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Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Translation Diary, Entry #9.6

But sometimes it is about the vocabulary.

I have just translated the following sentence:

En un relato perfecto, aunque no muy celebrado, La busca de Averroes, Borges da noticia de un estupor semejante.

as

In Averroes' Search, a perfect if underrated short story, Borges makes his readers aware of a similar phenomenon.

Literally, it describes a stupor or enchantment or sense of admiration similar to the one described in the previous paragraph, a stupor or enchantment that is described with words like blithe and insouciant. The word phenomenon on its own doesn't necessarily indicate any of those concepts, except — except insofar as it is related to phenomenal, the sort of thing that either a stupor or an admirable quality is, and is redolent with the reverberations (to my ear, anyway, and I am undertaking this project on the strength and value of my ear) of phantasm, the sort of thing that can produce a stupor.

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