Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Panel discussion: Translating a self-translation: Epic Annette 8th February

Epic Annette: Podium Discussion with Anne Weber (German-French self-translator) and Tess Lewis (translator of the novel into English), organised by Hannah Scheithauer (Queen’s DPhil candidate in French & German) 

Thursday, 8th February, 5-7pm, Shulman Auditorium, The Queen’s College in Oxford, England

Registration free but essential: https://www.queens.ox.ac.uk/blog/epic-annette-an-evening-of-translation-and-resistance-at-queens/

Having grown up in Germany and later settled in France, Anne Weber is an author and translator whose work reaches across two distinct cultural contexts and linguistic traditions. Weber consistently completes both a French and a German version of her writings, engaging in practices of self-translation which maximise the creative potential of her two languages of expression. The stakes of translation, in this context, go far beyond the purely linguistic, as they necessitate an acute awareness to questions of history, memory, and cultural identity. This is aptly illustrated by her latest work. Published in 2020 and titled Annette, ein Heldinnenepos in German, Annette, une épopée in French, it retraces the life of a heroine of the French resistance, who came to fight for Algerian independence in the post-war era. Using a verse form inspired by ancient epic, Weber thus addresses the contested place of colonialism in French national memory. At the same time, the work speaks to distinctively German debates on the singular status of the Holocaust in the country’s memory culture and its relationship to other – and most notably, colonial – histories of violence.

The text was translated into English by Tess Lewis and published as Epic Annette: A Heroine’s Tale by Indigo Press in 2022. Having already won a PEN Translates Award for her skilful translation of the text’s unique form and style, Lewis has recently been shortlisted for the Schlegel-Tieck Prize, which will be awarded in February 2024. Lewis is an accomplished writer and translator from both French and German, with previous translation projects including a range of authors such as Peter Handke, Walter Benjamin, Montaigne, Lutz Seiler, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and Christine Angot.

During the podium event, Weber and Lewis will discuss their work on the text, the relationship of translation and literary creation, and the challenges of conveying a complex and sensitive story to audiences with vastly different backgrounds, insights, and expectations. Their conversation will be followed by an audience Q&A and a drinks reception.

To sign up, please visit: https://www.queens.ox.ac.uk/blog/epic-annette-an-evening-of-translation-and-resistance-at-queens/ 

Monday, January 15, 2024

Self-translation panel at the London Book Fair (12th March 2024)

Self-translation will be a panel topic at the London Book Fair on Tuesday, 12th March 2024,13:15 - 14:00. The panel "Writing the Same Text Twice? Bilingual Poets and Self-translation" will take place at Literary Translation Centre, Panelists are:

  • Astrid Alben (Dutch-English)
  • Beatriz Chivite (Basque-Spanish)
  • Iestyn Tyne (Welsh-English)
  • Alexandra Büchler (chair)

Announcement:
Self-translation is a way forward for bilingual authors writing in less translated languages who want to reach a wider audience in a range of markets. It may also give them a chance to approach a text from another cultural and linguistic perspective, rethink and reshape it, producing an authoritative second language version or a second ‘original’. Poets bilingual in Basque, Dutch, English, Spanish and Welsh discuss the processes, challenges and rewards of having the capacity to write in two or more languages and translate one’s own work.

Saturday, September 23, 2023

New edited volume: "Creación, traducción, autotraducción"

The  volume Creación, traducción, autotraducción, edited by Olga Anokhina y Aurelia Arcocha has recently been published. It focuses on self-translation in Spain.

Access to the content overview: https://www.iberoamericana-vervuert.es/indices/indice_R213584.pdf  

Read the introduction: https://www.iberoamericana-vervuert.es/introducciones/introduccion_R213584.pdf

More information: https://www.iberoamericana-vervuert.es/FichaLibro.aspx?P1=213584 

Friday, August 25, 2023

Conference: Literary Self-Translation and its Metadiscourse, Power Relations in Postcolonial Contexts, Liège, Belgium, 26-27 October 2023

I feel honored to be on the scientific board for this exciting upcoming conference in Belgium.  All information can be found on the conference homepage.

