Robert Stevens

This story is another literary review, but this time of an author that does not and has never existed, Pierre Menard. It starts with a list of his previous works, along with various credits to selected European Nobility. The story goes on to cover how Menard became obsessed with the translation of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Rather than just translate the story, he decides to “recreate” it, line for line.

Instead of retelling the story as Cervantes had originally written it, he set the story in “the land of Carmen” and made the story much richer in his translation that it had ever been originally.
This, at least, is the opinion of the reviewer. In reality, the entire translation is merely a line-for-line reprint of Cervantes’ story. This is shown in the quotations between Menard and Cervantes in the review. The reviewer however, believes that Menard’s version has become richer simply because it is a reproduction, and the fact that he can reproduce the language of Cervantes so far in the future from him that is a major reason why.

The Italians have a phrase: "traduttore, traditore" which means “Translator, Traitor.” It basically means that when a work is translated, the original meaning is lost, and thus, the work becomes useless. I think this phrase has some meaning here because the reviewer is trying to paint Menards translated version of Don Quixote as better than Cervantes’ original work. He does not know what Cervantes was thinking when the story was written, or what messages he was necessarily trying to convey, so in essence, Menards translation has distorted and lost the original purpose of the story and replaced it with another meaning.