Dana Todorović on translating her novel "The Tragic Fate of Mortiz Toth"

In an interview with Susan Curtis-Kojaković for the European Literature Network, Serbian writer Dana Todorović reflects on the challenges of translating her novel Tragična sudbina Morica Tota (2008) / The Tragic Fate of Mortiz Toth (2013) into English:

"It was more challenging than I though it would be. In t/he past, I would always scorn translations that were so literal that they failed to capture the spirit of the target language, but when I first sat down to translate my own novel, I found myself falling into the same trap. I think that authors are much too tied to their original work with all its metaphors, similes, sentence structure, etc., and if they are to embark on the difficult venture of translating their own work, it is necessary to step back and try to view it from different angles. Sometimes it is necessary to let certain things go."

To read the full interview (published on October 10th, 2017) please visit:  https://www.eurolitnetwork.com/translators-qa-dana-todorovic/ 

Lana Bastašić on self-translating her novel

In an interview with Jovanka Kalaba for Asymptote Journal, Yugoslav-born author Lana Bastašić discusses the self-translation into English of her novel Catch the Rabbit (2021). 
She initially started translating the novel to show it to a literary agent and did not think of a possible English publication at that time. When the English publisher asked for her own translation, she had to rework the entire text. She found the self-translation process "very educational":

"This was a difficult process but also very educational. When you translate your own work, you look at your text from a distance. Suddenly you are thinking as a translator, and you can see every little weakness of the book."

She then used the English version to "edit the new edition of the Bosnian and Serbian book".

To read the full interview please visit Asymptote: 
https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog/2021/08/19/lana-bastasic-still-believes-in-beauty/ 

Welsh author Manon Stefan Ros on self-translation

In a recent interview with Casi Dylan for Words without borders, Manon Stefan Ros (1983) talks about her experience as a self-translator from Welsh into English for her two novels Blasu/The Seasoning and Llyfr Glas Nebo/The Blue Book of Nebo. One of the advantages of self-translation is the ability to express one's own voice in both languages: 

"Because I’m translating my own work, I have the freedom to change it as I choose, to work out what my voice is in English."

However, translation also means transformation if intended or not and that can be challenging to face:

"It’s so strange; even if you translate something word for word it’s never the same. The thing that emerges—it might be as good, better than the original even, but it’s never the same thing. Blasu in Welsh is a very dark novel, difficult to read, but in English it felt much lighter, and I couldn’t work out why."

Manon Stefan Ros also discusses the question of how much adaptations are needed for a different audience. Click here to read the full interview: 
https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/the-privilege-of-language-manon-steffan-ros-on-self-translation-welsh-liter?src=fb

In a youtube interview with Gŵyl Haf, Manon Stefan Ros talks in more detail about the joy of self-translating for the first time, which was her novel Blasu/The Seasoning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YimUQglEB4o&ab_channel=G%C5%B5ylHaf

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.

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 

Jhumpa Lahiri on self-translation

In a very interesting interview with Victoria Livingstone for Asymptote (16th April 2018), Jhumpa Lahiri talked about various aspects of translation, including translating other authors, being translated and translating herself. Here is a short quote about her plan to self-translate her current novel:

"I’ve just written a new novel in Italian and so my energy will go towards translating that myself. [...] I recently translated one of my short stories into English, which appeared in The New Yorker a couple of months ago. I now have more of a sense of what it will involve to translate myself. But we’ll see. That was a very short story that I had written four years ago in Italian. It was ten pages long. Translating it into English was weird, but it was also brief. I don’t know what it will be like to translate a novel, but I feel that it’s important to try. If it doesn’t feel satisfying, I may have to reconsider the choice. Right now every project I’m doing has its own set of needs and I can’t really say until I’m inside of it how I feel about it."

Please click here to read the full interview.

Interview with Andre Brink on self-translation

In one of his lasts interviews, South-African writer Andre Brink shares some fascinating insights into his process of self-translation with Maria Recuenco. Brink and Recuenco discuss the differences between translating his own works and the works of others, the idea of being translated by someone else, the notion of translation, the advantage of being a self-translator, his thoughts on collaborative translations etc. I will share some interesting quotes, but I highly recommend reading the whole interview.

