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Full Description
A fascinating collection of essays and conversations on the changing nature of language.
Finalist for the 2018 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards in the Essay category
From award-winning, internationally known scholar and translator Ilan Stavans comes On Self-Translation, a collection of essays and conversations on language in its multifaceted forms. Stavans discusses the way syntax is being restructured by texting and other technologies. He examines how the alphabet itself is being forgotten by the young, how finger snapping has taken on a new meaning, how the use of ellipses has lapsed, and how autocorrect is shaping the way we communicate. In an incisive meditation, he shows how translating one's own work reinvents oneself in another tongue. The volume includes tête-à-têtes with Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Wilbur and short-fiction master Lydia Davis, as well as dialogues on silence, multilingualism, poetry, and the durability of the classics. Stavans's explorations cover Spanish, English, Hebrew, Yiddish, and the hybrid lexicon of Spanglish. He muses on the meaning of foreignness and on living and dying in different languages. Among his primary concerns are the role and history of dictionaries and the extent to which the authority of language academies is less a reality than a delusion. He concludes with renditions into Spanglish of portions of Hamlet, Don Quixote, and The Little Prince. The wide range of themes and engaging yet informed style confirm Stavans's status, in the words of the Washington Post, as "Latin America's liveliest and boldest critic and most innovative cultural enthusiast."
This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to Knowledge Unlatched-an initiative that provides libraries and institutions with a centralized platform to support OA collections and from leading publishing houses and OA initiatives. Learn more at the Knowledge Unlatched website at https://www.knowledgeunlatched.org/.
Contents
Preface
Part I. Meeting the "I"
On Self-Translation
Part II. Meditations
Alphabetizing
As It Were
Parable of Don Quixote
Finger Snapping
The Tenure Code
Transadaptation
Ellipses and I
On Clarity
Auto-Corrected
Part III. Beyond Words
On Being Misunderstood
Against Representation: A Note on Borges's Aleph
The Monkey Grammarian
Midrash on Truth
Don Quixote in Schlemieland
Dying in Hebrew
The Reading Life of Ricardo Piglia
Adiós, Chespirito
Part IV. On Fútbol
"Sudden Death"
Van Persie's Goal
Box of Resonance
Part V. Language and Politics
Trump and the Wall
Why Doesn't English Have an Academy?
Shakespeare in Prison
The Spanish Language in Latin America since Independence
Against "Diversity"
Rolling One's R's
Part VI. Conversations
The Poet's Alchemy (with Richard Wilbur)
On Silence (with Charles Hatfield)
Translating Cervantes (with Diana de Armas Wilson)
The Color of Existence (with Ryan Mihaly)
The Downpour of Inspiration (with Asymptote)
The Translingual Sensibility (with Steven G. Kellman)
Rescuing the Classics (with Lydia Davis)
Part VII. Onto Spanglish
Un Walker en Nuyol
Hamlet, Acto 2, Scene Dos [fragment] and Acto 3, Scene Uno
El Little Príncipe, Chapters I-IV
Don Quixote, Parte II, Chapter 72
Spanglish and the Royal Academy
About the Author
Index