Thursday 26 October 2023
9:30-10:00 Welcome and Conference Opening: Núria Codina, Maud Gonne, Marie Herbillon, Reine Meylaerts, Myriam-Naomi Walburg
10:00-11:00 Keynote Lecture by Rachael Gilmour (Queen Mary University of London) 
11:30-13:00 Panel 1: Self-Translation as Multilingual Writing in Postcolonial Contexts
  • Trish Van Bolderen: “Wasting Away: How ‘Waste’ Represents Fertile Ground for Understanding Writers’ Attitudes about Self-Translation”
  • Ai-Ling Lu (The Ohio State University): “Renegotiating Ethnic Identity Through Linguistic Hybridity and Self-Translation: A Case Study of a Taiwanese Amis Poet, Adaw Palaf”
  • Ovio Olaru (Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu): “Self-Othering the Roma”
 14:00-15:30 Panel 2: Self-Translation, Bilingualism and Linguistic Minorities 
  •  Laura Kennedy (Queen’s University Belfast): “Self-translation through Literary Dubbing in Tsitsi Dangaremba’s Nervous Conditions”
  • Peter D. Mathews (Hanyang University): "From Woolf to Fox: Literary Self-Translation and Contemporary Australian Fiction"
  • Mirna Sindičić Sabljo (University of Zadar): “Self-translation in the Bilingual Work of Joséphine Bacon” 
16:00-17:00 Panel 3: Self-Translation as Retranslation: Political and Linguistic Implications 
  • Prabhat Kumar (Indira Gandhi National Open University New Delhi): “Selftranslation as a Protest against Indifferent Translation” 
  • Maria Chiorean (Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu): The Metabolization of Anticolonial Themes in Sorley MacLean's Translated and Self-Translated Poetry: Between Political Critique, Assimilation and 'Exotic' Selfishness" 
17:00-18:30 Panel 4: Linguistic Migration, Memory and the Politics of Language 
  • Delphine Munos (University of Liège): “‘Mal vu, mal dit’: ars memoriae and Selftranslation in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Work” 
  • Eralda L. Lameborshi (Texas A&M University): “The Dialectic of Self-Translation: Gëzim Hajdari’s Linguistic Migration and Double Language” 
  • Ouyang Yu (Independent scholar and author): “Self-translating Moon over Melbourne and Other Poems and The Angry Wu Zili” 
Friday 27 October 2023 
9:30-10:30 Keynote by Gillian Lane-Mercier (McGill University) 
10:45-12:15 Panel 5: Power Relations and Self-Translation in Sinophone Contexts 
  • Lara Maconi (East Asian Civilisations Research Centre, Paris): “Tibetan Variations in Self-Translation. Diglossia, Cultural Belonging and Reinventing the Self in Tibetan Contemporary Literature” 
  • Xin Wei (The Chinese University of Hong Kong): “Self-Translation as a Voice of the Other: Pema Tseden’s Sinophone Stories and Films” 
  • Xinran Di (Beijing Foreign Studies University): “Self-Translation as Self-Consecration or Self-Illusion? : A Sociological Glance at Eileen Chang” 
13:15-14:45 Panel 6: (Self)-Censorship and Erasure in Practices of Self-Translation 
  • Georgina Fooks (University of Oxford): “No Mother Tongue? Self-Translation and Alejandra Pizarnik’s Translingual Poetics” 
  • Oleksandr Kalnychenko (V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University) and Natalia Kamovnikova (Matej Bel University): “Oleksandr Finkel’s Self-Translation: 1929 and 1962 Papers Compared” 
  • Ilya Skokleenko (Vrije Universiteit Brussel): "On the Independence of Ukraine: Russian (Neo-Colonialism in Joseph Brodsky's (Not) Self-Translated Poetry". 
14:45 - 15:45 Panel 7: Self-Translation as Self-Fashioning and Self-Exoticization 
  • Rainier Grutman (University of Ottawa): “Self-Translating in and for Abya Yala” 
  • Sare Rabia Öztürk (Boğaziçi University): “The Bilingual Website as a Site of SelfTranslation for Literary Celebrity: The Case of Elif Shafak” 1
16:15 - 17:45 Panel 8: The Impact of Self-translation on Reception and Circulation 
  • Snejana Ung (Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu): “Self-Translating from Serbo-Croatian in a Post-Yugoslav Context: The Case of Lana Bastašić’s Catch the Rabbit (2021)” 
  • Max Hidalgo Nácher (Universitat de Barcelona/ École Normale Supérieure): “Haroldo de Campos et les politiques de la littérature” 
  • Fransiska Louwagie (University of Aberdeen): “Self-Translation and literary reception in the works of Ouyang Yu and Raymond Federman” 
17: 45 – 18:15 Closing remarks: Núria Codina, Maud Gonne, Marie Herbillon, Reine Meylaerts, Myriam-Naomi Walburg

For more information: https://www.cirti.uliege.be/cms/c_10745974/fr/cirti-literary-self-translation-and-its-metadiscourse

Wednesday, August 16, 2023

Conference: Self-Translation: Inclusion Of Diversity, Bologna, 20 - 21 September 2023

I have wonderful memories of the first conference on self-translation in Bologna, so I am especially sad to miss the second one.