On the process of self-translation:

"It is never a mechanical process of translating, it is writing a book and then going back to it and redoing it in the other language. I rewrite it from scratch. Therefore, the two versions are always different" (p. 149)

On the reasons for self-translation:

"I like to be hands on when it comes to the translating. I won’t easily ask somebody else to do it. Or even allow somebody else to do it." (p. 150)

On self-translation being an exception:

"There are still very few writers that do it regularly, all the time they write. Apparently it happens in the Slavic languages more often that writers write in two languages." (p. 152)

On research on self-translation:

 "I would find it very interesting if somebody would write a thesis, for example, about a specific text in two languages and see how it differs, or when it differs, and find out why. That would fascinate me very much." (p. 153)

Reference:
Peñalver, M. R. "Encounter with André Brink: Looking on … Self-Translation." Research in African Literatures, vol. 46 no. 2, 2015, pp. 146-156. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/581746.

Struggling with self-translation

In a recent interview with the journal Apogee, Hong Kong Poet Wawa (Lo Mei Wa) described the struggle of self-translating one of her poems into English:

"I do terrible in self-translation from one language to another because my linguistic personality, which was already laid down in the poem, is too complete. I know the cultural context too well. I am totally there. I couldn’t translate “Nation Rooftop” and I did it terribly. I translated the poem into an English dictionary."

To read the complete interview, please click here.

Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez: "If I’m doing a self-translation, I find myself changing the original in many ways"

Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez is a Chicano self-translator and currently a Fulbright Senior Lecturer at Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey. In an interview with Xánath Caraza, published on La Bloga on 1st May 2017, he talks about his experience of self-translating his short story “Algún día te cuento las cosas que he visto” into English.

"Even after publication, I still tinker with my cuentos. And, if I’m doing a self-translation, I find myself changing the original in many ways to the point where I have to go back to make those changes in the other version. My story, “Algún día te cuento las cosas que he visto” has undergone a number of changes, and that’s probably the story that has been most edited as it moved from Spanish to English to Spanglish."

To read the complete interview please click here.

Interview With Poet and Self-Translator Alison Whittaker', by Elizabeth Bryer

Alison Wittaker is a Gomeroin poet living in Sydney. In an interview with Elizabeth Bryer she speaks about her experience of translating her poem ‘Wattle in the Dykes’ into and then out of Gamilaraay.

"It’s important that readers see the poem in Gamilaraay on the screen as its own poem, not just as a catalyst to change the meaning of a poem in English."

To read the interview, please click here.

Interview with Bulgarian-English self-translator Michael Penkov

The Rumpus published a very interesting interview with the Bulgarian-English self-translator Michael Penkov, who has self-translated his short story collection, East of the West as well as recently his new novel Stork Mountain into Bulgarian.

Penkov talks with Christine Pivovar about why he started self-translating, about the textual genesis of his works and about the use of languages during the creation process. As many other writers, Penkov refuses to label his bilingual writing "translation":

"I wouldn’t call it a translation because that would be disrespectful to literary translators throughout the world who try to stay true to the author’s work. I took great liberties with my sentences."

"The two versions are true to each other, meaning you wouldn’t think it’s a completely different book, but there was definitely a moment of rebirth."

To read the complete interview, please click here.

Marlene Van Niekerk on self-translation

In a recent interview with The White Review Afrikaans writer Marlene Van Niekerk (*1954) reflects upon her experience of translating her own poems vs. translating poems by Seamus Heaney into Afrikaans:

In translating my own poems, I sometimes take liberties and change things depending on what works out better. I just try to get the spirit and the texture of the thing. With Heaney there is always also the architecture to try and fathom – and then to scale.

To read the complete interview, please click here.

Interview with Rolando Hinojosa-Smith on self-translation

The Acentos Review has recently published an interview with Rolando Hinojosa-Smith conducted in 2012 by Marlene Hansen Esplin. Hansen Esplin asks him some very interesting questions about self-translation:

• Do you think bilingual, multilingual, and/or bi-scriptive writers can be “good” translators of their own texts? Also, what circumstances in the past have prompted you to write in both or either English or Spanish?
• So, you feel more comfortable translating your own work, obviously, instead of working with someone else’s?
• Here’s a related question, considering your own “translations,” or the Spanish and English versions of your texts, e.g. Estampas del valle and The Valley, do you hold to the notion of an “original” text and a “translation” when speaking of your literature? How do you view your Spanish and English texts or versions of your texts in relation to each other?
• Would you advocate that the reader encounter both of the texts or one before the other?
• Do you feel that in rewriting or self-translating you make “concessions” for the monolingual reader?

