Translators and identity in Jhumpa Lahiri’s transfiction

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the presence of fictional translators in three works by Jhumpa Lahiri, asking what their underlying function is across the author’s English- and Italian-language texts. These figures are analysed with a view to teasing out their characteristics, and are then compared to identify patterns, analogies, and differences. Lahiri’s works have been often compared to those of other writers. This article, instead, singles out the fictional translators in her own works, belonging to different phases of her career. Lahiri’s fictional and fictionalised translators can be interpreted as figurative milestones in the author’s creative path and, hence, are closely connected to the theme of identity. They function as alter egos and shed light on the interplay between transfiction, exophony, and identity.

KEYWORDS:

• Transfiction
• exophony
• identity
• self-translation
• cultural translation
• pseudotranslation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the editorial group Mauri Spagnol for giving me permission to quote Lahiri’s Il quaderno di Nerina and In altre parole.

Notes

1 In this article, the terms ‘exophony’ and ‘translingualism’, as well as ‘exophonic’ and ‘translingual’, are used interchangeably.

2 From 2015 to 2021, the works authored by Lahiri were written directly in Italian. However, since Lahiri wrote the 2022 collection of essays Translating Myself and Others in English, she recently shifted from being an ‘isolingual translingual’ to ‘ambilingual translingual’, i.e., from writing not only in Italian, the ‘adopted language’, but ‘in more than one language’ (Kellman, 2019, p. 338).

3 Lahiri talks about this text in the chapter ‘L’adolescente peloso’ [the hairy adolescent]. However, the text itself seems to be unretrievable.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Trinity College Dublin (Rachel Thompson Ussher Fellowship).

Notes on contributors

Andrea Bergantino

Andrea Bergantino is a second-year PhD candidate at the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation, Trinity College Dublin. His research focuses on transfiction, exploring fictional representations of translation and literary portrayals of translators primarily in contemporary Italian literature. His research project has been awarded the Rachel Thompson Ussher Fellowship by Trinity’s School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies.