Abstracts
Simona Anselmi
Self-translating into and from Italian
One of the most intriguing and significant aspects of self-translation studies to investigate in general, and particularly within the dynamics of diversity and inclusion, is the motivation or telos behind the authors’ decision to translate their own works into another language rather than entrusting professional translators with it. After giving an overview of the most common motivations underlying self-translators’ decisions, which are often concomitant and change throughout an author’s life, this paper focuses on the self-translational scenario in Italy, whose richness, as Rainier Grutman (2018) points out, begs to be explored more fully. It will look into the reasons why and the goals for which authors most typically translate into and from Italian, dwelling first on neodialectal poets translating into Italian their poems originally written in dialect, for whom self-translation is primarily a way to express and preserve the difference between language and dialect. Then it will focus on authors migrating from Italy or, as is increasingly the case, into Italy, like the Eritrean-born Ribka Sibhatu or Shirin Ramzanali Fazel, of Somali and Pakistani origin, for whom self-translation is most fundamentally a way of reshaping the colonial tradition and accounting for their transcultural and multilingual identity.
Maria Alice G. Antunes
Migration and Self-translation: the Case of a Brazilian Linguist in universities in the USA
Recent data from the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MRE, 2021) shows that there are 4,215,800 Brazilians living abroad nowadays. Of these 46.06% reside in North America alone. Voluntary migration from Brazil, caused by severe economic crises, began in the mid-1980s. Most migrants chose the USA to live and work in order to be a long way from poor labor relations, social inequality, and violence that arose from economic stagnation (GOZA, 1994; LESSA, 2009). Here I present the results of a case study of a Brazilian linguist, aged 58, who left Brazil in the 1980s largely because of the economic factor. She took her master and doctorate degrees in a university in the USA, she writes academic articles and (self)translates texts from/into her mother tongue or from/into the foreign language and claims that (self)translation is an integral part of her professional and personal life. She is thus an agent of translation for she has gained the ability to translate (CRONIN, 2006). This case study was carried out by means of a semi-structured videoconferencing interview and e-mails used to clarify statements made during the interview. The interview was organized around four themes: a (brief) personal account of the migration of the linguist and her family to the US; descriptions of the beginning of her career at university; her academic writing process; the place of translation and self-translation in her academic and personal life. My analysis followed several previous studies. Firstly, following Goza (1994) and Lessa (2009), who describe how South America lost residents and how the developed countries in North America and Europe, in particular, saw their population of migrants expand in the 1980s and 1990s. The second source was Balbachevsky and Couto e Silva (2011), who analyse the active scientific diaspora to the USA, but whose exact size cannot be described. Thirdly, Bennett (2015: 10), who discusses “signs of language change” in Portuguese and the move towards a loss in the particular characteristics of a culture as well as standardization of academic language. Fourthly, Polezzi (2012), who examines the crucial ways migrant writers exercise their agency. In addition, Chan (2016), who regards academic writing in one’s second language as self-translation, since writers go through a process of mental translation when they write a text in a language other than their own. Finally, Antunes (2022), who presents a revision of Verena Jung’s typology of academic self-translation. The analyses of the semi-structured interview shows that the economic crises and stagnation affected the interviewed linguist in both direct and indirect ways. Her career in three different universities in the USA can be seen as successful. The professional linguist can be regarded as an agent of self-translation, since, when she writes she consciously and mentally translates from and into one of the languages (Portuguese or English). The scholar argues that her writing style in Portuguese has changed and she believes this is due to constant reading and writing in English. The Brazilian linguist highlights other “translation” practices in her life as a migrant in the US.
Nadzieja Bąkowska
The Case of Maria Kuncewiczowa: Self-translation and Autobiographical Narrative
The self-translating activity of Maria Kuncewiczowa (1895-1989) lasts over a quarter of a century (1939-1968) and it is strictly connected to her migrant experiences. Kuncewiczowa leaves Poland in 1939, first she stays in France, then in England, and finally in the United States. She returns to Poland only in 1968. Kuncewiczowa’s self-translation production is bidirectional (from Polish to English and vice versa) and includes four texts: Klucze, Thank you for the rose, Gaj oliwny, and Tristan 1946. As for today, only the self-translation of the play Thank you for the rose has become the subject of a detailed case study.
The first work that marks Kuncewiczowa’s overcoming of monolingualism are her memoirs entitled Klucze, where she recounts her escape from Poland with the outbreak of the second world war, and depicts her own memory and image of Poland. Kuncewiczowa writes the first chapter of the book in French during her stay in France. Then she continues to work on the text in Polish. The book, written between 1940 and 1942, was published first in Polish in 1943 and then in English in 1946 with the title The Keys: A Journey Through Europe at War. Kuncewiczowa translates her diary into English in order to introduce herself to a new literary, linguistic and cultural environment. Initially, the work was supposed to be translated into English by Harry Stevens, but the author’s interference was so massive that Stevens couldn’t accept it, resigned, and Kuncewiczowa completed the translation by herself.
The article aims to present a textual and translational analysis of Kuncewiczowa’s diary (comparison of the Polish text and the English self-translation). In this respect, special attention will be paid to the relationship between the self-translation and the diary as a form of life and identity narrative, in order to formulate more general conclusions about the author-translator trajectory in the broader context of the diversity and inclusion dynamics, the negotiation of the hybrid self/identity that takes place in the course of self-translation of autobiographical narratives, as well as of the literary citizenship and the concept of “world citizenship” coined by Kuncewiczowa herself.
