Scrittura bilingue
In this interview, Pierre Lepori focuses on biographical reasons for his practice of bilingual writing, the relationship of his two writing languages (Italian and French) to each other and its evolution in the course of his career as a writer and translator.
Selbst-Übersetzung und mehrsprachiges Schreiben
In this e-mail exchange, Christen focuses on his career as a bilingual writer. He started out with German poetry, but is now writing in both German and French moving back and forth between the two languages. Christen defines self-translation as a form of recreation. Differences between languages are not a drawback but activate the artist’s creativity.
Literary Translingualism in Switzerland: Pierre Lepori and Beat Christen
The Swiss writer Conrad Ferdinand Meyer had two languages at his disposal, German and French. He hesitated, but in the end he opted to write in German. His decision was deeply affected by the outcome of the French-German war of 1870, which led to the unification of Germany. Contemporary Swiss writers do no longer have to grapple with such heartbreaking decisions. Quite the opposite is the case. In the last few decades, new forms of translingual writing have come into being. They have created a dense dialogical net across the country linking the four linguistic regions with each other. In this paper I would like to discuss two significant examples of this new form of translingual literature. Pierre Lepori combines Italian and French and Beat Christen writes in German and French.
Literarische Selbstübersetzung im Kontext weniger verbreiteter Sprachen – ein zweischneidiges Schwert?
Self-translation is a common practice among minority language writers, who often consider their works an active contribution to language maintenance. However, translation reveals itself to be a double-edged sword in contexts of lesser-translated languages. This article aims to show that there is an urgent need for self-translation studies to explore the link between self-translation and language maintenance.