In My Own Words: Self-Translation as Method

COMPLIT 109X Subject & Catalog Number

Description

Self-Translation as Method investigates the process, aesthetics, and politics of literary self-translation and transmediation worldwide. Self-translation refers to the process through which authors translate their own writing into another language; such a translation may be undertaken at the same time as the original is composed or long after it is completed, but it always represents a self-reflexive relationship between the author and their own work. Because the self-translator has access to the original’s authorial intentions, they are empowered to take creative liberties that a conventional translator might shy away from. Through these creative liberties, self-translators enrich the cultural capital of both their native and adopted language and culture. Self-translation, in this way, often involves writing oneself into world literature, creating cosmopolitan palimpsests that reveal, in their dialogue with diverse cultural traditions, the nonlinear forms of modernity. In this course, we will delve into case studies of self-translation from East Asia, East Africa, Latin America, North America, and Italy. We will also investigate the implications of self-transmediation, which occurs when an author adapts their own work into another medium, transporting that work from the page to the stage to the screen, for instance. For the final assignment, students will produce their own work of self-translation or transmediation.