Sabina Ciminari and Elisa Segnini
Trajectories of self-translation in Alba de Céspedes: incomparability and untranslatability
The case of Alba de Céspedes (1911-1997), an Italian-Cuban writer who chose to publish directly in French from the end of the 1960s, has been the subject of several studies, mostly focused on the novel Sans autre lieu que la nuit (Le Seuil, 1973), self-translated for Mondadori in 1976 with the title Nel Buio della notte (Ciminari 2005 and 2009; Bramati, 2020). De Céspedes’ poetic writing in Italian and French has however not yet been studied. This paper takes up the challenge and explores issues of self-translation, censorship and untranslatability in the making of the collection Chansons des filles de mai, dedicated to the Parisian '68 and published in France by Editions du Seuil (1968) and in Italian self-translation in 1970 by Mondadori (Le ragazze di maggio). As in the case of Sans autre lieu que la nuit, the choice of French was motivated by biographical reasons (de Céspedes had chosen to leave Italy and move to Paris) but also by a detachment from the public figure around which, up to the 1960s, she had built her identity as an author. Claudio Galderisi has suggested that writing in a non-native language can become a way to reinvent oneself in maturity, and that it often coincides with considerable stylistic experimentation (2011). This is precisely the case of Alba de Céspedes, who grew up speaking Italian, French and Spanish, but was a basically monolingual author until she moved to France. In Chansons des filles de mai, de Céspedes refers to the ‘68 movements in terms of ‘revolution’, firmly convinced that '68 is a global experience destined to challenge Western capitalism. The close link that the writer perceives between the events of 1968 and the Cuban Revolution is highlighted by the numerous references to Cuba, and by the fact that the poems feature Cuban women among the protagonists (Ciminari 2020). At the same time as she was working on the Italian edition, which the author tried in vain to publish with a publisher other than Mondadori, de Céspedes planned a Cuban edition. She identified the ideal translator in Heberto Padilla, an anti-conformist Cuban poet and translator closely monitored by the government and already at the centre of numerous controversies. In a letter dated October 25, 1970, Padilla declares himself enthusiastic about the poems, but notes that he has not yet received approval from the Instituto del libro, and speaks of his condition as that of an ‘apestado’ (leper) (FM 90, 1). As a tribute, he encloses the translation of the poem ‘La peur’ (fear). It is a highly symbolic gesture that expresses at the same time the desire and the impossibility of a collaboration. For de Céspedes, given the continuity she perceives between the French and Cuban events, the publication of the collection of poems in Cuba seems a natural outcome. Padilla’s letter instead suggests instead another version of the story, in which the untranslatability of the collection (the Cuban edition will never be approved by the government) is closely related to the ‘incomparability’ of the Cuban Revolution. A similar dynamic also conditioned the following novel, Con grande amore, a multilingual text, ‘born in translation’ (Walkovitzt 2015), and conceived from the outset in three editions (French, Italian, Cuban), that would only be published posthumously, in 2011.
Ellen Corbett
Spectrums within Spectrums: Self-Translation as Aspect of Broader Translation Practices in Irish-to-EnglishTranslation in Ireland
Self-translation in the Irish literary tradition is no new foray. Despite the most researched (migrant) self-translator, Samuel Beckett, coming from Ireland, the other language in this tradition, the Irish language, and those using the language have been largely overlooked. Self- translation has also been practiced by Irish-language poets; minority-language speakers living, working, and writing in a majority English-speaking country. Definitions of self-translation tend to embody Beckett’s version of self-translation, that is, self-translation in its simplest form as the translation of a work from one language into another by the original author with no added involvement by other agents. Yet can self-translation in Ireland be so neatly confined to these parameters? In reality, as will be discussed in this paper, this practice is not so exclusive and, instead, frequently engages a diversity of agents.
Self-translation has taken on multiple roles in the writing and editing processes of Irish-language poets on the island of Ireland. For Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, one of the foremost Irish-language poets of the modern era, self-translation was firstly a feasible option for gaining a larger readership and being included in the wider Irish literary canon at the beginning of her career, and was subsequently used to create cribs of her work to then pass on to her translators andcollaborators. Gearóid Mac Lochlainn—the Belfast-born writer whose poetry examines culture, heritage, language, and life on the Falls Road at the height of the Troubles—initially translated his own poetry, but then collaborated with poet and academic, Frank Sewell, to create English translations for his collection Sruth Teangacha/Stream of Tongues (2002). In the process, Mac Lochlainn edited and refined his own work, even omitting lines from the English-language translation with the final and finished translation left at his discretion.
When do these practices, broadly categorised as self-translation, become collaborative translation, or even trans-editing (i.e. any and all editorial activity that goes beyond what is considered common practice within translation)? Can we, or should we, pigeonhole these methods of engagement with translation into one box and one box alone? Or should we approach engagement with translation, rather than as a range of options, but as a sliding scale?
Based on an ongoing PhD project, this paper proposes that Irish-language poets who engage with self-translation do so using a diverse range of approaches. It will also build on prior discussions in this panel and on existing scholarship on the intersections between translation, self-translation, and collaboration, to argue that these practices are part of a much larger spectrum of translational engagement, which spans from refusal to translate, to self-translation, tocollaborative translation, and to trans-editing and ‘free’ translation.
Anthony Cordingley
When is self-translation global literature?
From Pascale Casanova’s La république mondiale des lettres (1999) to Rebecca Walkowitz’s Born-translated (2015), scholars of global literature have used self-translators and the concept of self-translation to advance their own theories. I will begin this paper by surveying the different uses or ends of self-translation within global literature studies. If certain interpretations of self-translation feel foreign to some working within self-translation studies, these theories compel us to ask, “When is self-translation global literature?” Perhaps more perplexing is this question’s corollary, “When is self-translation not global literature?” In addressing each of these questions, I will challenge self-translation’s conceptualization from the global north, within both global literature studies and self-translation studies. I will show the effects of decentring the discourses of self-translation by offering perspectives from different Asian language groups, and in particular, by considering a variety of self-translators writing within Sinophone contexts, which range from the cosmopolitan authors of Republican China to diasporic writers of Chinese heritage in Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and western, typically Anglophone, nations.
Arianna Dagnino
Seeking inclusion through “perceived” self-amputation: an Italian-Canadian case study
Whether due to migration or exile, it is not uncommon for writers who have developed bilingual proficiency or translingual writing practices to self-translate their work in the official language/s of their country of destination/adoption (Gentes and Van Bolderen, 2021; Grutman, 2018). The reasons for such a choice are manifold, yet one of the most common is the desire to become an active and recognized member of the local literary scene (Dagnino, 2019 and 2021). This might be perceived as a self-imposed linguistic excision, in which the mother tongue or the idiom in which one has so far expressed oneself in literary terms is renounced in favour of an adopted language (Hoffman 1998, Fanetti 2005, Krause 2016). This self-amputation may also be interpreted as a pernicious and subtle form of linguistic (neo)colonialism and even “betrayal” when the shift happens from a minority language to a majority language (Whyte 2022, Bandia 2016). However, other scholars support the idea that self-translation does not involve “renouncing” the native language since both versions exist, more often than not, as autonomous texts (Cordingley, 2013). In particular, Rainier Grutman (2011, 2017) theorizes that “supra-self-translation” can be seen and has often been used as a tool for individual self-promotion in a “larger” language context (even when this may happen at the expense of the original minority language context). In this paper, taking as a case study the self-translation of my work from Italian into English in a Canadian context, I will show how for a migrant writer autotranslation and, in particular, “supra-self-translation” can become a successful means of inclusion in the local literary context and an augmentation – rather than an amputation – of one’s writing capabilities, literary performance and cultural identity (Van Bolderen, 2021).
Margherita Dore
Standing Up Against Ableism. The Cathartic and Persuasive Power of Self-Translated Humour
Stand-up comedy is a versatile way of performing humour. Comedians skilfully attempt to gear the audience’s cognitive and practical (dis)engagement through jab and punch lines (Attardo 2001), gags, etc. Apart from dealing with light-hearted topics, stand-up comedy can stir debate, influence the audience’s beliefs, attitude and behaviour, or even instil change, which can be short- or even long-term. To this end, comedians may make use of personal testimonials or biographical events and, in some particular cases, they self-translate their routines and humorous lines into another language. This paper discusses in interesting case in point in this sense. Marsha De Salvatore is an Italian American comedian living in Italy and she self-translates her one-woman shows from English into Italian, which talk about her chronic illness (i.e., Beta-Thalassemia Major) and her life in Italy as a “half-expatriate” (Dore 2022a, 2022b).
