Issues with translations - Walt Whitman and Jorge Luis Borges
A couple of summers ago, I was desperate for a job so I caved. This was not, in fact, the first time. I remember typing Leaves of Grass for a whole nickel a page before I knew how to type properly, painstakingly pecking out what was then incomprehensible text. During my summer and winter break of 2006, then a proficient typist who had learned a bit of Spanish, I got a pay increase and went to work for my dad, Ken Price, encoding Álvaro Armando Vasseur’s 1912 translation of Whitman’s poetry for the Walt Whitman Archive.
While working on the project, I did not reflect much upon the problems of translations, both within themselves and the issues and concerns in their representation on archives like the Whitman Archive. Frankly, I was too preoccupied about my quickly-approaching study abroad trip to Madrid. Read more…
