Self Translation

Introduction

Michael Boyden and Liesbeth De Bleeker, University College Ghent-GhentUniversity Association

Until recently, literary self-translation was considered to be a relatively

marginal phenomenon within literary and translation studies. While a

comparatively small circle of well-known literary self-translators (Jorge

Semprun, Fernando Pessoa, Samuel Beckett, Julien/Julian Green, Milan

Kundera) has received (and continues to receive) considerable scholarly

attention, the deeper mechanisms at the basis of self-translation as a

textual and social phenomenon have so far largely escaped academic

scrutiny. However, in recent years, a consensus has been growing that

self-translation deserves much wider study. Even a cursory glance at the

number of Nobel Prizewinning authors who were at one point or

another active self-translators the names of Samuel Beckett, Joseph

Brodsky, Czesaw Miosz, Frederic Mistral, Luigi Pirandello, IsaacBashevis Singer, Rabindranath Tagore, and Gao Xinjian spring to mind

reveals that self-translation is far more common and perhaps more

paradigmatic than is sometimes supposed (see in this regard Grutman,

2013). But the circle of self-translating authors is obviously much wider

than those consecrated by the Swedish Academy. One thing the editors

of the current special issue of Orbis Litterarum hope to do is increase

awareness of the ubiquity and importance of self-translation as a literary

practice. Translation scholars now believe that self-translation is not

only much more pervasive than is commonly thought, but also consti-

tutes a privileged object of study that allows us to get a better under-

standing of questions of authorship, identity, and translation. Even if

crystallized through a supposedly eccentric phenomenon such as self-

translation, the issues addressed in this special issue therefore impinge

on broader debates within humanities research.

Reviewing the literature on self-translation (for a fairly comprehensive

overview, see Santoyo et al. 2013), one is struck by the relative novelty

of the subject in academic research. Roughly up until the 1980s, apart

Orbis Litterarum 68:3 177187, 2013Printed in Malaysia. All rights reserved

from a few studies on authors such as Giuseppe Ungaretti (Maggi

Romano 1974; Sansone 1989) and Vladimir Nabokov (Cummings 1977;

Grayson 1977; Holmstrom 1985), most scholarly energy was channeled

toward the work of Samuel Beckett (Cohn 1961; Beer 1985; Fitch 1985,

1988; Chamberlain 1987), who up until today continues to be regarded

as perhaps the most prototypical of self-translators. Another ourishing

research strand centered on the work of Neo-Latin writers during the

Renaissance, notably Etienne Dolet (Koppen 1972; Lloyd-Jones 1973;

Worth 1988), Jean Daurat (Iljsewijn, Tournoy, & de Schepper 1984),

and Joachim du Bellay (Hoggan 1982; Demerson 1984). While generat-

ing much valuable scholarship, these research strands seldom coalesced

into an overarching discussion of the larger signicance of self-transla-

tion. Writing in 1968, Leonard Forster could state without irony that his

lectures on multilingualism in literature, delivered at the University of

Otago in New Zealand, were the rst survey of this particular problem

(Forster 1970, xii). Since Forsters pioneering study, the only consistent

attempt to arrive at a panoramic overview of self-translation across the

ages has been Jan Walsh Hokenson and Marcella Munsons The

Bilingual Text (2007), which impressively traces the phenomenon and its

uses from the vertical world of medieval Europe and the Renaissance,

when Latin was considered the universal source of the vernaculars, to

the horizontal world of modernity, which turned ones native language

into the egoic essence of subjectivity (Hokenson & Munson 2007,

142). While it has always existed, it was probably only when the latter,

horizontal worldview became increasingly dominant that self-translation

came to be problematized as something exceptional.

