ABSTRACT

The translation studies course in self-translation explores the history of bilingual literary writings since the Middle Ages, with emphasis on modernists in Europe and the Americas. Accordingly, it also tracks the rise and fall of literary nationalisms, the role of sociopolitical dislocations in the legacy of bilingualism, and the changing concepts of translation and originality in literary history and critical theory. Bilingual authorship is a fertile subset of translation studies that offers students the opportunity to do some exciting, close comparative translation analysis while investigating the basic but often unstated assumptions of translation theory. As in most translation studies courses, students are required to have advanced skills in at least two languages, including English. One of the challenges in teaching "Mirrored Texts" is students' preconceptions perfectly understandable in the long legacy of German Romantic translation theory about the unitary self as a kind of one-dimensional consciousness that is happiest and most original in the maternal language.