Sunday, December 27, 2015

« Regards croisés autour de l’autotraduction », PAOLA PUCCINI (éd.)

New publication on self-translation: 
Issue n°6 of Interfrancophonie. Revue des littératures et cultures d'expression française dedicated entirely to self-translation. Edited by Paola Puccini. Title: Regards croisés autour de l’autotraduction.
All articles are available online as pdf files. Open Access.


You can find abstracts for all articles on the website of the journal.
Please click here.



Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Conference Translation in Exile, December 09-11, 2015, Brussels

Self-translation will be a topic at the conference Translation in Exile, taking place from December 09-11, 2015, Brussels.

December, 10

09:00-10:30
Self-translation (I) Chair: Philippe Humblé (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Room Francqui

  • Suzanne Jill Levine (University of California, Santa Barbara): Translating Against Censorship: Cabrera Infante as Self/Collaborative Translator 
  • Maria Alice Antunes (State University of Rio de Janeiro, UERJ): Self-translation and the question of exiled writers translating their work into English: the case of Ngugi Wa Thiong’o and Ariel Dorfman

11:00-12:30
Self-translation (II) Chair: Ilse Logie (Ghent University), Room Francqui

  • Michele Russo (G. d’Annunzio University of Pescara): Self-translation and ‘intratextual’ expansion in Nabokov’s autobiographical texts: a model for Brodsky’s memoirs 
  • Rozemarijn Vervoort (Ghent University): Permanently in-between. Self-translation as a characteristic of Sámi society in Sigbjørn Skåden’s work

14:00-15:30
Self-translation (III) Chair: Judith Woodsworth (Concordia University), Room Francqui

  • Lucía Azpeitia Ortiz (Pompeu Fabra University): Una antologia de la lírica nord-americana: Agustí Bartra’s catalan canon of American poetry 
  • Maria-Clara Versiani Galery & Júlia de Melo Arantes (Federal University of Ouro Preto): Samuel Beckett and Nancy Huston: Self-translation, Exile and Liminality


December, 11

9:00-10:30
Soviet Union I Chair: Natalia Kaloh Vid (University of Maribor), Room Francqui

  • Julia Holter (Institute of Modern Texts and Manuscripts (ITEM), CNRS/ENS): Vadim Kozovoï’s Self-translation in France 
  • Jamie L. Olson (Saint Martin’s University): Americanness and Self-Translation in Joseph Brodsky’s Exile Poetry


For the complete conference program, please click here.

Friday, November 13, 2015

Research Seminar: Borrowed Words: Brodsky’s Collaborative Self-Translation

In their Research Seminar Series 2015-16 the Birmingham Centre for Translation offers a lecture on self-translation by Dr Natasha Rulyova (Birmingham) on Tuesday 17 November 2015 1-2pm, Ashley Building, room 121a (Building R17 on the Edgbaston campus map)

Abstract of the talk:
In this paper, I will propose that collaborative translation and self-translation are not mutually exclusive but, in fact, are two sides of the same coin. Independently, each field – collaborative translation and self-translation – has recently started to receive considerable scholarly attention. Self-translation has become a burgeoning subject of research since the 1980s (Grutman 2013; Boyden & De Bleeker 2013; Hokenson & Munson 2007). Collaborative translation is a newer field but has increasingly been gaining pace (Wakabayashi 2011; Cordingley forthcoming 2016). I will show that self-translation can be, in fact, a form of collaborative translation, especially for late bilingual writers who require a certain ‘reprogramming’ from one language to another (Pavlenko 2014, p.168) This process of re-programming is dialogic: bilingual writers do not only start a dialogue with their inner selves in L2 but they are also in dialogue with native speakers of L2 who often become their implicit co-authors. It is in this dialogic process of co-creation, late bilingual writers conduct their self-translation. As my case study, I discuss the work by Joseph Brodsky, a Russian-American Noble Prize winning poet. Brodsky was a late bilingual who arrived in the USA in 1971, having been exiled from the USSR. His early work was translated into English by excellent translators including George Kline, Daniel Weissbort, Alan Myers and others. By the late 1970s, Brodsky started feeling sufficiently confident to intervene in his translators’ work and to self-translate. My study of his manuscripts and correspondence with his translators reveals some fascinating facts about the way in which Brodsky acquired his English-language voice through borrowing, mixing and experimenting, sometimes at the expense of his dedicated translators and friends.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Talk on self-translation at the University of Oregon

Organized by the Translation Studies Working Group (TSWG) at the University of Oregon 
Friday, November 6, 2015, 3-5 p.m. in EMU South Dining West. Free and open to the public. 
  • Brandon Rigby (RL), “Polysemy of the Space Between: Self-translation in Contemporary Transatlantic Bilingual Poetry”

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Update! Bibliography on self-translation

The bibliography on self-translation has been updated.
For any additions, please leave a comment.

To access the pdf-file, please click here.

