Talk: Emotional Response to Self-Translation. The Case of Jhumpa Lahiri

 The talk "Emotional Response to Self-Translation. The Case of Jhumpa Lahiri" by Andrea Bergantino (Trinity College Dublin) is available on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJf45YilDnM&ab_channel=TrinityCentreforLiterary%26CulturalTranslation

CfP: Literary Self-Translation in the 21st Century: A Global View (special issue 2024 Journal of Literary Multilingualism

Guest-edited by Eva Gentes and Trish Van Bolderen
brill.com/view/journals/jlm/jlm-overview.xml?contents=editorialcontent-57548

Literary self-translation is defined as the phenomenon of authors translating their own writing and producing more than one linguistic version of a given literary work. While research on the topic has surged since the turn of the 21st century (for reference, see the Bibliography on Self-Translation), scholarship is overwhelmingly dominated by a restricted set of focal points: bilingual practices, literary figures of international renown (typically in the West), 20th-century contexts, a selection of major Western European languages, and minority-language settings in Spain.

This special issue of the Journal of Literary Multilingualism explores 21st-century self-translation related to languages, regions, writers, and literary genres that have thus far received little to no critical attention within self-translation research.

We welcome case studies, ethnographic research, larger-scale studies, genetic criticism, theoretical reflections, and any other approach that engages with and adds meaningful new perspectives to existing self-translation research. Possible research questions include:

• How do understandings of self-translation shift when we account for projects that are not limited to transfers between English, French, and/or Spanish, such as those incorporating lesser-translated languages like Bulgarian (e.g. Miroslav Penkov), Slovenian (e.g. Brina Svit), Swedish (e.g. Linda Olsson) or Yiddish (e.g. Chava Rosenfarb)? 

• What idiosyncrasies characterize the self-translation process when writers work with three or more languages, as in the case of Lisa Carducci (English-French-Italian-Spanish), Laià Fabregas (Catalan-Dutch-Spanish) or Monika Zgustovà (Catalan-Czech-Spanish)? 

• How can self-translation be mapped out in geopolitical regions or sociocultural spaces whose self-translation practices remain un(der)studied, such as Guatemala, India, Japan, and New Zealand? 

• How is the decision to self-translate shaped by linguistic and cultural minority settings, such as in Ireland (e.g. Doireann Ní Ghríofa), within the Francophonie like the Occitanie (e.g. Aurélia Lassaque) or Saint Boniface (e.g. J.R. Léveillé), or in indigenous communities in regions like Guatemala (e.g. Humberto Ak’abal), Canada (e.g. Joséphine Bacon), or Paraguay (e.g. Susi Delgado)?

 • How does the question of audience affect approaches to self-translating children’s literature, such as in works by Tomson Highway or Lene Kaaberbøl? 

• What can graphic novels, like those by Geneviève Castrée, Apostolos Doxiadis, or Nora Krug, tell us about intersemiotic self-translation and collaborative forms of self-translation? 

• How might the notion of the authorial self be complicated by the creative process involved in the self-translation of plays, as in those by Rudi Bekaert, Nilo Cruz, or Gilles Poulin-Denis?

Informal queries are welcome, and contributors are asked to submit an abstract by October 30, 2022. Please direct queries to Eva Gentes (Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany) and Trish Van Bolderen (independent scholar, Ireland).

Articles should be 6,000 to 10,000 words in length, and the deadline for their submission is April 15, 2023. Acceptance of the final versions of articles is subject to double-anonymous peer review. Please send articles as email attachments to Eva Gentes (eva.gentes[at]gmail.com) and Trish Van Bolderen (trishvanbolderen[at]gmail.com).

https://brill.com/view/journals/jlm/jlm-overview.xml?contents=editorialcontent-57548

Update Bibliography on Self-translation

The bibliography on self-translation has been updated (41th update, May 2022). To download the pdf-file please click here. If you have any suggestions for further entries, please leave a comment.

Call for Proposals special issue 2/2023: Global Migration and Literary Multilingualism

War, disease, famine, political oppression, climate change, and individual opportunity account for 280.6 million migrants in the world today. Although most migrants are not writers, scores of writers find themselves adjusting to lives as strangers in strange lands and adopting new literary languages. 

Issue 2/2023 of the Journal of Literary Multilingualism is dedicated to the nexus between global migration and literary multilingualism. We welcome contributions on diverse aspects of this interconnection and are particularly interested in new, hitherto under-researched perspectives on the topic. For instance, essays can examine the ways in which linguistic adaptation functions as a theme within literary works. Or they can examine the ways in which changing languages has shaped migrants’ literary texts through translingualism: code-switching, hybridization, intertextuality, cross cultural encounters, different forms of translation (including self-translation), and other literary strategies. 

The focus can be on the work of contemporary migrants such as Edwidge Danticat, Najat El Hachmi, Xiaolu Guo, Ha Jin, Aleksandar Hemon, Gazmend Kapllani, Milan Kundera, Alain Mabanckou, Shirin Nazammafi, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Atiq Rahimi, Igiaba Scego, and Yoko Tawada. Or it can be on the work of historical figures such as S.Y. Agnon, Mary Antin, Apuleius, Adelbert von Chamisso, Erasmus, Kahlil Gibran, Maimonides, and Anselm Turmeda. These are some examples; we are of course open to studies of authors who migrated at other times and into other languages. 