In the period between Forsters rst observations on self-translation

and Hokenson and Munsons wide-ranging study, we can observe a

marked increase of publications on the topic, especially since the nal dec-

ade of the twentieth century. Most obviously, there has been a shift of

interest away from relatively established authors such as Beckett and

toward the alternative canon propagated by postcolonial studies of which

Forster was only dimly aware in the late 1960s. Recurring names are

Rosario Ferre, Rachid Boudjedra, Jo~ao Ubaldo Ribeiro, and Ousmane

Sembene, whose literary practice as self-translators hinges on a compli-

cated relationship with the languages of European colonization and (neo-)

imperial dominance. In the European framework, quite a lot of recent

178 Introduction

research has been directed at authors belonging to so-called minor liter-

atures (in Deleuze and Guattaris sense), who translate their work into

one of the major European languages. Prominent examples are Karen Bli-

xen (DanishEnglish), Vassilis Alexakis (GreekFrench), Panat Istrati

(RomanianFrench), and Czesaw Miosz (PolishEnglish), as well as ahost of Basque, Catalan, and Galician authors. What all of these postco-

lonial and minority writers have in common, it seems, is that the incentive

to translate ones own work derives in large part from the asymmetric

power relation between the languages involved. In the case of Beckett, this

dynamic is largely absent. Self-translation is here not so much an instru-

ment of empowerment although, on some level, it is of course also that

as of deliberate estrangement. While linguistic asymmetries do play a

role in the writings of the Neo-Latin authors mentioned above, the direc-

tionality is markedly dierent here. In the Renaissance, the transfer was

generally (but not exclusively) from Latin to a vernacular, and the motive

was often to elevate the latter. By contrast, writers hailing from postcolo-

nial or minority contexts tend to translate from an unsanctioned language

into a dominant one as a paradoxical act of armation.

The rst decade of the new millennium has witnessed a further intensi-

cation of academic interest in self-translation, and the playing eld has

consequently become much more variegated. While canonical authors

such as Kundera, Nabokov, and especially Beckett continue to soar high

(Oustino 2001; Sardin-Damestoy 2002; Van Hulle 2006; Ackerley

2008), a number of others seem to be well on their way to becoming

new classics, among them Alexakis, Ferre, and Nancy Huston. Much of

this recent research is presentist in scope. A lot of attention has gone to

contemporary self-translators emerging from unstable contexts, where

the choice of a writing language is politically loaded, to the degree even

that self-translation is often approached as inherently asymmetrical. For

the Scottish poet Christopher Whyte, who translates his Gaelic works

into English, self-translation is a necessary evil because it entails the

danger that the author may wield improper control over his own text

(Whyte 2002, 70). Like Ezra Pound and Walter Benjamin before him,

Whyte sees translation as a mode of criticism, which is driven by

fascination for the opacity of the original. The practice of self-

translation, however, springs from a desire to make ones work more

widely available, which clashes with the critical impulse to confront the

Michael Boyden and Liesbeth De Bleeker 179

strangeness of the text. For Whyte, the practice of self-translation is

never innocent, as it reveals a power imbalance between the source and

target languages. Self-translators do nothing to correct that imbalance,

but even reinforce it, since their misleading authority keeps the reader

from digging deeper and learning the language of the original. Whytes

perspective is convincingly polemical. At the same time, however, it fails

to consider the relative novelty of the idea of a unique mother tongue.

For centuries, the dominant mode of self-translation was not from the

low-status language to the high-status one, but the other way around.

The bulk of scholarship on self-translation is product-oriented, rather

than process- or function-oriented. This means that it is less directly con-

cerned with the actual writing process or the ways in which a self-trans-

lation is received in a given society than with how a self-translation

relates to other translations and the original text on which it is based. A

central question, in this regard, is whether self-translators have more

freedom than ordinary translators, and, if so, whether and to what

purpose they use that freedom. As Gerard Genette has stated, indelity

is a privilege of the author, un privilege auctorial (Genette 1987, 372).

