Away from the Abyss: Borgesian Translation Reconsidered through Buddhist Philosophy

Abstract

The English-language translations of Jorge Luis Borges’s Spanish-language works undertaken by the author and Norman Di Giovanni went above and beyond what is generally perceived as acceptable in traditional Western practices. Their work, together with Borges’s thoughts on translation itself, garnered criticism from within Western Translation Studies for its rejection of the status of the original text and the blurring of the distinction between author and translator. Yet the pair’s actions and Borges’s views on translation cease to appear scandalous under the light of Buddhist philosophy, particularly through the use of the Buddhist principles that all phenomena are impermanent and interdependent. This thesis will seek to use these ideas to legitimize the actions of Borges and Di Giovanni. To do so, it will trace the history of opposing and convergent theories from Western philosophy and describe our Buddhist concepts in detail. In order to better understand Borges, it will examine the array of philosophies that influenced the writer and how they both align themselves and differ from Buddhist ideas. This thesis will end by directly applying impermanence and interdependence to the translation practices of Borges and Di Giovanni and considering what potential effect legitimacy for such practices would have on translation overall.