The textual analysis of the original English scripts and the Italian scripts De Salvatore self-translated show that she consciously mixes tragedy and comedy (Double 2017) to defy stereotypes about sick people (a.k.a. ableism, Nario-Redmond 2019: 6), win over her audience and persuade them to donate blood, thus proving the cathartic and persuasive power of stand-up comedy. Also, the comparative analysis proves that, while the scripts in English are mainly constructed on the opposition between English and Italian (and Calabrian) language and culture, De Salvatore’s self-translated scripts recast this opposition between Italian and Calabrian, albeit retaining some English since her audience normally has a good grasp of it. The use of a dialect helps the comedian to involve the target audience and win their affiliation.
Marcos Eymar
Self-translating in-betweenness: from Life on the hyphen (1994) to Vidas en vilo (2000) de Gustavo Pérez-Firmat
Self-translation studies have mainly focused on narrative, theatrical, poetic and autobiographic texts. However, the self-translation of essays poses specific challenges in terms of finding the appropriate strategies to render theoretical concepts intelligible in the author’s other language. Such an endeavor turns out to be particularly demanding when the text itself deals with the very bicultural and bilingual condition from which self-translation stems.
Pérez-Firmat (1953) is one of the leading EEUU Hispanic poets and academics of his time. Born in Cuba, he fled to the States with his family shortly after the Cuban Revolution. Both his poetry and his essays, written in English, in Spanish and sometimes in a combination of the two, are mainly concerned with exile and cultural and linguistic displacement. In his influential Life on the hyphen Pérez-Firmat offers an encompassing portrait of what he calls the “1.5 generation of Cuban-Americans” which are “born in Cuba and made in the EEUU” (Firmat 1994). In his 2000 Spanish self-translation, the author faces the difficulty not only of adapting the abundant cultural references of the original to a Hispanic reader, but also of expressing in his mother-tongue an experience of in-betweenness which was originally lived and theorized about in English. The change in the titles of the two versions sums up this predicament: since the orthographic sign that acts as a symbol of hybridity in “Cuban-American” is absent from the Spanish “cubanoamericano”, Firmat replaces the “hyphen” of the original by an alliteration (vida/vilo) which can be translated as “Lives in suspension”. In the preface to the Spanish version Pérez-Firmat acknowledges that he has try hard “to translate literally all the English concepts” though he hasn’t always been able to do so (G. Pérez Firmat, Vidas en vilo, Madrid: Editorial Colibrí, 2000, p. 13). In spite of this effort, the author also states that he hasn’t pretended to conceal the derivative nature of Vidas en vilo, for, precisely, the Cuban-American culture who lies at the center of his work results from “a desire for translation” (G. Pérez Firmat, Vidas en vilo, Madrid: Editorial Colibrí, 2000, p. 14).
This two-fold approach to self-translation, which combines mainstream target-oriented translation with “re-creation” (A. Ferraro, R. Grutman (ed.), L’Autotraduction littéraire. Perspectives théoriques, Paris : Classiques Garniers, 2016, p. 10) shows that self-translating a bicultural original is not easier than self-translating a less hybrid one. Each language in play in a situation of bilingualism such as that of the Cuban diaspora in the States offers a different perspective on cultural and linguistic exchange. The self-translation thus nuances and completes the ideas of the original in such a way that both texts become “intertwined in one textual entity” (A. Cordingley, Self-Translation. Brokering Originality in Hybrid Culture, London: Bloomsbury, 2013, p. 31) which reflects the complexity of an intellectual struggle across linguistic and national borders.
Rainier Grutman
Post-vernacular self-translation: Bringing languages back from the brink
The call for papers for this second Bologna conference on self-translation explicitly seeks to frame the phenomenon “in terms of the dynamics of diversity/identity and inclusion/exclusion.” In 2011, many papers explored what could be called a “poetics of rewriting,” but this edition focusses on the “politics of diversity” as evidenced by self-translation. Hence my proposal to examine linguistic diversity through the lens of directionality and democracy. I will proceed in three times or steps. First, I will submit that self-translation is arguably more diverse than regular translation because it involves a larger number of source languages. Then, I will take the opposite view and argue against treating the dominant practice of translating into an acquired, but more widespread or more prestigious language (= L2 supra-self-translation), as a vector of diversity. The third and perhaps most important part of my intervention focusses on a very different scenario, which involves self-translating into one’s less widespread or less prestigious mother tongue (= L1 infra-self-translation).
Though less common and therefore less studied, this last scenario is perhaps more exciting insofar as it shows the potential of self-translation as a form of collective empowerment (and not merely a tool for individual self-promotion.) Not so long ago, speakers of small, fragilized or endangered languages that no longer functioned as full-fledged vernaculars in everyday life, felt that they had no choice but to become translingual writers in a “major” language. While they could and often did work their native tongue into the fabric of their translingual texts, it remained largely invisible to the untrained eye (or ear), hidden as it was beneath the surface of the text, where it led the parasitic life of a palimpsest. For a variety of reasons (censorship, lack of standard grammar and spelling, their own limited literacy), writing in their first language was hardly an option. This would change when self-translation started to become somewhat of a trend. The first quarter of our century has even witnessed a small revival of so-called “post-vernacular” languages (to borrow Jeffrey Shandler’s characterization of Yiddish in the USA), meaning languages that are no longer used (or deemed useful) as means of communication but that one may want to maintain (or reclaim) in order to stay connected (or reconnect) with one’s heritage. “Re-claim and re-connect,” indeed, because this type of self-translation goes beyond writing back in the mother tongue. It also involves so-called heritage speakers of long-neglected languages that were/are on the brink of extinction (= L2 infra-self-translation). By thus developing literacy, empowering minorities and visibilizing formerly invisible languages, post-vernacular self-translation becomes an exercise in “inclusive democracy.”
Gabriella Elina Imposti
Collaborative Self-Translation: VV, DV Nabokov and Italian Language
There is a large body of critical literature on Vladimir Nabokov’s translations and self-translations, mostly published in the Anglophone context. Yet, at closer look, very little still has been said about his translations published in Italy (cfr. Marchesini 2018, Montini 2022). In this regard, Nabokov owes much to his collaboration with his son Dmitry, who, in many cases, was the author of the first translation drafts which he later reworked. Indeed, the writer did not have the command of Italian that Dmitry had. Nevertheless, there is evidence of his corrections even on Italian translations. To fill this gap, the present paper will focus, in particular, on the act of “collaborative self-translation” that saw Nabokov father and son work together. Such an investigation also makes it possible to discuss, from a theoretical point of view, the phenomenon of self-translation under a new light. Usuallyconceived as an individual exercise, through collaboration this activity “opens up”, thus becoming inclusive.