On the other hand, there is Paul Valerys equally widespread view that

the author, once the work is completed, has no special authority over

it (quoted in Whyte 2002, 68). The positions in the debate range from

the view that, in spite of appearances, self-translators are just like other

translators because they use similar procedures, to the opposite position,

which holds that self-translators are not like translators at all but more

like authors rewriting their own work. In her illuminating rejoinder to

this special issue, Susan Bassnett veers towards the latter position,

although she goes a step further by adding that, like Andre Lefevere, she

considers all forms of translation to be rewritings. In the end, Bassnett

claims, it is a waste of time to distinguish between self-translations

and allographic translations, since the distinction that counts is that

between writing and rewriting, the production and the manipulation of

texts. Interestingly, Bassnetts conclusion that the distinction between

translation and self-translation is irrelevant here converges with the

opposite position, which holds that self-translators do not rewrite, but

simply translate (e.g. Ehrlich 2009). From this perspective, too, it ulti-

mately does not matter whether self-translators have more freedom than

other translators, since they do not use it anyway.

180 Introduction

Bassnetts observations seem to call for greater attention to what is hap-

pening in translation rather than who is involved in it, the translation pro-

cess rather than the product. This indicates that the debate over the freedom

of the self-translator is at least partly misguided, insofar as all human

behavior is necessarily norm-based, including the freedom to ignore norms.

The more important question, then, is which particular norms are at work

in self-translations. One could claim, for instance, that what Andrew Ches-

terman (1997) refers to as the relation norm (which establishes a relation

of relevant similarity between source and target text) is often weaker for

self-translators, who may be less bound by the expectation of source text

equivalence. On the other hand, in spite of the assumed dictate of uency, it

cannot be denied that regular translations sometimes display a relatively

high tolerance for correctives or explanatory insertions. In this regard, self-

translators seem more constrained by their audiences horizon, or by Ches-

termans accountability norm (which involves the translators loyalty to

the original, the commissioner or the prospective audience): They are sup-

posed to guard over the coherence of the text and are inclined to smooth

over, rather than point out, inconsistencies springing from the process of

cultural transfer, which they will sometimes do at the cost of violating

socially transmitted standards of equivalence. A translator is bound by the

demand of consistency in his translation method. A self-translator, how-

ever, is often also expected to project a coherent self-image, which may

require rewriting of the original. This is not necessarily an expression of

freedom. It is simply another norm to be reckoned with. One question that

an integrated approach to self-translation would have to address, in our

view, is that of why dierent types of self-translators translate as they do.

One could venture, for instance, that self-translations from one domi-

nant language into another dominant language are more like creative

writing and less like translation proper than self-translations from a

minor language into a dominant one (self-translations from a dominant

into a dominated language, or from one dominated language into

another, are much less frequent). Since the aim in the latter case (minor

into major) is often the desire for broader recognition of the original

through self-translation, the impact of the relation norm may be greater

here. Dierent kinds of self-translations will also display dierent degrees

of accountability. With translations from a minor into a major language,

the responsibility of authorizing the work in the host culture can be


devolved onto, or rather taken over by, secondary agents like editors,

reviewers, or critics. The sociologist Harrison White has posited that

heightened comparability functions as an unanticipated by-product of

attempts at dominance (White 1992, 13). Extending this insight to self-

translation in its various guises, we could construct some kind of law in

Tourys sense: The greater the power imbalance in the language pair, the

closer the original and the translated versions will be expected to resemble

each other (which obviously does not mean that they actually will). Vice

versa, the less one language manages to overshadow the other, the more

leeway the reader will have to approach the two language versions as dis-

tinct original works, departing from each other in signicant ways

(although, here too, the self-translator may defy expectations by being less

adventurous than anticipated). Such sweeping claims obviously cry out

for correction by the facts, but it may nevertheless be helpful to keep an

eye on the big questions, especially given the above-mentioned fragmenta-

tion of scholarship on self-translation. The essays collected in this special

issue take up various positions in the ongoing debate about the status and

distinctive quality of self-translation as a discourse genre.

