Universidad de ConcepciónFacultad de Humanidades y Arte

Traducción/Interpretación en Idiomas Extranjeros

Cognates and perceived reading fluency in two English translations of

Jorge Luis Borges' “The Circular Ruins”

Tesina para optar al grado de Licenciado en Traductología

Candidato: Santiago R. Killing Stringer Profesor Guía: Dra. Lilian Gómez Álvarez

Concepción, junio de 2010

Acknowledgements

First of all, I would like to thank my supervising professor, Lilian Gómez Ph.D., for her invaluable

guidance and expertise. Second, this thesis would not have been possible without the assistance of

professor Roberta Lavine Ph.D. from the University of Maryland and her group of students, who

graciously accepted to cooperate with a thesis being written five thousand miles away.

Table of Contents

Abstract1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 12. Theoretical Framework ................................................................................................................... 53. Objectives ........................................................................................................................................ 134. Methodological Framework ............................................................................................................ 145. Results ............................................................................................................................................. 17

5.1.Cognates ................................................................................................................................... 175.2. Questionnaire .......................................................................................................................... 205.3.Questionnaire Examples .......................................................................................................... 22

6. General Discussion .......................................................................................................................... 287. Conclusions ..................................................................................................................................... 308. Sources ............................................................................................................................................ 319. Appendix ......................................................................................................................................... 33

Appendix A: Transcriptions ........................................................................................................... 33Appendix B: Cognates ................................................................................................................... 49Appendix C: Questionnaire ............................................................................................................ 69Appendix D: Letter to Professors .................................................................................................. 71Appendix E: Letter to Participants ................................................................................................. 72

Abstract

The aim of this thesis was to study the density of cognates in relation to the perceived textual fluidity of

two translations of Jorge Luis Borges' short story “The Circular Ruins”. The analysis of the translation

into English done by Norman Thomas di Giovanni in 1970 (in collaboration with the author) and of the

one done by Andrew Hurley in 1998 (commissioned by the author's estate) show that the former is

more biased towards the English, while Hurley's translation is more literal. Each text was assessed by a

group of English speaking readers studying at an undergraduate level in an honors university in the

USA. The readers were divided into two groups and each group read one of the translations and then

answered a single questionnaire. The results of the questionnaire indicate that the lower density of

cognates of the first translation (171 as opposed to 249) account for higher readability and therefore a

better reading experience as perceived by native speakers of English. The readers consistently

identified problematic passages with a high frequency of cognates in Hurley's translation, which along

with other factors led to the conclusion that a high density of cognates in a Spanish to English

translation may have a negative effect on the translation's textual fluency, especially when the cognates

employed do not enjoy widespread usage in the TL.

Resumen

El propósito de la presente tesina fue estudiar la densidad de cognados en relación con la fluidez textual

percibida en dos traducciones al inglés del cuento “Las Ruinas Circulares” de Jorge Luis Borges. El

analysis de la traducción hecha por Norman Thomas di Giovanni en 1970 (en colaboración con el

autor) y de la traducción hecha por Andrew Hurley en 1998 (por encargo de la sucesión de Borges)

muestra que la primera se aparta más del español original, a diferencia de la traducción de Hurley que

es más literal. Cada traducción fue evaluada por un grupo de estudiantes angloparlantes de una

universidad prestigiosa en los Estados Unidos. Los lectores se dividieron en dos grupos y cada grupo

leyó una traducción para luego responder un cuestionario único. Los resultados obtenidos a partir del

cuestionario indican que la menor densidad de cognados en la traducción de Di Giovanni (171 versus

249 en la traducción de Hurley) conlleva una mayor fluidez textual y por ende una lectura más óptima

según la percepción de hablantes nativos de inglés. Los lectores identificaron una serie de pasajes

problemáticos con una alta frecuencia de cognados en la traducción de Hurley, lo que sumado a otros

factores llevó a la conclusión de que la alta densidad de cognados en una traducción de español a inglés

podría ser perjudicial para la fluidez del texto, en especial tratándose de cognados de uso menos

frecuente en la lengua meta.

1. Introduction

Jorge Luis Borges is considered to be one of the most original and captivating writers of the twentieth

century, and his poems, short stories and essays have been translated and read the world over.

Therefore, an analysis of a short story from a relatively recent (1998) collection of his entire fictional

output translated into English seems in itself to be a worthy task, especially as there is a collection of

translations on which Borges himself collaborated (The Aleph and Other Stories), originally published

in 1970, that due to copyright issues and a strange stance on the part of the author's own estate seems to

be disappearing into the mists of the past (Di Giovanni, 2003).

In 1968 Borges began working with American translator Norman Thomas Di Giovanni in order to

produce a series of new translations of his poems and shorts stories for English-speaking readers,

specifically in the United States. Borges and Di Giovanni worked together on every piece of prose and

poetry, and while the author had the final word on the content, Di Giovanni had the final word on the

English (Di Giovanni, 2003, pp. 165-8). It is important to note, however, that these are not adaptations

of the original texts. Both Borges and Di Giovanni refer to them as translations and state that they did

not tamper with the originals, except to occasionally supply the American readers with additional

information regarding geographical, topographical and historical aspects (Borges, 1970, p. 10). Another

interesting detail regarding their collaboration is that Borges, apparently indifferent to the financial

aspect of their work, made the translator part owner of the copyright of every translation they produced

together, entitling him to fifty percent of all the royalties derived from the sales of these translations.

One of the stories they translated was “The Circular Ruins” (Las Ruinas Circulares), one of Borges'

most celebrated and analysed works of fiction (Gujral, 2006).

It seems logical to assume that these translations would continue to be a highly valued source of insight

into Borges' mind and intentions, however:

“In the mid-1990s Kodama had a New York agent negotiate a lucrative new English-language deal,

selling the English translation rights to Borges's complete Spanish works. These would be the official

English language editions, authorised by Borges's estate, rendering the work by Borges and di

Giovanni redundant and unpublishable, and giving Maria Kodama full copyright and the Borges estate

100 per cent of English royalties.” (Flanagan, 2003)

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Di Giovanni's translations are therefore no longer in print. Yet such a collaboration as that which came

to exist between him and Borges is rare in the history of literary translation, where the translators more

often have to grasp at meaning and guess at intention, never knowing whether or not they are being true

to the author's original ideas and desires, or not daring to make any decisions and therefore trying to

retain every detail of what they perceive to be the author's idiolect.

Andrew Hurley was the translator hired by Borges' estate to take on the daunting task of translating the

author's complete fictional works, published as Collected Fictions in 1998. In his notes on the

translation, Hurley states that: “In producing this translation, it has not been our intention to produce an

annotated or scholarly edition of Borges, but rather a 'reader's edition'” (Borges, 1998, pp. 519-20). An

analysis of his translation of “The Circular Ruins” shows that he has nonetheless tried to remain as

faithful as possible to the formal properties of the source text, using more often than not cognates of the

source language (SL) words. The question addressed in the present thesis is if this high degree of

“Source Text Bias” (Hervey, S., Higgins, I., & Haywood, L.M., 1995), particularly in the use of

cognate words, can be detrimental to the overall readability or fluency of the final text.

Unlike Di Giovanni before him, Hurley does not have the original author's guidance, and his role as

Antony Pym's anonymous translator (1992, p. 53) is much clearer. In the same notes, when defending

one such case of cognate translation, he states that: “...it clearly responds to Borges' intention, explicitly

expressed in such fictions as “The Immortal”, to let the Latin root govern the Spanish (and, by

extension, English) usage.” (Borges, 1998, p. 518). However, in their preface to The Aleph and Other

Stories (1970), Di Giovanni and Borges write: “We have therefore shunned the dictionary as much as

possible and done our best to rethink every sentence in English words.” (Borges, 1970, p. 9).

Furthermore, Di Giovanni, in his collection of essays regarding Borges and their work together, The

Lesson of the Master: On Borges and his Work (2003), states: “Borges and I further agreed that in

translating from Spanish into English, words with Anglo-Saxon roots are preferable to words of Latin

origin.” (Di Giovanni, 2003, p. 170).

Of course, translators will always have different approaches, and the decision of keeping a source text

(ST) word or choosing a synonym is no different. The final target text (TT), however, should always be

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readable in the target language (TL). Why should the reader have to stumble on unfamiliar syntax and

words that, despite existing in the dictionary, are hardly ever used by writers or speakers in the target

language. Who decides where to draw the line between what a writer is saying and how a writer is

saying it? Which is more important? Both are important, of course, but it is my view that the details are

always subservient to the complete text and its function. Equivalence at a word-level should be sought

only if it does not impede the overall understanding of a text by its target audience.

What, therefore, makes a text readable? It seems logical to assume that for a text to be readable, it must

first be understandable. If something, be it word-order, an excess of unfamiliar and extravagant words,

or an excess of particles, impedes the reader's understanding of the text, or if the reader cannot follow

the ideas because he is too busy trying not to get lost in the flow of words, the translation is not

readable enough. Of course, central to this idea is the “skopos” theory, which refers to the purpose of

the translation. If a translation is designed to reflect the writer's original style as faithfully as possible,

then an "extreme SL bias" (Hervey et al., 1995, p. 12) is no doubt justified. However, such a translation

would seem to be more helpful to academics than to the general readership, interested on the whole in

reading a story and enjoying it, as opposed to analysing it linguistically and socio-anthropologically.

Has the concept of enjoyment been taken into account in the study of literary translation? Is it even

possible to assess such a vague and complex concept, inexorably entwined with the individual reader's

personal experience and tastes?

The main goal of this study is not to say whether one translation is better than the other. It is rather to

judge, if possible, which translation is more fluid in terms of a specific readership and to determine

whether this is influenced in any way by the frequency of cognates in the TT. In this case the readership

refers to undergraduate students whose native language is English and who have studied literature at a

university level.

Another key-approach in this thesis is the view of the TT, not only as a translation, but also as a story

that happens to be a translation. The short story was Borges' form of choice for narrative literature, and

in the prologue to his famous collection of short stories, Ficciones, which includes “The Circular

Ruins”, the author wrote:

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“Desvarío laborioso y empobrecedor el de componer vastos libros; el de explayar en quinientas

páginas una idea cuya perfecta exposición oral cabe en pocos minutos.” (Prólogo de Ficciones, 1956)

And he is not alone in his assessment. Stephen Donaldson, a writer who has achieved a degree of

success both in longer and shorter fiction, and who included Borges' “The Aleph” in his anthology of

short fiction, Strange Dreams (1993), states in the introduction to one of his collections of short stories:

“...in many circles the short story is regarded as a higher art form than the novel. A novel is to a short

story as beer is to champagne. In a novel, the writer simply stands back and throws words at his subject

until some of them stick—an ordeal from which the subject generally emerges spattered but unbowed.

But in a short story the words, being so few, must be carefully placed on the subject (in the pockets, so

to speak, or perhaps behind the ears) in order to have any impact at all. Thus the short story appears to

demand more of both reader and writer. The reader must become adept at perceiving the writer's

meaning as it peeps past the lapels of the subject—or the writer must become expert at tucking his

intent here and there so that it still shows.” (Donaldson, 1984)

This thesis does not intend to comprehensively analyse the translation of short stories as a specialised

form of literary translation, but rather to address the importance of textual fluidity in the translation of

literary texts, particularly short stories, from Spanish to English, and how this textual fluidity can be

affected by an excess of cognates in the target text. Syntactic structure, although doubtless an important

factor, is well beyond the scope of this study and will only be referred to in very basic terms.

This topic is relevant to translators in general because it refers to the way in which texts we create as

translators are perceived by our target readership or audience. Decision making is an intrinsic part of

the translating process and the decisions made have to take into account both the original text and the

target readers. One extremely important decision is the degree of ST Bias our TT will have, and all

translators should at least be able to achieve a degree of balance between faithfulness to the original

and a natural use of language in the TT. The amount of cognate translations, which for the most part are

also dictionary equivalents, can be a decisive factor in achieving this equilibrium. Other notions hinted

at in the present thesis, relevant for translators as well as possible researchers, are those of translating a

“story” as opposed to merely translating a “text”, and of translating a short story as opposed to

translating a novel.

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2. Theoretical Framework

“From a translator's point of view, the short story is, of literary forms, the second most difficult,”

(Newmark, 1988, p. 170). This is how Newmark begins the section of his A Textbook of Translation

entitled “The Short Story/Novel”. The most difficult is, of course, the poem. It is clear why poems hold

the first place: the abundance of metaphors and figurative speech, the multiplicity of interpretations,

and, depending on the case, metre and rhyme (Frye, 2000). The question is, why is the short story

second? What makes a short story harder to translate than a novel? As the quotation from Donaldson

states, the reason is that in a short story each word is important. There are fewer of them, and they have

been chosen carefully, so that each is riper with meaning, more possibly full of implications (and also

more charged with aesthetic value). All of which only adds to the difficulty of translating such texts.

In terms of literary translation in general, the difficulty in defining borders is compounded by the

difficulty, first of all, of defining what a literary text is. Christiane Nord, in her 1997 Translating as a

Purposeful Activity, and in accordance with her functionalist approach, finally decides on defining

literariness as “first and foremost a pragmatic quality assigned to a particular text in the communicative

situation by its users”(Nord, 1997, p. 82); i.e. a text is literary because its function is literary. As she

goes on to state, it is even possible for a reader not to recognize a specific text's literary function.

Hervey et al. (p. 132) state that the essence of literary texts is that they refer to imaginary events and

characters not controlled by the physical world outside. This of course is a quality that is not

linguistically measurable. If a reader is not aware that a certain text is “literary”, he or she could very

well believe that a certain event portrayed is real and not fictional. This means that there is no

universally accepted linguistic indicator of a text's “literariness”. Although at one point there may have

been such an idea as a “conventional literary style”(Nord, 1997, p. 82), there is no doubt that in modern

literature such notions have been done away with, and as in the case of a smear of dirt on the wall that

is considered art, any text, whatever its style or general use of language, can be literature if it is given

that function.

If literature cannot be defined linguistically, how can it be defined in terms of its translation? If we

cannot systematically break down the ideal, abstract literary text, then how can we define the

parameters that should govern literary translation? What is the true problem behind literary translation?

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One of the main problems is the author. Hervey et al. (p. 132), when defining the literary genre, finally

state that: “In texts in this category, the author is understood to be ultimately in control of events and

characters”. Thus, if the author wrote something a certain way, then it seems logical that the translator

should want to write it in the same way. A text with a predominantly informative function is expected to

have, normally speaking, a “modern, non-regional, non-class, non-idiolectal style” (Newmark, 1988, p.

40). In other words, the text should basically have no individual identity; it is an information vessel,

nothing more. A literary text, on the other hand, is important individually, and not only in terms of what

it is saying, but how it is saying it.

