Self-translation is examined in relation to intertextuality from a hermeneutical perspective taking as an example the bilingual edition of Limbes/Limbo : un hommage à Samuel Beckett by Nancy Huston. Self-translation is a most interesting subject for literary theory, translation studies or contemporary philosophical hermeneutics insofar as it puts into question the traditional ideas of original work and translation, identity and otherness, as well as the concepts of author and text in relation to meaning. The self-translation of Limbes/Limbo, with its references or allusions to Beckett and its style as pastiche, looks into the relationship of making “one’s own” what was previously 'foreign' or 'alien'; it illustrates the hermeneutical problem of the' appropriation' of a work of literature in its dimension of intertextuality. Paul Ricoeur’s concept of 'appropriation' as a form of dispossession helps to explain Nancy Huston’s practice of self-translation. The hermeneutical circle represents circular understanding as a dialectical interaction between the whole and the part, each giving the other meaning, and self-translation is an instance of that circle.