In his panoramic opening article, Rainier Grutman argues that in order

to get at a better understanding of some of the systemic constraints at

the basis of this genre, we need to make a rhetorical move beyond

Beckett, whose remarkable double oeuvre is too easily taken as a bench-

mark for what self-translation is about. As Grutman points out, the

average self-translator does not normally start out as a particularly

experienced literary translator, nor does he or she consistently develop a

double oeuvre the way Beckett did, collapsing the temporal (simulta-

neous translation) and spatial (bidirectionality of the linguistic transfer)

boundaries between original and translation. Furthermore, contrary to

Beckett, the typical self-translator is thrown into an asymmetrical

world, wedged as he or she is between languages that are not on the

same footing. This inequality has to do with the power relations between

languages in a specic speech community, but also with their overall

exchange value on the global translation market. For writers working

in such asymmetrical constellations (typically immigrants, or those

coming from minority cultures or formerly colonized nations), the deci-

sion to cross the Rubicon of self-translation (as Grutman beautifully

phrases it) springs from a totally dierent set of motivations than those

182 Introduction

that dene Becketts quite unique bilingual writings. The majority of

self-translators experience the transposition of their work into another

language as a constrictive rather than a liberating enterprise, which they

undertake at the risk of betraying their socially dened identity.

In his article on Ariel Dorfmans best-selling memoir Heading South,

Looking North and the Spanish version Rumbo al sur, deseando el norte,

Steven Kellman shows how a dierent optic is inscribed in the two language

versions of the Chilean authors autobiography. By drawing attention to

the shifts between the two versions of Dorfmans life story, Kellman

declares himself to be more on the Bassnett side of the debate. That means,

the article reveals how Dorfman took liberties in rendering his English

memoir into Spanish, by adding or deleting non-inferable content, which

any other translator could probably not aord. An interesting question in

this regard is how Dorfman manages to maintain the illusion of truthful-

ness, ingrained in the autobiographical genre itself, even while adapting his

text to the cultural framework of his respective readerships. As Kellmans

article evinces, the memoir is a testimony, not just of his eventful life as a

hemispheric go-between equally at home (and ill at ease) in North and

South America, but also of what Dorfman himself refers to as a linguistic

psychomachia, an allegorical power struggle between English and Spanish

as the idioms through which he is forced to narrate his life story. Quite

strikingly, that power struggle is not simply a reection of sociolinguistic

realities. In opposition to emigre writers like Thomas Mann, who never

wrote in English, or immigrants like Mary Antin, who fully abandoned

Yiddish in favor of English, Dorfman prefers to write about things experi-

enced in Spanish in English, while switching to Spanish to dene his place

in North American society. Such distancing mechanisms, which Kellman

links to Bertold Brechts dramatic device of the alienation eect, throw

light on the complex psychology of the self-translator, which deserves much

broader study than it has hitherto received.

In counterpoint to Kellmans essay, Michael Boyden and Lieve

Jookens article on J. Hector St. John de Crevecurs Letters from an

American Farmer appears to verge toward the pole that denies the self-

translator authorial control. This may surprise at rst, given that the

translations that Crevecur produced in France (now largely forgotten

but much more inuential than the English version upon their rst

publication) read very much like secondary originals, not only revising


signicant portions of the text, but also adding a lot of materials (the sec-

ond French version counts no less than eighty-four letters, seven times

the number included in the rst English edition!). In other words, whilepreparing his work for the French readership, Crevecur could draw on

a creative arsenal unavailable to, for instance, the coetaneous Dutch

translation which Boyden and Jooken draw into the analysis. Yet, the

article rubs against the grain of the widely held view that self-translators

by denition enjoy a privileged status on the supposition that they are

not faced with the kind of interpretation problems that beset regular

translations. On the basis of an extended comparison of the paratextual

framing of the English, French, and Dutch versions of Crevecurs Let-

ters on the one hand, and a close analysis of one section of the work, the

allegorical tale of Andrew the Hebridean, on the other, Boyden and Joo-

ken show that Crevecur (whose French pen might have been guided by

some of his patrons) had to submit to the expectational horizon of the

French reader at the time, which raises important questions about the

historical embedding of self-translated narratives. The dominance cong-

uration in which Crevecurs Letters are now received is markedly dier-

ent from, in some sense even inversely proportional to, the one in place

at the end of the eighteenth century, when everything gravitated toward

Paris and the freedom of the press was severely curtailed.

In her article on Nancy Hustons 1993 double text PlainsongCantique

des plaines, Desiree Schyns adopts a similar procedure of comparing the

authors own translation to an ordinary one. Given that she herself trans-

lated Hustons work into Dutch for a Flemish publisher, Schyns can draw

on her own experience as a professional translator of francophone litera-

ture. The article thus oers a view into the complex inner workings of the

translation process and the contradictory demands of literary institutions.

Among other things, this approach is revelatory of the gaps between o-

cially sanctioned norms and those that actually guide the work of the trans-

lator, or between what Niklas Luhmann (1995, 320321) would call

cognitive and normative expectations, that is to say, expectations disposed

toward learning and those relatively immune to contestation. While the

Flemish publisher advertised the Dutch version as a translation from the

French without making reference to the English original, Schyns was urged

by the author to acknowledge the priority of the English version (which she

did, although she takes the French version as her primary source text). The

184 Introduction

tenor of this personal correspondence clashes in its turn with Hustons o-

cial proclamations upon her receipt of the Governor Generals Award for

Cantique des plaines. Responding to the critique that a translation could

not qualify for the prize, Huston stressed that the English and French ver-

sions had mutually inuenced each other and should therefore be regarded

as parallel original works. In her article, Schyns attests that Hustons trans-

lation strategies are in many ways similar to the ones she herself applied in

the Dutch translation. There are no indications, moreover, of interference

from the French version in the English. Another interesting tension can be

inferred from the fact that, while translating her English text, Huston

primarily appealed to the readership of the Hexagon rather than that of

Quebec, as appears from her use of Parisian argot (even while describing

Western scenes). It can thus be argued that the consecration of Hustons

novel in francophone North America went along with, perhaps even

derived from, a desire to connect to French valuation orderings.

The nal article in this collection by Eva Gentes on dual-language edi-

tions oers perhaps the most compelling arguments for breaking open

an exclusively product-based approach to self-translation by bringing in

empirical research on reading patterns. Gentess typology of various

kinds of bilingual editions and the sort of readers they appeal to suggests

the need for a Genette-style study teasing out the intricacies of this

genre. As Gentes shows, even the most common and supposedly sym-

metrical format, that of the en face edition, has a more or less implicit

perspectivity built into it, as appears from the language used for the

peritexts, the choice for corresponding facing pages, and the governing

practice of printing the original on the left-hand side. Usually it is

only when such received practices are upset, through the use of bilingual

footnotes, non-aligned text, or a deliberate reversal of the left-to-right

text arrangement, that the reader is forced into recognition of the con-

ventionality of age-old methods of information processing ingrained in

our social order and the directionality of the writing systems associated

with it. Therefore, although it may strike one as a rather exotic genre at

rst, dual-language publishing (but one should also consider, for

instance, trilingual translations of such dual editions) raises highly perti-

nent questions about the study of self-translations in relation to issues of

authorship, transliteration, intermediality, and digraphia. Without a

doubt, the digital age will yield interesting new research objects in this


regard. We believe that the most productive avenue for future research

is not to adopt a shopkeepers mentality of setting self-translation o

from other discourse genres, but rather to situate it in relation to what

George Steiner (1998, 58) referred to as the destructive prodigality of

the language system. This volume is a modest contribution to such a

project.

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Michael Boyden ([email protected]), born 1977, PhD, is an assistant pro-fessor in the Faculty of Applied Language Studies at Ghent University College(Belgium). Prior to his appointment, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Univer-sity of Leuven, a fellow at the German Historical Institute, and a Fulbright scholarat the Harvard University Longfellow Institute. Boyden has published variousarticles on translation and multilingualism in American literature. His rst book,Predicting the Past, was published by Leuven University Press in 2009.

Liesbeth De Bleeker ([email protected]), born 1980, PhD, is an assistantprofessor in the Faculty of Applied Language Studies at Ghent University College (Bel-gium). After nishing her PhD (2007, University of Leuven), she worked as a FrancquiFoundation fellow of the BAEF at New York University. Her current research projectfocuses on the translation of multilingual literature in the Caribbean region.


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