“One out of 500 words in any text is likely to be used in a faulty or idiosyncratic sense. Unless the text

is an important document or is written by an important writer, the translator should normalize the error

or idiosyncrasy.” (Newmark, 1988, p. 155, emphasis added)

Although there are cases in which the importance of the author may be downplayed for different

reasons (perhaps the study of the events in The Iliad in historiographical terms, although even then

trying to separate the “events” from the narrator is a futile and misleading exercise). On the whole —

and especially in the case of a writer such as Borges— the creator of literature tends to be considered

an essential and inevitable part of his or her creation, and both are studied and analysed side by side

throughout history. “A good writer's use of language is often remote from, if not at cross purposes with,

some of the conventional canons of writing,” states Weightman (1947, quoted in Newmark, 1988), and

“it is the writer not the canons that the translator must respect”. The translator's dilemma is therefore

the desire to preserve both the “message” and the author's idiolect and style, the author's “spark”.

Translators are then faced with the decision where to draw the line. In Thinking Spanish Translation: A

course in translation method: Spanish to English (1995), the authors define a spectrum that ranges

from “Extreme SL Bias” on the one hand to “Extreme TL Bias” on the other. The most extreme form

of SL Bias, what Hervey et al. call “interlineal translation”, can be useful in descriptive linguistics or

language teaching. “Free” or “communicative” translation, the other extreme, may be mandatory in the

case of “culturally conventional formulas that do not allow literal translation”(Hervey et al., 1995, pp.

12-3). Both extremes are in themselves rare, but varying degrees of bias towards the SL or the TL are

valid, depending, on the Übersetzungsauftrag or “translation brief” (Nord, 1997, p. 30), which in most

cases will be in accordance with the target text's purpose, Vermeer's Skopos (Nord, 1997, p. 27). To

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continue with the same example used previously, one could compare a SL Biased and a TL Biased

translation of The Iliad and both would doubtless be useful in different contexts. As Borges himself

states in both “Los traductores de las mil y una noches” and “Las versiones homéricas” (Borges, 1974),

there is no single valid translation of any text, and there can be as many valid translations as there are

translators.

In a certain sense, this is not very different from the debate between faithfulness to “the slice of reality”

being referred to and faithfulness to the way in which that “slice of reality” is referred to in the source

language (Rabin, 1958, p. 123; cited in Venuti, 2000, p. 113). Saint Jerome himself, patron saint of

translators said: “I do not translate word for word, I translate sense to sense,” when called upon to

defend a translation of a papal letter from Greek into Latin (Jerome, “Letter to Pammachius”, in Venuti

(2000)) . This of course assumes that “senses” are equivalent and that words are mere manifestations of

sense. The twentieth century writer and translator, Vladimir Nabokov, however, demanded the

“absolute literal sense, with no emasculation and no padding” (Nabokov, 1955, “Problems of

Translation: Onegin in English, in Venuti (2000)). The problem here is the degree to which “sense” or

meaning can be seen as separate from its linguistic representation in a specific language. There is no

doubt, however, that in many cases an absolutely literal translation can impede understanding and even

distort the meaning of the original text, especially in the case of figurative language and highly

heterogeneous cultures (Baker, 1992, pp. 25-6).

Nowadays, there seem to be two main schools of thought related to how translations should be done.

The first of these states that for every SL message or element, there is an “equivalent” TL message or

element, and that a translation is valid only in terms of how “equivalent” it is to the ST (Nord, 1997, p.

7). Nord's own theory of translation functionalism, however, states that the translator must always take

into account the text's function both in the SL and in the TL, and that translation decisions should be

guided by the function a translation seeks to fulfil (Nord, 1997, 39). “Loyalty to the ST” does not cease

to be a decisive factor, but is rather complemented by or, in some cases, made subservient to the idea of

“loyalty to the text's function”.

How then does one judge a translation? As Newmark says, in order to judge a translation you must first

“state your own principles categorically” (Newmark, 1988, p. 185), and then go on to state the

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translator's principles and views (assuming they are available somewhere). One cannot, therefore,

criticise a translation for being too literal if that is precisely what the translator wished to achieve. The

critic has the right to judge the translation according to those parameters already established. It is

another matter entirely if the critic does not agree with the translator's principles and intentions, or the

instructions he or she had to follow.

In the case of Borges and Di Giovanni, the latter writes: “We agreed, for example, that a translation

should not sound like a translation but should read as though it had been written directly in the

language into which it is being made.” (Di Giovanni, 2003, pp. 169-70). For Borges, getting the story

across was more important than preserving every last detail of the way he had written it in Spanish. In

fact, the writer sometimes would even “conceive titles, phrases and sentences for his works in English

and then translate them back into Spanish” (Flanagan, 2003). It is also important to note that Borges

saw himself as “a storyteller”, and refers to himself as such in his autobiography (Borges, 1997, p.

240). If one takes his word for it, then the matter of text typology is immediately resolved. The

question is, what is a story, and what should it read like? Questions of ST or TT Bias aside, one of the

main functions of a story is arguably to entertain, which means that its translation should entertain as

well.

“Jorge Luis Borges was a product of another era, of a time when people read books for the sheer

enjoyment of them and for the genuine ideas and talk that they stimulated.”

(Di Giovanni, 2003, p. 59)

Although enjoyment is not something that can be universally quantified or defined in a purely objective

manner, it seems logical to assume that for a reader/listener to enjoy a storyline comprised of a

chronological sequence of events (as in the case of “The Circular Ruins”), he or she must first be able

to understand the individual events and the relationships between them, or at least to be able to form a

coherent mental image of what is being narrated. In “The Circular Ruins”, for example, the revelation

at the end that the protagonist himself is a “dream” would have no effect on the reader if the succession

of events leading to that revelation were not understood.

In their 1983 Strategies of Discourse Comprehension, van Dijk and Kintsch state that one of the main

factors in discourse understanding is “the cognitive representation of the events, actions, persons, and

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in general the situation, a text is about” (van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983, pp. 11-2). If this cognitive

representation does not take place, then there is a problem with comprehension. The authors also state

that two basic requirements for text comprehension are local and global coherence. The text must, in

other words, be coherent at all levels for effective text comprehension to take place. In very general

terms, text comprehension is an exceedingly complex process that works on many levels and requires

certain mental strategies; these strategies need to be learned and sometimes require special training

(van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983, p. 11). It could be argued that specific strategies are required to understand

literary texts. It is therefore important that readers used to assess a literary text be familiar with literary

writing.

“Much of the information needed to understand a text is not provided by the information expressed in

the text itself, but must be drawn from the language user's knowledge of the person, objects, states of

affairs, actions, or events the discourse is about” (van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983, p. 303). The level of

cultural difficulty when translating Borges into English thus depends on the frequency of foreign-

culture-specific elements with which the TT reader might not be familiar. In the case of Borges one

could arguably divide his stories into two groups in terms of the cultural milieu to which they belong.

The first would be those set in the cultural heritage that is common to western cultures, heirs of the

Greek and Roman traditions. The second group would be Borges' stories set in Argentina, those stories

about gauchos and knife fights on the Argentinian pampa. For an educated translator, native to the

United States or England, the stories belonging to the first group will be easier to translate in terms of

their cultural content, because on a cognitive level this corresponds to a mental reality that the

individual is more familiar with. In addition, there should be a high frequency of concepts whose

denominations share the same root in both languages, another element to be taken into account in this

thesis. The second group of stories, on the other hand, is likely to have a higher preponderance of

elements specific to the SL culture that do not necessarily have an equivalent word or concept in the

TL, either because the reality does not exist or because it has different connotations for historical or

national reasons (e.g. mate, pampa, zaguán, yuyo). Translators dealing with the first group, stories more

rooted in the western cultural tradition, should encounter fewer difficulties, not least because of the

number of cognates that can be used.

In a later section dedicated to sentence production strategies, van Dijk & Kintsch (1983, p. 285), write

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that “the speaker must organize his or her utterance in such a way that the hearer receives enough cues

to figure out, not only grammatically or correctly, but also effectively, how the utterance should be

interpreted.” In other words, a sentence may be grammatically correct, but this does not mean that it is

necessarily effective in terms of its comprehension. This is extremely important in the case of long,

complex sentences with numerous clauses and high information density. The author must write these

sentences in such a way that they make sense by themselves and within their context. Of course, in the

translator's case, decisions are less autonomous because the underlying information is part of another

text to which the translator, to whatever degree, must remain faithful.

“During the production of sentential surface structures the language user will not simply have recourse

to an autonomous syntax and phonology: At nearly each point a decision must be made about the

semantic, pragmatic, interactional, and textual relevance of lexical items, word order, intonation, and

the presence of certain words.” (van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983, p. 285)

In the case of the short story, a single word or “lexical item” can have a major effect on the way a

sentence is perceived. If the word is misplaced, wrongly chosen or excessive, then it becomes a

stumbling block, not a stepping-stone. “We go from the understanding of words, to the understanding

of clauses in which these words have various functions, and then to complex sentences, sequences of

sentences, and overall textual structures” (van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983, p. 10). Words are therefore one of

the basic units of text comprehension, and for an individual to understand a word, its meaning must

either be known, or the individual must be able to infer its meaning from the context. It seems logical

to assume that a text that constantly bombards the reader with unfamiliar words will finally have a

tiring effect and be detrimental both to understanding and enjoyment. If the reader is important to the

translator, and if the cultural background is not completely alien or crucial, then the translator must

make decisions regarding the words used. Is it necessary to use a cognate*, a TL word with the same

root as the SL word, if said cognate is less common in the TL than a synonym with a completely

different root and usage? These words; “cognates”, “dictionary equivalents”, or “good friends”, as

opposed to false friends (Kussmaul, 1995, p. 15), can be a source of great discomfort to translators.

Kussmaul refers to a case in which students refused to use such a word in an English to German

translation, eventually choosing a paraphrase and causing undesirable information loss that could have

* “Coming naturally from the same root, or representing the same original word, with differences due to subsequent separate phonetic development” (OED, 1971)

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been avoided by simply using the “formally corresponding word” (Kussmaul, 1995, p. 19).

Kussmaul states that the decision whether or not to use a cognate (always assuming that it is not a false

friend) does not necessarily depend on the word itself, but on the context (Kussmaul, 1995, p. 19).

Other factors that should be taken into account are text type and readership. Certain words will be

appropriate for certain text types and readers. Legalese is out of place in a pamphlet designed for the

general public, and highly poetic words are out of place in an instructions manual. If literature is meant

to be read and not only studied, the translator must constantly put himself in the place of the reader and

make decisions regarding word choice, syntax, and local and global coherence in terms of the

readership.

However, the problem of respecting the author requires that, in the case of literature, the translator take

into account what Newmark calls “key-words” (Newmark, 1988, p. 171), that is to say, words

characteristic of a specific text or of an author's general style. In the case of Borges' “The Circular

Ruins”, an example of the former would be the word “Fire”, which is the name of a character and motif

within the story. A key-word identifying the author himself could be “mirror” or “circular”, both being

words with which Borges' readers are more than familiar. Key-words on the whole should restrict the

translator's options when the original author's decisions are considered to be important. In many cases

the literal word or “cognate” translation would be desirable in order to respect certain aspects of the

author's idiolect that the translator wishes to retain. But in prose not every word can be a key-word and

as Di Giovanni states: “where simple sentences flowed out into solid English prose, I let them flow.”

(Di Giovanni, 2003, p. 166)

Textual fluidity, reading fluency, or readability (expressions used interchangeably in this thesis) is a

concept that many translators and translation theorists seem to deride:

“Ironically, as Nabokov pointed out, many reviewers of translated books neither know the original work nor

the foreign language, and judge a translation on its smoothness, naturalness, easy flow, readability and

absence of interference, which are often false standards. Why should a translation not sometimes read like

one, when the reader knows that is what it is?” (Newmark, 1988, pp. 185-86)

However, depending on the function, it may be desirable or even absolutely necessary for a TT not to

11

reveal its “foreign” nature, and for it to appear as though it had been written directly in the SL. And for

this to be possible, it is necessary for the text be written in natural language. In Borges' and Di

Giovanni's words, a translation that reads as though it had been written in English (Borges, 1970, p. 9).

“Natural language” is perceived to be an important part of textual fluidity, as the frequency of

unfamiliar structures and expressions beyond the linguistic eccentricity attributable to artistic license

can cause unnecessary interference in the understanding of a text and eventually lead to a reading

experience that is excessively tiring.

In terms of “natural language”, this is seen as a specific linguistic group's temporary perception of the

way in which a language is normally used, accepted and therefore understood in a certain context.

What a certain linguistic group perceives to be “natural language” does not always coincide with the

normative element (although in the case of literature, both can not only coincide, but also influence

each other (Alonso, A & Henríquez, P., 1938, p. 13).

In the context of the present thesis, the concept of textual fluidity or fluency does not need to be

measured by any additional quantitative or theoretical standards, as it is studied in terms of the way in

which it is perceived by a certain readership, and not as an abstract or inherent quality. Although

relevant factors may be explored, the concept itself and the individual, cultural and linguistic

mechanisms through which it is perceived will not be analysed in depth in this thesis.

12

3. Objectives

Main objective: To study the relationship between perceived reading fluency and density of cognates

in two English translations of Jorge Luis Borges' short story “The Circular Ruins”.

Specific objective: To qualitatively assess the perception of native English-speakers of the overall

textual fluidity of two English translations of J.L. Borge's “The Circular Ruins”.

Specific objective: To quantitatively assess the density of cognates in two English translations of J.L.

Borge's “The Circular Ruins”.

Specific objective: To analyse a possible relation between perceived textual fluidity and cognate

density in two English translations of J.L. Borge's “The Circular Ruins”.

13

4. Methodological Framework

In terms of its methodology, the present study was divided into two main parts. The first was a

quantitative analysis of the cognate words present in each TT, and the second a qualitative analysis of

the way in which a group of readers perceived the fluidity of each text.

The first step, necessary for both parts of the study, was to transcribe both target texts and the source

text in order to work with a digital copy. The stories were then organized in three columns, with the

original story in Spanish on the far left and both translations on the right, and arbitrarily divided into

sections in order to facilitate their analysis (see Appendix A). These sections were the result of a

subjective division of the texts into clauses, phrases or sentences according to what I perceived to be

the minimal units of syntactic coherence and meaning. It is important to note that this was only possible

due to the fact that both translations had retained the main structure of the ST in terms of the order of

the sentences within each paragraph and the order of the paragraphs within the text.

For the quantitative analysis, all the words in both target texts that were cognates of the corresponding

ST word were identified. Subsequently, two separate databases were created, one for each translation,

containing for each TT word: the ST word, both words' grammatical category (adjective, adverb, noun,

verb or preposition), whether or not the TT and the ST cognates belonged to the same category,

whether or not the ST cognate was present in both target texts, the other translator's alternative in case a

cognate was only used in one translation, and the variant in case both translators used two different

cognates of a ST word (“dialéctica” was translated in one text as “dialectic” and in the other text as

“dialectical”).

