Orbis Litterarum 68:3 177187, 2013

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Introduction
Michael Boyden and Liesbeth De Bleeker, University College Ghent-Ghent
University 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, Fr
ederic Mistral, Luigi Pirandello, Isaac
Bashevis 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 constitutes a privileged object of study that allows us to get a better understanding of questions of authorship, identity, and translation. Even if
crystallized through a supposedly eccentric phenomenon such as selftranslation, 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

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Introduction

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 (K
oppen 1972; Lloyd-Jones 1973;
Worth 1988), Jean Daurat (Iljsewijn, Tournoy, & de Schepper 1984),
and Joachim du Bellay (Hoggan 1982; Demerson 1984). While generating much valuable scholarship, these research strands seldom coalesced
into an overarching discussion of the larger signicance of self-translation. 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 decade 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 Ferr
e, Rachid Boudjedra, Jo~ao Ubaldo Ribeiro, and Ousmane
Sembene, whose literary practice as self-translators hinges on a complicated relationship with the languages of European colonization and (neo-)
imperial dominance. In the European framework, quite a lot of recent

Michael Boyden and Liesbeth De Bleeker

179

research has been directed at authors belonging to so-called minor literatures (in Deleuze and Guattaris sense), who translate their work into
one of the major European languages. Prominent examples are Karen Blixen (DanishEnglish), Vassilis Alexakis (GreekFrench), Panat Istrati
(RomanianFrench), and Czesaw Miosz (PolishEnglish), as well as a
host of Basque, Catalan, and Galician authors. What all of these postcolonial 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 instrument 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 directionality 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 postcolonial 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 intensication 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, Ferr
e, 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 selftranslation, however, springs from a desire to make ones work more
widely available, which clashes with the critical impulse to confront the

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Introduction

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 concerned with the actual writing process or the ways in which a self-translation 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 G
erard Genette has stated, indelity
is a privilege of the author, un privilege auctorial (Genette 1987, 372).
On the other hand, there is Paul Val
erys 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 Andr
e 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 ultimately does not matter whether self-translators have more freedom than
other translators, since they do not use it anyway.

Michael Boyden and Liesbeth De Bleeker

181

Bassnetts observations seem to call for greater attention to what is happening in translation rather than who is involved in it, the translation process 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 Chesterman (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, selftranslators seem more constrained by their audiences horizon, or by Chestermans accountability norm (which involves the translators loyalty to
the original, the commissioner or the prospective audience): They are supposed 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, however, 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 dominant 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

182

Introduction

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 selftranslation 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 distinct 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 fragmentation 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 benchmark 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 (simultaneous 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 decision to cross the Rubicon of self-translation (as Grutman beautifully
phrases it) springs from a totally dierent set of motivations than those

Michael Boyden and Liesbeth De Bleeker

183

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 truthfulness, 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
emigr
e 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 experienced 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 selftranslator 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

184

Introduction

signicant portions of the text, but also adding a lot of materials (the second French version counts no less than eighty-four letters, seven times
the number included in the rst English edition!). In other words, while
preparing 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 Letters 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 Jooken 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 conguration in which Crevecurs Letters are now received is markedly dierent 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, D
esir
ee Schyns adopts a similar procedure of comparing the
authors own translation to an ordinary one. Given that she herself translated Hustons work into Dutch for a Flemish publisher, Schyns can draw
on her own experience as a professional translator of francophone literature. 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 ocially sanctioned norms and those that actually guide the work of the translator, 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

Michael Boyden and Liesbeth De Bleeker

185

tenor of this personal correspondence clashes in its turn with Hustons ocial 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 versions had mutually inuenced each other and should therefore be regarded
as parallel original works. In her article, Schyns attests that Hustons translation 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 editions 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 symmetrical 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 conventionality 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 pertinent 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

186

Introduction

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 (michael.boyden@hogent.be), born 1977, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Applied Language Studies at Ghent University College
(Belgium). Prior to his appointment, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Leuven, a fellow at the German Historical Institute, and a Fulbright scholar
at the Harvard University Longfellow Institute. Boyden has published various
articles on translation and multilingualism in American literature. His rst book,
Predicting the Past, was published by Leuven University Press in 2009.
Liesbeth De Bleeker (liesbeth.debleeker@hogent.be), born 1980, PhD, is an assistant
professor in the Faculty of Applied Language Studies at Ghent University College (Belgium). After nishing her PhD (2007, University of Leuven), she worked as a Francqui
Foundation fellow of the BAEF at New York University. Her current research project
focuses on the translation of multilingual literature in the Caribbean region.

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