کتاب ابداع مورل

Thanks so much for your feedback! I will answer your questions in inverse order.

I have been to many places in the world where you need a brief medical examination (and accompanying certificate) to be allowed to use a public pool; a knowledge of such locales likely influenced Yates's phrasing. The pun with "revisación" -- and Borges adored puns -- is the same with "review": in other words, their comments are as much about getting her name spelled correctly as her getting ogled by the doctor (a "medical review"); there is also the implication that they cannot get her name right because it is Jewish. Hurley's translation misses the medical angle entirely.

Your supposition on what Emma feared Elsa would say is correct. Borges's Spanish has such a Germanic feel to it (owing to a British grandmother, as is well-known, English was the first language he mastered) that verbatim translations often work sensationally well. Here is one where a mild exaggeration echoes grandly in both tongues. Then again, perhaps it is no exaggeration, as the whole story is about a daughter's love for her innocent father.

Thank you again for your comments.

Best wishes,
Hadi

A difference in interpretation (of the word revisación): Se inscribieron; tuvo que repetir y deletrear su nombre y su apellido; tuvo que festejar las bromas vulgares que comentan la revisación. Your translation: “They signed in; she had to spell and repeat her name and surname and pretend to enjoy the vulgar jokes which accompanied the review.” Andrew Hurley translates, along the same lines: “They joined; she had to repeat and then spell her name; she had to applaud the vulgar jokes that accompanied the struggle to get it correct.” But Donald Yates, in an older translation, wrote: “They signed their names; she had to repeat and spell out her first and her last name, she had to respond to the vulgar jokes that accompanied the medical examination.” A medical examination for a swimming pool? That cannot possibly be correct, can it? :)

Thanks very much for sending this! Please make sure that you correct the reference: my last name is Deeb, my middle name is Kamil. So the translation should be credited either to Hadi Deeb, or Hadi Kamil Deeb.

Thanks very much again!

Best,
Hadi

the paper is published now! You can download the Preprint-PDF under the follwoing link:

https://academic.oup.com/scan/article/doi/10.1093/scan/nsx069/3778354/The-emotional-power-of-poetry-neural-circuitry

Thanks again for allowing me to use your translation!

Best,
Eugen

Best,
Eugen

PS: The paper will be published in about two months in SCAN (Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience).