Argentinian writer and polyglot Jorge Luis Borges—he spoke several European languages, as well as Old Norse—translated Virginia Woolf's Orlando (1928) in 1937, nine years after its initial publication in the UK. Published on the initiative of Victoria Ocampo in her publishing house Sur in Buenos Aires, Borges's translation was very popular in Spanish-speaking countries, to the extent that it was not re-translated until 1993 (Leone 223). However, the text has been interpreted as being contrary to what Woolf might have had in mind: feminist readings of Borges's text have of ten focused on passages where the Spanish version does not fully cater for a feminist perspective, or even contradicts it.

I am going to recast this debate in order to investigate whether Borges's translation of Orlando posed (or still poses) a threat to feminist readings of Woolf's text. I will describe some differences between the English and Spanish language system which might trigger problems in translation, and analyse how Borges's solutions have been and can be interpreted. Further, I would like to return to feminist criticism, in the form of feminist Translation Studies, in order to examine how this enables a reading of the translated Orlando which is based on the presumed equality (rather than a hierarchy) of the original text and its translation.