“Upward, beyond the onstreaming, it mooned” and things lost in translation

(Originally posted on cohost, RIP) I love translations, and I love translations of translations, and I love translations of translations of nonsense. That makes “Upward, behind the onstreaming, it mooned” from Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius one of my favorite little lines in Borges’ work. The relevant excerpt explaining it is here – English translation by James Irby (I think) and Spanish is of course…