Dunya K. Ismael
Self-translation, migration, and colonial relations in Sinan Antoon’s novel The Corpse Washer
This paper investigates self-translation, migration, and power relations in the translation of the Iraqi/American writer Sinan Antoon’s The Corpse Washer (originally Wahdaha Shajarat ar-Rumman= Only the Pomegranate Tree). Antoon is an Iraqi novelist who was born in Iraq but migrated to the United States following the 1991 Gulf War. He wrote the novel in question after the American occupation of Iraq in 2003. The novel is a recount of the sufferings of an Iraqi young man under different eras, from the dictatorship of the 1980s to the 2003 American occupation of Iraq and its chaotic aftermath.
Contrary to the authority that the term self-translation might suggest, Sinan Antoon did not give himself more license to change the original text than any translator would have given themselves when translating a text that is not their own. Antoon closely followed the Arabic version in his translation, maintaining even the paragraphing and the order in which the sentences occurred.
However, in his introduction to the English version, the author/translator states that when his characters spoke English, they “said a few things here and there differently and left a few others unsaid,” (Antoon, 2012). This paper takes this statement too literally and aims to investigate where and why the self-translator made changes in the translation by either dropping parts of the text or making additions that are not necessitated by cultural specificity; are these changes related to his migrant author self, particularly in the light of the fact that he is a migrant living in the country which has a ‘colonial relationship’ with his country of origin?
The above questions are discussed against a background of the power relations that pertain in this case of self-translation between two cultures, two countries, and two languages.
Following a cultural/linguistic method, this qualitative study will compare the two versions of the novel and identify the parts of the text that show significant changes which are not prompted by the need to explicate culture-bound concepts. The parts added, deleted, or altered will be examined against a socio-cultural and colonial background. In other words, the criterion for justifying the translation decisions is whether they are a result of leaning toward the cultural norms of the second community. The examples range from extreme cases of power relations represented by the American forces’ existence in Iraq to bits of the text that show less tensional relations but which nonetheless indicate an influence of the American culture in translation.
Imsuk Jung
The Possibility and Limitation of Self-Translation in Korean Literary Works: Silver Stallion by Ahn Junghyo in a continuous rewrite process
This work aims to analyze the characteristics of self-translation, focusing on the question according to which it can contribute to a better outcome of the result. It is a shared opinion that self-translation can become part of a “continuous writing process” of the own author, potentially making the translation a more refined version of the work for readers from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
Self-translation allows the author the freedom to transform and manipulate the original text and at the same time to rewrite own work in the target language respecting the initial intentions. For Umberto Eco (2013) self-translation is a “reinvention in different languages”, and in fact it leaves no room for readers and critics to evaluate any type of modification, deletion and/or manipulation on the hypothesis that the translator may have misunderstood or missed the author’s intentions.
Ahn Junghyo’s Silver Stallion, translated by the author himself into English and published by Soho Press in New York in 1990, is considered one of the most successful Korean novels ever translated into another language. Even if its commercial success could therefore serve as a successful example of self-translation, the intention of the author-translator to simplify and better clarify his message in the translation, combined with the massive manipulation implemented to make understandable aspects that would otherwise have remained inaccessible to Western readers, have inevitably produced a new version of the novel.
Silver Stallion (1990) will be the subject of this research to deepen reflections on the self-translation process in a dimension in which terms such as “original”, “translation”, “author” and “translator” take on hybrid features and represent translation phenomena.
Magdalena Kampert
From the monolingual ideals of nationhood to a multilingual paradigm and sustainability: self-translation as a means of recognition of diversity and cultural inclusion
The paper explores self-translation in relation to multilingual sustainability and the issues of power and ideological persistence of monolingualism. Using examples of 20th- and 21st- century Sicilian self-translation, I present self-translation as a meaningful tool of recognition and cultural inclusion which challenges the monolingual paradigm and power asymmetries.
The concept of monolingualism has been tied to nationhood and mother tongue, acting as a driving force behind the formation of identities, disciplines, institutions and of the social constructs of culture and nation (Gramling 2016). Despite the consensus in sociolinguistics that the global linguistic landscape is characterised by multilingual superdiversity (Blommaert and Rampton 2011), monolingualism has obscured multilingual practices and has been ideologically predominant. Scholarship on self-translation has demonstrated that both “exogenous” and “endogenous” self-translations (Grutman 2013) are indicative of hybrid identities and defy the nationalist paradigm of monolingualism (Cordingley 2013). The developments in Self-Translation Studies have led to “the power turn” (Castro et al. 2017), with a focus on the political, social, cultural and economic significance of self- translation. Although it has been discussed as a site of power struggle and an expression of multilingual identities, its relevance to the monolingual nation-state belief and sustainability has not been explored. This paper aims to investigate self-translation as a route to defy the monolingual paradigm and power hierarchies, through taking the less researched endogenous self-translation as a case study and focusing on the Sicilian context.
Italy has actively contributed to scholarship and is characterized by linguistic diversity. However, scholarship on Italian self-translation has concentrated mainly on émigré writers and Italian diaspora, neglecting dialect self-translation (Grutman 2018, Nannavecchia 2014). Yet, dialect self-translation is an ideal case for examining the practice, multilingual sustainability and the monolingual paradigm that delegitimizes non-national languages, due to intricate dynamics of power relations between the national language and dialects. I examine theatre self-translations by Luigi Pirandello and poetry self-translations by Nino De Vita, due to the minorised status and vulnerable position of Sicilian. Considering relevant political, economic and sociolinguistic factors, I analyse the reception and status of the texts involved in self-translation and draw attention to the practices of “zero self-translation pact” (Ferraro 2016). I use the agency of author-translator and paratext to shed light on the complexities of power and the ways in which self-translation may upset monolingual ideals of nationhood and act as a means of inclusion of hybrid identities and multilingual sustainability.
The paper shows that endogenous self-translation exposes local hybridization, indicative of the illusion of monolingualism of the national culture and literature. I claim that self- translation can be a tool of visibilisation and cultural inclusion, in which speakers reclaim their hybrid identity and the marginalized shows to be relevant in its own right and in relation to the wider world. I thus contend that self-translation can be another tool for embracing diversity and promoting multilingual sustainability.