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Katerina Stoykova-Klemer: "Translation can serve as a wonderful editing tool"

Katerina Stoykova-Klemer was born in Bulgaria and moved to the United States in 1995. She has published her poems in a bilingual edition The Air around the Butterfly / Въздухът около пеперудата (2009). She has also translated a wide range of Bulgarian poets into English. On her blog she talks about the experience of self-translating her poetry and choosing the language for a poem. She stresses the quality of translation as an editing tool:
I feel lucky to be using two languages for writing poetry, because translation can serve as a wonderful editing tool. If something doesn’t work in a poem or group of poems, translate it into another language to see what it looks like and to hear what it sounds like with completely different words. It will really make you think about what you wanted to say in the first place. Even if you think your poem is perfect, taking it apart and reassembling it in another language may give you ideas on how to say something differently. Very rarely when I translate my poems do the originals stay intact.
To read her complete blog entry "Writing in two languages" please click here.

Friday, August 28, 2015

Interview with Rolando Hinojosa-Smith on self-translation

The Acentos Review has recently published an interview with Rolando Hinojosa-Smith conducted in 2012 by Marlene Hansen Esplin. Hansen Esplin asks him some very interesting questions about self-translation:

  • Do you think bilingual, multilingual, and/or bi-scriptive writers can be “good” translators of their own texts? Also, what circumstances in the past have prompted you to write in both or either English or Spanish?
  • So, you feel more comfortable translating your own work, obviously, instead of working with someone else’s?
  • Here’s a related question, considering your own “translations,” or the Spanish and English versions of your texts, e.g. Estampas del valle and The Valley, do you hold to the notion of an “original” text and a “translation” when speaking of your literature? How do you view your Spanish and English texts or versions of your texts in relation to each other?
  • Would you advocate that the reader encounter both of the texts or one before the other?
  • Do you feel that in rewriting or self-translating you make “concessions” for the monolingual reader?

To find out Hinojosas answers, please click here

Thursday, August 27, 2015

Zoë Jenny: "I would rather write something new."

Swiss born writer Zoë Jenny, who moved to London and has just switched her literary language to English, was asked about self-translation in a recent interview by New Books in German:

NBG: Would you consider translating your own works into English, or do you feel that has to be done by a third party?
Z.J: I don’t think I would be interested in translating my own work as long I have new ideas for books. I would rather write something new."
To read the full interview please click here .

Monday, July 13, 2015

Conference: Rewritings MHRA Postgraduate and Early Career Conference

Self-translation will be a topic at the Modern Humanities Research Association Postgraduate and Early Career Conference taking place Friday, 16 October 2015 at the Institute of Modern Languages Research, Senate House, London.

  • 3:30 pm Panel 6: Translation as Rewriting (Room G34):
    Magdalena Kampert (Glasgow): ‘Self-translation as a Form of Rewriting: The Case of Janusz Głowacki‘s Antigone in New York
To read the full conference program, please click here.

Workshop Migrating Histories of Art: Self-translations of a Discipline

8-9.10.2015 in Florence, Italy

Annual Workshop of the International Research Group Bilderfahrzeuge. Aby Warburg’ legacy and the future of Iconology
organized by Maria Teresa Costa and Hans Christian Hönes
  
The workshop situates itself at the crossroads of art history and translation studies, exploring, for the first time, the problem of self-translation in the realm of art writing. One the one hand it seeks to provide a theoretical framework from Translation Studies, on the other hand it aims to offer case-studies from Art History and related fields, providing a unique and comprehensive overview on how a discipline defines itself through cultural transfers.
The workshop addresses these decisive migrations and considers how the adoption and processing of foreign-language texts and their corresponding methodologies have been fundamental to the disciplinary discourse of Art History, since the earliest days of its professionalization. The objects of investigation are both translations of texts by art historians who themselves migrated to other Sprachraums, changing their working language, and also the implication of this transfer for subsequent writings in the mother tongue.
In addition, the self-translations by art historians will be contextualised and juxtaposed against examples from other fields. This will lead to a case-based discussion of the theoretical and practical consequences of the understudied phenomenon of scholarly self-translation, especially with regard to the possibilities and limitations of the dissemination of art-historical methodologies (and therefore of the discipline itself). Consequently, the study of self-translations also addresses the problem of (un-) translatability of concepts and ideas.

The topics considered include:
  • Self-translation as a theoretical phenomenon;
  • Case studies on self-translation from art history and related disciplines;
  • Reports and reminiscences of personal experiences with self-translations and self-translators.

 For more information, please click here.




Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Bibliography on Self-translation - Update July 2015

The bibliography on self-translation has been updated. To download the  PDF file, please click here.
If you know of any missing contribution, please leave a comment with the bibliographical information. Thank you very much!

Monday, June 1, 2015

Conference "...übersetzt von Peter Handke"

Self-translation was a topic of a talk at the conference "...übersetzt von Peter Handke" which took place at the University of Innsbruck, 28-30.05.2015.

