ABSTRACT
The hierarchies of originality and authority that traditionally place the source text as master of the target text find their roots in a Romantic literary ideal of the author as inspired creator-genius. Some of the theoretical tools that translation studies have borrowed from literary studies reflect such literary ideal. The blurred nature of the distinction between the specific identities of author and translator is particularly evident in the activities of authors who act as translators of their own work, demonstrating that the roles of author and translator are neither mutually exclusive nor entirely commensurable. Beyond the literary context, the question of authorship has been taken up in audiovisual and multimodal research in translation studies. The dismantling of the auteur in film theory has implications for film translation; similarly, the translation of video games highlights the corporate production of the translated text and the need to acknowledge multiple authorial agents in the creation of the finished product.