Kristina Landa
Boundaries of self-translation in the melopoeia «Man»: the case of Vyacheslav Ivanov
Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949) was one of the most brilliant representatives of the Russian poetic, artistic and philosophical renaissance of the early 20th century who had emigrated to Italy after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. A symbolist poet and a philosopher who was in correspondence with Martin Buber, Charles du Bos and Benedetto Croce, was also a great master of literary translation. He translated biblical, classical, medieval and modern texts. His profound knowledge of ancient and modern languages was instrumental in his translations from Greek, Latin, Italian, French and German. According to Ivanov, literary translation needed to be hermetic and created the equivalent source-text not only in its ‘musical’ form, but also in substance. Many poets of the Silver Age used translations as means for introducing new metrical and prosodic forms into Russian poetry, thus developing the potential of the Russian language. Nevertheless, as Konstantin Lappo-Danilevsky had shown, translations made by Ivanov were intended to introduce not only new aesthetic models, but also specific metaphysical values formulated by Ivanov himself into the minds of his compatriots. Since Ivanov regarded his poetic and critical writing as «a holistic artistic and religious project», his translations of the pre-emigration period mainly served as ideological tools for poetic-philosophical school of Russian Symbolism.
While many of Ivanov's poetry translations of that period have already been analysed by other scholars, the subject of self-translation remains almost untouched, while it had been of fundamental importance for Ivanov in his emigration period.
When Ivanov left the USSR in 1924 and moved to Italy, he was forced to work in a linguistic, cultural and political context that was dramatically different from his experiences of the pre-revolutionary years. Whereas in the earlier period his translations of the great classics (Dante, Petrarch or Pindar) into Russian were read in the scholarly milieu of Russian modernists and supported the ideas formulated in his own critical articles, during the emigration Ivanov had to translate his own aesthetic and religious reflections into Italian or write directly in this language. A special case in the history of his self-translations of the emigration period is a verse translation of the melopoeia «Man» (1919, first published in Paris in 1939; published in Italian in 1946).
It was officially made by Rinaldo Küfferle, but was in fact closely curated by Ivanov himself, who often insisted on his own translation choices, imposing them on the Italian translator. In my paper I will present first reflections on this text, regarding it as an example of self-translation combined with the translation made by Küfferle. The Italian translation of melopoeia was viewed by Ivanov as the most accurate statement of his own ideas on art and religion. In fact, it gave the Russian poet the opportunity to rethink some of the concepts of the 1919 Russian version, with Ivanov changing the whole text in the process of rewriting it in Italian. This rewriting shows the evolution of Ivanov's ideas from the Russian Civil War time to the Second World War period in Italy. Its primary analysis will be done through a diachronic perspective. The discrepancies in style and content between the individual source-text and target-text episodes will also be examined in the context of the already published correspondence between Ivanov and Küfferle.
Julie Lesnoff
Can we speak of self-translation in the context of Nabokov’s own writing of the screenplay for Lolita?
The difference between various language codes is particularly poignant in Nabokov’s Lolita (1955), which he later transformed through the prism of film adaptation. But to what extent can we speak here of “self-translation”? This communication problematizes this issue, arguing that the theory of (self-)translation provides a solid basis for the study of film adaptation and to what we could call “transmedial self-translation”. To do so, we will analyze the choices made by Nabokov himself in the context of his screenplay translating his most famous novel for the cinema.
Elizabete Manterola Agirrezabalaga
The Self-Translation of Short Stories Collections in an Asymmetric Language Combination
Fiction books for adults have been extensively analysed within Self-Translation Studies (Anselmi, 2012), but only a few studies have focused their attention on short stories translation (such as Egorova et al, 2017; Sang Zhonggang, 2011; Stos, 2007). This paper presents a study framed within a context of endogenous bilingualism which will focus on sedentary self-translators (Grutman, 2015: 11). Our main purpose is to enhance the knowledge on the translation of collections of short stories by their authors and to assess how diversity is reflected in their texts.
The short story is frequently considered as a minor genre compared to the novel (González, 2022: 21). It seems that short stories must claim their space by comparing their characteristics to other genres, such as their length, aesthetic possibilities or ideological options. There are multiple types of short stories and collections of short stories available in the book market. In order to delimit the object of study, this paper will examine the transfer of contemporary short stories collections for adults published in Basque that have been self-translated into Spanish. Considering this type of books gather various pieces of literature in a single volume, it is not rare that translated short stories collections include modifications in the number or the order of the stories compared to the original publications. Studying the self-translation of short stories collections will permit us to go deeply into cultural boundaries between Basque and Spanish literatures and consider dynamics of centre-periphery and power.
The paper will first examine the number of short stories collections translated from Basque into Spanish, and the proportion thereof that have been self-translated. Paratextual information will also be analysed to see if Spanish versions are presented as translations, as self-translations or as originals. Additionally, from a macrostructural perspective, we will observe whether short stories collections in the target language respond to the same structure as originals in Basque or they include modifications (by adding non-published short stories or short stories published elsewhere, removing short stories included in the original, etc.). This way, we will assess to what extent identity of the original culture is preserved in target texts and how diversity is received by the Spanish audience. Our contention is that target publications are frequently presented as equivalent texts of the originals, although they might present considerable modifications related to the macrostructure. This will lead us to reflect on the level of transformation of self-translated books and the way they are presented to target readers. We will also consider the existence of collections that include in the same volume short stories translated by the author and short stories translated by another translator. That is why observing paratextual information on the authority of translation will be important.
By approaching the self-translation of short stories collections in an asymmetric language combination, this paper will help identify the conventions in the transfer of this specific literary genre as well as reflect on the limits of self-translation and the extent to which originals’ identity is preserved in target texts.
Irina Marchesini
Why the Space of Self-Translation Matters: Nabokov, Identity and Arizona
The year 1953 and, chiefly, his stay in Portal (Arizona), can be considered of crucial importance for Vladimir Nabokov. Here, not only he carried on his scientific research and his work on the final version of Lolita but, as Boyd reports, he also self-translated parts of his autobiographical memoir Conclusive Evidence into Russian (1991: 224). Interestingly, as Nabokov’s letters seem to suggest, the time dedicated to entomological explorations of the land had a meaningful impact on the time devoted to creative writing and self-translation. Thus, in light of the so-called “spatial turn” that has recently invested the field of Translation Studies, this contribution will explore the role played by geographical space in shaping the practice of self-translation. To this aim, we will take into account Nabokov’s self-translation of his own autobiography, ultimately investigating the intersection between space, self-translation, self-narration, and the creation of “a new self in a second language” (Evangelista, Writing in Translation: A New Self in a Second Language, 2013: 177-87). This contribution will make use of original, unpublished documents gathered during field trips to Arizona.
Chiara Montini
Re-translating in collaboration: the other side of self-translation
Perhaps what unites Vittorio Alfieri and Vladimir Nabokov is not only bilingualism, and it is not merely a love for language either. A language never fully possessed by Alfieri and almost abandoned in the case of Nabokov. Both writers have practiced self-translation, and translated or re-translated their texts in collaboration: the former with his companion, Luisa Stolberg, and the latter with his son, Dmitri. We could say that this incestuous, as it were, relationship with the text allows us to consider translation as a form of self-translation.
