As I will talk about in another post, I have started re-reading El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha.
This one is for all my bookish buddies:
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| My Well Annotated Editions |
...he spent whole days and nights over his books; and thus with little sleeping and much reading, his brains dried up to such a degree that he lost the use of his reason." (Walter Starkie)
...he spent his nights reading from disk till dawn and his day reading from sunrise to sunset, and so with too little sleep and too much reading his brains dried up, causing him to lose his mind. (Edith Grossman)
...que se le pasaban las noches leyendo de claro en claro, y los días de turbio en turbio: y así, del poco dormir y del mucho leer se le secó el celebro, de manera que vino a perder el juicio. (Cervantes)
So, my book - loving friends, it seems we are warned: our brains are going to dry up and we are going to lose either our minds or our reason -- or both.
And yes, two translations of the same work, because we are lovers of words and attuned in our own reading to the authors choice of words. The same goes for the art of translating. There is no such thing as an exact translation; there are always choices to be made. Does he lose his mind or his reason; do both words have the same meaning? I suppose that is why I have so many different translations in my house.
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