CfP: CSIS Panel on self-translation: Perché autotradursi? (Why should one self-translate?)

Deadline for submission: February 25, 2018

** CSIS Annual Conference in Ottawa, Canada (May 11-13, 2018)  http://canadiansocietyforitalianstudies.camp7.org/Conference-2018

Panel on self-translation: Perché autotradursi? (Why should one self-translate?)

Self-translation has always been present in the Italian literary scene, although this practice has rarely been acknowledged and its study has been most often neglected.
In the past, self-translations by Italian writers have been offered, at various times, and in different language combinations  (e.g., Italo Calvino, Beppe Fenoglio, Carlo Goldoni, Luigi Pirandello). More recently, a high level of bilingualism due migration, exile, or transnational lifestyles triggered by post-colonial and post-war developments has produced a new wave of self-translations, within and outside Italy. We are inviting proposals to reveal and dissect the practice of self-translation both as a process – of linguistic mediation, cultural negotiation and/or creative “transmutation” (Octavio Paz) – and as a product, with all that concerns publication trends, market-related restrictions, readers’ response and critics’ reception.

The reasons that lead a writer to self-translate (or not to self-translate, as Tim Parks argues) his/her work are manifold and often overlapping. It is striking, however, that publishers are rarely keen to advertise their publications as self-translations. Again, the reasons behind this reticence are manifold and require further study.

This panel offers the opportunity to explore the question of its title  – “Perché autotradursi?” – in the widest possible way, embracing any historical time-frame and from any specific point of view, be it that of:

- the emerging or already established writer;
- the independent or trade publisher;
- the monolingual or bilingual (if not multilingual) reader;
- the literary critic or the scholar;
- the language combination itself, and its relation to the socio-linguistic web of global power dynamics.

Please submit an abstract in English, Italian, French or Spanish and a short bio to Arianna Dagnino, The University of Ottawa,  adagnino@uottawa.ca,  by February 25, 2018.