Please note: Registration closes 1st September. 

Highlights from the program

Wednesday, 20 September 2023

9:30 Keynote address

Rainier Grutman: Post-Vernacular Self-Translation: Bringing Languages Back from the Brink

10:45 Session I Self-Translation as an Inclusive Act: The Case of Vladimir Nabokov

- Irina Marchesini: Why the Space of Self-Translation Matters: Nabokov, Identity and Arizona

- Gabriella Elina Imposti: Collaborative Self-Translation: VV, DV Nabokov and Italian Language

- Julie Lesnoff: Can we Speak of Self-Translation in the Context of Nabokov’s Own Writing of the Screenplay for Lolita?

- Chiara Montini: Re-Translating in Collaboration: the Other Side of Self-Translation: Vittorio Alfieri and Vladimir Nabokov

14:20 Session II Self-Translation in the Slavic Area

- Nadzieja Bąkowska: Il caso di Maria Kuncewiczowa: autotraduzione e narrazione autobiografica

- 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

- Kristina Landa: I limiti della Self-Translation ne I limiti dell’arte: il caso di Vjačeslav Ivanov

- Katja Radoš-Perković and Sanja Roić: Autore-(auto)traduttore-traditore? Analisi dell’autotraduzione in inglese e della traduzione in italiano del romanzo Uhvati zeca (2018) di Lana Bastašić

16:15 Session III Self.ie: Literary Self-Translation and Ireland

- Hannah Rice: Féin-aistriú Teanga: Language Shift and Self-Translation in Ireland

- Ellen Corbett: Spectrums within Spectrums: Self-Translation as Aspect of Broader Translation Practicesin Irish to English Translation in Ireland

- 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)

Day 2 – Thursday, 21 September 2023

9:00 Keynote address

Anthony Cordingley: When is Self-Translation Global Literature?

9:55 Session IV Self-Translation outside Europe I

- Dunya K. Ismael: Self-Translation, Migration, and Colonial Relations in Sinan Antoon’s Novel The Corpse Washer

- Paola Puccini e Ines Peta: Dalla Biografia (Sīra) ai Tormenti (Tourments) di un asino: l’autotraduzione dall’arabo al francese del romanzo Sīrat ḥimār di Ḥasan Aurīd

- Imsuk Jung: La possibilità e il limite dell’autotraduzione nelle opere letterarie coreane: Silver Stallion di Ahn Junghyo in un processo di riscrittura continua

11:30 Session V Self-Translation outside Europe II

- Maria Antonietta Rossi: Educare alla diversità attraverso la letteratura per l’infanzia: il bilinguismo letterario di Roberto Parmeggiani fra italiano e portoghese brasiliano

- Maria Alice Goncalves Antunes: Migration and Self-Translation: the Case of a Brazilian Linguist in Universities in the USA

- Marcos Eymar: Self-Translating In-betweenness: from Life on the hyphen (1994) to Vidas en vilo (2000) de Gustavo Pérez-Firmat

- Arianna Dagnino: Seeking Inclusion through “Perceived” Self-Amputation: an Italian-Canadian Case Study

14:45 Session VI Self-Translation in the European Context I

- Simona Anselmi: Self-Translating into and from Italian

- Gian Mario Anselmi and Monica Turci: Translating Oneself, Resisting Self-Translation and Bilingualism. The Strange Case of In altre parole / In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri

- Adrian Wanner: From Dove mi trovo to Whereabouts: Linguistic Destabilization in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Self-Translated Novel

- Margherita Dore: Standing Up Against Ableism. The Cathartic and Persuasive Power of Self-Translated Humour

16:40 Session VII Self-Translation in the European Context II

- Fabio Regattin: La duplice Italia? I polars di Gilda Piersanti tra francese e italiano

- Catia Nannoni: L’autotraduzione nella produzione poetica di Francis Tessa/Francesco Tessarolo

- Sabina Ciminari and Elisa Segnini: Traiettorie dell’autotraduzione in Alba de Céspedes, tra intraducibilità e incomparabilità

- Elizabete Manterola Agirrezabalaga: The Self-Translation of Short Stories Collections in an Asymmetric Language Combination

More information, registration and complete program on: https://eventi.unibo.it/selftranslation2023 

Saturday, May 6, 2023

Talk on self-translation and Li Kotomi

 Dr Aoife Cantrill (Manchester) will give a talk on self-translator Li Kotomi with the title "Self-Translation and Language-Making in Li Kotomi/Li Qinfeng's The Island Where the Spider Lily Blooms" on Monday, 15 May 2023, 12:45.
More information: https://talks.ox.ac.uk/talks/id/a9cea786-6665-4b0d-8be5-40e4f5ca9c5c/  
Only accessible of members of Oxford university, unfortunaley.