The cognates were then divided into three groups; those considered to be key-words of the story

(circular, leopard's, ruins, temple, tiger), those that were considered to be straightforward

translations of concepts, real-world elements and terms without direct alternatives other than a

complete paraphrase (anatomy, artery, bamboo, cosmogonies, cosmography, demiurges, during,

figs, fruit, Gnostics, gray, Greek, hour, human, lepers, north, organs, pulmonary, pyramids, rose,

skeleton, time), and the remaining cognate words that composed the final list used in the analysis (see

14

Appendix B). The omission of the words in the second group for the final analysis was necessary in

order to only work with those words that offered the translators a choice between using a cognate and a

TL synonym. This was the same for the key-words, which, as stated in the Theoretical Framework (p.

11), it is usually desirable to retain.

The second part of the study consisted in creating a single questionnaire for the purpose of extracting

the sample readership's subjective perception of each target text's overall fluidity or fluency (See

Appendix C). The final questionnaire was composed of ten open and closed questions: two multiple

choice questions, three Yes/No questions, four questions asking the readers to identify parts of the text,

and one question for additional observations. The questionnaire was reviewed by expert judges before

it was sent to the readers.

Question 1 asked the readers to rate the text's overall reading fluency according to four alternatives

ranging from “Very Clear” to “Extremely Unclear”. Question 2 asked the readers to identify parts of

the text they had to reread in order to “form a coherent mental image of what was being narrated” (see

Theoretical Framework, pp. 8-9). Question 3.1 asked the readers to select any alternatives that

influenced their not being able to immediately form a cognitive representation of the segments

identified: (Syntax; Unknown Vocabulary; Excess of words; Complexity of Ideas). Questions 3.2 and

3.3 asked the readers to identify words they were not familiar with or the meaning of which they were

not sure about. Question 4 asked the readers to identify points in the text where they had to stop and

rest before continuing with their reading. Questions 5, 6 and 7 asked the readers if they felt that the text

read like a translation, if they would reread the same version again for their personal enjoyment and if

they felt motivated to read more of Borges based on the version they had read. Question 8 allowed the

readers to write down any additional comments.

A series of personal information questions were also included along with the questionnaire. These

questions referred to the students' major, their self-assessed level of reading comprehension, whether or

not they had taken literature courses, and whether or not they read literature on a regular basis for their

personal enjoyment. These questions were one of the parameters upon which the assumption that all

readers possessed a certain level of reading comprehension was based.

15

As stated in the introduction, the study required a sample composed of native English speakers, as its

purpose was to emulate the original target audience of both translations: the English-speaking world.

Non-native speakers might be impaired by their lack of proficiency in the English language, and even if

their English were excellent, they could still be biased in their perception of the language. That they

should be higher education students familiar with literature was necessary for a certain level of reading

comprehension, so that the reading of the text was not hindered by a lack of familiarity with literary

writing. Finally, it was possible to contact and work with college students through a professor of their

university.

The final group consisted of 14 undergraduate students of the University of Maryland, USA, majoring

in various areas, most of them related to the humanities. A letter was sent via E-Mail both to the

students and to the professor through which they were contacted, explaining the purpose of the study

and the way in which they were being asked to cooperate (see Appendix D and E). Transcriptions of the

texts were then sent via E-Mail in two separate “.doc” files, each containing a copy of the questionnaire

and the personal questions. The fourteen sample readers were divided into two groups of equal number,

one for each translation, by the contact professor, who also proctored their reading of the text and

answering of the questionnaire.

In compliance with American ethical codes of conduct for research involving human subjects, upon

receiving the results, which were sent via E-Mail, the identity of the readers of Hurley's text were

coded as H-1, H-2, H-3, H-4, H-5, H-6 and H-7, and the readers of Di Giovanni's text, as D-1, D-2, D-

3, D-4, D-5, D-6, D-7. Given that the results were received in digital format, and that the problematic

segments in each text were identified digitally, these were simply copied and pasted into tables for their

subsequent analysis. These were analysed and compared with the corresponding segment of the other

version, in order to discover a possible density of cognate words. The cognates present in each portion

of problematic text were also identified and quantified.

16

5. Results5.1. Cognates

A total of 249 cognate words were found in Hurley's translation, 43 of which were omitted in the final

analysis due to their being either key-words (20) or “direct” translations (23). Of the 206 contemplated

in the final analysis, 98 (48%) were present in both texts, i.e. both authors used a cognate of the same

ST word, even if their choice was not always the same (“fantasma”, for example, was translated as

“phantasm” by Hurley and “phantom” by Di Giovanni), and 108 (52%) were present only in Hurley's

version (Fig. 1). Of these 206 cognates; 59 (29%) were adjectives, eight (4%) were adverbs, 91 (44%)

were nouns, and 48 (23%) were conjugated verbs or infinitives (Fig. 2). 195 cognates (95%) belonged

to the same grammatical category as the corresponding ST cognate, and 11 (5%) belonged to a different

category (Fig. 3). The most common shift was from verb form to noun, as in the case of “preexistían”

to “preexistence”.

In terms of the alternatives used by Di Giovanni for the 108 cognates unique to Hurley's translation; 78

were direct synonyms of the cognate, 16 were similar words that fit the context, 12 were complete

paraphrases, and two were omissions (Fig. 4).

17

48%52%

In both textsOnly in AH

4%

23%

29%

44%

Adv.VFAdj.NPrep.

Fig 1: Unique and Shared Cognates in Hurley Fig 2: Distribution of Cognates in Hurley

In Di Giovanni's translation, a total of 171 cognate words were found, of which 43 (the same 43 as in

Hurley's version) were omitted due to their being either key-words or “direct” translations. Of the 128

contemplated in the final analysis, 98 (77%) were present in both texts, and 30 (23%) were present only

in Di Giovanni's version (Fig. 5). Of these 128 words; 32 (25%) were adjectives, three (2%) were

adverbs, 65 (51%) were nouns, 27 (21%) were conjugated verbs or infinitives, and one (1%) was a

preposition (Fig. 6). 119 words (93%) were of the same grammatical category as the corresponding ST

cognate, and nine (7%) were of a different category (Fig. 7). There was no preponderant “shift” in

grammatical categories.

18

2%

15%

11%

72%

OmissionOther wordParaphraseSy nony m

Fig 4: Alternatives in NTDG to Cognates in Hurley

77%

23%

In both textsOnly in NTDG

Fig 5: Unique and Shared Cognates in Di Giovanni

Fig 3: Category Shift in Hurley

95%

5%

Same categoryDif ferent category

2%

21%

25%

51%

1%

Adv.VFAdj.NPrep.

Fig 6: Distribution of Cognates in Di Giovanni

In terms of the alternatives used by Hurley for the 30 cognates unique to Di Giovanni's translation; 23

were direct synonyms of the cognate, two were similar words that fit the context, three were complete

paraphrases, and two were omissions (Fig. 8).

19

93%

7%

Same categoryDif ferent category

Fig 7: Category Shiftin Di Giovanni

7%

7%

7%

79%

OmissionOther wordParaphraseSy nony m

Fig 8: Alternatives in Hurley to Cognates in Di Giovanni

5.2. Questionnaire

In Group 1 (Hurley's version) (Fig. 9), four readers considered the text to be “Relatively Clear”, two

thought it was “Not Very Clear”, and one did not answer. Only one of the seven readers answered that

they would read the version again. The same one reader answered that the text did not read like a

translation, another one answered that it read somewhat like a translation, and the remaining five that it

did read like a translation. Only two of the seven felt motivated to read more of Borges after reading

Hurley's version. The only observation was: “Somewhat wordy and repetitive”.

Figure 9. Group 1 (Hurley)Q-1

Overall clarityQ-5

Would reread version?Q-6

TT read like a translation?

Q-7Would read more

Borges?

H-1 N/A No Yes No

H-2 Relatively Clear No Yes No

H-3 Relatively Clear No Yes Yes

H-4 Relatively Clear Yes No Yes

H-5 Relatively Clear No Yes No

H-6 Not Very Clear No Somewhat No

H-7 Not Very Clear No Yes No

In terms of the group's identification of “problematic” sections of the text, six of the seven readers had

to reread various sentences and sections. A total of 62 different cognate words were found in these

sections of text. The reasons listed for their having to reread these sections were: “Syntax” (once)

“Excess of Words” (twice), and “Complexity of Ideas” (once) (four readers did not select an alternative

for this question). Six of the seven readers identified Unfamiliar Words. Of a total of 18 unfamiliar

words, nine were cognates taken into account in the analysis (the words with the highest frequency,

though not taken into account in the analysis as their are no alternative translations, were

“cosmogonies, “Gnostics”, and “demiurges”). Five of the seven readers identified words the meaning

of which they were unsure about. 16 different words were listed, of which six were cognates taken into

account in the study. Four of the seven readers identified parts of the text where they had to stop and

rest before continuing with their reading, which may imply that at times they found the reading

20

experience tiring.

In Group 2 (Di Giovanni's version) (Fig. 10), three readers considered the text to be “Very Clear”, and

four readers considered it to be “Relatively Clear”. Four of the seven readers answered that they would

read Di Giovanni's version again. Four readers thought the text read like a translation (although

participant D-7 admitted that this was only because he or she was aware that it was a translation), one

said it did “at times”, and two that it did not read like a translation. Five of the seven readers answered

that they felt motivated to read more of Borges after reading the story (although one stated in the

observations that he was already familiar with many of Borges' short stories).

Figure 10. Group 2 (Di Giovanni)Q-1

Overall clarityQ-5

Would reread version?Q-6

TT read like a translation?

Q-7Would read more

Borges? D-1 Very Clear Yes No Yes

D-2 Very Clear Yes Yes Yes

D-3 Very Clear No Yes No

D-4 Relatively Clear No Yes No

D-5 Relatively Clear No No Yes

D-6 Relatively Clear Yes Yes (at times) Yes

D-7 Relatively Clear Yes Yes Yes

Six of the seven readers in Di Giovanni's group identified problematic passages. In total eighteen

different cognate words were identified in those passages the students had to reread. The reasons listed

were “Complexity of Ideas” (twice), “Excess of Words” (twice) and “Syntax” (once). (Three readers

did not answer this question). Three of the seven readers identified “Unfamiliar Words”. Of the total of

five unfamiliar words, two were cognate words taken into account in the analysis. Four of the seven

readers identified words the meaning of which they were unsure about. Of these six words, one was a

cognate word taken into account in the study. Two of the seven readers identified sections of the text

where they had to stop and rest, which may imply that at times they found the reading experience

tiring.

The readers in Group 1 listed their majors as; Spanish, Psychology & Spanish, Accounting, Education,

21

Spanish Linguistics and Communications (one reader did not give his or her major). All of the readers

had taken literature courses, and they assessed their level of reading comprehension as “Excellent”

(three readers), “Good” (three readers), and “Average” (one reader). Only two of the seven readers

claimed to read literary texts on a regular basis for personal enjoyment, meaning that they could be

more familiar with literary texts than the other readers in their group.

The readers in Group 2 listed their majors as; Spanish, TESOL*, Spanish and Asian American Studies,

Environmental Science, and Spanish (two readers did not give their major). Three of the readers had

taken literature courses, one had not, and two did not answer. The self-assessed levels of reading

comprehension were “Excellent” (five readers), and “Good” (two readers). Six of the seven readers

claimed to read literature on a regular basis for personal enjoyment.

5.3 Questionnaire Examples

This section presents an analysis of certain chosen passages that appeared in the answer to question 2 in

either group's questionnaire. The first column shows the section number in the transcription used for

the analysis; the second column contains Borges' original version; the third column contains Hurley's

version; and the fourth, Di Giovanni's. The sections identified as problematic are in bold, and all

cognates used in the final count are underlined.

N°Original Hurley Di Giovanni

21Hacia la medianoche lo despertó el grito inconsolable de un pájaro.

About midnight he was awakened by the inconsolable cry of a bird.

Along about midnight, he was awakened by the forlorn call of a bird.

In this case, Hurley chose to retain the word “inconsolable”. This word was marked by the same reader

and another as an unfamiliar word. Two readers had problems with Di Giovanni's “Along about

* “Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages”

22

midnight...”, but this points to unfamiliarity with the colloquial American expression “along about”. No

readers had problems with the word “forlorn”, the root of which is Old English (O.E.).

31El arroz y las frutas de su tributo eran pábulo suficiente para su cuerpo, consagrado a la única tarea de dormir y soñar.»

The rice and fruit of their tribute were nourishment enough for his body, which was consecrated to the sole task of sleeping and dreaming.»

The rice and fruit of their offerings were nourishment enough for his body, whose one task was to sleep and to dream.»

The reader who had trouble with this passage was not sure about the meaning of the word

“consecrated”. The use of this word seems unnecessary in the English, and it is possible that its mainly

religious usage makes it unfamiliar to certain readers. Di Giovanni's paraphrase seems an effective

strategy, transforming the ST word into the more transparent, “whose one task was”. This section was

not a source of problems for any of the readers of Di Giovanni's text.

29Le convenía el templo inhabitado y despedazado, porque era un mínimo de mundo visible;

The uninhabited and crumbling temple suited him, for it was a minimum of visible world;

This forsaken, broken temple suited him because it held few visible things,

This is another passage that was identified as problematic, and that stands out due to its literal

translation, especially in the case of “a minimum of visible world”, which seems more like

translationese (Newmark, 1988, p. 73) than anything else. No readers had problems with Di Giovanni's

version, in which the Germanic word “forsaken” was used instead of “uninhabited”.

32Al principio, los sueños eran caóticos; poco después, fueron de naturaleza dialéctica.

At first, his dreams were chaotic; a little later, they became dialectical.

At the outset, his dreams were chaotic; later on, they were of a dialectic nature.

23

The main source of problems with this section was the word “dialectic/dialectical”. The reader who

identified this passage as problematic was unfamiliar with the word and two other readers were not sure

of its meaning. None of Di Giovanni's readers had problems with the word, although one had problems

with the passage. Neither translation strays very far from the original text. It seems reasonable to

suppose that certain readers could be unfamiliar with the Greek concept of “dialectic”, but the

alternative --a complete paraphrase or explanation-- does not seem justified in the context. Both

translators retained the word “chaotic”.

50licenció para siempre el vasto colegio ilusorio y se quedó con un solo alumno.

he dismissed the vast illusory classroom once and for all and retained but a single pupil

he dismissed his vast dream-school forever and kept a single disciple.

In the original Spanish, “vasto” and “ilusorio” are separated by the noun. In English, the fact that both

adjectives must be used together makes the sentence more cumbersome. The use of a compound noun

(a valuable resource for English-speaking translators working into English) in Di Giovanni's version

makes the sentence much more natural in the TL (although one reader marked the word “disciple” in

DG's text to show that he or she had to stop at that point and rest, this does not necessarily point to this

individual sentence).

