"Je suis un autre: Authorship in Self-Translation"

Self-translation was a topic at the 7th Translation Studies Conference in Portugal, Faculty of Letters, University of Lisbon, 24–25.10. 2013.

Here is an extract of the abstract of the talk “Je suis un autre: Authorship in Self-Translation. Notes on Migration, Metamorphosis & Translation” given by Alexandra Lopes:

"This paper aims to critically engage with Schleiermacher’s arguments, reflecting on their import to understanding the meanders of self-translation. Taking Schleiermacher’s views on the ideal comprehension model for translation as a starting point, I examine the work of a German-born immigrant writer and translator in Portugal: Ilse Losa (1913-2006). My paper focuses particularly on Losa’s 1962 novel Sob Céus Estranhos [Under Strange Skies], which she later translated into German under the title Unter fremden Himmeln. In my paper, I discuss Schleiermacher’s dictum that the translator must be ‘conscious of the difference between that language [the source language] and his own’ [ibidem], and argue that difference is not necessarily a category of the Other, as it visibly inhabits the contemporary displaced self. As Rushdie famously put it in ‘Imaginary Homelands’, the identity of the migrant ‘is at once plural and partial’ (1991:15). Thus, what Losa’s narrative brings to the fore is the complex web of relations between self and language, self and other(s), creativity and defamiliarization, authorship and translationship, and showcasing the often unacknowledged fact that translatability and translatedness inhabit the creative gesture." 

For more information on the conference and to read the complete abstract, please click here.