Abstract

One of the most significant aspects to explore in self-translation studies is the ultimate purpose or telos underlying authors’ decision to translate their own works into another language rather than entrust this task to professional translators. Focusing on the diverse self-translational landscape in Italy, whose richness has yet to be fully explored, this article examines the reasons why authors most typically translate into and from Italian. It first dwells on endogenous self-translators operating in the Italian diglossic context, from medieval autovolgarizzatori to the neo-dialect poets of the second half of the twentieth century. It then reviews exogenous self-translators, including illustrious foreign authors who since the early nineteenth century began translating their works into the prestigious language of the Italian literary tradition, as well as numerous authors migrating from Italy or, as is increasingly the case, to Italy, such as the Albanian Gëzim Hajdari, the Italian writer of Somali-Pakistani origin Shirin Ramzanali Fazel, the Eritrean-born Ribka Sibhatu and the Algerian Amara Lakhous, for whom self-translation is most fundamentally a way to account for their plural and transnational identities.