Self-translation

Self-translation is a translation of a source text into a target text by the writer of the source text.

Self-translation occurs in various writing situations. Since research on self-translation largely focuses on literary self-translation, this article will tend to have a similar focus.

The practice of self-translation has attracted critical attention especially since the beginning of this century, in the wake of intensive investigation into the field of non-authorial translation in the twentieth century. Literary self-translation has been recognized as a special branch of translation studies at least since the publication of the first edition of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies in 1998.

Within the study of translation, literary self-translation has been one of the most neglected practices. Until recently, very little research has been done in this area. Many studies focus on single authors, most of them on Samuel Beckett. Research topics are the reasons for self-translation, the methods of self-translation and the textual relation between both texts.

—Self-translation may result either from a regular activity of the author or from a merely sporadic experience, which may be due to a variety of reasons. The latter case is represented, for example, by James Joyce's self-translation into Italian of two passages from his "Work in Progress" (later entitled "Finnegans Wake"). Other relevant cases are the self-translations of Stefan George and Rainer Maria Rilke.—Self-translation may result from a process in which either the mother tongue or an acquired tongue is the source language, so that the target language varies accordingly. The latter case is represented by a few Belgian poets of the period between the two World Wars (among them Roger Avermaete and Camille Melloy), who self-translated their texts into Flemish shortly after completing the originals in the acquired yet fully mastered French language.—Self-translation may occur either some time after the original has been completed or during the process of creation, so that the two versions develop almost simultaneously and inevitably influence each other. These two types are sometimes referred to as consecutive self-translation and simultaneous self-translation.—Self-translation may even involve more than one target language, whether native or acquired. This is the case with authors like Fausto Cercignani, Alejandro Saravia, and Luigi Donato Ventura.

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