Concept of (self-)translation in Jhumpa Lahiri’s books “In Other Words”, “Translating Myself and Others”

Abstract

The aim of the study is to identify the basic peculiarities of the concept of (self-)translation, noticeably represented in Jhumpa Lahiri’s autobiographical works “In Other Words” and “Translating Myself and Others”. The study is original in that it is the first one to holistically understand significant aspects of the concept of (self-)translation in Jhumpa Lahiri’s creative biography by analyzing these works applying comparative and biographical methods. As a result of the study, it was found that the phenomenon of literary translation receives a diverse interpretation in Lahiri’s books containing the sources of her Italian-language works. The relationships between the translation and the original are subjected to rethinking against the backdrop of W. Benjamin’s ideas and revealed in the context of the author’s actualization of her complex linguistic experience, reflecting gradual transformation of her personal identity. In this regard, the concept of (self-)translation, expressed in the form of linguistic practice, turning into the transformation of literary texts into another language, is getting inseparable from the author’s awareness of her dual identity, which embodied the belonging to several linguistic and cultural paradigms.