When is a translation not a translation?

A translation's not a translation when the words and meaning have been deliberately tinkered with to the extent that it becomes a new work of fiction with translator as author. This is exactly what happened with Mille et une Nuits. 

In 1704 French Orientalist Antoine Galland started to publish Mille et une Nuits. This text was a "translation" of various manuscripts that he had collected during his travels which had sought to preserve oral folktales traditional in India, Persia, Iraq, Syria and Egypt. The problem was that he didn't just translate them; he did a lot of tinkering too. (There's also a question about the suitability of transmitting the meaning of oral folktales through manuscripts but that's a story for another night). He made clear choices about what was left in, what was omitted and what was exaggerated to make sure that Mille et une Nuits would be suitable for and popular with his early 18th Century European readership.

The language shifted from folktale coarse to a stiff and regal French and Galland tried to save the ladies some blushes - explicit reference to the Queen's sexual infidelity was removed from the frame tale.

But the tinkering which has had an impact that has buffeted through the last three centuries is his propensity to dwell on European stereotypes of the East. Galland palpitated with excitement at imagery of harems and retributive violence that made up his imagined Orient - even when he travelled he seemed fixated by instances of sensuality and cruelty. The frame story itself has just about every reductive European image of the East poured into it - a despotic King is ruling a decadent court and sleeping with a different virgin every night before cruelly killing them.

In his introduction, Galland assured his readers that the Orient of Mille et une Nuits was "faithful and realistic". And presto - Galland's made up world became the reality for readers.

Stereotypes reinforce themselves with repetition and the Mille et une Nuits lit the touch paper for an Arabian Nights mania that swept through Europe and every writer that read the "translation" and repeated the false imagery in his or her own work compounded this invented East.

But today's imagery is more realistic, right? It would seem from this Ray Harryhausen quote that Galland's "translation" is still having it's wicked way in Hollywood "When you are making a picture about the Arabian Nights, there are certain things that you are going to have which are repetitous like a sword and a turban".