3rd International Conference on Itineraries in Translation History

Self-translation was a topic at the 3rd International Conference on Itineraries in Translation History, which took place June 13-14, 2014 at the University of Tartu, Estonia. 

Janika Päll: The role of translation and self-translation in Early Modern society: the examples from Estonia and Livonia in the context of European learned practice 

Abstract: 

The paper consists of three parts: at first it presents the main contexts and uses of translating in the publications from Tartu, Riga (and Tallinn) from the 17th century; secondly it turns its attention to one specific translation type, namely the phenomenon of self-translation (author’s own translation of his/her works) both regarding its contemporary roles and practices and the difference of this practice in early modern society. The third part consists of the discussion of some examples of poems, presented in two languages (Latin and Humanist Greek) by Martinus Herzog, Reinerus Brockmann and Martinus Henschelius (in comparison to European practice, e.g. by F.Virdungus), as well as a treatise on rhetoric by J.Witte and M.Heno, which appeared both in Tartu (in Latin) and Riga (in German). Finally some conclusions will be drawn on the general practice, firstly regarding the role of multi-language texts in society, as well as the reasons of occasional preference of translating the texts into ancient and not vernacular languages.

For more information on the conference, please click here.

New book on self-translation

Josep Miquel Ramis has published a book on self-translation in Catalan with the title Autotraducció. De la teoria a la pràctica. You can read an extract here. For more information on the book please click here.

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.

Annual Conference Canadian Association for Translation Studies

Self-translation will be a topic at the 27th Conference Canadian Association for Translation Studies taking place in Ontario, 26-28 May 2014.

Session 6b AUTO-TRADUCTION – SELF-TRANSLATION
10 h 30 – 12 h 00 (Salle/Room Plaza-500-A)
Président / Chair : Nayelli Castro

FOGLIA, C. : « Nos racines sont nos antennes » : Marco Micone et la cosmopolitisation intérieure des immobiles.
VAN BOLDEREN, T. : Self-Translation in Canada: A Preliminary Prosopography

Abstracts
FOGLIA, Cecilia «Nos racines sont nos antennes»:
Marco Micone et la cosmopolitisation intérieure des immobiles. L'installation dans le pays d'accueil ne se solde pas obligatoirement par un oubli de leur terre d'origine, mais peut entraîner un enracinement physique contrebalancé par un retour mental et volontaire au pays natal. Ce cosmopolitisme, ayant à la fois des ailes et des racines, reflète la condition de certains migrants tels que Marco Micone, qui n'ayant que leurs bras à vendre, se métamorphosent en artistes transfrontaliers dont l'art consiste à défier les frontières visibles et invisibles, à les franchir, les utiliser, les contourner. Dans cette communication nous explorerons le potentiel créatif de cet écrivain issu de la migration et, par l'adoption d'une perspective cosmopolite inspirée principalement du sociologue allemand Ulrich Beck, nous analyserons comment Micone a produit des espaces littéraires hétérotopiques. Immobile physiquement, mais muni d'antennes syntonisant toujours les fréquences italiennes, Micone écrit et traduit pour la scène ce cosmopolitisme qui le traverse, le déchire et le fait renaître en même temps.

VAN BOLDEREN, Trish Self-Translation in Canada: A Preliminar Prosopography
In this conference paper, Ipresent a prosopography of self-translators in Canada. After briefly contextualizing self-translation research in order to expose certain gaps, I define prosopography and discuss its merits for examining large groups of people from an historical perspective. Subsequently, I outline my methodology for this research. On the one hand, how has "self-translation in Canada" been defined? And how have the self-translators included in the study been identified? On the other hand, what specific data has been collected?Why have these variables (and not others) been selected? And what methods have been used for gathering these data?I then discuss the results of the research, in terms of observable patterns and their broader implications for self-translation research, both within and outside of Canada. Finally, I reflect on the methodological value (benefits, drawbacks) of prosopography.

Program available under: fhttp://act-cats.ca/English/Congress/ProgrammeACT22mai.pdf
All abstracts available under: http://act-cats.ca/English/Congress/supplement-congres-2014.pdf

Between Policies and Poetics: Itineraries in Translation History

Self-translation will be a topic at the conference Between Policies and Poetics: Itineraries in Translation History, taking place at the University of Tartu Centre for Translation Studies and Tallinn University, 13.-14.06.14.