  • Dirk Weissmann: Ceci n'est pas une (auto)traduction. A propos de textes 'doubles' de Peter Handke. (Saturday, 30. May 2015)


Gegenstand des Beitrags sind die französisch-deutschen Doppeltexte (wie ich sie vorläufig nennen möchte), die Peter Handke seit Beginn der 2000er Jahre verfasst hat. Anhand einer Analyse der drei Theaterstücke Pourquoi une cuisine ? / Warum eine Küche? (2001-2003), Jusqu’à ce que le jour nous sépare ou Une question de lumière / Bis dass der Tag uns scheidet oder Eine Frage des Lichts (2008-2009), Les Beaux jours d’Aranjuez / Die schönen Tage von Aranjuez (2012) soll zunächst und vor allem der Frage nachgegangen werden, inwiefern (und unter welchen Kriterien) im vorliegenden Fall von (Selbst)Übersetzung gesprochen werden kann. Daneben soll der Status der französischen ‚Fassungen’, ‚Originale’ bzw. ‚Erstschriften’ Handkes für sich hinterfragt werden. Inwiefern kann – produktions- bzw. rezeptionsästhetisch – von einem französischen Schriftsteller Handke gesprochen werden? Zur Diskussion dieses Punktes soll auch ein Blick auf die Aufführungsgeschichte der Stücke sowie ihre Aufnahme durch die Kritik geworfen werden. Phänomene wie die (fremde) Rückübersetzung deutscher Texte in Französische werfen ein interessantes Licht auf die Schwierigkeiten des Literatur- und Theaterbetriebs beim Umgang mit mehrsprachigen Schriftstellern.

To download the full program of the conference please click here.

Conférence de l'Association canadienne de traductologie

Self-translation is a topic at the 28thAnnual Conference of the Canadian Association for Translation Studies La traduction littéraire et le Canada / Literary Translation and Canada / La traducción literaria y Canadá taking place at Ottawa University / Ontario –  June 1st to 3rd, 2015.

Monday, June 1st Session / Séance 2b
Panel: Self-translation   Chair: Patricia Godbout
Talks given by:

  • Sperti, Valeria: Nancy Huston, l’autotraduction et le Canada
  • Van Bolderen, Trish : Huston, we have a problem… (or What on earth is “Canadian self-translation” supposed to mean?)
  • Puccini, Paola : L’autotraduction responsable : recevoir l’autre en tant qu’autre

For more information on the conference and to download the full program, please click here.

Conference Transfiction 3

Self-translation was a topic at the international conference Tranfiction 3 which took place at Concordia University, May 27-29, 2015. Please find below the abstracts of the contributions on self-translation.

TALKS

Rainier Grutman: Non interpres sed orator: Self-translational self-fashioning/la posture d’autotraducteur.

In this bilingual presentation, I will focus on the image projected and created by self-translating writers, on their discursive identity in other words, as it can be seen unfolding in prefaces, correspondence, and interviews. My analysis of this “paratextual” material will draw on Stephen Greenblatt’s notion of “self-fashioning” (which owes quite a bit to Michel Foucault) and on Jérôme Meizoz’s « posture d’auteur » (an offshoot of Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology). Preliminary results indicate that much of the rhetoric deployed is oppositional in nature, i.e. it serves to construct translating and writing as not only two different but axiologically opposed practices (hence my title’s reference to one of the most famous prefaces in translation history, Cicero’s De optimo genere oratorum). We will see how and why this is the case.


Nadia Louar: Bilingual Beckett: The figure(s) of bilingualism in Beckett’s work 
Bilingualism in Samuel Beckett’s œuvre engages a process of rewriting that operates at all strata of his composition and generates a network of repetitions of which intertextuality, transposition, adaptation and all forms of doubling participate. It thus functions as the paradigm for all the formal decisions that led Beckett from being a novelist, to a playwright, a poet and a stage/film director and back. This paper proposes to elucidate the complexities of the author’s identity as a bilingual Irish writer-in-exile. Rather than assessing the author’s literary bilingualism as a fact of linguistic competence attached to a culture and a nation, I will conceptualize the phenomenon as an aesthetic category and show how the passage between French and English (and vice versa) is repeated in those between genres and media.


Xuanmin Luo: Translating, rewriting or trans-writing? A case study of Eileen Chang’s self-translation of Jinsuo Ji 
Regarded as “a rewriting of an original text” (Lefevere 1999), a translation functions as an independent literary product in a target culture. When a writer translates his or her own work, “trans-writing” is perhaps a better term than “rewriting.” This paper will focus on Eileen (Ai-ling) Chang’s self-translation of her novel Jinsuo Ji (The Rouge of the North), first published in Chinese in 1945. There are major differences between the original and its translation: changes in plot and characters, added explanations of Chinese customs, for example. This paper will highlight the ways in which this self-translation can be considered a case of trans-writing, illustrating the writer’s efforts to mediate and negotiate between two cultures. The success of the translation is particularly significant, since it paved the way for Chinese literature to be accepted worldwide. This not an isolated example; the case can be applied to self-translation by writers elsewhere.