On these bases, I will analyze the manuscripts of the translation by Alfieri of his tragedy Filippo into French (after an initial draft in French, a self-translation into Italian, and various versifications in Italian) by the hand of Luisa Stolberg, accompanied by the author's comments. Then I will compare it, methodologically, with the translations performed by Dmitri Nabokov and corrected by Vladimir Nabokov. Despite the temporal distance that separates the authors and the translators, the two practices share many common points. Furthermore, the authors' corrections and comments allow us to grasp their thoughts on what translation and self-translation are.
Catia Nannoni
Self-translation in the poetry of Francis Tessa/Francesco Tessarolo
My contribution aims to present the self-translated production of Francis Tessa, an Italo-Belgian author who was born in Rossano Veneto in 1935 (known at the registry office as Francesco Tessarolo) and settled in Wallonia (a French-speaking region in the south of Belgium) in 1952 to join his family, who had emigrated from the Vicenza countryside in the immediate post-war period for economic reasons. Having completed his schooling in Italy, he could more easily maintain his heritage language while learning French, which illustrates a de facto bilingualism that is not uncommon among the members of the so-called 'generation 1.5', that is, the children of emigrants who arrived in a new country after accomplishing their education in their country of origin, but who are still young enough to be able to master the language of their adopted country (Grutman 2022). They occupy an intermediate position between two societies and two cultures, between the first and second generation, which makes them well suited to the practice of self-translation.
In Belgium, Francis Tessa has now established a solid reputation as a French-speaking poet under his French nom de plume, but he is also a translator from Italian into French and vice versa, as well as a self-translator between these two languages. His poetic works include two bilingual collections with parallel texts (Italian and French), Dans le tremblement du souffle/Nel tremolio del soffio (1989) and Dimora del lutto/Demeure du deuil (2003). The first collection seems to be one of the “simultaneous self-translations” that Grutman (2009) speaks of, since the author states that he carried out the two texts simultaneously in the two languages, without indicating either an original or a language that takes precedence in terms of chronology or importance. The second collection, on the other hand, indicates from the peritext that the Italian text is a translation from French made by the author along with a collaborator.
In my study, I will attempt to investigate the genesis of these texts and focus on their characteristics, making use of the author's statements (with whom I am in contact) and a textual, paratextual and contextual analysis that takes into account the main parameters that have emerged in studies on self-translation (in particular those concerning the sub-field of bilingual editions, e.g. Hokenson and Munson 2006; Gentes 2013). If, at first glance, Tessa seems to be among the authors who self-translate “out of personal and inner necessity” (Vischer 2014), further research also seems to point to material circumstances which are not favourable to publishing in the Italian language alone in an allophone context, which would have led to the need for a bilingual version.
Assimilating the case of Francis Tessa to the category of “migrant self-translators” identified by Grutman 2015 (i.e. those who have changed country and added a new language to their linguistic repertoire), I will also explore the relationship between self-translation and migratory experience (also emphasised by Ferraro 2011), a relationship in which Serge Vanvolsem (1995) sees a characteristic of some authors of Italian origin writing in Belgium, especially when it comes to poetry.
Ines Peta and Paola Puccini
From the Biography (Sīra) to the Torments (Tourments) of a Donkey: Ḥasan Aurīd’s Self-translation from Arabic to French of the Novel Sīrat ḥimār
Ḥasan Aurīd is a Moroccan novelist, essayist, and historian whose very biography iconically witnesses the inclusive dimension of “linguistic and cultural diversity”: being of Amazigh origins, both Tamazight and colloquial (Moroccan) Arabic are his mother tongues. He also studied Standard Arabic and French at schools, later publishing his works in both languages. Born in 1962 in al-Rāshīdiyya, he was chosen to study with the future King Mohammed VI at the Royal College in Rabat due to his excellent results at school. After receiving his doctorate in political science from Université Mohammed V (1999), he was appointed official spokesman of the Royal Palace, a position he held until 2005. From 2005 to 2009, he was governor of the Drâa-Tafilalet region, where he is originally from, and from 2009 to 2010, he became the official historiographer of the kingdom. Still, in 2010 he left all official positions to devote himself exclusively to writing, research, and teaching. His most important novels include Sīrat ḥimār (Biography of a Donkey), Rabī‘ Qurṭuba (The Spring of Cordoba), and Ribāṭ al-Mutanabbī (The Bond of al-Mutanabbī), which, incidentally, was included in the longlist for the 2020 International Prize for Arabic Fiction.
The present contribution focuses on Aurīd’s Biography of a Donkey, in Arabic Sīrat ḥimār, inspired by Apuleius’ Metamorphosesand written in 2014. Importantly, Ḥasan Aurīd himself translated it into French in 2018 under the title Tourments d’un âne. The novel recounts the vicissitudes and tribulations experienced by the protagonist, Aḏirbāl, following his transformation into a donkey. Through this narrative, it is possible to capture the author’s reflections on the bestiality of power, the marginalization of Amazigh culture, and – in counterpart – its dream (or utopia) of a society open to the Other and the proper recognition of the valuable contribution offered by different civilizations. Only this way, suggests the author, it is possible to understand how much they harmoniously nurtured and shaped present Morocco’s values and identity. While providing a comparison between the Arabic and French versions of the novel, our contribution will shed light on those selected passages from the book expressing its most interesting aspects.
Katja Radoš-Perković and Sanja Roić
Author – (Auto)Translator – Traitor? The Analysis of the Autotranslation into English and the Translation into Italian of Lana Bastašić's novel Uhvati zeca (2018)
Lana Bastašić, born in Zagreb in 1986, raised in Banja Luka (Bosnia and Herzegovina), graduated in Belgrade, has published in 2018 the novel Uhvati zeca (Kontrast, Belgrade), which obtained great success in the Western Balkans region (three editions in Sarajevo and one in Zagreb) and was awarded the EU Prize for Literature in 2020. She shared her award with her Italian translator Elisa Copetti. In 2021 the American edition of the novel was released, entitled Catch the Rabbit (Brooklyn, New York, Restless Books) translated by the author herself. The paper aims at finding and analyzing a series of examples of the auto-translation in order to determine the translational strategies applied and the subsequent deviations from the original text as a product of the author-translator’s hybrid identity. The awarded Italian translation will be taken into consideration as well, so as to gain a complete and thorough insight into the treatment of culturally specific elements, given that the novel takes mostly place in Bosnia and Herzegovina before and after the war during the ‘90s. The purpose of the research is to show how the author manages her (auto)translator role, what kind of authorial liberties can be traced within the translation and their outcomes in comparison with the Italian translation.
Fabio Regattin
Two languages, two Italies. Gilda Piersanti's polars between French and Italian
Gilda Piersanti (1957) is an Italian-French author of crime novels and thrillers. The eight volumes of her series “Les Saisons meurtrières” have achieved great public recognition in France – a success which also led to the making of four films for TV.
