Herman Melville’s short story "bartleby, the scrivener: a story of Wall Street" and the analysis of Jorge Luis Borges’s translation

Abstract

This research project intends to analyze the influence of culture in a translation. Two texts were chosen: Bartleby by Herman Melville and its translation made by Jorge Luis Borges. To carry out the objective of the project through a comparative analysis of both texts, five categories of analysis were established: conciseness, translation techniques and grammatical structure of the English language compared to the grammatical structure of the Spanish language in the direct speeches, register, and vocabulary. The results corroborated the idea that there are no texts that can be transferred to a target text in the exact same form as it is in the source text. Firstly, results showed that the translation was not loyal to the source text in the number of words, paragraphs and phrases. Secondly, the techniques used by the translator provoked structural and cultural changes in the target text. Afterwards, the grammatical structure of the direct speeches showed a necessary change produced because of the language structure itself. Consequently, this change lead to the analysis of the next category: the register, produced by the use of the formal and informal language in the direct speeches which changed in the translation. Finally, two specific words from the target text established a cultural change in the text because of its origin. The analysis of these categories showed precise changes in the structure, expressions, form, characters, personalities and mainly culture. These changes can show the influence of the translator’s culture on the text.