The Lottery of Babylon

Among the short stories in Jorge Luis Borges' anthology Ficciones is "La lotería en Babilonia", which, in my edition, contains the following passage:

[....] No se publica un libro sin alguna divergencia entre cada uno de los ejemplares. Los escribas prestan juramento secreto de omitir, de interpolar, de variar. También se ejerce la mentira indirecta.

I am also in possession of a literal if inadequate translation ("The Babylon Lottery") by Anthony Kerrigan, who translates the passage as follows:

[....] No book is ever published without some variant in each copy. Scribes take a secret oath to omit, interpolate, vary.

The incommensurability of the lengths of these passages is not an error of mine; in both versions, these passages terminate their respective paragraphs, and the subsequent paragraph concerns a different topic. Evidently Kerrigan's omission is more demonstrative of the idea expressed in the original than a more faithful translation would be.

I am reluctant to ascribe to Anthony Kerrigan the imaginative decision of this significantly-placed infidelity, for the story had already been published in one or two other places before Ficciones was compiled, and the multiple manifestations of the story need not have been identical. Whether the credit is due to Kerrigan, or to Borges, or to the inscrutable labyrinth of chance, is immaterial; the fact is that the infinite game of chance described in this story is no longer confined to an imaginary Babylon.