Jane Koustas: Polyphony, voice-over, translation as selfie 
From Les variations Goldberg (1981) to Danse noire (2013), Nancy Huston’s literary voice has remained polyphonic. The reader experiences the narrative via a polyphonic filter that requires that s/he “combine” the different versions such as in Les variations Goldberg or, like the narrator, engage with the other/double such as in Infrared. The act of speaking through or for another led Huston to assume a male voice in her performance piece “Le Mâle Entendu.” As a self-translator who now translates while she writes the original, Huston introduces another “silent” voice-over, namely that of her English voice; her novels are written with the translation in mind and, indeed, in progress. As in a selfie, Huston is consciously “seeing” and hearing herself in her English voice or double as she writes and translates. This study considers the relationship between polyphony in Huston’s work and her self-translation.


Valeria Sperti: Fictional translators in the novels of Nancy Huston 
Between the publication of Cantique des plaines in 1993 and Danse noire in 2013, Nancy Huston developed an important critical reflection on bilingualism and divided identity, while the issue of self-translation remained secondary. My presentation analyzes the evolution of the notion of linguistic division in Huston’s novels and demonstrates how themes of translation and self-translation become increasingly important. The audible friction between languages plays an essential role in maintaining the reader’s interest, and instances of cultural interference abound, leaving traces that reveal an interesting linguistic and semantic dissonance. In her most recent novels – particularly Infrarouge and Danse noire – Huston makes interlinguistic translation and its commingling with intersemiotic translation the two integral elements of her transfiction to the point that translation begins to approximate an autobiographeme.


Paola Puccini: Between hetero-translation and self-translation, towards creative translation: The case of Marco Micone
The work of playwright, translator, and self-translator Marco Micone highlights two salient points: the impact of the literary genre on creation and translation, and the relationship between hetero-translation and self-translation. Our aim will be to investigate the complex relationship between writing and translation with reference to Micone’s translation of Carlo Goldoni, which triggered, for the author, an important process of discovery and reflection. We will first examine Micone’s translation of Goldoni’s Locandiera (1993) and then consider his self-translation of Gens du silence (1996) into the Italian Non era per noi (2004) as an intermediary transition to his 2004 Silences. Our multidisciplinary approach will draw on Translation Studies, Cultural Anthropology and intercultural communication theory.

POSTER PRESENTATIONS

Ann Marie Boulanger: Self-translation and Nancy Huston 
Self-translation, the process whereby an author translates his or her own work into another language, has long been viewed, and even scorned, as a literary curiosity at best, and a betrayal of the translation process at worst. Yet, self-translation has a long history and has been practised by some of humanity’s greatest writers. This presentation will cover the history of self-translation in broad strokes, and discuss the various motivations for self-translation and the contexts in which it takes place. Some of the theories and concepts at play in self-translation include agency, cultural mediation, bilingualism, and the cultural turn in translation. Emphasis will be placed on the prolific Canadian author and self-translator Nancy Huston, who was raised as an anglophone but adopted France as her home and French as her language of creation. This presentation will cite examples of her work and discuss her motivations for writing in a language other than her mother tongue. Finally, the disputed status of self-translation will be discussed, in particular as it applies to the debates and controversy surrounding Huston’s work.


Nicodème Niyongabo: The politics of self-translation: Multilingualism in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow and Devil on the Cross 
Sociolinguistic studies of emerging indigenized varieties of English have emphasized the influence of “inner circle” English (in the U.S. and U.K.) on the development of English in the “outer circle.” However, the influence of “World Englishes” on translation has received little attention. Our project investigates the East African variety of English that blends lexical elements of Kiswahili in Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s self-translated novels Devil on the Cross (1982) and Wizard of the Crow (2006). Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s work as an essayist, novelist, playwright, activist and commentator places African indigenous languages and culture in the centre and stresses issues of multilingualism and power relations between English, Kikuyu and Kiswahili. Our study of the translations reveals that both the Kikuyu source texts (T1) and their counterpart English versions (T2) sketch the English-Kiswahili-Mother tongue triple configuration underlying regional language policies. This poster will present the corpus of our project, our tentative research questions, our research methodologies, and some preliminary findings.


Elizabeth Saint: Portraits of self-translation: Fransaskois theatre 
The intentions behind a writer’s decision to undertake the “difficult, tedious, and repetitive” task of self-translation (Grutman, 2007, p. 220) influence its presentation, the strategies employed and the type of translation produced. We will compare two pieces of Fransaskois theatre – La Maculée by Madeleine Blais-Dahlem and Bonneau et la Bellehumeur by Raoul Granger – to shed light on aspects of self-translation in Fransaskois drama. We will examine contextual constraints, publication formats, paratexts and translation strategies. Blais-Dahlem and Granger are, like all translators, agents of “intercultural communication” (Vermeer, 1989), and they share a skopos oriented toward “building communal bridges” (Day, 2013). However, while the first develops his personality as a bilingual writer, the second erases any trace of his intervention as a self-translator. An analysis of the translation strategies employed reveals the interdependence between the original and the self-translation in the case of Blais-Dahlem, but the autonomy of the two versions in the case of Granger.


For more information on the conference, please click here.

