Don Quixote

Translator’s Introduction

• “So the translation of Don Quixote does turn out to be logically impossible after all. The translator must both make his text modem and keep it old; make it English and keep it Spanish. There can be no coherence or consistency. But this doesn’t matter. All creative literature exists as a defiance of rational logic. There’s nothing more illogical or irrational than a metaphor, saying that something is something else. Translation is only impossible as any worthwhile enterprise is impossible: impossible to perform with the perfection that we desire. What translators must do, like modern knights errant, is to come as close as we can to the impossible goal.”