Abstract;

Li Kotomi/Li Qinfeng is a Taiwanese-born author living and writing in Japan, whose novels explore migrant experiences, queer perspectives, and linguistic politics. In this talk, Dr Aoife Cantrill will discuss Li’s 2021 Japanophone novel The Island Where the Spider Lily Blooms, which uses the plot device of a young girl washed up on an island with no memory of her previous life to comment on competing ideas of language purity and identity. The linguistic hierarchies established within the novel depend on the different Japanese scripts (kanji, hiragana, katakana), which Li uses to develop themes relating to territory and exclusion. The book was a critical success, winning the prestigious Akutagawa literary award in 2021, making Li the first Taiwanese-born Akutagawa recipient.

The linguistic complexities of the novel are reiterated in its Mandarin Chinese translation, undertaken by Li in 2022. This version of the novel reproduces the linguistic hierarchies of the first, but relies on patterns of script variation devised by Li herself. Taking both versions together provides an opportunity to think about self-translation: what is the influence of script in the translation of contemporary Sinophone and Japanophone literatures? How does Li reproduce structures of linguistic logic between the two versions? And how does a novel in an author’s second language translated back into their first shape ideas of a text being ‘born translated’?

Friday, March 10, 2023

Maxim D. Shrayer on Translingual Adventures

In his essay "Within (and Without) Languages: A Jewish Writer’s Translingual Adventures", recently published by the Davis Center, Maxim D. Shrayer explores his own literary translingualism in comparison to other translingual writers. Self-translation has always played a role in his literary journey in one way or another:  

"Self-translation has evolved from attempts to give previous Russian texts another life in English (a life they may or may not have deserved)—through creatively revising my English-language fiction and nonfiction—to parallel compositions of texts in both English and Russian, a mode that I presently find most stimulating."     

To read the full essay, please follow this link: https://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/insights/within-and-without-languages-jewish-writers-translingual-adventures  

                                                                               

Saturday, March 4, 2023

Podcast Lahiri on self-translation

 In a recently published episode of the Modern Poetry in Translation podcast, Jhumpa Lahiri discusses self-translation with Khairani Barokka. Topics include her relationship to translation, language and poetry; differences between the process of self translating poetry versus prose.

You can listen to the podcast or read the transcript here: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/jhumpa-lahiri-speaks-to-khairani-barokka-on-self-translation-and-turning-to-poetry/ 

Monday, February 20, 2023

Updated bibliography on self-translation

 The bibliography on self-translation has been updated (42th update, February 2023). To download the pdf-file please click here. If you have any suggestions for further entries, please leave a comment.

Sunday, February 19, 2023

Ouyang Yu: Self-translation and bilingual writing as a transnational writer in the age of machine translation

In his essay "Self-translation and bilingual writing as a transnational writer in the age of machine translation", recently published in Overland, poet Ouyang Yu talks about his bilingual Chinese-English poems. He explains that publishers were sceptical about his self-translations:

"I had difficulties in getting them accepted because I gave away the secret of self-translation until I presented them as if they were originally written in the English language, a strategy well worth adopting in those days of insensitivity to the genre."

The focus of his essay, however, is on the role that machine translation, e.g. DeepL, plays in his bilingual writing. 

The full essay can be found here: https://overland.org.au/2023/02/self-translation-and-bilingual-writing-as-a-transnational-writer-in-the-age-of-machine-translation/


Saturday, February 11, 2023

Andrey Gritsman. On Bilingual Poetry and Self-Translation

Check out the essay by Russian-American poet Andrey Gritsman on bilingual poetry and self-translation published on EastWest Literary Forum. Reflecting on its experience of creating "parallel poems", he concludes:

"In summary, writing poetry in two poetic languages shows that a successful poem appears when it is written in two languages on the same emotional wave, yet created as two original poems in different languages."

Read the full essay here:  https://eastwestliteraryforum.com/essays/andrey-gritsman-on-bilingual-poetry-and-self-translation 

Panel discussion: Translating a self-translation: Epic Annette 8th February

Epic Annette: Podium Discussion with Anne Weber (German-French self-translator) and Tess Lewis (translator of the novel into English),  orga...