Thursday, May 21, 2015

CfP: Écrire entre les langues Migration, bilinguisme, plurilinguisme et poétiques de la frontière dans l’Italie contemporaine (1980-2015)

COLLOQUE INTERNATIONAL

Université Paul-Valéry – Montpellier, Jeudi 19 et vendredi 20 novembre 2015
Equipe d’accueil 4582 – LLACS (Langues, Littératures, Arts et Cultures des Suds)

Présentation générale du colloque 

Le phénomène du bilinguisme littéraire, bien qu’il soit déjà présent dans la littérature du XXe siècle, a atteint, dans les dernières décennies, une dimension nouvelle et plus vaste. Les migrations massives aussi bien que les nouvelles mobilités et les migrations de retour, en plus d’un marché et d’une pratique de l’écriture qui ont totalement changé, ont certainement contribué à rendre le concept de bilinguisme plus complexe.
Le cas italien – pays d’importante émigration, qui est devenu, au cours des vingt-cinq dernières années, un pays d’immigration – est, à ce propos, paradigmatique. À l’heure actuelle, nous comptons de nombreux écrivains plurilingues qui utilisent, parmi d’autres langues, l’italien. À travers la reconstruction de leurs parcours (parcours d’immigration et d’émigration, bien sûr, mais aussi expériences transfrontalières ou choix purement esthétiques
non liés à des vicissitudes personnelles), nous essayerons de réfléchir à la notion de « littérature italienne contemporaine » qui se présente aujourd’hui comme un ensemble de plus en plus diversifié, non seulement du point de vue de la langue, mais également sur le double plan de la poétique et des choix esthétiques.
Les différentes interventions du colloque nous permettront de nous interroger sur les problématiques suivantes :

1. Écritures transnationales. Le cas des écrivains de la frontière ;
2. Écritures migrantes (d’immigration et d’émigration) ;
3. Le cas du bilinguisme et du plurilinguisme ;
4. L’emploi littéraire de la langue et du dialecte ;
5. La représentation littéraire et la notion d’identité.

Langues du colloque : Français et italien.
Envoi des propositions de communication :
Veuillez envoyer vos propositions de communication sous forme d’un résumé de 20 lignes, avec titre, indication de cinq mots-clés ainsi qu’une courte biobibliographie, aux organisateurs du colloque :
Daniele COMBERIATI (daniele.comberiati@univ-montp3.fr)
Flaviano PISANELLI (flaviano.pisanelli@univ-montp3.fr)

Date limite d’envoi des propositions de communication : 30 juin 2015
Réponse du comité scientifique : 15 juillet 2015
La participation au colloque prévoit des frais d’inscription.

For more information and the call for papers in Italian Language, please click here.


Wednesday, May 6, 2015

CfP: Authorial Translation in Renaissance Europe

Authorial Translation in Renaissance Europe

Deadline: 15 May 2015
Organizers: Dr William Barton (Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, Innsbruck); Dr Sara Olivia Miglietti (Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, University of Warwick)

This panel, or series of panels, aims to investigate the forms and strategies of authorial translation in the long Renaissance (c. 1350-1650). By ‘authorial translation’ we intend to designate a constellation of practices ranging from self- translation proper (see e.g. Cordingley 2013, Deneire 2013, Turchetti 2013, Turchetti 2015) to the activity of ‘“strong” translators who placed their own unmistakable imprint on the works they translated’ (Bernofsky 2005:x). In the latter sense, authorial translation is not necessarily defined ‘by the translator being an author in his own right, but by his active shaping of the translated textin a particular direction’ (ibid.). By encouraging reflection on this theme, we aim to draw attention to a crucial, though still understudied, aspect of Renaissance culture, and to establish a dialogue between intellectual historians, linguists, and literary theorists concerning the character of Renaissance translation practices.
[...]
While studies such as these have greatly advanced our knowledge of the forms and strategies of Renaissance translation, as well as of the social and biographical profiles of Renaissance translators (see e.g. recent studies of John Florio by Pfister 2005, Pirillo 2013), substantial work still remains to be done in order to clarify the complex relationship between translation and authorship throughout the late medieval and early modern period—a time that witnessed profound transformations to the very notion of ‘author’ (see Brunn 2001). By focusing on the theory and practice of Renaissance authorial translation, we hope to contribute, on the one hand, to our knowledge of Renaissance translation practices, and, more broadly, to the on-going theoretical debate about the nexus between translation and authorship (see e.g. Venuti 2008 and Pym 2010).

We welcome abstracts for 20-minute presentations on the following themes:
  • authorial translation: definition and case studies
  • self-translation: forms, strategies, related issues (linguistic: Latin andvernacular, bilingualism, linguistic choice and the expressive potentialities of different languages, etc.; social and cultural: intended audiences, impact of censorship, etc.; literary: authorial revision, rewriting, authorial intention, etc.)
  • supervised translation: status and case studies
  • traducteur/traditeur: translation as a form of rewriting/authorship

Please send a 150-word abstract (inclusive of keywords) and a 300-word curriculum vitae to s.o.miglietti@warwick.ac.uk by 15 May 2015 (sample CVs are available on the RSA website: http://www.rsa.org/?page=submissionguidelines). 

For more information and the complete call for papers, please click here 

Conference: La traduction littéraire comme création, 20-21 mai 2015

Self-translation will be a topic at the conference La traduction littéraire comme création, taking place from 20-21 May in Avignon, France.

