This chapter engages with the ways in which self-translation problematises traditional binary hie... more This chapter engages with the ways in which self-translation problematises traditional binary hierarchies between minor and major languages through a close reading of Basque author Bernardo Atxaga’s 1988 text Obabakoak. Atxaga’s writing process with regards to this text reflects the diglossia between a minor and a major language which exists in the Basque Country. He originally wrote Obabakoak in the Basque language Euskera, a language spoken by fewer than one million people worldwide. A year later, he translated the text into Castilian, making significant changes to the structure and the content of his book in the process. Responding to Lawrence Venuti’s theory of translation as an inherently violent process, captured within a power binary of foreignisation and domestication, I suggest Atxaga’s text is caught within a similar tension: between the demands of the “domestic,” revealed by his desire to support and revitalise the Basque literary scene by writing in Euskera; and the dema...
This chapter engages with the ways in which self-translation problematises traditional binary hie... more This chapter engages with the ways in which self-translation problematises traditional binary hierarchies between minor and major languages through a close reading of Basque author Bernardo Atxaga’s 1988 text Obabakoak. Atxaga’s writing process with regards to this text reflects the diglossia between a minor and a major language which exists in the Basque Country. He originally wrote Obabakoak in the Basque language Euskera, a language spoken by fewer than one million people worldwide. A year later, he translated the text into Castilian, making significant changes to the structure and the content of his book in the process. Responding to Lawrence Venuti’s theory of translation as an inherently violent process, captured within a power binary of foreignisation and domestication, I suggest Atxaga’s text is caught within a similar tension: between the demands of the “domestic,” revealed by his desire to support and revitalise the Basque literary scene by writing in Euskera; and the dema...
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Papers by Harriet Hulme