This week’s story is a translation of a work by Jorge Luis Borges. Translations fascinate me. I always wonder how much meaning is lost by changing languages. And meaning does change with new tongues because thinking changes in new languages. You know you are fluent in a new language because you start thinking in the new language and not just translating from your native tongue to a new one. Language guides how thoughts are formed in your brain. English, for example, is a problem-solving language. I don’t have the research handy, but even the difference between the succinct Anglo and the more robust Saxon (or is it the other way around?) is the difference between help and assistance.

Maybe I should find the information and write a real post about it rather than trying to remember a book I read about 20 years ago. But it will make a great mini book review, so I should find it, at least for that.

My point being that this was a great story about a man trying to avoid assassination, unsuccessfully, in the second world war and highlights a city to his handlers by killing a man with the same name.
I think I will have a better handle on the translation thing when my French is better, and I can read books that I have previously read in English to compare the translation to the original text.