earticle

영어

This study aims to examine the nature and characteristics of self-translation, which is a relatively new field in translation studies and accordingly is decidedly not a common practice. Though a new comer, however, this field of study has much possibilities for theorists of translation studies. This article argues that the concept of self-translation, or auto-translation, should be limited mainly to literary translation, not to technical translation. Authors have attempted to translate their own literary works for a variety of reasons: psychological, linguistic, social, political, and artistic. Among these reasons, the last reason is most noteworthy. First of all, authors self-translate their own works because they think complete work can only be represented when they write in two different languages. Secondly, they often consider self-translation a sort of extension or revision to the original text. Thirdly, they translate their own writing because they are dissatisfied with existing translations. In other words, authors often believe that they are quite qualified to do the job far better than professional translators. Despite some possibilities, self-translation has some limitations because it cannot boast of a rich harvest of theoretical contributions to confront.