Guest-edited by Eva Gentes and Trish Van Bolderen
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Literary self-translation is defined as the phenomenon of authors translating their own writing and producing more than one linguistic version of a given literary work. While research on the topic has surged since the turn of the 21st century (for reference, see the Bibliography on Self-Translation), scholarship is overwhelmingly dominated by a restricted set of focal points: bilingual practices, literary figures of international renown (typically in the West), 20th-century contexts, a selection of major Western European languages, and minority-language settings in Spain.
This special issue of the Journal of Literary Multilingualism explores 21st-century self-translation related to languages, regions, writers, and literary genres that have thus far received little to no critical attention within self-translation research.
We welcome case studies, ethnographic research, larger-scale studies, genetic criticism, theoretical reflections, and any other approach that engages with and adds meaningful new perspectives to existing self-translation research. Possible research questions include:
• How do understandings of self-translation shift when we account for projects that are not limited to transfers between English, French, and/or Spanish, such as those incorporating lesser-translated languages like Bulgarian (e.g. Miroslav Penkov), Slovenian (e.g. Brina Svit), Swedish (e.g. Linda Olsson) or Yiddish (e.g. Chava Rosenfarb)?
• What idiosyncrasies characterize the self-translation process when writers work with three or more languages, as in the case of Lisa Carducci (English-French-Italian-Spanish), Laià Fabregas (Catalan-Dutch-Spanish) or Monika Zgustovà (Catalan-Czech-Spanish)?
• How can self-translation be mapped out in geopolitical regions or sociocultural spaces whose self-translation practices remain un(der)studied, such as Guatemala, India, Japan, and New Zealand?
• How is the decision to self-translate shaped by linguistic and cultural minority settings, such as in Ireland (e.g. Doireann Ní Ghríofa), within the Francophonie like the Occitanie (e.g. Aurélia Lassaque) or Saint Boniface (e.g. J.R. Léveillé), or in indigenous communities in regions like Guatemala (e.g. Humberto Ak’abal), Canada (e.g. Joséphine Bacon), or Paraguay (e.g. Susi Delgado)?
• How does the question of audience affect approaches to self-translating children’s literature, such as in works by Tomson Highway or Lene Kaaberbøl?
• What can graphic novels, like those by Geneviève Castrée, Apostolos Doxiadis, or Nora Krug, tell us about intersemiotic self-translation and collaborative forms of self-translation?
• How might the notion of the authorial self be complicated by the creative process involved in the self-translation of plays, as in those by Rudi Bekaert, Nilo Cruz, or Gilles Poulin-Denis?
Informal queries are welcome, and contributors are asked to submit an abstract by October 30, 2022. Please direct queries to Eva Gentes (Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany) and Trish Van Bolderen (independent scholar, Ireland).
Articles should be 6,000 to 10,000 words in length, and the deadline for their submission is April 15, 2023. Acceptance of the final versions of articles is subject to double-anonymous peer review. Please send articles as email attachments to Eva Gentes (eva.gentes[at]gmail.com) and Trish Van Bolderen (trishvanbolderen[at]gmail.com).
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