By Elena Borelli and Cecilia Rossi
In mid-July 2024, we met to talk about literary translation and directionality. We discussed questions which are integral to what we do, as we both are “exophonic translators” working from our “mother tongue” or “first language” into our “second language” or, more accurately, “main language,” English. Our conversation revolved around the nature of directionality in literary translation, in which the choice of the language in which one translates reflects both one’s personal experience of language(s) and a decision inherent in the act of creative writing. Choosing a language in which to write literature challenges the existing norms based on a binary distinction between one’s “first” and “second” language. In this essay, we report the essence of our conversation, recounting our experience in the third person, to indicate our respective contributions to this exchange.
Cecilia Rossi was born in Buenos Aires where she grew up. Spanish was the language she spoke at home but attending kindergarten in both Spanish and English set her on a distinctive linguistic path. At the age of six she began learning to read and write in Spanish, English and German. After a year at Cardiff University, where she completed an MA in Creative Writing, she moved to Norwich in 2003 to start a PhD in Literary Translation. She is now Professor of Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia where she works for the British Centre for Literary Translation and directs the MA in Literary Translation. She translates from Spanish to English. Elena Borelli grew up speaking Italian, but from an early age, she loved to read books and listen to poems and songs in English. At 27, she moved to the United States to do a Ph.D., and this is when English became both a professional language and the lingua franca of everyday life, as she shared a flat with native speakers of English and international students. Elena is now a Lecturer of Italian and Intercultural Studies at King’s College London, as well as an exophonic translator. She has co-translated Giovanni Pascoli’s Poemi Conviviali and Canti di Castelvecchio, and regularly translates for Journal of Italian Translation.
Directionality in the field of Translation Studies refers to the practice of translating into a language that is not the translator’s “first” language or “mother tongue.” While the term may allude to the direction of the text from a language into another, translating into one’s own language is such a codified and taken-for-granted practice that it comes with no specific name. Therefore “directionality” solely indicates the rather unusual choice of some translators to render a text in a language that they did not learn as children. Such translators are also called “exophonic” or “L2 translators.”
While there are many cases of renowned writers who wrote in their second or even third language, and while the lives and works of those have been often investigated through a postcolonial lens, the experiences of literary translators are much neglected. Literary translators act as cultural mediators, engaging in acts of linguistic and cultural adaptation. The assumption that a translator is not only more proficient in their native language but also more familiar with the culture(s) of the places where this language is spoken, rests on the old-fashioned conflation of language and culture.
Exophonic translators question not only the equation language and culture, but also the motives driving the translation of a certain work of literature in a certain language. The motives rest in the translator’s “language biography,” a complex and fascinating intersection of personal experiences, bodily encounters and relationships with languages and texts, as well as subjective perception of languages and cultures. In other words, with exophonic translators, the focus is not on the translated text, but on the translators themselves. This shift of focus from text to translator has led to the creation of a new sub field of Translation Studies, called Translator Studies, investigating the lived experiences of individual translators, or their Spracherleben. 1Busch, Brigitta. 2017. “The Lived Experience of Language.” Applied Linguistics 38 (3): 340–358. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amv030.
For both Cecilia and Elena, translation represents a creative writing practice. Cecilia started translating into English when she was enrolled in a Master’s in Creative Writing at the University of Cardiff, in Wales. As a bilingual country, Welsh writers face a choice, whether to write in English or Welsh, so Cecilia’s choice to write in, or translate into, English, was never queried. English therefore became for her the language of literary writing, and the language in which she could express herself creatively. As she explains, “For me the question of language is intimately connected with the experience of the language itself and how this experience changes over time: in other words, the choice of language to write in is inscribed in your biography. In Wales, everybody must choose a language, and they do so for reasons that have to do with their personal relationship with the language, therefore nobody was judging me for writing in a language that was not my own. Concepts of ownership were not called into question.”
For Elena, too, the choice of translating into English is inspired by her own perception of English as a literary language that she deeply enjoyed. Her love of English is rooted in the way words appear on the page, an almost bodily pleasure originating primarily from a visual experience, and only later from the appreciation of sound. Elena elaborates on this experience: “For me English was a written language before being a spoken one, and it has always had this very special literary quality. It had mystery; it was the stuff of poetry. I am reminded of what an Italian poet, Giovanni Pascoli, said about writing in a dead language such as Latin: it is the distance between us and the language that shrouds its words in mystery, giving them poetic resonance. This was my perception of English, which for me was the language of poems I loved, songs I listened to and were meaningful to me. I wanted to translate everything into English because I wanted all texts to be improved by being written in that beautiful language.”
The comparison between English and Latin is also particularly relevant for translators like Cecilia and Elena, whose other languages derived from Latin. In Italian and Spanish, most words originate from Latin, but the original spelling of Latin has almost disappeared, eroded by generations of speakers who have used those words and written them according to their pronunciation. On the contrary, in English Latin-based words are a later addition to the language, and many preserve the etymological spelling of Latin, thus offering the same feel of distance that Latin provides. “The way I was attracted to English resonates with this,” says Cecilia. “I took Spanish for granted, but I was attracted by the familiar otherness of English, so to speak. I felt a desire to make it mine.” In the case of Elena, a classicist in training, English was for her the new Latin of the modern world: a global language that could reach many more people than her native Italian. “Every time I read something I loved in Italian, I wanted to translate it into English, I wanted the whole world to read it.”