55El hombre, un día, emergió del sueño como de un desierto viscoso,

One day the man emerged from sleep as though from a viscous desert,

One morning, the man emerged from his sleep as from a sticky wasteland,

In this case, the already strange-sounding simile is made even less comprehensible by the relatively

uncommon usage of “viscous” in unscientific contexts (the Cambridge dictionary lists it as a

specialised word). Two readers other than the one that highlighted this sentence were unsure of the

word's meaning. “Sticky wasteland”, although perhaps just as strange, is at least transparent in its

meaning, as no English speakers should have problems with the word “sticky”. Di Giovanni's version

24

was not identified as problematic by any of the readers.

87En las cosmogonías gnósticas, los demiurgos amasan un rojo Adán que no logra ponerse de pie;

In the cosmogonies of the Gnostics, the Demiurges knead up a red Adam who cannot manage to stand;

In the cosmogonies of the Gnostics, the demiurges mold a red Adam who is unable to stand on his feet;

Many readers of both texts had problems with this section and the words: “cosmogonies, Gnostics and

“demiurges”. “Cosmogony”*, is doubtless the most obscure of the three, and was the word that

appeared with the highest frequency in the various sections of the questionnaire. The problem here is

clearly the lack of knowledge on the part of the readers of the philosophical/historical concepts

involved.

103Con el pretexto de la necesidad pedagógica, dilataba cada día las horas dedicadas al sueño.

Under the pretext of pedagogical necessity, he drew out the hours of sleep more every day.

Under the pretext of teaching him more fully, each day he drew out the hours set aside for sleep.

Using both “pretext” and “pedagogical” in the same sentence seems slightly cacophonous. Di

Giovanni's use of a verbal phrase deals with the problem in a natural way. There were no problems with

DG's version.

1Nadie lo vio desembarcar en la unánime noche,

No one saw him slip from the boat in the unanimous night,

Nobody saw him come ashore in the encompassing night,

2nadie vio la canoa de bambú sumiéndose en el fango

no one saw the bamboo canoe as it sank into the

nobody saw the bamboo craft run aground in the sacred

* “the branch of science that deals with the origin of the universe, especially the solar system.“ ("cosmogony". Oxford Dictionaries. April 2010. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_us1236324 (accessed July 05, 2010). )

25

sagrado, sacred mud, mud,

3pero a los pocos días nadie ignoraba que el hombre taciturno venía del sur y que su patria era una de las infinitas aldeas que están aguas arriba,

and yet within days there was no one who did not know that the taciturn man had come there from the South, and that his homeland was one of those infinite villages that lie upriver,

but within a few days everyone knew that the quiet man had come from the south and that his home was among the numberless villages upstream

4en el flanco violento de la montaña,

on the violent flank of the mountain,

on the steep slopes of the mountain

5donde el idioma zend no está contaminado de griego y donde es infrecuente la lepra.

where the language of the Zend is uncontaminated by Greek and where leprosy is uncommon.

where the Zend language is barely tainted by Greek and where lepers are rare.

There were readers of both texts that had problems with the first paragraph. However, the words:

“unanimous”, “sacred” and “infinite” stood out for one reader (H-5) as “poor translations”. Another

reader of Hurley's text also identified segments 1-3 as a point at which he or she had to stop and rest.

The word “unanimous” seems to be a problem, as some readers might find it hard to imagine a

“unanimous night”. Hurley nevertheless defends this decision stating:

“What an odd adjective, “unanimous.” It is so odd, in fact, that other translations have not allowed it.

But it is just as odd in Spanish, and it clearly responds to Borges' intention, explicitly expressed in such

fictions as “The Immortal,” to let the Latin root govern the Spanish (and, by extension, English) usage.”

(Borges, 1998, A Note on the Translation, p. 518)

It seems hard to understand how the leap from Spanish to English usage was made, when both are

completely different languages with a different history. Words with a Latin root constitute only a part of

the English language, unlike Spanish which as a Romance language is descended directly from Vulgar

Latin. Furthermore, as stated previously, a word's usage in one language does not necessarily

correspond to that of a cognate word in a another.

26

One of Borges' techniques was to begin his stories with long sentences in order to fully involve the

reader right from the start (Di Giovanni, 2003, p. 168). The opening sentence fulfils that “dictum”, as

he calls it. However, as a rule translations will rarely be as fluid and captivating as the original, and in

this case it is the duty of the translator to take into account such factors and not overload the starting

paragraph with literal translations that might not read fluently in the TL.

72adoró los dioses planetarios, pronunció las sílabas lícitas de un nombre poderoso y durmió.

bowed down to the planetary gods, uttered those syllables of a powerful name that it is lawful to pronounce, and laid himself down to sleep.

worshiped the gods of the planets, uttered the prescribed syllables of an all-powerful name, and slept.

This passage in Hurley's version was identified by one reader as one he or she had to reread, and by

another reader as a point where it was necessary to stop and rest. It is interesting to note that in this

case, “pronounce” is not exactly a word-translation, but rather a compensation, as Hurley translated

“pronunció” as uttered. The word was nevertheless included in the final list of cognates because it

shows an obvious decision on the part of the translator to retain the ST lexical item, albeit in a different

part of the TT sentence. This passage was not a source of problems for any of Di Giovanni's readers.

27

6. General Discussion

Not counting key-words and the ST words that offered no alternative but a direct translation (bamboo,

leprosy, etc.), there were a total of 206 cognates in Hurley's translation, and 128 in Di Giovanni's

translation. 98 cognates were present in both texts, leaving a total of 108 original cognates in Hurley's

translation, and 30 original cognates in Di Giovanni's translation. The fact that Hurley preferred literal

word translations, or, in his own words, “letting the Latin root govern the usage”, is clear and does not

require further discussion. It is the possible effect this has on the text's readability that we are concerned

with. Returning to the numbers, and specifically in terms of Hurley's translation, 206 cognates in a

2,308 word story may not appear to be a substantial amount. However, of the 145 sections into which

the transcriptions were divided, almost all of them contained cognates in Hurley's version, whereas in

Di Giovanni's version a substantial amount of sections contained no cognates at all, other than those

considered key-words or “direct” translations.

An interesting result of the analysis of cognate density was the fact that, in general, the distribution of

cognates in terms of their grammatical category was relatively similar in both texts. The great majority

of the cognates in both texts were nouns, followed by adjectives, then verbs, and finally, by adverbs.

This, together with the fact that both texts basically retained the grammatical category of 93-95% of the

cognates they used, shows that the only element that varied was the amount of cognates in one

translation in comparison with the other. In addition, both translators respected the same key-words,

“direct” translations and a certain number of the remaining cognates. The cognates that only appear in

one text and not in the other are therefore possibly the most significant.

The fact that Di Giovanni also included 108 cognates besides key-words and direct translations shows

that the mere presence of cognates in the story does not necessarily impede understanding by itself.

Most of the problematic passages in Di Giovanni's text were due to syntax and expressions or words the

readers were not familiar with. If the readers' answers regarding their perception of the textual fluency

can be trusted, then it is clear that the cognates in themselves are not necessarily a problem. The

problem is using perhaps too many, too close together, and in certain places of the text. The high

density of cognates in Hurley's version, as well as the frequent existence of cognate translations that

stand out in those segments identified as problematic all point to the fact that in this particular context

28

the preponderance of cognates does have at least some effect on the fluidity of the text as perceived by

the readership. An analysis of the positions of these words within the sentence and how this affects text

comprehension according to van Dijk and Kintsch could be an interesting exercise for further research.

As stated previously, it is neither the purpose nor the desire of this thesis to judge either translation

holistically as good or bad (two extremely unhelpful parameters, for that matter), but rather in terms of

their reading fluency as perceived by a specific readership. This perception is of course subjective and

in addition variable, as a reader's mental, emotional and physical state can have an important effect on

the experience of reading a completely unfamiliar literary text with a certain complexity of ideas such

as “The Circular Ruins.” It is impossible, however, to create a perfect reading situation, and it is

assumed that higher education students will be used to the rigours of having to constantly read and

comprehend texts of diverse nature.

Another possible issue is the difference between the sample groups. The division of the sample readers

into groups was not intentional, but random, so that it was impossible to predict the distribution of

readers in advance. One receives the overall impression, for example, that the readers of Di Giovanni's

text might be more experienced readers of literature, especially as six of the seven readers belonging to

this group claimed to read literature on a regular basis, as opposed to the readers in Hurley's group, of

which only two claimed to read literary texts regularly. However, all fourteen readers are students of a

prestigious university, with majors for the most part related to the humanities. In addition, all of the

readers, with the exception of three in Di Giovanni's group, had taken college-level literature courses

(one had not and two did not answer). It is therefore considered that their differences, although not

entirely insignificant, do not invalidate the answers given in the questionnaires or the subsequent

analysis of the said answers. Another possible limitation is the fact that the questionnaire was not tested

before sending it to the readers. I would suggest that this were done in future research in order to test

the effectiveness of the questionnaire as a data collection instrument.

29

7. Conclusions

Based on the results of this study, cognates in themselves do not seem to be a problem. What translators

have to be wary of is overloading a TT with words that may not be as common in the TL as their SL

cognates. The existence of a word in the dictionary does not reflect its usage, and dictionaries are filled

with words that even highly educated native speakers seldom encounter.

This does not mean that translators should never use words that target readers might possibly not know.

First of all, it is impossible to anticipate every single reader's knowledge of vocabulary. Second of all,

depending on the translation brief and the translator's own parameters, it may be desirable to use

cognate words in the TT in order to show the choice of words of the original author. What must be

taken into account, however, is the impact this may have on the final text and by extension the target

readership's reading experience and understanding of the text. If it is possible that an excess of cognates

may be interfering with the target text's communicative function, then the translator must make a

decision as to whether the use of such words is absolutely necessary and worth the additional effort it

may require of the reader.

Another factor in the case of Spanish to English translation is that the English language's main

etymological source is not Vulgar Latin, as is the case of Spanish, a romance language. Although it has

been greatly influenced throughout history by Latin, Greek, French and other languages, English is a

West-Germanic language. Constantly choosing words of the same Latin origin when translating from a

romance language into English can be a problem when perfectly correct synonyms of O.E. origin can

be used. A more comprehensive etymological and linguistic analysis of the frequency of words with

different roots in the present story or other translations of Borges, or even literary texts or text

typologies in general in the English language could also be an interesting research exercise.

As stated in the introduction, syntactic structure is well beyond the scope of this study and is doubtless

a interesting subject for future research. Other areas requiring further exploration are the way in which

textual fluidity in terms of cognate frequency is perceived in a novel, where it might be possible that

the readers adapt to the excessive use of cognates and are no longer hindered by it.

30

8. Sources

Alonso, A. & Henríquez, P. (1938). Gramática castellana. Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, S.A.

Baker, M. (1992). In other words: a coursebook on translation. London: Routledge.

Borges, J.L. (1998). Collected Fictions (Translated by Andrew Hurley). London: Penguin Books.

Borges, J.L. (1956). Ficciones. Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, S.A.

Borges, J.L. (1974). Obras Completas. Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, S.A.

Borges, J.L. (1970). The Aleph and Other Stories (Edited and translated by Norman Thomas di

Giovanni, in collaboration with the author). Toronto & Vancouver: Clarke, Irwin & Company

Limited.

Corominas, J. (1954). Diccionario crítico etimológico de la lengua castellana. Berna: A. Francke AG.

Di Giovanni, N.T. (2003). The Lesson of the Master: On Borges and his Work. London: Continuum.

Donaldson, S. (1984). Daughter of Regals and Other Tales. Glasgow: William Collins Sons & Co.

Donaldson, S. (1993). Strange Dreams [Anthology]. New York: Spectra.

Flanagan, R. (2003). Writing with Borges. Retrieved June 22, 2010, from The Age Web Site:

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/07/12/1057783281684.html

Frye, D. (2000). The Joy of Translation. Retrieved June 28, 2010, from: the personal homepage server

for the University of Michigan Web Site: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dfrye/joytrans.html

Gujral, S.S. (2006). Writing About Writing: An Allegorical Interpretation of “Las Ruinas Circulares”

by Jorge Luis Borges. Retrieved June 22, 2010, from: Rambling Echoes: The assorted musings

of Sahil Singh Gujral Web Site: http://apassionreborn.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/sahil-gujral-

jorge-luis-borges-article-writing-about-writing-las-ruinas-circulares-the-circular-ruins.pdf

Hervey, S., Higgins, I., & Haywood, L.M. (1995). Thinking Spanish Translation: A course in

translation method: Spanish to English. London: Routledge.

Kussmaul, P. (1995). Training the Translator. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co.

Nord, C. (1997). Translating as a Purposeful Activity. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.

31

Newmark, P. (1982). Approaches to translation. Hertfordshire. Prentice Hall International (UK) Ltd.

Newmark, P. (1988). A textbook of translation. Hertfordshire. Prentice Hall Europe.

Onions, C.T. (1966). The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Oxford University Press (1971). The Compact Edition of The Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.

Van Dijk, T.A., & Kintsch, W. (1983). Strategies of Discourse Comprehension. San Diego: Academic

Press.

Venuti, L. (2000). The translation studies reader. Second edition. London: Routledge

32

Appendix A: Transcriptions

Original Hurley Di Giovanni1

Nadie lo vio desembarcar en la unánime noche,

No one saw him slip from the boat in the unanimous night,

Nobody saw him come ashore in the encompassing night,

2nadie vio la canoa de bambú sumiéndose en el fango sagrado,

no one saw the bamboo canoe as it sank into the sacred mud,

nobody saw the bamboo craft run aground in the sacred mud,

3pero a los pocos días nadie ignoraba que el hombre taciturno venía del sur y que su patria era una de las infinitas aldeas que están aguas arriba,

and yet within days there was no one who did not know that the taciturn man had come there from the South, and that his homeland was one of those infinite villages that lie upriver,

but within a few days everyone knew that the quiet man had come from the south and that his home was among the numberless villages upstream

4en el flanco violento de la montaña,

on the violent flank of the mountain,

on the steep slopes of the mountain

5donde el idioma zend no está contaminado de griego y donde es infrecuente la lepra.

where the language of the Zend is uncontaminated by Greek and where leprosy is uncommon.

where the Zend language is barely tainted by Greek and where lepers are rare.

6Lo cierto es que el hombre gris besó el fango,

But in fact the gray man had kissed the mud,

The fact is that the gray man pressed his lips to the mud,

7repechó la ribera sin apartar (probablemente, sin sentir) las cortaderas que le dilaceraban las carnes

scrambled up the steep bank (without pushing back, probably without even feeling, the sharp-leaved bulrushes that slashed his flesh),

scrambled up the bank without parting (perhaps without feeling) the brushy thorns that tore his flesh,

8y se arrastró, mareado y ensangrentado,

and dragged himself, faint and bloody,

and dragged himself, faint and bleeding,

9hasta el recinto circular que corona un tigre o caballo de piedra,

to the circular enclosure, crowned by the stone figure of a horse or tiger,

to the circular opening watched over by a stone tiger, or horse,

10que tuvo alguna vez el color del fuego y ahora el de la

which had once been the color of fire but was now the color of

which once was the color of fire and is now the color of ash.

