Call for papers: TTR 39.2 Rethinking Self-Translation: Shifting Prisms

Co-edited by Christopher Mole (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle), Trish Van Bolderen, (Independent Scholar, Ireland)

As recently as 20 years ago, the simple act of investigating self-translation was a radical undertaking, partly because of the relative novelty of such research and partly due to the subversive nature of the reflections and findings, which unsettled many of the ways we understood translation, authorship, language and identity. 

By 2024, however, self-translation has gained considerable currency in Translation Studies; and if scholarship is to remain progressive and to continue representing and responding to the contemporary issues surrounding self-translation practices and processes, then it will need to shift its gaze and call into question 1) key assumptions about self-translation and 2) epistemological prisms dominating self-translation research. To date, for instance, self-translation has been considered almost exclusively through a literary prism, with analyses variously rooted in comparing source and target texts, in adopting sociological approaches to reflect on literary actors and contexts, and/or in engaging in genetic criticism (incidentally, all worthy endeavours). As a result, a whole world of non-literary self-translation activity remains largely unrecognized, which leaves many lived experiences and their conceptual complexities unexamined and misunderstood. 

This thematic issue seeks to address such blind spots by rethinking assumptions and paradigms related to scholarship on self-translation, where the notion is defined according to its most common definition: translation by the self. We welcome papers that engage in shifting the prisms of self-translation by exploring such questions as:

• Are the differences between self-translation and allograph translation all that significant? If so, what more can we learn about allograph translation by broadening and deepening our appreciation of such distinctions?
• What are the physiological dimensions (expressions, repercussions) of self-translation? How does considering them open up new avenues of investigation?
• How can we understand performativity in the context of self-translation products and/or processes?
• What nuances have yet to be tackled with respect to self-translation when it comes to the overlap and distinctions between translation BY the self, translation OF the self, and even translation FOR the self?
• What facets of literary self-translation tend to be neglected? For instance: which literary genres have gone un(der)represented?
• What assumptions accompany the notion of self-translation in terms of public, editorial, artistic and/or scholarly perceptions? What are the philosophical, social, artistic and material implications of these assumptions? 
• How do readers access and/or interpret self-translation products? How do publishing industry perceptions and priorities shape (restrict, enable) these products and potential audiences?
• How many and what kinds of selves are contained within a given self-translator, and what are the implications of making room for such multiplicity?
• How is self-translation an uncomfortable experience? And how do self-translators find comfort in this discomfort?
• How can the idea of the self in self-translation be understood, both practically and theoretically, in the age of AI and MT?
• What features characterize self-translation in non-literary spaces (e.g. politics, journalism, the public service, sports, domestic spaces) and in the context of different media (e.g. film, video games, social media platforms, podcasts)?
• What are the connections between memory and self-translation practices?
• What are the limits of agency in the context of self-translation practices, and what are some of the ramifications of those limits (e.g. for the more-than-human world)?

Articles of 8,000 to 11,000 words, written in French or English, should be sent before February 16, 2026 to: chris.mole@live.co.uk and trish@bolderwords.com.

The Word document should include the author’s name, institutional affiliation, and an abstract in French and English (250 to 300 words each), followed by 5 keywords and a biobibliographical note (200 to 300 words).

All articles received will be double-blind peer reviewed. The publication is scheduled for November/December 2026. Should there be any questions, please contact the guest co-editors directly.

Selective Bibliography

Bujaldón de Esteves, Lila et al., eds (2019). Literary Self-Translation in Hispanophone Contexts: Europe and the Americas. London, Palgrave Macmillan.

Castro, Olga et al., eds (2017). Self-Translation and Power. Negotiating Identities in Multilingual European Contexts. London, Palgrave Macmillan.

Cordingley, Anthony (2013). “The Passion of Self-Translation: A Masocritical Perspective.” In Anthony Cordingley, ed. Self-Translation: Brokering Originality in Hybrid Culture. London and New York, Bloomsbury, pp. 81-94.

Cordingley, Anthony (2018). “Self-Translation.” In Kelly Washbourne and Ben Van Wyke, eds. Routledge Handbook of Literary Translation. Abingdon and New York, Routledge, pp. 352-368.

Desjardins, Renée (2019). “A Preliminary Theoretical Investigation into [Online] Social Self-Translation: The Real, the Illusory, and the Hyperreal.” Translation Studies, 12, 2, pp. 1-21. DOI: 10.1080/14781700.2019.1691048

Ferraro, Alessandra, and Rainier Grutman, eds (2016). L’autotraduction littéraire: Perspectives théoriques. Paris, Classiques Garnier.

Gentes, Eva and Trish Van Bolderen, eds (2024). “Literary Self-Translation in the 21st Century: A Global View.” Journal of Literary Multilingualism, 2, 1, pp. 1-10.

Grutman, Rainier (1998). “Auto-translation.” In Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha, eds. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. London and New York, Routledge, pp. 17-20.

Grutman, Rainier (2018). “The Self-Translator as Author: Modern Self-Fashioning and Ancient Rhetoric in Federman, Lakhous, and De Kuyper.” In Judith Woodsworth, ed. The Fictions of Translation. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, John Benjamins, pp. 15-30.

Jung, Verena (2002). English-German Self-translation of Academic Texts and its Relevance for Translation Theory and Practice. Frankfurt, Peter Lang.

Kippur, Sara (2015). Writing It Twice: Self-translation and the Making of a World Literature in French. Evanston, Northwestern University Press.

Klimkiewicz, Aurelia (2013). “Self-Translation as Broken Narrativity: Towards an Understanding of the Self’s Multilingual Dialogue.” In Anthony Cordingley, ed. Self-Translation: Brokering Originality in Hybrid Culture. London, Bloomsbury, pp. 189-201.

Lahiri, Jhumpa (2022). Translating Myself and Others. Princeton, Princeton University Press.

Minors, Helen Julia (2023). Music, Dance and Translation. London, Bloomsbury.

Panichelli-Batalla, Stéphanie (2015). “Autofiction as a Fictional Metaphorical Self-Translation.” Journal of Romance Studies. 15, 1, pp. 29-51.

Saint-Martin, Lori (2022). Un bien nécessaire: éloge de la traduction littéraire. Montréal and Québec, Boréal.

Saint-Martin, Lori (2023). Pour qui je me prends. Paris, Éditions de l’Olivier.

Shread, Carolyn (2009). “Redefining Translation through Self-Translation: The Case of Nancy Huston.” French Literature Series, 36, pp. 51-61.

Stavans, Illan (2018). On Self-Translation. Meditations on Language. Albany, State University of New York Press.

Stocco, Melisa (2021). La Autotraducción en la Literatura Mapuche. Frankfurt, Peter Lang.

Wilson, Rita (2009). “The Writer’s Double: Translation, Writing, and Autobiography.” Romance Studies, 27, 3, pp. 186-198. DOI: 10.1179/174581509X455150

Wilson, Rita (2017). “Forms of Self-Translation.” In Nicholas Monk et al., eds. Reconstructing Identity. Cham, Springer International Publishing, pp. 157-177. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-58427-0_8