Abstract

My interest in the subject of literary self-translation stems from my own multi-lingual writing practice. I am a native speaker of the Serbian and Italian languages. I have been living in English-speaking countries for thirty years and I have become a proficient user of the language. I have written fiction and academic works in Serbian, Italian and English and I have translated literary works from Italian, Spanish and French into Serbian. The self-translator is the author of both the first and second texts and his/her creative writing and translation practice overlap. Self-translation therefore, draws on the experiences of both creative writing and translation but it also proposes new forms of expression. In this presentation, I will give a brief overview of the relevant theoretical issues and then move on to explore some aspects of this literary practice in the works of Rosario Ferré, Vesna Goldsworthy, Benvenuto Lobina and my own.