33

ceniza. ashes.

11Ese redondel es un templo que devoraron los incendios antiguos,

That the ring was a temple devoured by an ancient Holocaust;

This opening is a temple which was destroyed ages ago by flames,

12que la selva palúdica ha profanado y cuyo dios no recibe honor de los hombres.

now, the malarial jungle had profaned it and its god went unhonored by mankind.

which the swampy wilderness later desecrated, and whose god no longer receives the reverence of men.

13El forastero se tendió bajo el pedestal.

The foreigner lay down at the foot of the pedestal. »

The stranger laid himself down at the foot of the image. »

14Lo despertó el sol alto. He was awakened by the sun

high in the sky.Wakened by the sun high overhead,

15Comprobó sin asombro que las heridas habían cicatrizado;

He examined his wounds and saw, without astonishment, that they had healed;

he noticed–somehow without amazement–that his wounds had healed.

16cerró los ojos pálidos y durmió, he closed his pale eyes and

slept,He shut his pale eyes and slept again,

17no por flaqueza de la carne sino por determinación de la voluntad.

not out of any weakness of the flesh but out of willed determination.

not because of weariness but because he willed it.

18Sabía que ese templo era el lugar que requería su invencible propósito;

He knew that this temple was the place that is his unconquerable plan called for;

He knew that this temple was the place he needed for his unswerving purpose;

19sabía que los árboles incesantes no habían logrado estrangular, río abajo, las ruinas de otro templo propicio, también de dioses incendiados y muertos;

He knew that the unrelenting trees had not succeeded in strangling the ruins of another promising temple downriver

–like this one, a temple to dead, incinerated gods;

he knew that downstream the encroaching trees had also failed to choke the ruins of another auspicious temple with its own fire-ravaged, dead gods;

34

20sabía que su inmediata obligación era el sueño.

he knew that his immediate obligation was to sleep.

he knew that his first duty was to sleep.

21Hacia la medianoche lo despertó el grito inconsolable de un pájaro.

About midnight he was awakened by the inconsolable cry of a bird.

Along about midnight, he was awakened by the forlorn call of a bird.

22Rastros de pies descalzos, unos higos y un cántaro le advirtieron que los hombres de la región habían espiado con respeto su sueño y solicitaban su amparo o temían su magia.

Prints of unshod feet, figs, and a jug of water told him that the men of the region had respectfully spied upon his sleep and that they sought his favor, or feared his magic.

Footprints, some figs, and a water jug told him that men who lived nearby had looked on his sleep with a kind of awe and either sought his protection or else were in dread of his witchcraft.

23Sintió el frío del miedo y buscó en la muralla dilapidada un nicho sepulcral y se tapó con hojas desconocidas.»

He felt the coldness of fear, and he sought out a tomblike niche in the crumbling wall, where he covered himself with unknown leaves.»

He felt the chill of fear and searched the crumbling walls for a burial niche, where he covered himself over with leaves he had never seen before.»

24El propósito que lo guiaba no era imposible, aunque sí sobrenatural.

The goal that lead him on was not impossible, though it was clearly supernatural:

His guiding purpose, though it was supernatural, was not impossible.

25Quería soñar un hombre: He wanted to dream a man. He wanted to dream a man;

26quería soñarlo con integridad minuciosa e imponerlo a la realidad.

He wanted to dream him completely, in painstaking detail, and to impose him upon reality.

he wanted to dream him down to the last detail and project him into the world of reality.

27Ese proyecto mágico había agotado el espacio entero de su alma;

This magical objective had come to fill his entire soul;

This mystical aim had taxed the whole range of his mind.

28si alguien le hubiera preguntado su propio nombre o cualquier rasgo de su vida anterior, no habría acertado a responder.

if someone had asked him his own name, or inquired into any feature of his life till then, he would not have been able to answer.

Has anyone asked him his own name or anything about his life before then, he would not have known what to answer.

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29Le convenía el templo inhabitado y despedazado, porque era un mínimo de mundo visible;

The uninhabited and crumbling temple suited him, for it was a minimum of visible world;

This forsaken, broken temple suited him because it held few visible things,

30la cercanía de los labradores también, porque éstos se encargaban de subvenir a sus necesidades frugales.

so did the proximity of the woodcutters, for they saw to his frugal needs.

and also because the neighboring villagers would look after his frugal needs.

31El arroz y las frutas de su tributo eran pábulo suficiente para su cuerpo, consagrado a la única tarea de dormir y soñar.»

The rice and fruit of their tribute were nourishment enough for his body, which was consecrated to the sole task of sleeping and dreaming.»

The rice and fruit of their offerings were nourishment enough for his body, whose one task was to sleep and to dream.»

32Al principio, los sueños eran caóticos; poco después, fueron de naturaleza dialéctica.

At first, his dreams were chaotic; a little later, they became dialectical.

At the outset, his dreams were chaotic; later on, they were of a dialectic nature.

33El forastero se soñaba en el centro de un anfiteatro circular que era de algún modo el templo incendiado:

The foreigner dreamed that he was in the center of the circular amphitheater, which was somehow the ruined temple;

The stranger dreamed himself at the center of a circular amphitheater which in some way was also the burnt-out Temple.

34nubes de alumnos taciturnos fatigaba las gradas;

clouds of taciturn students completely filled the terraces of seats.

Crowds of silent disciples exhausted the tiers of seats;

35las caras de los últimos pendían a muchos siglos de distancia y a una altura estelar, pero eran del todo precisas.

The faces of those farthest away hung at many centuries' distance and at a cosmic height, yet they were absolutely clear.

the faces of the farthest of them hung centuries away from him and at a height of the stars, but their features were clear and exact.

36El hombre les dictaba lecciones de anatomía, de cosmografía, de magia:

The man lectured on anatomy, cosmography, magic;

The man lectured on anatomy, cosmography, and witchcraft.

37los rostros escuchaban con ansiedad y procuraban responder con entendimiento,

the faces listened earnestly, intently, and attempted to respond with understanding--

The faces listened, bright and eager, and did their best to answer sensibly,

36

38como si adivinaran la importancia de aquel examen,

As though they sensed the importance of that education

as if they felt the importance of his questions,

39que redimiría a uno de ellos de su condición de vana apariencia

that would redeem one of them from his state of hollow appearance

which would raise one of them out of an existence as a shadow

40y lo interpolaría en el mundo real.

and insert him into the real world.

and place him in the real world.

41El hombre, en el sueño y en la vigilia, consideraba las respuestas de sus fantasmas,

The man, both in sleep and when awake, pondered his phantasms' answers;

Whether asleep or awake, the man pondered the answers of his phantoms

42no se dejaba embaucar por los impostores,

he did not allow himself to be taken in by imposters,

and, not letting himself be misled by imposters,

43adivinaba en ciertas perplejidades una inteligencia creciente.

and he sensed in certain perplexities a growing intelligence.

divined in certain of their quandaries a growing intelligence.

44Buscaba un alma que mereciera participar en el universo.»

He was seeking a soul worthy of taking its place in the universe.»

He was in search of a soul worthy of taking a place in the world.»

45A las nueve o diez noches comprendió con alguna amargura que nada podía esperar de aquellos alumnos que aceptaban con pasividad su doctrina y sí de aquellos que arriesgaban, a veces, una contradicción razonable.

On the ninth or tenth night, he realized (with some bitterness) that nothing could be expected from those students who passively accepted his teachings, but only from those who might occasionally, in a reasonable way, venture an objection.

After nine or ten nights he realized, feeling bitter over it, that nothing could be expected from those pupils who passively accepted his teaching, but that he might, however, hold hopes for those who from time to time hazarded reasonable doubts about what he taught.

46Los primeros, aunque dignos de amor y de buen afecto, no podían ascender a individuos;

The first – the accepting – though worthy of affection and a degree of sympathy, would never emerge as individuals;

The former, although they deserved love and affection, could never become real;

47los últimos preexistían un poco más.

the latter – those who sometimes questioned – had a

the latter, in their dim way, were already real.

37

bit more preexistence.

48Una tarde One afternoon One evening

49(ahora también las tardes eran tributarias del sueño, ahora no velaba sino un par de horas en el amanecer)

(afternoons now paid their tribute to sleep as well; now the man was awake no more than two or three hours around daybreak)

(now his evenings were also given over to sleeping, now he was only awake for an hour or two at dawn)

50licenció para siempre el vasto colegio ilusorio y se quedó con un solo alumno.

he dismissed the vast illusory classroom once and for all and retained but a single pupil

he dismissed his vast dream-school forever and kept a single disciple.

51Era un muchacho taciturno, cetrino, díscolo a veces, de rasgos afilados que repetían las de su soñador.

-- a taciturn, sallow-skinned young man, at times intractable, with sharp features that echoed those of the man that dreamed him.

He was a quiet, sallow, and at times rebellious young man with sharp features akin to those of his dreamer.

52No lo desconcertó por mucho tiempo la brusca eliminación de los condiscípulos;

The pupil was not disconcerted for long by the elimination of his classmates;

The sudden disappearance of his fellow pupils did not disturb him for very long,

53su progreso, al cabo de unas pocas lecciones particulares, pudo maravillar al maestro.

after only a few of the private classes, his progress amazed his teacher.

and his progress, at the end of a few private lessons, amazed his teacher.

54Sin embargo, la catástrofe sobrevino.

Yet disaster would not be forestalled.

Nonetheless, a catastrophe intervened.

55El hombre, un día, emergió del sueño como de un desierto viscoso,

One day the man emerged from sleep as though from a viscous desert,

One morning, the man emerged from his sleep as from a sticky wasteland,

56miró la vana luz de la tarde que al pronto confundió con la aurora y comprendió que no había soñado.

looked up at the hollow light of the evening (which for a moment he confused with the light of dawn), and realized that he had not dreamed.

glanced up at the faint evening light, which at first he confused with the dawn, and realized that he had not been dreaming.

57Toda esa noche y todo el día, la intolerable lucidez del

All that day and the next day, the unbearable lucidity of

All that night and the next day, the hideous lucidity of

38

insomnio se abatió contra él. insomnia harried him, like a hawk.

insomnia weighed down on him.

58Quiso explorar la selva, extenuarse;

He went off to explore the jungle, hoping to tire himself;

To tire himself out he tried to explore the surrounding forest,

59apenas alcanzó entre la cicuta unas rachas de sueño débil,

among the hemlocks he managed no more than a few intervals of feeble sleep,

but all he managed, there in a thicket of hemlocks, were some snatches of broken sleep,

60veteadas fugazmente de visiones de tipo rudimental: inservibles.

fleetingly veined with the most rudimentary of visions – useless to him.

fleetingly tinged with visions of a crude and worthless nature.

61Quiso congregar el colegio y apenas hubo articulado unas breves palabras de exhortación, éste se deformó, se borró.

He reconvened his class, but no sooner had he spoken a few brief words of exhortation than the faces blurred, twisted, and faded away.

He tried to reassemble his school, and barely had he uttered a few brief words of counsel when the whole class went awry and vanished.

62En la casi perpetua vigilia, lágrimas de ira le quemaban los viejos ojos.»

In his almost perpetual state of wakefulness, tears of anger burned the man's old eyes.»

In his almost endless wakefulness, tears of anger stung his old eyes.»

63Comprendió que el empeño de modelar la materia incoherente y vertiginosa de que se componen los sueños es el más arduo que puede acometer un varón, aunque penetre todos los enigmas del orden superior y del inferior:

He understood that the task of molding the incoherent and dizzying stuff that dreams are made of is the most difficult work a man can undertake, even if he fathom all the enigmas of the higher and lower spheres

He realized that, though he may penetrate all the riddles of the higher and lower orders, the task of shaping the senseless and dizzying stuff of dreams is the hardest that a man can attempt

64mucho más arduo que tejer una cuerda de arena o que amonedar el viento sin cara.

– much more difficult than weaving a rope of sand or minting coins of the faceless wind.

-- much harder than weaving a rope of sand or of coining the faceless wind.

65Comprendió que un fracaso inicial era inevitable.

He understood that initial failure was inevitable.

He realized that an initial failure was to be expected.

66Juró olvidar la enorme alucinación que lo había

He swore to put behind him the vast hallucination that at first

He then swore he would forget the populous vision which in

39

desviado al principio y buscó otro método de trabajo.

had drawn him off the track, and he sought another way to approach his task.

the beginning had led him astray, and he sought another method.

67Antes de ejercitarlo, dedicó un mes a la reposición de las fuerzas que había malgastado el delirio.

Before he began, he devoted a month to recovering the strength his delirium had squandered.

Before attempting it, he spent a month rebuilding the strength his fever had consumed.

68Abandonó toda premeditación de soñar y casi acto continuo logró dormir un trecho razonable del día.

He abandoned all premeditation of dreaming, and almost instantly managed to sleep for a fair portion of the day.

He gave up all thoughts of dreaming and almost at once managed to sleep a reasonable part of the day.

69Las raras veces que soñó durante ese periodo, no reparó en los sueños.

The few times he did dream during this period, he did not focus on his dreams;

The few times he dreamed during this period he did not dwell on his dreams.

70Para reanudar la tarea, espero que el disco de la luna fuera perfecto.

he would wait to take up his task again until the disk of the moon was full.

Before taking up his task again, he waited until the moon was a perfect circle.

71Luego, en la tarde, se purificó en las aguas del río,

Then, that evening, he purified himself in the waters of the river,

Then, in the evening, he cleansed himself in the waters of the river,

72adoró los dioses planetarios, pronunció las sílabas lícitas de un nombre poderoso y durmió.

bowed down to the planetary gods, uttered those syllables of a powerful name that it is lawful to pronounce, and laid himself down to sleep.

worshiped the gods of the planets, uttered the prescribed syllables of an all-powerful name, and slept.

73Casi inmediatamente, soñó con un corazón que latía.»

Almost immediately he dreamed a beating heart.»

Almost at once, he had a dream of a beating heart.»

74Los soñó activo, caluroso, secreto, del grandor de un puño cerrado, color granate en la penumbra de un cuerpo humano aun sin cara ni sexo;

He dreamed the heart warm, active, secret – about the size of a closed fist, a garnet-colored thing inside the dimness of a human body that was still faceless and sexless;

He dreamed it throbbing, warm, secret. It was the size of a closed fist, a darkish red in the dimness of the human body still without a face or sex.

40

75con minucioso amor lo soñó, durante catorce lúcidas noches.

he dreamed it, with painstaking love, for fourteen brilliant nights.

With anxious love he dreamed it for fourteen lucid nights.

76Cada noche, lo percibía con mayor evidencia.

Each night he perceived it with greater clarity, greater certainty.

Each night he perceived it more clearly.

77No lo tocaba: se limitaba a atestiguarlo, a observarlo, tal vez a corregirlo con la mirada.

He did not touch it; he only witnessed it, observed it, corrected it, perhaps, with his eyes.

He did not touch it, but limited himself to witnessing it, to observing it, to correcting it now and then with a look.