To contribute new perspectives to the topic of global migration and literary multilingualism, contributions might include but are not restricted to the following questions and topics: 

- What is the writers’ aesthetic approach to their multilingualism? Do they develop something like a multilingual/migratory poetics? Which literary strategies do they apply (see above)? How (if so at all) do they transfer migration and multilingualism into their literary works? - 

- To what extent can focusing on multilingual aspects of migrant literature shed light on hitherto understudied aspects of migrant writing? Which conceptual tools and theoretical frames can the study of multilingual literature offer to the study of migrant literature, and vice versa? - 

- Which methods are best suited to study multilingual migrant writing? Which methods should we include in our analysis (close reading, socio-literary methods, anthropological methods, cultural studies etc.)? - 

- What questions do we need to consider when it comes to the production, publication, circulation, translation, and reception of multilingual migrant literature? How can this be related to debates about the national canon and/or world literature? What role does academia play in this? Which place do multilingual migrant authors have in university curricula? 

We welcome informal queries, and potential contributors may submit an abstract by April 30, 2022. Please direct queries to Steven G. Kellman (University of Texas at San Antonio), steven.kellman@utsa.edu and Sandra Vlasta (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz / Università di Bologna), sandra.vlasta@gmail.com. 

The final deadline for the submission of articles of 6000-10000 words is October 15, 2022. Acceptance of the final articles is subject to double blind peer review. Please send articles as email attachments to Steven G. Kellman (steven.kellman@utsa.edu) and Sandra Vlasta (sandra.vlasta@gmail.com)

Filipino poet Jim Pascual Agustin on self-translation

 In the series "Translation Tuesday" by  the journal Asymptote, Filipino poet Jim Pascual Agustin talks about what it means to self-translate his poems into English decades after the publication of the original poems:

"More and more I have been looking at my self-translated writing as ‘versions’ instead of traditional translations. [...] I decided to leave out an entire stanza that was in the middle part of the original. The cut made for a stronger version of the poem. [...]

Recently, he also experimented with simultaneous self-translation:

"‘No Past, No Future’ sees publication ahead of the original Filipino (‘Walang Kahapon, Walang Kinabukasan’). This poem was written, revised and translated on the same day in January 2021, with each version influencing the completion of the other." 

You can read his full comment and some poems in English translation here: https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog/2021/11/30/translation-tuesday-three-poems-by-jim-pascual-agustin/ 

Special Issue Mutatis Mutandis "Autotraducción, América Latina y la diáspora latina"

 Just out: New special issue Mutatis Mutandis, volume 15(1), "Autotraducción, América Latina y la diáspora latina" edited by Rainier Grutman and María Laura Sportuno. The journal is open access.

Content overview:

• Rainier Grutman & María Laura Sportuno: Autotraducción, América Latina y la diáspora latina
• Melisa Stocco: Más allá del paradigma monolingüe: la autotraducción literaria en lenguas indígenas en Argentina
• Javier Aguirre Ortiz: La pregunta por el original en las ediciones bilingües de poesía mapuche
• Paola Mancosu: La autotraducción en la poesía quechua de Ch’aska Anka Ninawaman
• Cynthia Gabbay: Neodjudezmo en la lírica latinoamericana disidente: la construcción de registros intersticiales entre la autotraducción y el glosario
• Ana Eugenia Vázquez: Factores que condicionan la autotraducción. El caso de Los misterios del Plata, de Juana Manso
• María Eugenia Ghirimoldi: Traducción revisada por la autora: la semiautotraducción en La casa de los conejos de Laura Alcoba
• Trish Van Bolderen: The Spanish Imposition: Literary Self-Translation Into and Out of Spanish in Canada (1971-2016)
• Ma. Carmen África Vidal Claramonte: La autotraducción y el original secundario en Ilan Stavans: ser traduciendo, traducirse para ser
• Maria Alice Antunes: Autotradução acadêmica: o caso da produção publicada no periódico acadêmico periférico plurilíngueEcos de Linguagem
• Sabrina Solange Ferrero: La autotraducción como proceso legitimador de un ethos autoral en la obra de la artista Carla Quevedo
• Rainier Grutman: Autotraducción y asimetría en el mundo de habla hispana: una perspectiva transatlántica A propósito de: Lila Bujaldón de Esteves, Belén Bistué y Melisa Stocco (coords.). (2019)
• Rainier Grutman, María Laura Spoturno: Veinte años de estudios sobre la autotraducción: una entrevista con el profesor Julio-César Santoyo
  
  

For more information: https://revistas.udea.edu.co/index.php/mutatismutandis

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/ 

(Online) Seminar "The Theory and Practice of Self-translation in Renaissance France and Europe", 3 March 2022

Dr. Sara Miglietti (The Warburg Institute) will give an (online) seminar on "The Theory and Practice of Self-translation in Renaissance France and Europe" on Thursday, 3 March at 17:00 - 18:30 (UK Time).  This seminar will take place in person in Darwin Lecture Theatre 1. It will also be streamed online on Zoom. 

Sara recently gave a fascinating talk on this topic in our network "Self-translation around the Globe", so I can highly recommend joining this event to anyone interested in self-translation. 

For more information and to register for the zoom link, please visit:
https://www.kent.ac.uk/events/event/53311/the-theory-and-practice-of-self-translation-in-renaissance-france-and-europe 

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

Routledge Handbook on Literary Translingualism

Out now: The Routledge Handbook on Literary Translingualism with an entry on Self-translation by Trish Van Bolderen and myself!  Order it now for your university library: https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Literary-Translingualism/Kellman-Lvovich/p/book/9780367279189