  • 20. May at 10am
    Lucia QUAQUARELLI, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre : Traduction, re-traduction, auto-traduction, hétérolinguisme dans la littérature postcoloniale italienne : quelques réflexions
For further information on the program of the conference, please click here.

Saturday, April 25, 2015

Conference Europe en mouvement

Self-translation will be at topic of a talk given at the conference Europe en mouvement: Lieux, Passage taking place at Cerise, France, 02.06.2015-09.06.2015.

Abstract of the talk sheduled for Friday afternon:

Stefan WILLER: Les autotraductions des frères Humboldt
Avec une autotraduction, un auteur devient le traducteur de son propre texte. Bien qu'il s'agisse d'un phénomène particulier en apparence, il est au contraire très important pour les transmissions du savoir en Europe et dans le monde. Dans mon intervention, je vais éclaircir le rôle de Guillaume et d'Alexandre de Humboldt à cet égard. Les deux frères, qui écrivaient en allemand et en français pendant toute leur carrière de chercheur, de savant et d'homme politique, ont traduit à maintes reprises et dans les deux directions leurs propres textes. L'analyse d'un tel "entre-deux-langues" (comme l'a appelé l'autotraducteur Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt) permet de discerner avec précision les convergences et les tensions qui existent entre deux langues, deux langages ou même deux styles de pensée.

For more information on the conference please click here.

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Update Bibliography on self-translation

The bibliography on self-translation has been updated. A new section "Self-translators on self-translation" has been included.
To access the pdf-file, please click here. The next update is scheduled for July 2015.

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Cfp: Voix de la traduction Traduire, transformer, reformer (Bologne, les 15 et 16 octobre 2015)

Les mouvements transnationaux d’idées et d’œuvres, l’expérience des écritures postcoloniales, ainsi que l’affirmation de pratiques cross-médiales et collaboratives de la narration non seulement forcent les frontières entre les traditions nationales, les disciplines et les médias (et leurs dynamiques habituelles d’échange), mais mettent en échec toute hiérarchie entre l’original et ses « traductions » (inter- o intralinguistiques, intersémiotiques), sapent de l’intérieur la norme monolingue et compromettent l’idée de traduction comme transfert, passage, pont, nous demandant de repenser certaines notions traductives centrales telles que langue de départ/langue d’arrivée, fidélité, respect, transparence, équivalence, lisibilité, différence… 
De plus, l’acte traductif est un acte fortement conditionné, inséré dans un paysage culturel profondément hiérarchisé, traversé par des impératifs discursifs, productifs, commerciaux et politiques très rigides. Et il est également, aujourd’hui, le lieu (à la fois métaphorique et procédural) de la création, de l’imagination et de l’espoir (Martha Nussbaum) ; le lieu à partir duquel redessiner (configurer) les rapports entre les langues et les pays ouvrant vers un univers hétérolingue qui est la figure de l’explosion des frontières entre les langues et la marque de l’urgence de déconstruire et transgresser l’idée que la différence distingue et divise. 
Le colloque Voix de la traduction. Traduire, transformer, reformer entend se proposer comme lieu de réflexion sur les transformations en cours, appelant les spécialistes à s’interroger sur quelques questions centrales telles que : 
  • Esthétique, éthique et politique de la traduction 
  • Traduction comme création 
  • Traduction comme métaphore du tiers-lieu 
  • Traduction et littérature postcoloniale 
  • Traduction et hétérolinguisme 
  • Autotraduction, traduction sans original 
  • Convergence médiatique et pratiques traductives 
  • Traduction collaborative 
  • Traduction comme lieu de l’accessibilité (langue des signes…) 


Le colloque sera bouclé par un Laboratoire de traduction collaborative ouvert aux étudiants du Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Traduzione Specializzata et aux doctorants. 
Consignes 
Les propositions, de 300 caractères maximum, sont à envoyer par mail, et avant le 30 mars 2015, à Lucia Quaquarelli / lquaquarelli@u-paris10.fr Licia Reggiani / licia.reggiani@unibo.it 
La confirmation de l’acceptation sera communiquée, toujours par mail, avant le 30 avril 2015. 
*** 
Projet scientifique: Lucia Quaquarelli, Licia Reggiani 
Comité scientifique international: Chiara Elefante, Danielle Londei, Christophe Mileschi, Myriam Suchet, 
Organisation: Chiara Denti, Gianna Tarquini

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

NEW Special Issue on Self-Translation

The special issue on self-translation of the journal Glottopol has just been published.
Glottopol issue N°25 directed by Christian Lagarde is entitled: L'autotraduction : une perspective sociolinguistique and discusses self-translation from a sociolinguistical point of view
The 18 contributions are written in French or Spanish.
The content is available online for free. You can download the whole issue or single articles on the website of the journal.

