Writing for Liberty: Self-translation as a Form of Liberation in Exile

MARÍA LAURA SPOTURNO

San Martín y Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires

Congreso; Writing for Liberty; 2019

Unviersidad de San Martín y University of Lancaster

This presentation explores some of the features of self-translation. This discursive practice, which may be operatively defined as the ?act of translating one?s own writings into another language and the result of such an undertaking? (Grutman, [1998] 2009: 257), is quite relevant to reflect upon the problems of subjectivity and authorship in literary discourse (Grutman and Von Bolderen, 2014). I will argue that the category of ethos (Amossy, 2009, 2010, 2014) is productive to explore the enunciative distinctive nature of literary self-translation (Spoturno, forthcoming). Drawing from both sociological and discursive paradigms, the reworking of ethos can be understood as the elaboration of the set of socio-discursive elements and procedures which enable speakers to restore, modify or transform the image an audience may have of them in a new discursive situation (Amossy, 2010). Amossy?s notion, which has been typically used in the study of political discourse, proves also appropriate to assess the configuration of subjectivity in self-translated discourse. By analyzing a corpus of (self) translated texts produced by women writers and translators in Latin America and the US in the defense of their rights to personal, artistic, social, and political liberty, this presentation seeks to contribute to the main focus of this conference.