Thursday, November 18, 2010

Self-translation from indigenous languages

Last week I attended the first international conference on self-translation in Pescara, Italy. There I had the chance to meet Julio-César Santoyo, who has been researching on self-translation for many years. During our talk, he made me aware of self-translation from indigenous languages, an aspect of self-translation I had completely ignored till that day. He was so kind to give me a copy of a presentation he gave last year in Canada on this topic as a starting point for my own research. Back in Germany I now started researching. It is a really fascinating field.
Today I would like to present you a Mayan writer and self-translator: Humberto Ak'abal. He was born in 1953 in Momostenango, Guatemala. He writes his poetry in Quiché and translates it into Spanisch. His poems are published in bilingual editions. Some of his work has been translated from the Spanish version into English, German and other languages.

For further reading and listening:

5 comments:

NK said...
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NK said...

Hi, I’ve found your blog just now and I’m so surprised to see that the whole blog is dedicaded to the subject of self-translation!
Actually I’m preparing a study on Bernardo Atxaga and his self-translation, and I’ve read some articles written by Julio César Santoyo.
Thank you so much for offering a lot of information about Self-translation. I will be following your posts!

Eva Gentes said...

Hi, that sounds very interesting. Are you focusing on a particular self-translation? There is a very interesting interview with Atxaga in the journal "Quimera" on his translation of Obabakoak:

GARZIA GARMENDIA, Juan (2001): “Bernardo Atxaga sobre la traducción de Obabakoak”, Quimera 210, p. 53-57.

NK said...

I’m going to focus on the self-translation of Obabakoak, because, as you know, this title is the most problematic case of Atxaga’s self-translations. About the interview in Quimera, I got a copy of this issue of the journal some months ago. It was really interesting, and other articles also helped me to get an idea of the phenomenon of self-translation in Spain.

Eva Gentes said...

If you can make any recommendations concerning interesting articles, I would be very happy to hear about it. Is your study part of a master or phd thesis?

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...