To find out Hinojosas answers, please click here

Sébastien Doubinsky on self-translating

Sébastien Doubinsky, born in France but living in Denmark, speaks about his experience of self-translating his novels in an interview with the arts and literary journal The Missing Slate:

I have translated myself—and others—many times and know well that perfect translation doesn’t exist. It can be seen as a tragedy, a communication failure, but actually I consider this a chance—a chance of freedom, of the irreconcilable space between cultures—and the mutual respect it implies. So if you read closely and compare the two versions of the same novel I’ve written, I think you might be shocked by the liberties I am taking with the original text! But that is because the second one becomes a new original, if you want, another text altogether. (The Missing Slate 2015)

To read the complete interview please click here.

Interview with Francesca Duranti on self-translation

Francesca Duranti (*1935) is an Italian author who lives in New York and Italy.
She has self-translated her novel Sogni Mancini (1996) into English as Left handed dreams (1996).
In a recently published interview (in Italian) she talks about this experience. The interview tackles the following aspects: the reasons for self-translation, her experience as a translator, her translation strategies, identity & multilingualism.

The interview has been published on 18.11.2014 and has been conducted by Translation Designers. 3 more interviews with other self-translators have been announced but not yet published.

To read the interview with Francesca Duranti please click here

Jon Gower on translating his novel Dala’r Llanw / Uncharted

Jon Gower is a Welsh autor who has self-translated his novel Dala’r Llanw (2009) into English as Uncharted (2010) In an essay and an interview he reflects upon his experience, in which he also chose to alter the ending of the novel:

"I usually try to write prose that has a melody and found writing the English translation difficult at first as I was trying to impose the Welsh "music" on the English version, that is until I decided to go with the English music. Adapting the book also gave me a chance to winnow out some weaknesses, and to alter the ending." (interview AmeriCymru)

Continue to read:
Jon Gower: The dynamism of switching between languages
AmeriCymru (2010): An Interview with Welsh Author - Jon Gower

Doireann Ní Ghríofa: "My translation process went from exhausting and difficult to exciting and nourishing."

The Colony Literary Magazine conducted a very interesting interview with the poet Doireann Ní Ghríof (*1981), who writes in both Irish and English. She talks about language choice, translation strategies and how her approach to self-translation has changed over the years.

To read the full interview please click here. You can also read a couple of her poems in both languages.

Interview with Syed Manzoorul Islam (World Literature Today)

The current issue of the fantastic journal World Literature Today includes an interview with Syed Manzoorul Islam, a Bengali author who writes in both English and Bengali. He has self-translated his short stories from Bengali, published in English as The Merman's Prayer and Other Stories. Dhaka, Bangladesh. Daily Star Books. 2013.

Rifat Munim and Syed Manzoorul Islam
"The author as self-translator. A conversation with Syed Manzoorul Islam".
World Literature Today Vol. 88, No. 3-4 (May/August 2014), pp. 66-68

A review of the short story collection, can be read here.

Jen Minkman: Self-translation & Self-publishing

Jen Minkman (*1978) has self-translated her novel Shadow Time from Dutch into English.:

"[T]he chances of being translated into English as a Dutch writer are very, very slim. So I decided to translate my books myself so I could reach a wider audience of readers worldwide. Since most of the Anglophone publishing world works with agents, I chose to self-publish because that would be a quicker way to get my book on the market." (Word Vagabond 2013)

Self-translation has been a good experience for her and she especially appreciates the possibility to improve her novel while translating it:

"I am planning to translate each and every book I write from now on. Not only is it a good way to get known across the border, it is also a very good method to revise your own manuscripts. When you’re translating a story, sometimes you suddenly realize that certain dialogues or scenes just don’t work, so you cut them out or change them."  (Word Vagabond 2013)

To read the full interview with Jen Minkman on World Vagabond, please click here.

Sinan Antoon: "When I translate my own material I give myself some more freedom."

Sinan Antoon (*1967) is an Iraqui poet and novelist, who lives in the United States. He writes in Arabic and English and has translated his own poems and novels:

"I write in both languages, so I have poems written in English, in addition to the ones I translate from Arabic myself. My novel is available in English as well and has been translated to five languages."

"When I translate my own material I give myself some more freedom. Meaning since I am the author, I can change a few things if need be."

To read the full interview with Aslı Iğsız, please click here.