Translating Selves: Experience and Identity Between Languages and Literatures

This collection of essays argues that acts of translation connect intimately with formations of the self and issues of individual or cultural identity; that in contexts in which languages, literatures and cultures meet, we also encounter ‘translating selves': ways of thinking, practices and understandings, creativity and experiences that (re)define the translating consciousness and (literary) translation. Chapters investigate the relationships between self and translation, from the realities of multilingualism to cognitive processes in the course of translating, to relations between writers and translators; from the creativities of self-translation to the transposition of conceptions of self across cultures and traditions. Structured in three parts, the book addresses in turn literary, cultural and theoretical aspects of encountered ‘selves in translation', as well as the interactions between them, culminating in a final series of case studies. Offering an interdisciplinary perspective on identity in translation, this book will be of interest to researchers working in translation studies, literary theory, linguistics and discourse analysis.

Paschalis Nikolaou is research and teaching fellow in literary translation at the Ionian University, Greece.

Mona Baker is Professor of Translation Studies, University of Manchester, UK.

Maria-Venetia Kyritsi undertook her doctoral research at the University of East Anglia, UK. She works as an in-house translator in London.