78Lo percibía, lo vivía, desde muchas distancias y muchos ángulos.

He perceived it, he lived it, from many angles, many distances.

He felt it, he lived it from different distances and from many angles.

79La noche catorcena rozó la arteria pulmonar con el índice y luego todo el corazón, desde afuera y adentro.

On the fourteenth night, he stroked the pulmonary artery with his forefinger, and then the entire heart, inside and out.

On the fourteenth night he touched the pulmonary artery with a finger and then the whole heart, inside and out.

80El examen lo satisfizo. And his inspection made him

proud.The examination satisfied him.

81Deliberadamente no soñó durante una noche:

He deliberately did not sleep the next night;

For one night he deliberately did not dream;

82luego retomó el corazón, invocó el nombre de un planeta y emprendió la visión de otro de los órganos principales.

then he took up the heart again, invoked the name of a planet, and set about dreaming another of the major organs.

after that he went back to the heart again, invoked the name of a planet, and set out to envision another of the principal organs.

83Antes de un año llegó al esqueleto, a los párpados.

Before the year was out he had reached the skeleton, the eyelids.

Before a year was over he came to the skeleton, the eyelids.

84El pelo innumerable fué tal vez la tarea más difícil.

The countless hairs of the body were perhaps the most difficult task.

The countless strands of hair were perhaps the hardest task of all.

85Soñó un hombre íntegro, un mancebo, pero éste no se

The man had dreamed a fully fleshed man –a stripling – but

He dreamed a whole man, a young man, but the young man

41

incorporaba ni hablaba ni podía abrir los ojos.

this youth did not stand up or speak, nor could it open its eyes.

could not stand up or speak, nor could he open his eyes.

86Noche tras noche, el hombre lo soñaba dormido.

Night after night, the man dreamed the youth asleep.»

Night after night, the man dreamed him asleep.»

87En las cosmogonías gnósticas, los demiurgos amasan un rojo Adán que no logra ponerse de pie;

In the cosmogonies of the Gnostics, the Demiurges knead up a red Adam who cannot manage to stand;

In the cosmogonies of the Gnostics, the demiurges mold a red Adam who is unable to stand on his feet;

88tan inhábil y rudo y elemental como ése Adán de polvo era el Adán de sueño que las noches del mago habían fabricado.

as rude and inept and elementary as that Adam of dust was the Adam of dream wrought from the sorcerer's nights.

as clumsy and crude and elementary as that Adam of dust was the Adam of dreams wrought by the nights of the magician.

89Una tarde, el hombre casi destruyó toda su obra, pero se arrepintió. (Más le hubiera valido destruirla.)

One afternoon, the man almost destroyed his creation, but he could not bring himself to do it. (He'd have been better off if he had.)

One evening the man was at the point of destroying all his handiwork (it would have been better for him had he done so), but in the end he restrained himself.

90Agotados los votos a los númenes de la tierra y del río, se arrojó a los pies de la efigie que tal vez era un tigre y tal vez un potro, e imploró su desconocido socorro.

After making vows to all the deities of the earth and the river, he threw himself at the feet of the idol that was perhaps a tiger or perhaps a colt, and he begged for its untried aid.

Having exhausted his prayers to the gods of the earth and river, he threw himself down at the feet of the stone image that may have been a tiger or a stallion, and asked for its blind aid.

91Ese crepúsculo, soñó con la estatua.

That evening, at sunset, the statue filled his dreams.

That same evening he dreamed of the image.

92La soñó viva, trémula: In the dream it was alive, and

trembling He dreamed it alive, quivering;

93no era un atroz bastardo de tigre y potro, sino a la vez esas dos criaturas vehementes y también un toro, una rosa, una tempestad.

– yet it was not the dread-inspiring hybrid form of horse and tiger it had been. It was, instead, those two vehement creatures plus bull, and rose,

it was no unnatural cross between tiger and stallion but at one and the same time both these violent creatures and also

42

and tempest, too – and all that, simultaneously.

a bull, a rose, a thunderstorm.

94Ese múltiple dios le reveló que su nombre terrenal era Fuego,

The manifold god revealed to the man that its earthly name was Fire,

This manifold god revealed to him that its earthly name was Fire,

95que en ese templo circular (y en otros iguales) le habían rendido sacrificios y culto

and that in that circular temple (and others like it) men had made sacrifices and worshiped it,

that there in the circular temple (and in others like it) sacrifices had once been made to it, that it had been worshiped,

96y que mágicamente animaría al fantasma soñado, de suerte que todas las criaturas, excepto el Fuego mismo y el soñador, lo pensaran un hombre de carne y hueso.

and that it would magically bring to life the phantasm the man had dreamed -- so fully bring him to life that every creature, save Fire itself and the man who dreamed him, would take him for a man of flesh and blood.

and that through its magic the phantom of the man's dreams would be wakened to life in such a way that – except for Fire itself and the dreamer – every being in the world would accept him as a man of flesh and blood.

97Le ordenó que una vez instruído en los ritos, lo enviara al otro templo despedazado cuyas pirámides persisten aguas abajo,

Fire ordered the dreamer to send to the youth, once instructed in the rites, to that other ruined temple whose pyramids still stood downriver,

The god ordered that, once instructed in the rites, the disciple should be sent downstream to the other ruined temple, whose pyramids still survived,

98para que alguna vez lo glorificara en aquel edificio desierto.

so that a voice might glorify the god in that deserted place.

so that in that abandoned place some human voice might exalt him.

99En el sueño del hombre que soñaba, el soñado se despertó.»

In the dreaming man's dream, the dreamed man awoke.»

In the dreamer's dream, the dreamed one awoke.»

100El mago ejecutó esas órdenes. The sorcerer carried out Fire's

instructions.The magician carried out these orders.

43

101Consagró un plazo (que finalmente abarcó dos años) a descubrirle los arcanos del universo y del culto del fuego.

He consecrated a period of time (which in the end encompassed two full years) to revealing to the youth the arcana of the universe and the secrets of the cult of Fire.

He devoted a period of time (which finally spanned two years) to initiating his disciple into the riddles of the universe and the worship of Fire.

102Íntimamente, le dolía apartarse de él.

Deep inside, it grieved the man to separate himself from his creation.

Deep inside, it pained him to say goodbye to his creature.

103Con el pretexto de la necesidad pedagógica, dilataba cada día las horas dedicadas al sueño.

Under the pretext of pedagogical necessity, he drew out the hours of sleep more every day.

Under the pretext of teaching him more fully, each day he drew out the hours set aside for sleep.

104También rehizo el hombro derecho, acaso deficiente.

He also redid the right shoulder (which was perhaps defective).

Also, he reshaped the somewhat faulty right shoulder.

105A veces, lo inquietaba una impresión de que ya todo eso había acontecido...

From time to time, he was disturbed by a sense that all this had happened before....

From time to time, he was troubled by the feeling that all this had already happened,

106En general, sus días eran felices;

His days were, in general, happy;

but for the most part his days were happy.

107al cerrar los ojos pensaba: Ahora estaré con mi hijo.

When he closed his eyes, he would think Now I will be with my son.

On closing his eyes he would think, “Now I will be with my son.”

108O, más raramente: El hijo que he engendrado me espera y no existirá si no voy.»

Or, less frequently, The son I have engendered is waiting for me, and he will not exist if I do not go to him.»

Or, less frequently, “The son I have begotten awaits me and he will not exist if I do not go to him.”»

109Gradualmente, lo fué acostumbrando a la realidad.

Gradually, the man accustomed the youth to reality.

Little by little, he was training the young man for reality.

110Una vez le ordenó que embanderara una cumbre lejana.

Once he ordered him to set a flag on a distant mountaintop.

On one occasion he commanded him to set up a flag on a distant peak.

111Al otro día, flameaba la The next day, the flag crackled The next day, there on the

44

bandera en la cumbre. on the summit. peak, a fiery pennant shone.

112Ensayó otros experimentos análogos, cada vez más audaces.

He attempted other, similar experiments – each more daring than the last.

He tried other, similar exercises, each bolder than the one before.

113Comprendió con cierta amargura que su hijo estaba listo para nacer —y tal vez impaciente.

He saw with some bitterness that his son was ready – perhaps even impatient-- to be born.

He realized with a certain bitterness that his son was ready – and perhaps impatient – to be born.

114Esa noche lo besó por primera vez y lo envió al otro templo cuyos despojos blanquean río abajo, a muchas leguas de inextricable selva y de ciénaga.

That night he kissed him for the first time, then sent him off, through many leagues of impenetrable jungle, many leagues of swamp, to that other temple whose ruins bleached in the sun downstream.

That night he kissed him for the first time and sent him down the river to the other temple, whose whitened ruins were still to be glimpsed over miles and miles of impenetrable forest and swamp.

115Antes (para que no supiera nunca que era un fantasma, para que se creyera un hombre como los otros) le infundió el olvido total de sus años de aprendizaje.»

But first (so that the son would never know that he was a phantasm, so that he would believe himself to be a man like other men) the man infused in him a total lack of memory of his years of education.»

At the very end (so that the boy would never know he was a phantom, so that he would think himself a man like all men), the magician imbued his disciple with total oblivion of his long years of apprenticeship.»

116Su victoria y su paz quedaron empañadas de hastío.

The man's victory, and his peace, were dulled by the wearisome sameness of his days.

His triumph and his peace were blemished by a touch of weariness.

117En los crepúsculos de la tarde y del alba, ser prosternaba ante la figura de piedra, tal vez imaginando que su hijo irreal ejecutaba idénticos ritos, en otras ruinas circulares, aguas abajo;

In the twilight hours of dusk and dawn, he would prostrate himself before the stone figure, imagining perhaps that his unreal son performed identical rituals in other circular ruins, downstream.

In the morning and evening dusk, he prostrated himself before the stone idol, perhaps imagining that his unreal son was performing the same rites farther down the river in other circular ruins.

45

118de noche no soñaba, o soñaba como lo hacen todos los hombres.

At night he did not dream, or dreamed the dreams that all men dream.

At night he no longer dreamed, or else he dreamed the way all men dream.

119Percibía con cierta palidez los sonidos y formas del universo:

His perceptions of the universe's sounds and shapes were somewhat pale:

He now perceived with a certain vagueness the sounds and shapes of the world,

120el hijo ausente se nutría de esas disminuciones de su alma.

the absent son was nourished by these diminutions of his soul.

for his absent son was taking nourishment from the magician's decreasing consciousness.

121El propósito de su vida estaba colmado; el hombre persistió en una suerte de éxtasis.

His life's goal had been accomplished; the man lived on now in a sort of ecstasy.

His life's purpose was fulfilled; the man lived on in a kind of ecstasy.

122Al cabo de un tiempo que ciertos narradores de su historia prefieren computar en años y otros en lustros, lo despertaron dos remeros a medianoche:

After a period of time (which some tellers of the story choose to compute in years, others in decades), two rowers woke the man at midnight.

After a length of time that certain tellers of the story count in years and others in half-decades, he was awakened one midnight by two rowers.

123no pudo ver sus caras, pero le hablaron de un hombre mágico en un templo del Norte, capaz de hollar el fuego y de no quemarse.

He could not see their faces, but they told him of a magical man in a temple in the North, a man who could walk on fire and not be burned.»

He could not see their faces, but they spoke to him about a magic man in a temple up north who walked on fire without being burned.

124El mago recordó bruscamente las palabras del dios.

The sorcerer suddenly remembered the god's words.

The magician suddenly remembered the god's words.

125Recordó que de todas las criaturas que componen el orbe, el fuego era la única que sabía que su hijo era un fantasma.

He remembered that of all the creatures on the earth, Fire was the only one who knew that his son was a phantasm.

He remembered that of all the creatures in the world, Fire was the only one who knew his son was a phantom.

126Ese recuerdo, apaciguador al principio, acabó por atormentarlo.

That recollection, comforting at first, soon came to torment him.

This recollection, comforting at first, ended by tormenting him.

127Temió que su hijo meditará en He feared that his son would He feared that his son might

46

ese privilegio anormal y descubriera de algún modo su condición de mero simulacro.

meditate upon his unnatural privilege and somehow discover that he was a mere simulacrum.

wonder at this strange privilege and in some way discover his condition as a mere appearance.

128No ser un hombre, ser la proyección del sueño de otro hombre ¡qué humillación incomparable, qué vértigo!

To be not a man, but the projection of another man's dream –what incomparable humiliation, what vertigo!

Not to be a man but to be the projection of another man's dreams-- what unparalleled humiliation, how bewildering!

129A todo padre le interesan los hijos que ha procreado (que ha permitido) en una mera confusión o felicidad;

Every parent feels concern for the children he has procreated (or allowed to be procreated) in happiness or in mere confusion;

Every father cares for the child he has begotten – he has allowed – in some moment of confusion or happiness.

130Es natural que el mago temiera por el porvenir de aquel hijo, pensado entraña por extraña y rasgo por rasgo, en mil y una noches secretas.»

it was only natural that the sorcerer should fear for the future of the son he had conceived organ by organ, feature by feature, through a thousand and one secret nights.»

It is understandable, then, that the magician should fear for the future of a son thought out organ by organ and feature by feature over the course of a thousand and one secret nights.»

131El término de sus cavilaciones fué brusco, pero lo prometieron algunos signos.

The end of his meditations came suddenly, but it had been foretold by certain signs:

The end of these anxieties came suddenly, but certain signs foretold it.

132Primero (al cabo de una larga sequía) una remota nube en un cerro, liviana como un pájaro;

first (after a long drought), a distant cloud, as light as a bird, upon a mountaintop;

First (after a long drought), a far-off cloud on a hilltop, as light as a bird;

133luego, hacia el Sur, el cielo que tenía el color rosado de la encía de los leopardos;

then, toward the South, the sky the pinkish color of a leopard's gums;

next, toward the south, the sky, which took on the rosy hue of a leopard's gums;

134luego las humaredas que herrumbaron el metal de las noches;

then the clouds of smoke that rusted the iron of the nights;

then, the pillars of smoke that turned the metal of the nights to rust;

135después la fuga pánica de las bestias.

then, at last, the panicked flight of the animals

finally, the headlong panic of the forest animals.

47

136Porque se repitió lo acontecido hace muchos siglos.

– for that which had occurred hundreds of years ago was being repeated now.

For what had happened many centuries ago was happening again.

137Las ruinas del santuario del dios del fuego fueron destruídas por el fuego.

The ruins of the sanctuary of the god of Fire were destroyed by fire.

The ruins of the fire god´s shrine were destroyed by fire.

138En un alba sin pájaros el mago vio cernirse contra los muros el incendio concéntrico.

In the birdless dawn, the sorcerer watched the concentric holocaust close in upon the walls.

In a birdless dawn the magician saw the circling sheets of flame closing in on him.

