This volume reevaluates and overturns the assumed hierarchical relationship between original text and translation with an approach that places source and target texts as equal. Combining the translation strategy of Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, the theoretical approaches of Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault, and the exponents of Possible World Theory, the author examines Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Franz Kafka’s short stories in detail. Rather than considering what may be lost in translation, this study focuses on why we insist on maintaining a border between the textual phenomena of “translation” and “original” and argues for a mutually enriching dialogue between two texts.

Introduction: The Universe as a Library of Translated Worlds

1. Myths of Margins and Pseudo-Truths: What Is a Translation?

2. Many Possible Worlds of Originals and Translations

3. The Pitfalls of Authenticity: Collaborative Authors and Self-Translators

4. Orlando in Argentina: Who is Reading My Translation?

5. The Double Standard of Fidelity: The Malaise of A Room of One’s Own

6. Expressionist Transformations and the Laws of Perfection: Borges Translates Kafka

7. Putting the (Textual) World in Order

Conclusion: Translation Means Change