Jorge Luis Borges and the self-translation : a jouthful incursion

Abstract

Borges’s activity as a translator is well-known, as is the centrality he assigned to the topic of literary translation in his essays and even in his fictional work. Less known is the German version he made of his own poetry and the changes he made to his first published ultraist poem, "Mañana" (Morning), in order to bring it closer to the expressionist movement that in the early 1920’s was burgeoning in German-spea king countries. This article establishes a connection between current axes of reflection on self-translation and the translation task of the young Borges, which reflects, at the same time, different aspects of his particular conceptualization of translation.