Cecilia further questions the division between native and second language: “There are many languages within a language, and we don’t inhabit all of them. There are certain books I would not be confident or comfortable translating. Books that contain slang, or languages or dialects to which I have had no exposure. But this is true also of Spanish for me. It’s true for all translators, not just exophonic ones.” Exposure, enjoyment, and relationship with the language are far more important than issues of nativeness in English. The primacy of the native speaker has since long been declining even in the discipline of language teaching, where the fetishization of the “authentic accent” dominated the field. “If you were teaching English, it had to be done in the Queen’s accent; at best, only national varieties were deemed acceptable,” says Elena. Phonetically, however, there is a myriad of accents, a myriad of “Englishes,” some as different from Received Pronunciation as a foreign accent. “For me,” adds Elena, “being born into language and forever marked by an accent when speaking English gave me the feeling of someone putting me in a prison cell and throwing the key away. Writing in that language, on the other hand, freed me. Nobody can hear an accent, nobody can point the finger, and say I’m not allowed to express myself in English.”
Exophonic translators challenge the norms that still exist in the field of languages and translation. Norms that associate speaking a language with being born or having lived in a country. Norms prescribing that a literature belongs to a language or to a country; that those born or grown there have privileged access to it, as if they automatically had the skills to penetrate the nooks and crannies of knowledge to interpret that language’s or country’s literature. “What I hear in this conversation,” says Cecilia “is a call for greater fluidity; for the final demolition of protectionism in the field of languages, and for a greater focus on translators’ own positionalities with respect not only to languages but also specific texts.”
Or, as Elena puts it, “When I translate or write in English, I feel I do it with a higher degree of performativity than when writing in Italian.” And she explains what she means by performativity: “English is the language of literature and carefully crafted writing, so when I write, well, everything feels theatrical, as if I am trying to reach a certain effect by weighing words, changing them, tasting them in my mouth. Obviously, it is the same for everyone writing literature, but in English the mask is there, visible for everyone to see. Nothing is casual, nothing is real: the writing itself is a performance.” Furthermore, Cecilia and Elena agree when they translate literature, they don’t just translate into a language but into a literary language with precise literary models. They want, for instance, to translate a nineteenth-century poet so that his/her poetry echoes a twentieth-century poet with whom they feel there is an affinity. This adds an extra layer of performativity: they choose a tradition, a literary idiolect, even a time, thus dressing up a text for a new life in the new language.
Sometimes the risk is that everything seems better sounding in English simply because it is in English, a risk that is part and parcel of the performativity involved in writing in a language we choose for its beauty. “It is true,” says Cecilia, who also used to think that everything sounded better in English. But sometimes another language comes and presents a challenge in the way of a word that refuses translation as it is just too “perfect.” “Like crepúsculo in Spanish which means “twilight” but has a particular cadence and is so musical; the word ‘twilight’ doesn’t do the same thing… When I encounter a word in Spanish and I marvel at its perfection, at its untranslatability, I know then that Spanish has also become a foreign language to me, or else that the distinction of ‘own’ and ‘foreign’ has become a lot blurrier than one thinks.”
After decades of obscurity, exophonic translators are coming onto the stage, claiming recognition for their work and shedding the impostor syndrome that has so far accompanied directionality in translation. At the same time, this phenomenon is not new, if one thinks of the practice during the Renaissance and Middle Ages of authors translating and self-translating into Latin, as an interesting project led by the Warburg Institute has shown. Latin was for centuries a lingua franca: everyone’s language with no territorial borders. It is an idea worth remembering to overcome the well-rooted prejudice and “ownership,” “nationality,” and belonging when it comes to languages and cultures.
The experiences of exophonic translators like Cecilia and Elena illuminate the evolving understanding of language ownership and identity in translation. Their journeys reveal that translating into a “second” language is not merely a practical choice, but an artistic, deeply personal expression shaped by each translator’s unique relationship with language. By embracing fluidity in linguistic identity and rejecting the strictures of “nativeness,” these translators challenge traditional boundaries and bring new dimensions to literary translation. In doing so, they embody a modern-day multilingualism inviting a rethinking of language as a shared, adaptable space for creative exploration.
Cecilia Rossi is Professor of Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia, where she convenes the MA in Literary Translation and works for British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT) as Postgraduate and Professional Liaison. Her latest translation, The Last Innocence and The Lost Adventures (Alejandra Pizarnik) published by Ugly Duckling Presse was shortlisted for the National Translation Awards for Poetry (ALTA) in 2020.
Elena Borelli is Lecturer of Italian at the Language Centre of King’s College London, where she teaches courses in Italian and Intercultural Studies. Her research focuses on the literature and culture of the European fin de siècle. She has co-translated Giovanni Pascoli’s Poemi Conviviali and published it in 2022 for Italica Press. She is a regular contributor of Journal of Italian Translation, and she is currently working on an English translation of Giovanni Pascoli’s Canti di Castelvecchio with US poet Stephen Campiglio.