139Por un instante, pensó refugiarse en las aguas,

For a moment he thought of taking refuge in the water,

For a moment, he thought of taking refuge in the river,

140pero luego comprendió que la muerte venía a coronar su vejez y a absolverlo de sus trabajos.

but then he realized that death would be a crown upon his age and absolve him from his labors.

but then he realized that death was coming to crown his years and to release him from his labors.

141Caminó contra los jirones de fuego.

He walked into the tatters of flame,

He walked into the leaping pennants of flame.

142Éstos no mordieron su carne, but they did not bite his flesh They did not bite into his flesh,

143éstos lo acariciaron y lo inundaron sin calor y sin combustión.

-- they caressed him, bathed him without heat and without combustion.

but caressed him and flooded him without heat or burning.

144Con alivio, con humillación, con terror, comprendió que él también era una apariencia,

With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he realized that he, too, was but appearance,

In relief, in humiliation, in terror, he understood that he, too, was an appearance,

145que otro estaba soñándolo. that another man was dreaming

him.that someone else was dreaming him.

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Appendix B.1: Definite list of cognates present in Hurley

Key: (adj.: adjective; Adv. adverb; N: noun; VF: verb form)

Segment TT Word TT Category ST Word ST Category Same category?

In both texts? Variant Alternative Alternative Category

068 abandoned VF abandonó VF ☑ gave up Synonym

120 absent adj. ausente adj. ☑ ☑

140 absolve VF absolverlo VF ☑ release Synonym

045 accepted VF aceptaban VF ☑ ☑

109 accustomed VF acostumbrando VF ☑ training (VF) Alternative word

074 active adj. activo adj. ☑ throbbing Alternative word

046 affection N afecto N ☑ ☑

033 amphitheater N anfiteatro N ☑ ☑

036 anatomy N anatomía N ☑ ☑

078 angles N ángulos N ☑ ☑

039 appearance N apariencia N ☑ shadow Synonym

144 appearance N apariencia N ☑ ☑

101 arcana N arcanos N ☑ riddles Synonym

079 artery N arteria N ☑ ☑

002 bamboo N bambú N ☑ ☑

061 brief adj. breves adj. ☑ ☑

002 canoe N canoa N ☑ craft Synonym

143 caressed VF acariciaron VF ☑ ☑

49

Segment TT Word TT Category ST Word ST Category Same category?

In both texts? Variant Alternative Alternative Category

033 center N centro N ☑ ☑

043 certain adj. ciertas adj. ☑ ☑

032 chaotic adj. caóticos adj. ☑ ☑

009 circular adj. circular adj. ☑ ☑

033 circular adj. circular adj. ☑ ☑

095 circular adj. circular adj. ☑ ☑

117 circular adj. circulares adj. ☑ ☑

010 color N color N ☑ ☑

133 color N color N ☑ hue Synonym

143 combustion N combustión N ☑ burning Synonym

122 compute VF computar VF ☑ count Synonym

138 concentric adj. concéntrico adj. ☑ circling Synonym

056 confused VF confundió VF ☑ ☑

129 confusion N confusión N ☑ ☑

031 consecrated VF consagrado VF ☑ -whose one task was-

Paraphrase

101 consecrated VF consagró VF ☑ devoted Synonym

077 corrected VF corregirlo VF ☑ ☑ correcting

087 cosmogonies N cosmogonías N ☑ ☑

036 cosmography N cosmografía N ☑ ☑

096 creature N criaturas N ☑ being Synonym

093 creatures N criaturas N ☑ ☑

125 creatures N criaturas N ☑ ☑

50

Segment TT Word TT Category ST Word ST Category Same category?

In both texts? Variant Alternative Alternative Category

140 crown N coronar VF ☑ crown (VF)

009 crowned VF corona VF ☑ watched over Paraphrase

101 cult N culto N ☑ worship Synonym

104 defective adj. deficiente adj. ☑ faulty Synonym

081 deliberately Adv. deliberadamente Adv. ☑ ☑

067 delirium N delirio N ☑ fever Synonym

087 demiurges N demiurgos N ☑ ☑

055 desert N desierto N ☑ wasteland Synonym

098 deserted adj. desierto adj. ☑ abandoned Synonym

089 destroyed VF destruyó VF ☑ ☑ destroying

137 destroyed VF destruidas VF ☑ ☑

017 determination N determinación N ☑ "because he willed it"

Paraphrase

011 devoured VF devoraron VF ☑ destroyed Alternative word

032 dialectical adj. dialéctica adj. ☑ ☑ dialectic

084 difficult adj. difícil adj. ☑ hardest Synonym

120 diminutions N disminuciones N ☑ decreasing Synonym

052 disconcerted VF desconcertó VF ☑ disturb Synonym

127 discover VF descubriera VF ☑ ☑

070 disk N disco N ☑ circle Synonym

035 distance N distancia N ☑ away Synonym

078 distances N distancias N ☑ ☑

069 during Prep. durante Prep. ☑ ☑

51

Segment TT Word TT Category ST Word ST Category Same category?

In both texts? Variant Alternative Alternative Category

121 ecstasy N éxtasis N ☑ ☑

088 elementary adj. elemental adj. ☑ ☑

052 elimination N eliminación N ☑ disappearance Synonym

055 emerged VF emergió VF ☑ ☑

108 engendered VF engendrado VF ☑ begotten Synonym

063 enigmas N enigmas N ☑ riddles Synonym

027 entire adj. entero adj. ☑ whole Synonym

061 exhortation N exhortación N ☑ counsel Alternative word

108 exist VF existirá VF ☑ ☑

112 experiments N experimentos N ☑ exercises Alternative word

058 explore VF explorar VF ☑ ☑

022 figs N higos N ☑ ☑

117 figure N figura N ☑ idol Synonym

004 flank N flanco N ☑ slopes Synonym

030 frugal adj. frugales adj. ☑ ☑

031 fruit N frutas N ☑ ☑

074 garnet-colored N -color granate- N ☑ darkish red Synonym

098 glorify VF glorificara VF ☑ exalt Synonym

087 Gnostics N gnósticas adj. ☑

109 gradually Adv. gradualmente Adv. ☑ little by little Paraphrase

006 gray adj. gris adj. ☑ ☑

005 Greek N griego N ☑ ☑

52

Segment TT Word TT Category ST Word ST Category Same category?

In both texts? Variant Alternative Alternative Category

066 hallucination N alucinación N ☑ vision Synonym

049 hours N horas N ☑ ☑ hour

103 hours N horas N ☑ ☑

074 human adj. humano adj. ☑ ☑

128 humiliation N humillación N ☑ ☑

144 humiliation N humillación N ☑ ☑

117 identical adj. idénticos adj. ☑ same Synonym

050 illusory adj. ilusorio adj. ☑ dream- Synonym

117 imagining VF imaginando VF ☑ ☑

020 immediate adj. inmediata adj. ☑ first Synonym

073 immediately Adv. inmediatamente Adv. ☑ at once Synonym

113 impatient adj. impaciente adj. ☑ ☑

038 importance N importancia N ☑ ☑

026 impose VF imponerlo VF ☑ project Alternative word

024 impossible adj. imposible adj. ☑ ☑

042 imposters N impostores N ☑ ☑

063 incoherent adj. incoherente adj. ☑ senseless Synonym

128 incomparable adj. incomparable adj. ☑ unparalleled Synonym

021 inconsolable adj. inconsolable adj. ☑ forlorn Synonym

046 individuals N individuos N ☑ become real Paraphrase

065 inevitable adj. inevitable adj. ☑ to be expected Paraphrase

003 infinite adj. infinitas adj. ☑ numberless Synonym

53

Segment TT Word TT Category ST Word ST Category Same category?

In both texts? Variant Alternative Alternative Category

115 infused VF infundió VF ☑ imbued Synonym

065 initial adj. inicial adj. ☑ ☑

057 insomnia N insomnia N ☑ ☑

097 instructed VF instruído VF ☑ ☑

043 intelligence N inteligencia N ☑ ☑

082 invoked VF invocó VF ☑ ☑

114 leagues N leguas N ☑ miles Synonym

036 lectured VF lecciones N ☑

133 leopard's N leopardos N ☑ ☑

005 leprosy N lepra N ☑ ☑ lepers

057 lucidity N lucidez N ☑ ☑

022 magic N magia N ☑ witchcraft Synonym

036 magic N magia N ☑ witchcraft Synonym

027 magical adj. mágico adj. ☑ mystical Synonym

123 magical adj. mágico adj. ☑ ☑ magic (???.)

096 magically Adv. mágicamente Adv. ☑ ☑ magic

127 meditate VF meditara VF ☑ wonder Synonym

127 mere adj. mero adj. ☑ ☑

129 mere adj. mero adj. ☑ some moment of

Paraphrase

029 minimum N mínimo N ☑ few Alternative word

063 molding VF modelar VF ☑ shaping Synonym

004 mountain N montaña N ☑ ☑

54

Segment TT Word TT Category ST Word ST Category Same category?

In both texts? Variant Alternative Alternative Category

130 natural adj. natural adj. ☑ understandable Synonym

103 necessity N necesidad N ☑ (Ø) Omission

023 niche N nicho N ☑ ☑

123 North N Norte N ☑ ☑ north

120 nourished VF nutría VF ☑ ☑ nourishment

020 obligation N obligación N ☑ duty Synonym

077 observed VF observarlo VF ☑ ☑ observing

097 ordered VF ordenó VF ☑ ☑

110 ordered VF ordenó VF ☑ commanded Synonym

082 organs N órganos N ☑ ☑

016 pale adj. pálidos adj. ☑ ☑

119 pale adj. palidez N vagueness Alternative word

135 panicked adj. pánica adj. ☑ ☑ panic

045 passively Adv. pasividad N ☑

116 peace N paz N ☑ ☑

103 pedagogical adj. pedagógica adj. ☑ teaching (VF) Synonym

013 pedestal N pedestal N ☑ image Synonym

076 perceived VF percibía VF ☑ ☑

078 perceived VF percibía VF ☑ felt Synonym

119 perceptions N percibía VF ☑ perceived

069 period N periodo N ☑ ☑

062 perpetual adj. perpetua adj. ☑ endless Synonym

55

Segment TT Word TT Category ST Word ST Category Same category?

In both texts? Variant Alternative Alternative Category

043 perplexities N perplejidades N ☑ quandaries Synonym

096 phantasm N fantasma N ☑ ☑ phantom

115 phantasm N fantasma N ☑ ☑ phantom

125 phantasm N fantasma N ☑ ☑ phantom

041 phantasms N fantasmas N ☑ ☑ phantoms

082 planet N planeta N ☑ ☑

072 planetary adj. planetarios adj. ☑ ☑ planets

072 powerful adj. poderoso adj. ☑ ☑ all-powerful

047 preexistence N preexistían VF were already real

Paraphrase

068 premeditation N premeditación N ☑ thoughts Alternative word

103 pretext N pretexto N ☑ ☑

127 privilege N privilegio N ☑ ☑

007 probably Adv. probablemente Adv. ☑ perhaps Synonym

129 procreated VF procreado VF ☑ begotten Synonym

012 profaned VF profanado VF ☑ desecrated Synonym

053 progress N progreso N ☑ ☑

128 projection N proyección N ☑ ☑

072 pronounce VF pronunció VF ☑ uttered Synonym

117 prostrate VF prosternaba VF ☑ ☑ prostrated

079 pulmonary adj. pulmonar adj. ☑ ☑

071 purified VF purificó VF ☑ cleansed Synonym

097 pyramids N pirámides N ☑ ☑

56

Segment TT Word TT Category ST Word ST Category Same category?

In both texts? Variant Alternative Alternative Category

040 real adj. real adj. ☑ ☑

026 reality N realidad N ☑ ☑

109 reality N realidad N ☑ ☑

045 reasonable adj. razonable adj. ☑ ☑

039 redeem VF redimiría VF ☑ raise Alternative word

139 refuge N refugiarse VF ☑

022 region N región N ☑ who lived nearby

Paraphrase

136 repeated VF repitió VF ☑ happening again Paraphrase

022 respectfully Adv. respeto N a kind of awe Paraphrase

037 respond VF responder VF ☑ answer Synonym

094 revealed VF reveló VF ☑ ☑

097 rites N ritos N ☑ ☑

117 rituals N ritos N ☑ ☑ rites

093 rose N rosa N ☑ ☑

088 rude adj. rudo adj. ☑ crude Synonym

060 rudimentary adj. rudimental adj. ☑ crude Synonym

019 ruins N ruinas N ☑ ☑

117 ruins N ruinas N ☑ ☑

137 ruins N ruinas N ☑ ☑

002 sacred adj. sagrado adj. ☑ ☑

095 sacrifices N sacrificios N ☑ ☑

137 sanctuary N santuario N ☑ shrine Synonym

57

Segment TT Word TT Category ST Word ST Category Same category?

In both texts? Variant Alternative Alternative Category

074 secret adj. secreto adj. ☑ ☑

130 secret adj. secretas adj. ☑ ☑

074 sexless adj. sexo N ☑ ☑ sexo

131 signs N signos N ☑ ☑

127 simulacrum N simulacro N ☑ appearance Alternative word

083 skeleton N esqueleto N ☑ ☑

121 sort N suerte N ☑ kind Synonym

119 sounds N sonidos N ☑ ☑

022 spied VF espiado VF ☑ looked on Synonym

091 statue N estatua N ☑ image Synonym

122 story N historia N ☑ ☑

019 strangling VF estrangular VF ☑ choke Synonym

024 supernatural adj. sobrenatural adj. ☑ ☑

072 syllables N sílabas N ☑ ☑

003 taciturn adj. taciturno adj. ☑ quiet Synonym

034 taciturn adj. taciturnos adj. ☑ silent Synonym

051 taciturn adj. taciturno adj. ☑ quiet Synonym

093 tempest N tempestad N ☑ thunderstorm Synonym

011 temple N templo N ☑ ☑

018 temple N templo N ☑ ☑

019 temple N templo N ☑ ☑

029 temple N templo N ☑ ☑

58

Segment TT Word TT Category ST Word ST Category Same category?

In both texts? Variant Alternative Alternative Category

033 temple N templo N ☑ ☑

095 temple N templo N ☑ ☑

097 temple N templo N ☑ ☑

114 temple N templo N ☑ ☑

123 temple N templo N ☑ ☑

144 terror N terror N ☑ ☑

009 tiger N tigre N ☑ ☑

090 tiger N tigre N ☑ ☑

093 tiger N tigre N ☑ ☑

122 time N tiempo N ☑ ☑

126 torment VF atormentarlo VF ☑ ☑ tormenting

115 total adj. total adj. ☑ ☑

077 touch VF tocaba VF ☑ ☑

092 trembling Adv. trémula adj. quivering Synonym

031 tribute N tributo N ☑ offerings Synonym

049 tribute N tributarias N ☑ were also given over to

Paraphrase

001 unanimous adj. unánime adj. ☑ encompassing Alternative word

005 uncontaminated adj. contaminado VF tainted Synonym

012 unhonored adj. honor N reverence Synonym

029 uninhabited adj. inhabitado adj. ☑ forsaken Alternative word

044 universe N universo N ☑ world Synonym

59

Segment TT Word TT Category ST Word ST Category Same category?