Friday 13.06.14 at 11 am:
Janika Päll:  The role of translation and self-translation in Early Modern Society: the examples from Estonia and Livonia in the context of European learned practice.

The preliminary conference programme is available here.

Translation in Russian Contexts

Self-translation will be a topic at the international conference Translation in Russian Contexts: Transcultural, Translingual and Transdisciplinary Points of Departure taking place at the Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies Uppsala University, Sweden 3-7 June 2014.

Wednesday, June 4

• 13.30-14.30    Keynote address: Beyond Nabokov and Brodsky: Russian Self-Translation in the 21st Century by Adrian Wanner

Thursday, June 5

• 14.00-15.30 Panel VIII: Translingualism, Self-Translation and Collaboration

Self-translation in Essays – Vilém Flusser in Brazil

Manuela Fantinato will give a talk about Vilém Flusser at the conference Key Cultural Texts in Translation taking place on April 29th and 30th, 2014 at the Research Centre for Translation and Interpreting Studies University of Leicester.

Here is the abstract of her talk:
Exile – forced or voluntary – has a major importance in contemporary history. This is evidenced by the massive expulsion of Jews from Nazi Germany, Soviet Pogroms, the decolonization of Africa and the recent Middle East wars. The process of migration has been equally affecting the five continents, promoting political, social or even philosophical consequences. It is estimated that the majority of Germans and Austrians who escaped the World War II have chosen the Americas as their new home.
Among them, many artists and intellectuals, such as Hannah Arendt, Edward Said, or Mira Schendel. These “refugees” have deeply influenced the new countries’ cultural life. Most of them wrote about their experiences, especially in regards to the cultural exchanges they have experienced. Many times, giving us a unique perspective on our culture, environment and people. This is the case of Vilém Flusser, who went to Brazil after spending one year in England running away from Nazi threat in Czechoslovakia. After years of struggle, he became an important writer and professor in Brazil, and ended up his life in Europe as a worldwide known philosopher that used to write and translate himself for the four languages that he was versed on. Writing was his way of overcoming his condition of strangeness, especially through the form of essay and self-translation. This presentation aims to reflect on his life and work, and how it unveils layers of cultures in translation.

For more information please click here.

Strindberg à la conquête de la France. L'auto-traduction française du Père.

Giuliano D’Amico (Volda, Norvège) will give a talk about the French self-translation of the play Fadren by Strindberg at the University of Strasbourg, France on 17th April 2014 at 6pm.

Place: Université de Strasbourg, Le Patio, s.4307.

For more information, please click here.

Update Bibliography on self-translation

The bibliography on self-translation has been updated. To access the pdf-file, please click here.
The next update is scheduled for July 1, 2014.

Conference: Entre liberté et contrainte : La traduction et la question du choix

Self-translation will be a topic of several talks at the conference Entre liberté et contrainte : La traduction et la question du choix taking place in Paris, France, 25-26 April 2014. To see the full programm: Please click here.

25. April
11.30-12.00 Olga ANOKHINA (ITEM) : Traductions vers l’anglais et le français de Vladimir Nabokov : traduction ou auto-traduction ?
Après avoir présenté rapidement la typologie des pratiques scripturaires des écrivains plurilingues, nous nous arrêterons sur l’autotraductionque nous considérons comme l’écriture consécutive, par opposition avec l’écriture parallèle, le code switchingou encore la séparation fonctionnelle des langues, stratégies créatives que nous avons pu observer dans le processus d’écriture de ces écrivains. L’autotraductionpermet à l’écrivain de prolonger le travail d’écriture, en créant un continuum créatif grâce au passage à une autre langue. En nous appuyant sur le cas de Vladimir Nabokov, qui avait pour l’habitude de superviser la traduction de ses œuvres du russe vers l’anglais et vers le français, nous interrogerons la frontière difficile à déterminer entre l’autotraduction et la traduction.

