“The Translators of The Thousand and One Nights”, 1936 (; backlinks):
[18pg Borges essay on translations of the collection of Arab fairytales The Thousand and One Nights: each translator—Galland, Lane, Burton, Littmann, Mardrus—criticized the previous translator by creation.]
At Trieste, in 1872, in a palace with damp statues and deficient hygienic facilities, a gentleman on whose face an African scar told its tale-Captain Richard Francis Burton, the English consul-embarked on a famous translation of the Quitab alif laila ua laila, which the roumis know by the title The Thousand and One Nights. One of the secret aims of his work was the annihilation of another gentleman (also weather-beaten, and with a dark and Moorish beard) who was compiling a vast dictionary in England and who died long before he was annihilated by Burton. That gentleman was Edward Lane, the Orientalist, author of a highly scrupulous version of The Thousand and One Nights that had supplanted a version by Galland. Lane translated against Galland, Burton against Lane; to understand Burton we must understand this hostile dynasty.