When reading any text in translation, it is important to keep in mind that words, grammar, and even entire ideas may differ from the original work. This is especially important when reading Borges since, as a translator himself, he was acutely aware of these differences. Furthermore, the centrality of books, language, and translation to "The Library of Babel" calls even more attention to how the story has been translated and how it is meant to be understood.
Borges grew up in Argentina, but he was raised to be bilingual in Spanish and English. His family had a large library of English books, thanks in part to his father's mother speaking English natively, and it is believed that he began translating works from English to Spanish as early as nine years old. Throughout his career, Borges not only translated from English, but also from French, German, Old English, and Old Norse into Spanish. He notably believed that translations did not have to stay entirely faithful to an original work. Rather, he believed that translators had the artistic right to edit, nuance, and present alternate perspectives on a story. Some scholars believe that Borges, in his translation of English masterworks such as A Room of One's Own and The Wild Palms, shaped the works to be more action-focused and less psychological, as he preferred plot-driven over character-driven novels.
Unlike some bilingual authors, such as Nabokov and Beckett, Borges did not translate his own works into English. Norman Thomas di Giovanni, an American author, worked closely with Borges on many translations, producing the first translations that led to Borges's international popularity. In the following decades, other translators, including Andrew Hurley and James E. Irby, published translations of Borges's work that differ slightly from one another.
The translation used for this ClassicNote on The Library of Babel is Andrew Hurley's, published in Collected Fictions in 1998, but a translation of the story by James E. Irby is also widely read and respected. Here is an example of how the two translations differ:
In Borges's original Spanish, the first axiom is described as follows: "El primero: La Biblioteca existe ab alterno. De esa verdad cuyo colorario inmediato es la eternidad futura del mundo, ninguna mente razonable puede dudar. El hombre, el imperfecto bibliotecario, puede ser obra del azar o de los demiurgos malévolos; el universo, con su elegante dotación de anaqueles, de tomos enigmáticos, de infatigables escaleras para el viajero y de letrinas para el bibliotecario sentado, sólo puede ser obra de un dios. Para percibir la distancia que hay entre lo divino y lo humano, basta comparar estos rudos símbolos trémulos que mi falible mano garabatea en la tapa de un libro, con las letras orgánicas del interior: puntuales, delicadas, negrísimas, inimitablemente simétricas." (Ficciones, 39)
In Hurley's translation, the first axiom of the Library reads: "First: The Library has existed ab eternitate. That truth, whose immediate corollary is the future eternity of the world, no rational mind can doubt. Man, the imperfect librarian, may be the work of chance or of malevolent demiurges; the universe, with its elegant appointments—its bookshelves, its enigmatic books, its indefatigable staircases for the traveler, and its water closets for the seated librarian—can only be the handiwork of a god. In order to grasp the distance that separates the human and the divine, one has only to compare these crude trembling symbols which my fallible hand scrawls on the cover of a book with the organic letters inside—neat, delicate, deep black, and inimitably symmetrical" (Collected Fictions, 113).
In James E. Irby's translation, this same section reads: "First: The Library exists ab aeterno. This truth, whose immediate corollary is the future eternity of the world, cannot be placed in doubt by any reasonable mind. Man, the imperfect librarian, may be the product of chance or of malevolent demiurgi; the universe, with its elegant endowment of shelves, of enigmatical volumes, of inexhaustible stairways for the traveler and latrines for the seated librarian, can only be the work of a god. To perceive the distance between the divine and the human, it is enough to compare these crude wavering symbols which my fallible hand scrawls on the cover of a book with the organic letters inside: punctual, delicate, perfectly black, inimitably symmetrical" (Labyrinths, 52-53).
It can be seen that Irby and Hurley differ slightly in word choice and word order, which can lead the reader to create different mental images or experience different emotions. For instance, the choice of "latrines" by Irby versus Hurley's "water closets" hold drastically different connotations, the former of war and the latter of formal society.
Borges even hints at the importance of translation in a metafictional moment near the end of "The Library of Babel." The narrator notes that in a library where an indefinitely large number of languages exist, one word must have multiple meanings. This paragraph ends with the direct address, "You who read me—are you certain you understand my language?" (118) Since a fictional editor/translator is part of the story, even a reader in Spanish would be given pause by this moment, but when read in a language other than Spanish, a reader is prompted to contemplate even more deeply what it means to understand what an author writes.
