61th Annual Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference

Self-translation will be a topic at the 61th Annual Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference, taking place from 29 September - 1st October 2011at the Auburn University in Alabama:

30 September 11:30am
Marianne Bessy: Les catégories de littératures 'française' et 'francophone' face aux bilinguisme d'écriture et à l'autotraduction : résistance et déstabilisation.

Conference "Literary Dislocations / Déplacements littéraires"

Self-translation will be a topic at the 4th International REELC/ENCLS Congress: "Literary Dislocations / Déplacements littéraires" from 01.09.2011 - 03.09.2011.

Saturday, September 3rd
Christine Lombez (France): Soi-même comme un autre : déplacements de l’énonciation au cours du processus d’autotraduction (V. Alexakis, Paris-Athènes)

For more information please click here.

"Self-translation is never innocent..."

I just came across a very interesting blog entry by Ken MacLeod about a panel discussion on the Gaelic-English self-translator Sorley MacLean at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2011.
The main topic according to these notes was the "'doube-edged sword' of translation and the parlous situation of the Gaelic language". Please read his blog entry to learn more about it.

For further information on Gaelic-English self-translation I highly recommend to read the works by Corinna Krause:

• Krause, Corinna (2005): Finding the Poem – Modern Gaelic Verse and the Contact Zone. In: Forum 1 ‘Origins and Originality’. Edinburgh University. Online available.
• Krause, Corinna (2005): Translating Gaelic Scotland. The culture of translation in the context of modern Scottish Gaelic Literature. Paper presented at the Fourth Mercator International Symposium on Minority Languages, Aberystwyth, 26–28 October.
• Krause, Corinna (2008): Voicing the Minority: Self-translation and the Quest for the Voice in a Scottish Gaelic Context. In: Paschalis Nikolaou, Maria-Venetia Kyritsi, und Mona Baker (eds.): Translating Selves. Experience and Identity between languages. London: Continuum, pp. 125–140.

Vassilis Alexakis - Un romancier entre deux cultures

"Vassilis Alexakis - Un romancier entre deux cultures" is the title of a one-day conference at the public library in Amiens (France) on Friday, 25/11/2011, organized by  Bernard Alavoine, MCF, University Picardie Jules Verne. For more information please click here.

Program conference Perpignan

The preliminary programm of the conference on self-translation in Perpignan has now been published. The program looks very promising and includes speakers like Julio-César Santoyo, Rainier Grutman, Helena Tanqueiro and Christian Lagarde. Topics include self-translators like Nancy Huston, Eileen Chang, Samuel Beckett, Panait Istrati, Anne Weber and many more. On Friday Francesc Parcerisas will chair a discussion round table with the self-translators Carme Riera and Antoni Marí.

Conference "Briding Cultures"

At the XIX Congress of the International Federation of Translators"Bridging Cultures", taking place from 1.-4. August 2011 in San Francisco, will be at least one presentation on self-translation:

Victoria Lipina: Vladimir Nabokov's Self-Translation: A Drama of Reunion
(Wednesday, 4:00pm-4:30pm; Advanced; Presented in: English)

The presentation will focus on the challenges of dealing with the translation-creation activity of Vladimir Nabokov. When examining the Russian and English versions of Nabokov's Lolita, and the nature of discordancy between the texts, the presenter finds that the Russian version of the novel is not a fairly close translation. In comparison to Nabokov's Mashen'ka and Priglashenie na kazn, Lolita is an independent text.

To see the full programm, please click here.

Conference: Literature & Translation, Australia

Self-translation will be the topic of a panel at the conference "Literature and Translation" which will take place from 11 to 12 July 2011 in Melbourne, Australia:

The panel (chair: Marc Orlando) consists of the following contributions:

Andrea BANDHAUER:
‘Tawada Yoko does not exist’: Yoko Tawada’s translations

Ian CAMPBELL
Translation of poetry from English to Indonesian: the case study of ‘Leaving Beirut’ / ‘Meninggalkan Beirut’

Jack ROSS
The twenty-year masterclass: Paul Celan’s correspondence with Gisèle Celan-Lestrange

Click here to see the full program.

CFP: Nancy Huston

Nancy Huston: the Multiple Self
Institut du Monde Anglophone, Université Sorbonne nouvelle - Paris 3, France - 8-9 June 2012
Deadline for proposals: 15 October 2011

The following topics have been suggested:

1. Self-translation
- The process of self-translation and the relationship to the mother tongue
- The status of self-translation
- The question of fidelity and infidelity in translation; fidelity to whom, to what?
- Bilingual "brothers" : Samuel Beckett, Romain Gary
2. Feminism, the body and maternity
3. The question of individual or collective identity and that of multiple identities
4. The language of exile
- The relation to that which is foreign
- The dialectics of sameness and otherness at the heart of translation
- Self-translation as writing between two languages: a position at the edge
5. The role of the writer, of literature and of translation

Click here to find the call for papers.

Writing in French

Today I would like to present you the book "La langue française vue d'ailleurs" which consists of 100 interviews conducted by Patrice Martin and Christophe Drevet with writers from all over the world who chose to write in French. The book has been published by Tarik Editions in 2001 and is based on the radio emission "La Langue française vue d'ailleurs" (MEDI 1). Each interview is about two to three pages long and focuses on the questions of bilingualism and the choice of their literary language. Each interview is accompanied by a few bio- and bibliographical information on the writer. Amongst the 100 writers are also a few self-translators, namely Vassilis Alexakis, Rachid Boudjedra, Nancy Huston and Anne Weber.

Anne Weber in Düsseldorf

I am very happy to host a lecture with the German-French self-translator Anne Weber on 18th June at 8pm in the zakk, Düsseldorf, Germany. She will present the German version of her new book "August" and will also read from her translation of Pierre Michon "Das Leben der kleinen Toten".

Jorge Semprún

Today is a sad day. The Spanish-French writer and self-translator Jorge Semprún passed away...
Read here the obituary of El País.

In an interview with Patricia López López-Gay he has talked about his self-translation of Federico Sanchez vous salue bien/Federico Sánchez se despide de ustedes: "Bueno, la libertad del autotraductor es total, hay que refrenarla, limitarla. Supongo que para todo autotraductor, la tentación sería el escribir un libro diferente. [...] no sé, en un libro autotraducido me permitiría cambiar el orden de las cosas, con el tiempo pasado; permite corregirse."

LÓPEZ LÓPEZ-GAY, P., “Conversación con Jorge Semprún. Sobre autotraducción: de los recuerdos y sus formas de reescritura”, Quaderns: revista de traducció, 16, 2009, pp. 157-164.