In both texts? Variant Alternative Alternative Category

101 universe N universo N ☑ ☑

119 universe N universo N ☑ world Synonym

117 unreal adj. irreal adj. ☑ ☑

050 vast adj. vasto adj. ☑ ☑

093 vehement adj. vehementes adj. ☑ violent Synonym

128 vertigo N vértigo N ☑ bewildering Alternative word

116 victory N victoria N ☑ triumph Synonym

004 violent adj. violento adj. ☑ Ø Omission

055 viscous adj. viscoso adj. ☑ sticky Alternative word

029 visible adj. visible adj. ☑ ☑

060 visions N visiones N ☑ ☑

090 vows N votos N ☑ prayers Alternative word

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Appendix B.2: Definite list of cognates present in Di Giovanni

Key: (adj.: adjective; Adv. adverb; N: noun; VF: verb form)

Segment TT Word TT Category ST Word ST Category Same category?

In both texts? Variant Alternative Alternative Category

120 absent adj. ausente adj. ☑ ☑

044 accepted VF aceptaban VF ☑ ☑

046 affection N afecto N ☑ ☑

072 all-powerful adj. poderoso adj. ☑ ☑ powerful

033 amphitheater N anfiteatro N ☑ ☑

036 anatomy N anatomía N ☑ ☑

078 angles N ángulos N ☑ ☑

144 appearance N apariencia N ☑ ☑

115 apprenticeship N aprendizaje N ☑ education Synonym

079 artery N arteria N ☑ ☑

002 bamboo N bambú N ☑ ☑

061 brief adj. breves adj. ☑ ☑

143 caressed VF acariciaron VF ☑ ☑

054 catastrophe N catástrofe N ☑ disaster Synonym

033 center N centro N ☑ ☑

043 certain adj. ciertas adj. ☑ ☑

113 certain adj. cierta adj. ☑ some Synonym

119 certain adj. cierta adj. ☑ somewhat Synonym

122 certain adj. ciertos adj. ☑ some Synonym

032 chaotic adj. caóticos adj. ☑ ☑

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Segment TT Word TT Category ST Word ST Category Same category?

In both texts? Variant Alternative Alternative Category

009 circular adj. circular adj. ☑ ☑

033 circular adj. circular adj. ☑ ☑

095 circular adj. circular adj. ☑ ☑

117 circular adj. circular adj. ☑ ☑

010 color N color N ☑ ☑

127 condition N condición N ☑ Ø Omission

056 confused VF confundió VF ☑ ☑

129 confusion N confusión N ☑ ☑

077 correcting VF corregirlo VF ☑ ☑ corrected

087 cosmogonies N cosmogonías N ☑ ☑

036 cosmography N cosmografía N ☑ ☑

093 creatures N criaturas N ☑ ☑

125 creatures N criaturas N ☑ ☑

140 crown VF coronar VF ☑ ☑ crown (N)

081 deliberately Adv. deliberadamente Adv. ☑ ☑

087 demiurges N demiurgos N ☑ ☑

137 destroyed VF destruidas VF ☑ ☑

089 destroying VF destruyó VF ☑ ☑ destroyed

032 dialectic adj. dialéctica adj. ☑ ☑ dialectical

127 discover VF descubriera VF ☑ ☑

078 distances N distancias N ☑ ☑

069 during Prep. durante Prep. ☑ ☑

121 ecstasy N éxtasis N ☑ ☑

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Segment TT Word TT Category ST Word ST Category Same category?

In both texts? Variant Alternative Alternative Category

088 elementary adj. elemental adj. ☑ ☑

055 emerged VF emergió VF ☑ ☑

082 envision VF visión N dreaming Alternative word

080 examination N examen N ☑ inspection Synonym

096 except Prep. excepto Prep. ☑ save (Prep.) Synonym

108 exist VF existirá VF ☑ ☑

058 explore VF explorar VF ☑ ☑

022 figs N higos N ☑ ☑

101 finally Adv. finalmente Adv. ☑ in the end Paraphrase

030 frugal adj. frugales adj. ☑ ☑

031 fruit N frutas N ☑ ☑

087 Gnostics N gnósticos N ☑ ☑

006 gray adj. gris adj. ☑ ☑

005 Greek N griego N ☑ ☑

024 guiding adj. guiaba VF led Synonym

049 hour N horas N ☑ ☑

103 hours N horas N ☑ ☑

074 human adj. humano adj. ☑ ☑

128 humiliation N humillación N ☑ ☑

144 humiliation N humillación N ☑ ☑

117 imagining VF imaginando VF ☑ ☑

113 impatient adj. impaciente adj. ☑ ☑

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Segment TT Word TT Category ST Word ST Category Same category?

In both texts? Variant Alternative Alternative Category

038 importance N importancia N ☑ ☑

024 impossible adj. imposible adj. ☑ ☑

042 imposters N impostores N ☑ ☑

065 initial adj. inicial adj. ☑ ☑

057 insomnia N insomnia N ☑ ☑

097 instructed VF instruído* VF ☑ ☑

043 intelligence N inteligencia N ☑ ☑

082 invoked VF invocó VF ☑ ☑

036 lectured VF lecciones N ☑

133 leopard's N leopardo N ☑ ☑

005 lepers N lepra N ☑ ☑ leprosy

077 limited VF limitaba VF ☑ only Paraphrase

075 lucid adj. lúcidas adj. ☑ brilliant Synonym

057 lucidity N lucidez N ☑ ☑

096 magic N mágicamente Adv. ☑ magically

123 magic adj. mágico adj. ☑ ☑ magical

088 magician N mago N ☑ sorcerer Synonym

100 magician N mago N ☑ sorcerer Synonym

124 magician N mago N ☑ sorcerer Synonym

130 magician N mago N ☑ sorcerer Synonym

138 magician N mago N ☑ sorcerer Synonym

127 mere adj. mero adj. ☑ ☑

134 metal N metal N ☑ iron Alternative

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Segment TT Word TT Category ST Word ST Category Same category?

In both texts? Variant Alternative Alternative Category

word

066 method N método N ☑ way Synonym

004 mountain N montaña N ☑ ☑

032 nature N naturaleza N ☑ Ø Omission

023 niche N nicho N ☑ ☑

123 north N norte N ☑ ☑ North

120 nourishment N nutría VF ☑ nourished

077 observing VF observarlo VF ☑ ☑ observed

097 ordered VF ordenó VF ☑ ☑

063 orders N orden N ☑ spheres Synonym

100 orders N órdenes N ☑ instructions Synonym

082 organs N órganos N ☑ ☑

016 pale adj. pálidos adj. ☑ ☑

135 panic N pánica adj. ☑ panicked

044 passively Adv. pasividad N ☑

115 peace N paz N ☑ ☑

063 penetrate VF penetre VF ☑ fathom Synonym

076 perceived VF percibía VF ☑ ☑

119 perceived VF percibía VF ☑ ☑ perceptions

070 perfect adj. perfecto adj. ☑ full Synonym

069 period N periodo N ☑ ☑

096 phantom N fantasma N ☑ ☑ phantasm

115 phantom N fantasma N ☑ ☑ phantasm

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Segment TT Word TT Category ST Word ST Category Same category?

In both texts? Variant Alternative Alternative Category

125 phantom N fantasma N ☑ ☑ phantasm

041 phantoms N fantasmas N ☑ ☑ phantasms

082 planet N planeta N ☑ ☑

072 planets N planetarios adj. ☑ planetary

103 pretext N pretexto N ☑ ☑

082 principal adj. principales adj. ☑ major Synonym

127 privilege N privilegio N ☑ ☑

053 progress N progreso N ☑ ☑

128 projection N proyección N ☑ ☑

117 prostrated VF prosternaba VF ☑ ☑ prostrate

079 pulmonary adj. pulmonar adj. ☑ ☑

024 purpose N propósito N ☑ goal Synonym

121 purpose N propósito N ☑ goal Synonym

097 pyramids N pirámides N ☑ ☑

040 real adj. real adj. ☑ ☑

026 reality N realidad N ☑ ☑

109 reality N realidad N ☑ ☑

044 reasonable adj. razonable adj. ☑ ☑

068 reasonable adj. razonable adj. ☑ fair Synonym

139 refuge N refugiarse VF ☑

094 revealed VF reveló VF ☑ ☑

097 rites N ritos N ☑ ☑

117 rites N ritos N ☑ ☑ rituals

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Segment TT Word TT Category ST Word ST Category Same category?

In both texts? Variant Alternative Alternative Category

093 rose N rosa N ☑ ☑

019 ruins N ruinas N ☑ ☑

117 ruins N ruinas N ☑ ☑

137 ruins N ruinas N ☑ ☑

002 sacred adj. sagrado adj. ☑ ☑

095 sacrifices N sacrificios N ☑ ☑

080 satisfied VF satisfizo VF ☑ made him proud Paraphrase

074 secret adj. secreto adj. ☑ ☑

130 secret adj. secretas adj. ☑ ☑

074 sex N sexo N ☑ ☑ sexless

131 signs N signos N ☑ ☑

083 skeleton N esqueleto N ☑ ☑

119 sounds N sonidos N ☑ ☑

122 story N historia N ☑ ☑

024 supernatural adj. sobrenatural adj. ☑ ☑

072 syllables N sílabas N ☑ ☑

011 temple N templo N ☑ ☑

018 temple N templo N ☑ ☑

019 temple N templo N ☑ ☑

029 temple N templo N ☑ ☑

033 temple N templo N ☑ ☑

095 temple N templo N ☑ ☑

097 temple N templo N ☑ ☑

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Segment TT Word TT Category ST Word ST Category Same category?

In both texts? Variant Alternative Alternative Category

114 temple N templo N ☑ ☑

123 temple N templo N ☑ ☑

144 terror N terror N ☑ ☑

009 tiger N tigre N ☑ ☑

090 tiger N tigre N ☑ ☑

093 tiger N tigre N ☑ ☑

122 time N tiempo N ☑ ☑

126 tormenting VF atormentarlo VF ☑ ☑ torment (VF)

115 total adj. total adj. ☑ ☑

077 touch VF tocaba VF ☑ ☑

101 universe N universo N ☑ ☑

117 unreal adj. irreal adj. ☑ ☑

050 vast adj. vasto adj. ☑ ☑

029 visible adj. visible adj. ☑ ☑

060 visions N visiones N ☑ ☑

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Appendix C: Questionnaire

READING EXPERIENCE QUESTIONNAIRE

1) 1) How clear did you perceive the text to be in terms of reading fluency (Please highlight an alternative):

a) Very Clear b) Relatively Clear c) Not Very Clear d) Extremely Unclear

2) 2) Did you have to reread any sentences or phrases in order to understand them or to form a coherent mental image of what was being narrated or described? If so, which sentences? Please highlight them in yellow as you read.

3) 3) Please answer the following questions about the sentences in question 2:

1. 1. Did any of the following factors influence your not having been able to understand the sentences in question 2? (Highlight one or more of the following alternatives)

a) Syntax b) Unknown Vocabulary c) Excess of words d) Complexity of Ideas

2. 2. Were there any words you were not familiar with? If so, which words? Please highlight them in green as you read.

3. 3. Were there any words the meaning of which you were unsure about? If so, which words? Please highlight them in blue as you read.

4) 4) Did you at any time have to stop and rest before continuing with your reading of the story? If so, how many times? Where? Please highlight this in red.

5) 5) Would you read this version of the story again for your personal enjoyment?

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a) Yes b) No

6) 6) In your opinion, did the story read like a translation?

a) Yes b) No

7) 7) Based on this story, do you feel motivated to read more of Borges' work?

a) Yes b) No

8) 8) Please write down any additional comments regarding your reading experience of this story.

Personal Information Questions

1) Major:

2) If your major is not literature or English, have you ever taken literature courses? Highlight your answer.

Yes No

3) How would you rate your level of reading comprehension?

Excellent Good Average Poor

4) Do you read literary texts for personal enjoyment on a regular basis?

Yes No

Thank you again for your help and cooperation.

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Appendix D: Letter to professors

Dear Professors:

I am an undergraduate student in the Translation Program of the University of Concepción in Concepción, Chile, and I am writing my undergraduate thesis under the supervision of Professor Lilian Gómez PhD. on the subject of translations into English of a short story by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.

The aim of my thesis is to qualitatively assess the “readability” of two English translations of Borges' short story The Circular Ruins, in terms of a sample readership consisting of higher education students who either study literature or have taken college-level literature courses at some point during their studies. In order to do this, I need to work with American students willing to read one of the translations and then answer a short questionnaire regarding their reading experience, as well as another brief questionnaire composed of personal information questions that will help me categorize the results. The text is approximately three pages long and both questionnaires should take no longer than 10-15 minutes to complete.

I am writing therefore to request your assistance in contacting American students who fulfill the sample requirements and who are willing to take part in the study, as the results would be extremely interesting to me, as well as helping me to obtain my Bachelor's Degree in Translatology.

As this is an undergraduate thesis, there is no intention of publishing it, either entirely or in part. In addition, any information obtained that could specifically identify any students taking part in the study will be strictly confidential and will not be accessed by anyone other than my supervising professor and myself.

I would like to thank you for the time you have taken to read this letter. If there is any additional information I can provide for you, please do not hesitate to write to my e-mail address: sankilling@udec.cl.

Sincerely,

Santiago Rafael Killing StringerUndergraduate Thesis CandidateTranslation and Interpreting ProgramUniversity of Concepción

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Appendix E: Letter to participants

Dear Sir or Madame,

I am an undergraduate student in the Translation programme of the University of Concepción in Chile and I am doing my undergraduate thesis on translations of Jorge Luís Borges into English. My goal is to study the way native English speakers with a high level of reading comprehension experience two different translations into English of J.L. Borges’ story Las Ruinas Circulares (The Circular Ruins) and compare the results with an analysis of both target texts in relation to the source text.

It is therefore that I extend this invitation to take part in the survey by reading one of the translations and subsequently completing a questionnaire designed to assess your reading experience in terms of the text’s overall readability and naturalness.

Your participation is important as it will allow me to evaluate two target texts of a well-known story by one of the twentieth century’s most recognized authors of fiction from the point of view of the target audience/readership, an element which has not been taken enough into account in the study of target text quality in translation. This comparison is also important as one of the translations was carried out in collaboration with the author himself and is yet at the moment out of print.

As this is an undergraduate thesis, there is no intention of it being published either partly or in its entirety. You may rest assured that any information obtained during this study which could specifically identify you will be kept strictly confidential and will not be accessed by anyone other than those involved directly in the research

The story should take between 20-25 minutes to read, and the following survey should take no more than 15 minutes, giving for a total time of approximately 40 minutes.

Sincerely,

Santiago Rafael Killing StringerUndergraduate Thesis CandidateTranslation and Interpreting ProgramUniversity of Concepción

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