Selftranslators’ rewriting in freedom: new insights from product-based translation studies

Despite the growing interest in self-translation among translation scholars, who increasingly view it as a phenomenon falling under their jurisdiction, the perception remains that self-translation is more a form of original writing than translation proper. This perception is corroborated by a number of authors-translators who are resistant to call translations the second versions of their works in another language by virtue of the greater liberty at their disposal when translating their own texts. The aim of this article is to reflect upon this apparent contradiction through the theoretical and methodological tools offered by translation studies. Firstly, self-translators’ “method of translation in freedom” is set against the liberties that “normal” translators have traditionally taken and continue to take with their source texts, as emerged from the creative turn in translation studies, which has shown, for example, that translators increasingly claim ownership of their translations. Then, the potential of applying the methodologies used in corpus-based translation studies to self-translated texts is explored by comparing self-translations with “standard” translations – either translations of the same texts done by other translators or translations of the works of others done by the authors-translators themselves – with a view of determining whether self-translated texts display features that set them apart from normally translated texts.