Reddit reviews Borges el memorioso : conversaciones de Jorge Luis Borges con Antonio Carrizo (Spanish Edition)

I like this translation better than all three posted in the linked article. I think "El Ferrocarril" is closer to the train than the railroad, but that's just a matter of opinion. The use of the definite article for "La ballena", "La caldera", "Los bastos" is for rhythm purposes, probably. I remember a book called "Borges el memorioso" that is a transcription from a radio show. The host would read aloud texts for Borges to comment on them. When they read this very snippet, a guest, Roy Bartholomew, said that the whole enumeration sounded very good ("la euritmia", he said). Borges replied that he chose carefully those words to make a chaotic enumeration that had a secret, euphonic order. Out of curiosity, he also commented that Luis Melián Lafinur was his uncle, and that, again, "caldera" was the kettle. Why would he say that to an audience that spoke Spanish? Because "caldera", for the people living in Buenos Aires, did not mean kettle either. Borges said "caldera es la pava": he made the translation for not Uruguayan people, and we're talking about a country that is considered closer culturally to Buenos Aires than most provinces of Argentina, so it's perfectly understandable that all three translators missed it. The same happens with "manta de carne": Borges said that he heard it in a slaughterhouse in Salto Grande (Uruguay), and that he chose it because it was an awful expression. Most of the ornament for that story is local color for Uruguay: think on those thirty-three Gauchos, but also Luis Melián Lafinur, who was Uruguayan, just like Agustín de Vedia; El Negro Timoteo was edited in Uruguay; Olimar is a river, guess where: in the Treinta y Tres Department of Uruguay. Probably Borges heard "manta de carne", and treasured it as an odd Uruguayan keepsake, and later used it to add more Uruguayan feel to the story. The final mysterious word there is "La ballena", that nobody would say it is especially an Uruguayan animal. There was an Uruguayan writer called Antonio Lussich who wrote a famous poem called "Los Tres Gauchos Orientales" (The Three Uruguayan Gauchos); such poem was considered by Borges the predecessor to the most famous Gaucho work in Argentina, "El Martín Fierro." Lussich, in 1896, eventually bought all the land from a peninsula called "Punta Ballena", where he established himself and where he was finally buried. I am sure Borges knew this and used it in the story.

Now back to those thirty-three gauchos, in "On writing" Borges and Di Giovanni discuss briefly the solution they used for "El otro duelo", where there is a dog called "Treinta y Tres" but in Spanish there is no further explanation for the name, as people is supposed to be familiar with that. Di Giovanni was reading the translation:

> DI GIOVANNI: Silveira was very fond of the animal, and had named him Treinta y Tres...
>
> BORGES: Treinta y Tres stands for the thirty-three heroes of Uruguay’s history, who attempted to free their country from Brazilian rule, and succeeded. They crossed the River Uruguay to their native land, only thirty-three of them, and now Uruguay is an independent republic. I know many of their descendants.

So in the translation they wrote "...had named him Treinta y Tres after Uruguay’s thirty-three founding fathers".

Well, sorry for the long text but I thought I could add more context to the fragment you translated. As I said before, your translation is better than those in the original post; I would only try to find a better meat cut for "manta de carne". Unlike beef shank, "manta de carne" has no bone in it, I think it's closer to flank steak.