Alexakis at the Festival Vo-Vf

The festival Vo-Vf La Parole aux Traducteurs will take place from 10 to 12 october 2014 in Gif-Sur-Yvette, France. On Sunday afternoon Vassilis Alexakis will talk about his self-translations:

14h - 15h15 Carte blanche à la Bulac
Conférence animée par Clotilde Monteiro sur l'autodraduction, avec l'écrivain Vassilis Alexakis dont l'œuvre, dans ses versions grecque et française, est présente dans les collections de la BULAC. Grand habitué des aller-retours entre le grec et le français, cetaficionado s'est mis un jour en tête d'apprendre une troisième langue, le sango. Vassilis Alexakis qui se définit comme Grec par ses parents et Français par ses enfants a aussi coutume de dire « j'ai une langue pour rire qui est le français, une langue pour pleurer qui est le grec et une troisième le sango, l'idiome de la république centrafricaine, pour jouer ». Comme d'autres noms prestigieux avant lui, tels que James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, Julien Green ou Samuel Beckett, Vassilis Alexakis a fait le choix de l'auto-traduction, un exercice qu'il considère comme faisant partie intégrante de son travail d'écriture. Au cours de cette rencontre, il lèvera le voile sur sa pratique de la traduction tout en abordant une question essentielle à ses yeux : « Y a-t-il une vie en dehors du roman ? ».

To see the full programm and for more information on the festival, please click here.

Doireann Ní Ghríofa: "My translation process went from exhausting and difficult to exciting and nourishing."

The Colony Literary Magazine conducted a very interesting interview with the poet Doireann Ní Ghríof (*1981), who writes in both Irish and English. She talks about language choice, translation strategies and how her approach to self-translation has changed over the years.

To read the full interview please click here. You can also read a couple of her poems in both languages.

Cfp: Tracing Self-Translation : discursive perspectives in context

This is a call for paper for panel 11 at the IATIS Belo Horizonte Conference. The panel is being organized by Maud Gonne, Klaartje Merrigan, Reine Meylaerts and Katarzyna Szymanska.

Deadline for abstracts: 1st August 2014

Once known as a marginal field of study, self-translation has recently attracted a considerable amount of scholarly interest. Current theories vacillate between opposing understandings of self-translation, depending on whether the focal point consists of the self-translator as a unique, 'privileged agent of transfer' (Tanqueiro 1999), or of the self-translated text as the result of an act of re-writing, and thus essentially no different from any other text that is reshaped or 'fragmented' in view of a new readership (Lefevere 1992, Bassnett 2013). The focus on the agency of the self-translator has led to passionate pleas to 'move beyond Beckett' in order to place reflections on self-translation in a broader sociological framework of a competing world system of languages (Grutman 2013). Theoretical reflections on the self-translated text have, in turn, defined the latter as a complex cultural artifact which constantly questions binary oppositions underlying key-concepts of translation studies (Cordingley 2013).

Nevertheless, current approaches tend to neglect the specificity of the self-translation process, which implies a cross-fertilization between writing, translating, reading and often re-writing between languages as well as an act of world-construction across languages. While self-translators are often exceptional 'cultural brokers', they are also the creators of complex literary scenographies, which necessarily bear the traces of the multilingual enunciative conditions out of which they emerge. By focusing on literary scenographies, this panel aims to extend current research on bilingualism within linguistic theories of discourse by reflecting on the ramifications of the 'bilingual condition' on the literary discourse of self-translating authors. The term scenography, as introduced by Maingueneau (2004) refers here to the narrative scene constructed in a fictional text, which reflects and legitimate the genre in which it partakes and in turn influences the 'image' of the author perceived as the creator of that particular scenography. In the case of literary self-translation, we believe these scenographies need to be linked to (i) the specific language(s) in which they are written and (ii) the complex author-translator status of the writer who created them.

The purpose of this panel is therefore to study self-translation as both a translational and literary activity, with highly complex modes of interaction which can be traced discursively. Concretely, we aim to (1)open up new methodological questions on how translation strategies between versions can be linked to narrative and/or discursive structures which concur across versions (2)study the continuities (and not only the dissimilarities) between versions and analyze how these deepen or problematize the relationship between a given literary scenography and its double context of reception.

Possible research questions are:

- Are there recurring topoi, stereotypes, discursive strategies within the self-translated text/discourse? What kind of discursive 'traces' (narration, voice, time, space, ...) emerge out of the conditions from which self-translators write?

- Is it possible to speak of a self-translating 'ethos', at once inscribing itself in authorial and translational discourses?

- To what extend does self-translation constitute a meta-literary or meta-translational practice? Can it be analyzed as the (self-)translator's comment on either the original or translation process?

Timeline for submission within a panel:

By 1st August 2014: Deadline for submissions of abstracts

By 25th October 2014: notification of acceptance of abstracts

For more information and for the modalities of submission, please click here.

New book on self-translation: Brodsky translating Brodsky

Bloomsbury has published Brodsky translating Brodsky. Poetry in Self-translation by Alexandra Berlina.
For more information on the book please click here. The book contains a foreword by the poet and translator Robert Chandler.

7th Annual International Conference on Languages & Linguistics, 7-10 July 2014, Athens, Greece

Self-translation will be a topic at the 7th Annual International Conference on Languages & Linguistics, taking place from 7-10 July 2014, Athens, Greece.

Yu-Fen Tai, Assistant Professor, Tamkang University, Taiwan:Rewriting or Creation: Self-Translation of Eileen Chang´s the Rice Sprout Song

For more information on the conference, please click here.

3rd International Conference on Itineraries in Translation History

Self-translation was a topic at the 3rd International Conference on Itineraries in Translation History, which took place June 13-14, 2014 at the University of Tartu, Estonia. 

Janika Päll: The role of translation and self-translation in Early Modern society: the examples from Estonia and Livonia in the context of European learned practice 

Abstract: 

The paper consists of three parts: at first it presents the main contexts and uses of translating in the publications from Tartu, Riga (and Tallinn) from the 17th century; secondly it turns its attention to one specific translation type, namely the phenomenon of self-translation (author’s own translation of his/her works) both regarding its contemporary roles and practices and the difference of this practice in early modern society. The third part consists of the discussion of some examples of poems, presented in two languages (Latin and Humanist Greek) by Martinus Herzog, Reinerus Brockmann and Martinus Henschelius (in comparison to European practice, e.g. by F.Virdungus), as well as a treatise on rhetoric by J.Witte and M.Heno, which appeared both in Tartu (in Latin) and Riga (in German). Finally some conclusions will be drawn on the general practice, firstly regarding the role of multi-language texts in society, as well as the reasons of occasional preference of translating the texts into ancient and not vernacular languages.

For more information on the conference, please click here.

New book on self-translation

Josep Miquel Ramis has published a book on self-translation in Catalan with the title Autotraducció. De la teoria a la pràctica. You can read an extract here. For more information on the book please click here.