Self-edition hypothesis

Abstract

Abstract ‘Self-editing’ refers to the practice of translators who edit their own earlier translations. Self-editions have been less investigated than retranslations. No attempt has been made so far to formulate a hypothesis concerning self-edition. Therefore, the present piece of research was conducted to fill the gap. The corpus of the study includes the modern Persian novella The Blind Owl written by Sadeq Hedayat (1903–1951) and translated (and self-edited) by Iraj Bashiri (in 1974, 2013 and 2016). The findings showed that self-edited versions appeared to be more target-oriented than their original translations. Therefore, although they appeared after the original translation, and could somehow be thought of as ‘retranslations’, they do not seem to confirm the Retranslation-Hypothesis (RH). The main principle of the tentative ‘Self-edition Hypothesis’ is contrary to that of the Retranslation-Hypothesis. It was also found that a self-edited translation is more ‘natural’, ‘accurate’, and ‘expanded’, but slightly less clear than its original translation. It should, however, be underscored that the reduction in clarity of self-edited versions was not so significant. Future researchers are encouraged to focus their study on ‘comparing strategies used by translators with those adopted by editors’ and ‘taking into account socio-cultural factors involved in the production of new editions’. Prospective researchers can test the hypothesis by concentrating on various language pairs and other text-types.