Interview Rolando Hinojosa-Smith

Novelist and bilingual self-translator Rolando Hinojosa-Smith has recently been interviewed by Gábor Tillman. Rolando Hinojosa-Smith talks about his first self-translation experience, the reasons for not self-translating his English work into Spanish and the adopted translation strategies in his self-translations from Spanish to English:

"Whenever I’m to translate from Spanish to English, I always stop to think of the what but, just as importantly, of the how I’m going to translate what is said by the characters or what is in the narration.[...] I think it’s a rendition more than a translation, but there is translation, of course. So, it’s a rendering of a society, a linguistic sect with another society (English-Spanish/Spanish-English). It’s presenting two societies who live in close, at times, intimate proximity." 

The interview has been published in the journal Americana in Spring 2013 and is available online.

Self-translation: translation or rewriting?

I just read a very interesting interview with the Catalan writer Ferran Torrent, who insists that he does not translate his novels but that he rewrites them. In fact many authors who write two versions of the same books, don't like to call what they are doing "to translate". Here are some quotations:

• The Catalan writer Carmen Riera: "„[D]ado que no creo en la traducción intento hacer una versión, lo cual significa para mí reescribir el texto en la nueva lengua […]“ (Carmen Riera (2002): La autotraducción como ejercicio de recreación. In: Quimera 210, pp. 11-12.)
  

• The African writer André Brink: „However, I do not ‚translate‘ my books. I rewrite them in English or Afrikaans, sometimes alternating chapters and in the process reworking the original in the light of the changes made in the other language. This cross-pollination continues until I say ‚that is enough‘, otherwise I'd never finish a book.“ (André Brink: ‚We can only manage the world once it has been storified‘ – Interview with André Brink. In: Unisa Latin American Report 15:1, p. 43, PDF-page 45)
  

• The Chicano writer Rolando Hinojosa: „He refers to the English and Spanish versions of his books not as translations, but as ‚renditions.‘ ‚I think I like to keep the flavor rather than just a word-by-word definition or translation. Because what won't fit in English -- or Spanish, since I've done both English and Spanish -- I try to give the nearest equivalent to it, say, a word-play or something like that,‘ he says.“ (Barbara Strickland (2007): Crossing Literary Borders. Rolando Hinojosa-Smith. In: The Austin Chronicle, 28.08.1997