Article published In:
FORUMVol. 19:1 (2021) ► pp.1–23
Self-edition hypothesis
The case of multiple self-edited versions of modern literary texts
‘Self-editing’ refers to the practice of translators who edit their own earlier translations. Self-editions have
been less investigated than retranslations. No attempt has been made so far to formulate a hypothesis concerning self-edition.
Therefore, the present piece of research was conducted to fill the gap. The corpus of the study includes the modern Persian
novella
The Blind Owl written by
Sadeq Hedayat (1903–1951) and
translated (and self-edited) by Iraj Bashiri (in
1974, 2013 and 2016). The findings
showed that self-edited versions appeared to be more target-oriented than their original translations. Therefore, although they
appeared after the original translation, and could somehow be thought of as ‘retranslations’, they do not seem to confirm the
Retranslation-Hypothesis (RH). The main principle of the tentative ‘Self-edition Hypothesis’ is contrary to that of the
Retranslation-Hypothesis. It was also found that a self-edited translation is more ‘natural’, ‘accurate’, and ‘expanded’, but
slightly less clear than its original translation. It should, however, be underscored that the reduction in clarity of self-edited
versions was not so significant. Future researchers are encouraged to focus their study on ‘comparing strategies used by
translators with those adopted by editors’ and ‘taking into account socio-cultural factors involved in the production of new
editions’. Prospective researchers can test the hypothesis by concentrating on various language pairs and other text-types.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Literature review
- 2.1Previous related studies on translations of The Blind Owl
- 2.2Previous studies on self-editions and self-retranslations
- 3.Methodology
- 4.Results and discussion
- 4.1Qualitative data analysis
- 4.2Statistical data analysis
- 5.Conclusion
- Note
-
References
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