  • Christian Lagarde : Des langues minorées aux « langues mineures » : autotraduction littéraire et sociolinguistique, une confrontation productive – 2
  • Rainier Grutman : L’autotraduction : de la galerie de portraits à la galaxie des langues. –  14
  • Christian Lagarde  : De l’individu au global : les enjeux psycho-sociolinguistiques de l’autotraduction littéraire. – 31
  • Julio-César Santoyo : Consideraciones acerca del estatus actual de la autotraducción en la Península Ibérica. – 47
  • Xosé Manuel Dasilva : Los horizontes lingüísticos del autotraductor. Una visión a partir del contexto de Galicia. – 59
  • Elizabete Manterola Agirrezabalaga : La autotraducción en el contexto vasco : entre distancia interlingüistica y la constitución de un campo literario nacional transfronterizo. – 71
  • Katixa Dolharé Çaldumbide : L’autotraduction comme résistance aux idéologies aliénantes et voie vers la paix : l’exemple de l’œuvre d’Itxaro Borda au Pays basque nord (Iparralde). – 88
  • David ar Rouz : De l’autotraduction à la traduction de soi : éléments de réflexion bretonne. –103
  • Erwan Hupel : Le cœur et l’esprit : déchirements et stratégies d’autotraduction chez quelques auteurs bretons. – 124
  • Joan-Claudi Forêt  : L’auteur occitan et son double. – 136
  • Turo Rautaoja et Yves Gambier : L’autotraduction : une pratique ancienne, un concept ambigu. Le cas du Suédo-Finlandais Karl Ekman. – 151
  • Peggy Pacini : L’autotraduction chez Grégoire Chabot : médiation, transmission, survie d’une communauté et d’une littérature de l’exigüité. – 163
  • Michel Calapodis et Elisa Hatzidaki : Du bilinguisme littéraire à la diglossie socio-historique : le cas de l’œuvre de Vassilis Alexakis. – 178
  • María Recuenco Peñalver : Vassilis Alexakis ou le paradoxe systématique de l’autotraduction.  – 187
  • Olga Anokhina  : Les traductions vers l’anglais de Vladimir Nabokov : traduction ou autotraduction ? –198
  • Helena Tanqueiro et Meritxell Soria : Análisis traductológico de referentes culturales en La testa perduta di Damasceno Monteiro de Antonio Tabucchi. –211
  • Chiara Montini: S’autotraduire en traduisant les mots : la vie entre deux langues de Dolores Prato. –223
  • Delfina Cabrera : Ecrire en « demi-langue ». Multilinguisme et autotraduction dans les premiers scénarios de Manuel Puig. –235


To access the journal issue or the single articles, please click here.

Monday, March 2, 2015

Conference Self-translation Global and Local

I just came home from a very interesting and inspiring international conference on self-translation which took place at Vitoria-Gasteiz in the Basque Country on 26th February.

Here is an overview of the talks that have been given:

  • Eva Gentes: Research on Self-Translation. A General Overview
  • Xosé Manuel Dasilva: The Phenomenon of Self-Translation. Typology of Self-Translation
  • Garazi Arrula & Elizabete Manterola: The Phenomenon of Self-Translation in Basque Literature
  • Ibon Uribarri: Self-Translation Within a Diglossic Environment
  • Frederick Verbeke: An Overview of Literary Self-Translation in Belgium
  • Rainer Guldin: Self-Translation in Switzerland
  • Agnes Pisanski Peterlin: Self-Translation in the Academic Field
  • Nebojša Radić: Criss-Crossing the Language Boundaries as an Expression of the Plurilingual Self
  • Ur Apalategi: The Self-Translating Author in Conflict with Diglossic Context. The Polygraphy of Iban Zaldua
  • Aurélia Arkotxa: La autotraducción como medio de creación en la génesis de Mimodramak eta Ikonoak de JM Lekuona
  • Olga Anokhina: Vladmir Nabokov:¿traducción o autotraducción?

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Conference: Multiculturalism and Multilingualism in Canada

Self-translation will be a topic at the symposium Multiculturalism and Multilingualism in Canada taking place 21-22 February 2015 at the University of Ottawa, Canada.
Two panels on Sunday 22 February are dedicated to self-translation with the following contributions:

11:15 – 12:45 Panel 5 Self-translation and the Canadian mosaic/L’autotraduction et la mosaïque canadienne I
  • Rainier Grutman (University of Ottawa), Self-translation in Canada: a Multilingual Affair 
  • Patricia Godbout (Université de Sherbrooke), Une autotraduction cleptomane? Le cas du Rêve de Kamalmouk de Marius Barbeau 
  • Tiziana Nannavecchia (University of Ottawa), Searching for a place to call home: self-translation and the literary experience of Italian migrants in multilingual Canada
13:45 – 15:15 Panel 6 Self-translation and the Canadian mosaic/L’autotraduction et la mosaïque canadienne II 
  • Cecilia Foglia (Université de Montréal), Autotraduire la « culture immigrée » : Marco Micone, une étude de cas 
  • Hugh Hazelton (Concordia University), Reclaiming the Text: Self-Translation Among Spanish and Portuguese-Speaking Writers of Canada 
  • Trish van Bolderen (University of Ottawa), Huston, we have a problem… (or What on earth is “Canadian self-translation” supposed to mean?)
To see the full programme please click here.

Call for posters. 5/27/2015. The Fictions of Translation. Canada.

