Third time’s the charm: Triangular Self-Translation

Abstract

Long considered rare or marginal, literary self-translation is now recognized as a widely practiced phenomenon: hundreds of writers have translated one or more of their own works. This issue of Oltreoceano focuses more specifically on so-called “multidirectional self-translations” (Julio-César Santoyo) that combine three or even more languages, admittedly a less common scenario but one whose vitality is nonetheless attested in the various essays that make up this issue. The resulting overview reveals the richness and diversity of these multilingual practices and argues for a broader understanding of self-translation as an inherently multilingual and multidirectional phenomenon.
While some writers translate an already bilingual source text into a third language, others alternate between different language pairs, depending on the title. However, the most accomplished form of literary trilingualism consists of translating the same text into two other languages. This could be called triangular self-translation, in the sense that each corner (“vertex”) of a triangle is connected to the other two by two lines (“sides.”) It is exemplified by authors such as Laia Fàbregas and Monika Zgustová, as well as Carlo Coccioli, Luigi Donato Ventura, and Felicia Mihali, whose careers showcase the diversity of trajectories involving languages, migrations, and writing practices.
Particular attention is paid to Italy, a profoundly multilingual country where the coexistence of Italian, dialects, and minority languages ​​fosters original forms of writing. Poets like Fernando Bandini and Michele Sovente combine dialect, Italian, and Latin. Gerhard Kofler and Andrea Zanzotto, on the other hand, develop multilingual works where self-translation by and large remains structured by binary relationships.
Trilingual configurations can also be found in Italophone migrant writing, as exemplified by Amelia Rosselli, Francesca Criselli, or Prisca Agustoni. In Canada, writers of Italian immigrant background likewise demonstrate the vitality of these practices: Licia Canton and Gianna Patriarca write and translate across several languages, while Giovanni Costa’s poetry in Italian, French, and English represents a very accomplished case of triangular self-translation.