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www.freetranslation.com interprets Penguin Classics (for Borges) (2009)
text installation

Taking initial inspiration from Jorge Luis Borges’ story ‘The Library of Babel’, Hugh Dichmont translated the final page of several works of American and English fiction (taken from Penguin’s ‘Classics’ range) into Spanish and back to English several times, using a free online translation website. Revealing the fragility and complexities of language, this process results in an erosion of meaning, through which these seminal texts lose their integrity.

Dichmont’s understanding of Borges’ writing -which often explores ideas of degradation of meaning- has itself has been mediated by a translator’s interpretation of the original Spanish text, and this piece, in part, seeks to satirise this poetic irony.

The last images on this page show a detail from one line of sheets of the installation, depicting the changing language.

Exhibition view of work during Fictions,
Bonington Gallery, March/April 2009






Comparative details of work (cropped)