15.00-15.30 Rainier GRUTMAN (Université d’Ottawa): Autotraduction et génétique. Regards croisés
Dans cette communication, nous voudrions continuer le dialogue, récemment entamé ici même à l’Institut des Textes et Manuscrits par différents membres de l’équipe « Multilinguisme, traduction, création » (Olga Anokhina, Chiara Montini), entre l’étude génétique des textes et l’autotraduction comme objet d’étude. Après avoir examiné la nature spécifique de la contribution que peut faire l’approche génétique à l’étude du processus autotraductif (direction, part de cotraduction, augmentation/effacement de l’hétérolinguisme etc.), nous nous arrêterons à l’energeiapropre à l’autotraduction comme réécriture et comme chaîne (inter)textuelle, dynamique qui permet de faire un retour sur la notion d’inachèvement (fondamentale dans la philosophie sous-tendant les travaux génétiques).

26. April
12.00-12.30 Dirk Van HULLE (Université d’Anvers) : Twin Geneses: Hesitation, Decision Making and Creative Undoing in Beckett’s Selftranslations
Making use of the Beckett Digital Manuscript Project’s first two modules (Beckett’s L’Innommable / The Unnamableand his last works; www.beckettarchive.org), the paper explores the exo-, endo- and epigenesis of Beckett’s bilingual works, paying special attention to moments of doubt and decision making in the translation process, as manifested in traces of creative undoing (cancellations, omissions, cuts, revisions). The awareness of manuscripts’ intellectual value culminates in the work of twentieth-century authors such as Samuel Beckett, who presented a new image of writers who fumble for words and therefore keep looking for them. This notion of continuous incompletion becomes even more striking if the genesis continues after publication, e.g. in the form of self-translation. A particularly interesting facet of genetic translation studies is the process of linguistic decision-making. The special case of Samuel Beckett’s works, however, forces us to also take into account the notion of ‘indecision-making’ and to investigate its interpretative relevance. The paper suggests a cognitive approach to genetic translation studies, to examine the role of hesitations and cancellations in enactive cognition on the basis of notebooks and drafts; and to explore the ways in which (and to what extent) this process of cognition can be made accessible to students and researchers in the form of a digital genetic edition.

Call for abstracts: Self-Translation as Transfer of Knowledge

Call for Abstracts: Self-Translation as Transfer of Knowledge
Conference in Berlin, Germany, 27.11.2014.

Deadline: March 31, 2014

As today’s knowledge society grows increasingly international—both in terms of medial acceleration and global networks—it demands more and more language skills from its actors. Quite often scholars and scientists completely or partially translate their own texts from one language into another. Given the practical implications of these developments, the time has come to reflect on their methodological and historical significance, and this is precisely the aim of the workshop »Self-Translation as Transfer of Knowledge.«
[...]
At the workshop, participants will present case studies on individual authors/translators. Specific attention should be given to the historically variable status of scientific and scholarly authorship and to the transitions between self-translations and non-authorial, external translations (e.g., ›assisted‹ self-translations). We have already accepted papers on Carl von Linné, Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt, Hannah Arendt, Kurt Goldstein, and Wolfgang Iser. We look forward to expanding this list with additional contributions.

The workshop will examine the following systematic aspects of self-translation:

• What pragmatic conditions lead to the production of self-translations? (Changes in the prestige of scientific idioms; changes of addressees, e.g., for the purpose of popularization; shifts in other scientific cultures due to exile/emigration; etc.)
• How are self-translations being received and commented upon within scientific communities in different cultures?
• What semantic, terminological, and structural qualities do the respective self-translations have? Have the original texts been radically changed, maybe even completely reworked?
• What kind of reflection on language arises from self-translations?
• What concepts are suitable for this field of research? Currently in translation studies, we find terms such as equivalence, imitation, representation, appropriation, assimilation, adaptation, amplification, substitution, transformation, interpretation, intention, inculturation, acculturation, compensation, as well as metaphors such as alienation (with regard to the source language) vs. naturalization (with regard to the target language), freedom, service, fidelity, and refashioning. At the workshop, we would like to test and discuss the interpretive capacity of these and other terms.

Conference languages are English and German. Presentations should not exceed 30 minutes.
Please send your abstracts (max. 500 words) by March 31, 2014 to Stefan Willer (willer@zfl-berlin.org)

To read the full call for abstracts, please click here.