Self-translation is one of the possible topics for a poster presentation at the international conference to be held May 27-29, 2015, at Concordia University, in Montreal, Canada.
Deadline for submission: January 30, 2015

Poster Presentations
The organizing committee of Transfiction 3 is seeking undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students as well as postdocs for poster presentations during the conference. A poster presentation involves producing an academic poster that translates your research into an engaging visual format, and presenting that information informally to conference attendees during specific periods such as lunchtime and coffee breaks. Posters give you an opportunity to interact one on one with conference attendees by giving a short talk on your topic and answering any questions. Your poster should contain the title of your presentation, a summary of your topic, relevant quotes, images, examples or illustrations of your key points, and any other information that helps you communicate your ideas clearly and fully.
Interested participants are invited to submit 300-word proposals for poster presentations by January 30, 2015, to transfiction@concordia.ca. The proposals should be attached in Word, with the file name in the following format: authorname.doc, and “poster presentation” indicated in the subject line of the e-mail. (Please include your contact information in the body of your e-mail, not in the file.)
Date of notification regarding acceptance of poster presentations: February 15, 2015.
Conference Theme
This conference is a follow-up to the first Transfiction conference on “Fictional Translators” (Vienna 2011) and its sequel, Beyond Transfiction, on “Translators and (Their) Authors” (Tel Aviv 2013). Transfiction 3 will continue to explore the complex relationship and shifting borders between writing and translation, in the past and at present. Using historical perspectives and current theoretical frameworks, participants will reflect on the continuing presence of the theme of translation and translators in fiction, drama, and other art forms such as cinema, on the often problematic interface between writers and translators, and the evolving status of translation in relation to so-called original work.
Suggested topics may include, but are not limited to:
· The figure of the translator and the theme of translation: is this primarily a (post)modern phenomenon or one that can be traced back to earlier times?
· Historical perspectives: shifting attitudes to the status of translation and the role of the translator; evolving perceptions of the authorial voice and the translator’s visibility.
· Fictionalized practices of translation such as pseudotranslation.
· Self-translation: can it really be called “translation” or is it a form of (re)writing?
· Translation and hybridity: dialects/diglossia/polyglossia across expatriate and diasporic communities, and their implications for writing and translation.
· Translation in/and/of modernism: Joyce, Pound, Beckett, etc.
· Intra-cultural or inter-semiotic forms of translation: for example, novels adapted for the cinema or stage, and graphic novels.
· New developments in a globalized, technological world: what are the implications for translations, translators, and relations between authors and translators of such phenomena as crowdsourcing, collaborative translation, and open translation?
· The “translation turn” in the social sciences and humanities: is the use of “translation” a metaphor, a fiction, or a legitimate epistemological practice?
Conference Languages
The languages of the conference will be English and French.
Note: The conference is being planned in cooperation with the Canadian Association for Translation Studies, whose annual conference will be held in Ottawa the following week, from June 1 to 3, 2015, on the theme “Literary Translation and Canada.” Scholars may wish to participate in both conferences.
Fee
Early registration fee for students (before March 31, 2015): CAN$75
Fee after March 31, 2015: CAN$100
Local Organizing Committee
Judith Woodsworth, Chair / Patricia Godbout, Co-chair / Gillian Lane-Mercier, Co-chair
Danièle Marcoux / Carmen Ruschiensky / Christine York
Scientific Committee
Véronique Béghain (Université Bordeaux Montaigne) / Nitsa Ben-Ari (Tel Aviv University)
Patricia Godbout (Université de Sherbrooke) / Gillian Lane-Mercier (McGill University)
Xuanmen Luo (Tsinghua University) / Judith Woodsworth (Concordia University)

Information and further details:
For all correspondence about the conference please use the e-mail address: transfiction@concordia.ca .

Sébastien Doubinsky on self-translating

Sébastien Doubinsky, born in France but living in Denmark, speaks about his experience of self-translating his novels in an interview with the arts and literary journal The Missing Slate:
I have translated myself—and others—many times and know well that perfect translation doesn’t exist. It can be seen as a tragedy, a communication failure, but actually I consider this a chance—a chance of freedom, of the irreconcilable space between cultures—and the mutual respect it implies. So if you read closely and compare the two versions of the same novel I’ve written, I think you might be shocked by the liberties I am taking with the original text! But that is because the second one becomes a new original, if you want, another text altogether. (The Missing Slate 2015)
To read the complete interview please click here.

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Conference "Lyrik transkulturell"

Self-translation will be a topic at the international conference Lyrik transkulturell taking place 21.-24th January at the University Innsbruck in Austria.

  • Samstag, 24.01.2015 (Un)Übersetzbarkeit
    09:00–09:45 Barbara Siller: Lyrik in zwei Sprachen – monolinguale Rezeption? Selbstübersetzung als literarische Handlungsform am Beispiel Gerhard Kofler
To see the complete program of the conference please click here.

Thursday, January 1, 2015

UPDATE Bibliography on self-translation

The bibliography on self-translation has been updated. To access the pdf-file, please click here. The next update is scheduled for April 1, 2015.

Happy New Year, everyone!

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...