On Self-Translation

Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities and Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College and the author of many books, including Borges, the Jew, also published by SUNY Press.

"…On Self-Translation: Meditations on Language, is, at its best, an engrossing potpourri of this thinker's continuing thoughts about language, culture, and the self … His capacious mind and intellectual verve are captured well in his short introduction." — The Arts Fuse"On Self-Translation is a beautiful and often profound work. Stavans, a superb stylist, offers erudite meditations on translation, and gives us new ways to think about language itself." — Jack Lynch, author of The Lexicographer's Dilemma: The Evolution of' "Proper" English, from Shakespeare to South Park"Stavans carries his learning light, and has the gift of communicating the profoundest of insights in the simplest of ways. The book is delightfully free of unnecessary jargon and ponderous discourse, allowing the reader time and space for her own reflections without having to slow down in the reading of it. This is work born out of the deep confidence that complete and dedicated immersion in a chosen field of knowledge (and practice) can bring; it is further infused with original wisdom accrued from self-reflexive, lived experiences of multilinguality." — Kavita Panjabi, Jadavpur University

• Preface Part I. Meeting the "I" On Self-Translation Part II. Meditations AlphabetizingAs It WereParable of Don QuixoteFinger SnappingThe Tenure CodeTransadaptationEllipses and IOn ClarityAuto-Corrected Part III. Beyond Words On Being MisunderstoodAgainst Representation: A Note on Borges’s AlephThe Monkey GrammarianMidrash on TruthDon Quixote in SchlemielandDying in HebrewThe Reading Life of Ricardo PigliaAdiós, Chespirito Part IV. On Fútbol "Sudden Death"Van Persie’s GoalBox of Resonance Part V. Language and Politics Trump and the WallWhy Doesn’t English Have an Academy?Shakespeare in PrisonThe Spanish Language in Latin America since IndependenceAgainst "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 72Spanglish and the Royal AcademyAbout the AuthorIndex