Self-translation
Open-knowledge reference entry
Self-translation is a translation of a source text into a target text by the writer of the source text.
Self-translation occurs in various writing situations. Since research on self-translation largely focuses on literary self-translation, this article will tend to have a similar focus.
The practice of self-translation has attracted critical attention especially since the beginning of this century, in the wake of intensive investigation into the field of non-authorial translation in the twentieth century. Literary self-translation has been recognized as a special branch of translation studies at least since the publication of the first edition of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies in 1998.
Research
Within the study of translation, literary self-translation has been one of the most neglected practices. Until recently, very little research has been done in this area. Many studies focus on single authors, most of them on Samuel Beckett. Research topics are the reasons for self-translation, the methods of self-translation and the textual relation between both texts.
Types of self-translation
Self-translation may result either from a regular activity of the author or from a merely sporadic experience, which may be due to a variety of reasons.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q374466. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1998.
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This entry incorporates text from “Self-translation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.