Lahiri interview on her self-translation Whereabouts

Recently, Jhumpa Lahiri published her first self-translated novel Whereabouts. In an interview with Urmila Seshagiri for Los Angeles Review of books she reflects on this experience:

"It becomes a hall of mirrors or an endless loop when you are at both ends. It’s like playing tennis with yourself but it’s not against the wall. It’s like hitting the ball and then running over to the other side, lobbing it back, and then running back. It’s kind of impossible, but in some crazy cartoon version of life you can imagine someone doing that."

To read the complete interview please click here: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/language-is-a-place-a-conversation-with-jhumpa-lahiri/

Also see this blog post.

Edited volumes on self-translation

For those readers of my blog who are starting their research on self-translation: Here is an overview of edited volumes on self-translation sorted by language of publication. 

English

• Bujaldón de Esteves, Lila, Belén Bistué & Melisa Stocco (eds.). 2019. Literary Self-Translation in Hispanophone Contexts - La autotraducción literaria en contextos de habla hispana. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. [378 pages] 
• Castro, Olga, Sergi Mainer & Svetlana Skomorokhova (eds.). 2017. Self-translation and Power. Negotiating identities in multilingual European Contexts. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Cordingley, Anthony (ed.), 2013. Self-Translation: Brokering Originality in Hybrid Culture. London: Continuum. [288 pages] 
• Costa, Maria Teresa & Hans Christian Hönes (eds.). 2018. Migrating Histories of Art: Self-Translations of a Discipline. Berlin: De Gruyter. [232 pages] 

French:

• Ferraro, Alessandra & Rainier Grutman (eds.). 2016. L’autotraduction littéraire: perspectives théoriques. Paris: Garnier. [260 pages]
• Galderisi, Claudio & Vincensini, Jean-Jacques (eds.). 2017. La traduction entre Moyen Âge et Renaissance. Médiations, auto-traductions et traductions secondes. Turnhout, Brepols. [265 pages]
• Lagarde, Christian & Helena Tanqueiro (eds.). 2013. L’Autotraduction aux frontières de la langue et de la culture. Limoges: Editions Lambert Lucas. 
• Lushenkova Foscolo, Anna & Malgorzata Smorag-Goldberg (eds.). 2019. Plurilinguisme et autotraduction. Langue perdue, langue 'sauvée'. Paris: Eur’Orbem. [308 pages]
• Regattin, Fabio (ed.) 2020. Autotraduzione Pratiche, teorie, storie.  Autotraduction Pratiques, théories, histoires. Città di Castello (PG): I libri di Emi.

Spanish:

• Bujaldón de Esteves, Lila, Belén Bistué & Melisa Stocco (eds.). 2019. Literary Self-Translation in Hispanophone Contexts - La autotraducción literaria en contextos de habla hispana. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. [378 pages] 
• Dasilva, Xosé Manuel & Helena Tanqueiro (eds.). 2011. Aproximaciones a la autotraducción. Vigo: Editorial Academia del Hispanismo. 
• Gallén, Enric & al. (eds.). 2011. Traducción y autotraducción en las literaturas ibéricas, Bern & Berlin: Peter Lang. 
• Poch Olivé, Dolors & Jordi Julià (eds.) 2020. Escribir con dos voces: Bilingüismo, contacto idiomático y autotraducción en literaturas ibéricas. Vol. 8. Valencia: Universitat de València. [244 pages]

Italian

• Berni, Bruno & Alessandra D’Atena (eds.). 2019. Autotraduzione. Obiettivi, strategie, testi. Roma: Istituto italiano di studi germanici. [147 pages]
  
• Cartago, Gabriella & Jacopo Ferrari (eds.). 2018. Momenti di storia dell’autotraduzione. Milano: LED. [174 pages] 
• Ceccherelli, A., Imposti, G.E. & Perotto, M. (eds.). 2013. Autotraduzione e riscrittura, Bologna: Bononia University Press. [454 pages]
• Regattin, Fabio (ed.) 2020. Autotraduzione Pratiche, teorie, storie.  Autotraduction Pratiques, théories, histoires. Città di Castello (PG): I libri di Emi.
• Rubio Árquez, Marcial & Nicola D’Antuono (eds.). 2012. Autotraduzione. Teoria ed esempi fra Italia e Spagna (e oltre). Milano: LED dizioni Universitarie di Lettere Economia Diritto.

German:

• Willer, Stefan & Keller, Andreas (eds.). 2020. Selbstübersetzung als Wissenstransfer. Berlin: Kadmos. [326 pages]

Catalan:

• Gallén, Enric & José Francisco Ruiz Casanova. (eds.) 2018. Bilingüisme, autotraducció i literatura catalana. Lleida: Punctum.

July 2021: Self-translation blog email subscription service will be terminated

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Essay by Jhumpa Lahiri: Where I Find Myself: On Self-translation

In their April 2021 issue, Words Without Borders published a very interesting essay by Jhumpa Lahiri who recently published her first self-translated novel Dove mi trovo / Whereabouts.  In her essay, she reflects on the process of deciding whether or not to translate the novel herself, the translation process, and how this self-translation will affect future editions of the original.  
Here are three quotes of her very interesting reflections on self-translation:

"... self-translation is like one of those radioactive dyes that enable doctors to look through our skin to locate damage in the cartilage, unfortunate blockages, and other states of imperfection."

"Self-translation is a bewildering, paradoxical going backward and moving forward at once. There is ongoing tension between the impulse to plow ahead undermined by a strange gravitational force that holds you back."

"That original book, which now feels incomplete to me, stands in line behind its English-language counterpart. Like an image viewed in the mirror, it has turned into the simulacrum, and both is and is not the starting point for what rationally and irrationally followed."

To read the complete essay, please go visit the Words Without Border journal:
https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/april-2021-where-i-find-myself-on-self-translation-jhumpa-lahiri