March 21st, 2024 (4:30-6:00pm Boston | 21:30 Madrid) | In Person & via Zoom
RSVP: https://bit.ly/RSVPObservatorio or info-observatory@fas.harvard.edu
Although originally written in English, the novel Maldición eterna a quien lea estas páginas by Manuel Puig was first published in Latin America as "a translation into Spanish by the same author." With this fact as a point of departure, also using the ideas of other authors of self-translation (Samuel Beckett, María Luisa Bombal, Vladimir Nabokov, Jhumpa Lahiri), this session by writer and translator Antonio Díaz Oliva will address the phenomenon of self-translation, together with the speaker's own experience in the United States as a writer in both languages. He will examine the following questions: What is self-translation and how do you define it? Who has implemented it in Hispanic and Anglo America, and why? And in the case of Puig, a polyglot author that supervises the translations of his books, what creative problems are posed, solved, and exacerbated with the self-translation of his New York novel? This lecture is part of a book "in progress", where Díaz Oliva will follow the footsteps of six Latin American writers through the United States—such as Manuel Puig in New York or José Donoso and his formative years at Princeton—, as well as the influence of this experience on their work.
Born in Temuco, Chile, but living in Chicago, the writer and translator Antonio Díaz Oliva (ADO) has published six books, including the picaresque novel Campus, a satire about Latin American academics at U.S. universities, as well as the short story collections La experiencia formativa and La experiencia deformativa, both with Editorial Neón in Chile and Suburban Publications in the United States. He has translated and edited Virginia Woolf, Henry David Thoreau, Roberto Arlt, George Eliot, G. K. Chesterton, and José Donoso. He has received Chile's National Book Award for Best Story Collection of the Year (novel), the Roberto Bolaño Young Writers Award (short story), and the Writings of Memory Award (non-fiction). He is currently working as an editor and translator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
Language: Spanish