Piersanti – who was born in Italy and moved to France only as an adult, after completing her university studies – writes her novels in French but sets them in Italy, in Rome; the protagonist of “Les Saisons meurtrières” is Mariella de Luca, an inspector of the capital's police. The French success has meant that some novels in the series have also been published in Italy, first by Bompiani and then by La Nave di Teseo, in translations made by the author.
In her novels written in French, Piersanti adds different touches of "local color", which make them more commercially attractive for her primarily foreign public. These Italian touches can sometimes be perceived as excessive for the Italian reader; this is why they are often downplayed in the versions issued by Italian publishers. My paper will analyze the self-translations Estate assassina (2016), Roma enigma (2017), and Giallo Caravaggio (2017) focusing on the depiction of Italianness – a way to deepen the theme of diversity/identity proposed by the conference.
Hannah Rice
Féin-aistriú Teanga: Language Shift and Self-Translation in Ireland
Although much research has been carried out with regard to self-translation in minority- language contexts, the political and linguistic contexts in which writers in Ireland create ‘original’ and self-translated literary works have not yet been studied and can greatly enrich the field of self-translation studies. When it comes to questions of inclusion, Ireland serves as a particularly interesting counterpoint to other regions insofar as Irish-language self-translation is practiced by what is arguably a surprising collection of writers.
With a view to exploring this central feature of self-translation in Ireland, I will offer a broad overview of the practice, focusing specifically on translation between Irish and English, two official languages on the island. My approach will be two-fold, firstly providing the socio- historical context of the two languages in Ireland, and secondly highlighting some of the most prominent self-translators and acts of self-translation. While self-translation has occurred on the island of Ireland for many centuries, it is only in the past 50 years that the phenomenon has gained visibility.
To understand wholly the significance of the Irish context when discussing self-translation, it is necessary to explore the sociolinguistic history of the island. While Irish is the first official language of the Republic of Ireland, and a language with official recognition in Northern Ireland, it is also a minority language, existing under the dominance of English, the second official language of the Republic of Ireland and the official language of Northern Ireland. I will give a brief survey of how this came to be, charting the prominent moments throughout Irish history which affected 1) the rise and decline of the English and Irish languages, respectively, as lingua francas on the island and 2) the subsequent Irish-language revival. Central to this discussion will be the effects of the partition of the island a century ago, and the changing status of Irish and English in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland until the present day.
Although the Irish language is indigenous to the island of Ireland, it is a learned language for the majority of contemporary Irish-language writers, as a result of the aforementioned generational language shift, a product of colonialism. Those Irish-language writers who self-translate can be considered “sedentary” self-translators whose practices evolve in a context of endogenous bilingualism (Grutman 2015). Due to the directionality of their self-translation practice, one might say that many of these self-translators would also be considered exophonic (or translingual) writers. To what extent is this true? The complex linguistic history on the island makes distinguishing between English and Irish as native and non-native languages in the case of Irish-language writers who self-translate especially thorny. I will therefore explore the notion of linguistic identity in Ireland, the idea of the ‘mother tongue,’ and the way this complex bilingual, postcolonial identity informs self-translation on the island. Who are these self- translators? In what direction(s) do they self-translate? How often do they self-translate?
In addition to exploring certain aspects of inclusivity within Irish-language self-translation, this paper will serve as a useful backdrop for the subsequent discussions in this panel, providing the audience with the necessary context to understand the intricacies of self-translation in Ireland more wholly.
Maria Antonietta Rossi
Educating for diversity through children’s literature: Roberto Parmeggiani’s literary bilingualism between Italian and Brazilian Portuguese
Within the recent investigation field of Self-Translation Studies (Grutman 2009, 2015; Antunes 2007; Tanqueiro 2009; Anselmi 2012; Bassnett 2013; Lusetti 2018), the present work intends to analyze the case of Roberto Parmeggiani’s literary bilingualism (Grutman 2015, p. 8), an Italian writer and educator who writes, having learned the Brazilian variant of Portuguese as a Second Language after having lived for few years in Carioca land, stories for children both in Italian, his mother tongue, and in Brazilian, langue d’adoption (Grutman 2015, p. 9). These texts are self-translated by the author himself in order to reach an increasingly vast audience of young readers, reason why he favors relevant social issues, such as inclusion and education for diversity, osmotic in-between activity (D'Angelo 2011, p. 117) which allows Parmeggiani to range, in this way, between two distinct linguistic and cultural spheres.
Specifically, we will examine the self-translational practices employed by the author during the rewriting process (Lefevere 1998) of the story A Lição das Árvores, published in 2013 first in Brazilian, its L2, and, in 2016, in Italian, with the title La lezione degli alberi, a text in which the issue of diversity is addressed, from an educational point of view, in order to sensitize the younger readers to adopt an inclusive social approach to stimulate, on the one hand, the development of a mental attitude projected towards empathy and emotional intelligence (Goleman 2011) and, on the other, to prevent bullying attitudes, which, on the contrary, imply conduct of exclusion and marginalization.
Since, as Riera states, «la búsqueda de equivalencias de una lengua a otra resulta complicada» (2013, p. 396), although the languages belong to the same linguistic family, the translingual author, as in the case of Roberto Parmeggiani, creates two texts – prototext and metatext – which are « identici nel contenuto, ma distinti nella veste linguistica» (Fusco 2011, p. 18), giving rise to a real «riscrittura di un testo altro» (Fusco 2011, p. 29).
In fact, the comparative/contrastic analysis between the Brazilian prototext (A Lição das Árvores) and the respective Italian metatext (La lezione degli alberi) will demonstrate how the self-translational choices adopted have determined the rewriting of a new text which, stylistically and linguistically, presents sections completely reworked, in which emerge substitutions, omissions and different choices at a lexical and morpho-syntactic level, since the author has left himself «llevar por su creatidad» (Recuenco Peñalver 2011, p. 202) in Italian , more manageable for him, being his mother tongue.
Furthermore, the analysis will also show how the source text, written in L2, presents «il riflesso, appannato ma non evanescente, della lingua nativa» (Mulinacci 2013, p. 104), through lexical or syntactic calques, a circumstance which leads us to reflect on a double stage of the translation process for the case examined: the i) pre-writing phase, during which, at an unconscious level, occurs an exclusively mental self-translation (from Italian into Brazilian for the creation of the prototext) and the ii) “rewriting”, the effective self-translation (from Brazilian into Italian to elaborate the metatext) which results in the production of a new original (Mulinacci 2015, p. 191).
Monica Turci and Gian Mario Anselmi
Translating oneself, resisting self-translation and bilingualism. The strange case of In altre parole / In other words by Jhumpa Lahiri
In altre parole is the first book-length work written in Italian by Bengali American author Jhumpa Lahiri. After years of studying Italian and feeling that this language eluded her, she took the radical step to leave the States and move to Rome with her family. This book was completed in Rome and published in Italian by Guanda in 2016. It was marketed in the English-speaking world in a bilingual format and was translated by Anne Goldstein, who has specialized in contemporary Italian literature and has also translated Elena Ferrante’s famous cycle of novels.
