissions’, The Society of

Authors <http://www.societyofauthors.org/guides-and-articles> [accessed 6 February 2015].;