Trish Van Bolderen

“Misleading and unnecessary”? The great self-translation debate

With a view to addressing what has become a chronic debate on self-translation, I analyze two opposing texts: “Un traductor privilegiado: el autotraductor” (Quaderns 1999), in which Helena Tanqueiro argues in favour of defining self-translation as translation, and “The Self-Translator As Rewriter” (Cordingley 2013), in which Susan Bassnett claims that the concept of self-translation is “misleading and unnecessary.” In this discussion, I present each scholar’s take on whether self-translation is truly translation, contextualizing their views within the evolution of Translation Studies and in relation to growing research in the more particular area of “self-translation studies” (Anselmi 2011). While acknowledging and briefly outlining my own position on the nature of self-translation, I ultimately explain how and why the debate itself is nonetheless now moot, contending, moreover, that recognizing the limitations of this recurring discussion is important to the fruitful advancement of research on writers who translate their own writing.

Keywords: self-translation, rewriting, moot debate, Tanqueiro, Bassnett

Biography

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, nam tota illud et, officiis laboramus definiebas usu ea. Wisi atomorum ne eum, sumo ullum an pro, alterum fierent evertitur nam ex. Vim ut doctus eleifend, veri porro laudem ad has. Nibh nullam tincidunt sit at.

At omnis viris melius mel, an tation copiosae pertinacia pri. No vel postea constituam dissentiunt, doctus philosophia vituperatoribus te nam. Eum corrumpit elaboraret te, elitr dolorem adolescens vel ei, postulant erroribus mel et. Aeque eirmod utroque nec ne. Commodo docendi appareat mei id, per dicam everti accumsan ad.