In altre parole is a peculiar, and yet interesting, case to reflect on self-translation and its connections with identity and multilingualism. The background of this work – Lahiri’s first attempt to write a book in Italian while living in Italy – together with the choice of the autobiographical genre makes it a relevant case study to reflect on the practice of self-translation and its effects on one’s identity. At the same time, the author’s resistance to translate her work opens up other exciting reflections that involves Lahiri’s perception of the Italian language and the relation between this language, her first language – English – and Bengali, a language Lahiri speaks but cannot write. Moreover, the fact that in the Anglo-American context this autobiography has appeared in Italian and English, hence as a bilingual work, provides the opportunity to explore connections and boundaries between self-translation and bilingual literature, a form that is lately attracting the attention of several contemporary migrant authors.
In this bilingual presentation, we will explore of these issues with reference to other fictional works by Lahiri, several interviews she has released on her relation with the Italian language and her work on the theory of translation and self-translation. More specifically, in discussing In altre parole, we will consider Lahiri’s first Italian novel Dove mi trovo published in 2018 in order to draw a comparison between reflections and the practice of self-translation that characterizes In altre parole and writing a fictional piece of work in a second language. We will also draw on Lahiri’s recently published work Translating Myself and Others (2022), as this provides material to reflect on Lahiri’s reasons to resist self-translation and favor a bilingual format with a translation by an experienced and well-known author, as well as to explore differences between the theory and practice of self-translation.
Trish Van Bolderen
A (G)host of Other Selves: How Self-translation Inhabits Allograph Translation in Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat (2020)
When a writer dies, their ability to self-translate is promptly extinguished. This is a banal fact of self-translation—an existential parameter that is so obvious, it goes without saying. Built into the very notion of self-translation, then, are certain socio-temporal inequities. If the author is no longer there to translate their own writing, any translation that reaches into the recent or more distant past to recuperate realities, perspectives and narratives expressed through the author’s pen would need to be performed through allographic means. In other words, due to the ephemeral and unique nature of the self, self-translation inherently excludes considerable self- translational potential: the potential to hear the author’s own voice multiplied over longitudinal time.
Through an analysis of Irish writer Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat (2020), I am interested in exploring the extent to which such an apparently banal fact of self-translation might actually double as an assumption. How might a variation on the standard definition of self-translation—even when it remains firmly rooted in interlingual and intertextual transfer— make it conceivable to overcome both the impossibility of more diachronic self-translation practices and the gaps that stem from this impossibility? I would like to suggest that it is within the notion of the self that such a variation resides, and that self-translation beyond the grave thus depends on a kind of reincarnation, whereby one self is reborn as another, by virtue of the former beingwilled back to life and embodied by the latter.
In Ghost, Ní Ghríofa probes the real and imagined ways that her own life and that of 17th-century Irish poet Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill not only intersect but also align across time, space, love, language, societal conventions, and experiences of gender; and the last 40 pages of the book are notably devoted to Ní Ghríofa’s own new translation of Ní Chonaill’s famous lamentpoem “Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire” (“The Keen for Art Ó Laoghaire”). I want to argue that, while this translation is not a self-translation in any classic sense of the word, the convergence of a series of features adjacent to and contained within Ghost equip Ní Ghríofa to establish such a close affinity with Ní Chonaill that the English-language version of the poem acquires apeculiar, powerful and insightful kind of self-translational value; however deliberate or incidental, one effect of Ghost is the semblance of self-translation. I am interested in how Ní Ghríofa positions herself not as a mouthpiece, who speaks on behalf of Ní Chonaill (as might be argued with respect to any instance of allograph translation), but as a medium, who is inhabited by and at one with the ghost of Ní Chonaill who has become lodged in Ní Ghríofa’s throat.
My proposed talk, which draws on paratextual, close-reading, and sociological analyses, seeks more broadly to consider the important yet thus far largely overlooked question of Who does self-translation exclude? In the process of exploring one answer (i.e. the dead), this discussion helps to deepen our understanding of both the limits and the porousness of self-translation and,more specifically, offers new and meaningful insights into how we view not only self-translation but also allograph translation, the self, exclusion, authority and agency, the constraints of time, (self)translation within Ireland, supra-self-translation (Grutman 2011), and translation involving languages that are locally and globally minoritized.
Adrian Wanner
From Dove mi trovo to Whereabouts: Linguistic Destabilization in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Self-Translated Novel
The Bengali-American author Jhumpa Lahiri is a most unusual case of a translingual writer. After a highly successful career as an Anglophone novelist, she decided in mid-life to switch to Italian, a newly learned foreign tongue. The voluntary and “high culture” character of Lahiri’s translingualism sets her apart from other recent non-native writers in Italian, most of whom arrived in Italy as refugees or economic migrants and learned the language from the bottom up rather than by studying the classics of Italian literature. Lahiri claims that her embrace of Italian was a means to escape the alienation caused by her bilingual upbringing in Bengali and English. Paradoxically, this quest for wholeness was coupled with insecurity in Italian, a language Lahiri only acquired in middle age. Writing in Italian is more challenging and difficult for Lahiri than writing in English—she compares it to “writing with my left hand.” Lahiri refused to self-translate her first book written in Italian, In altre parole (2015), because she felt she needed to “protect her Italian.” In 2018 Lahiri published her first novel written in Italian, Dove mi trovo. This time, after some initial hesitation, she did decide to self-translate the book. The English version appeared under the title Whereabouts in 2021.
What are we to make of Lahiri’s change of heart about self-translation? Has she succumbed to the pressures of the Anglophone publishing market and “betrayed” her newly found Italian voice? Has the book become stronger by being recast in the author’s stronger language? Lahiri claims that this was not her intention. Rather, her aim was “to respect and reproduce the novel I had originally conceived.” This statement of intended fidelity raises several questions. Given that the original text is written in a non-native language, should the translation into the native tongue preserve the “foreign” nature of the original? In other words, should Lahiri simulate the effect of writing with the left hand even when she is writing with the right hand?
While Lahiri’s previous books written in English displayed the hybrid cultural identity of a member of the Indian diaspora in the United States, her language was that of an English native speaker unaffected by foreign linguistic interference. This has changed with Whereabouts, a strange hybrid of a book that both is and isn’t Lahiri’s original creation inasmuch as it is a translation executed by Lahiri’s Anglophone self of a text written by a previous Italian-language self. In the confrontation between these two selves, Lahiri’s English becomes contaminated with occasional Italian calques, creating a hybridized language mirroring the author’s own hybrid consciousness. As I will argue, Lahiri’s trip to the Italian language and back to English via self-translation has given her the sense of linguistic destabilization that she seems to crave as a creative stimulus.