La traduction comme déstabilisation ? Écriture bilingue et autotraduction dans l’œuvre de Pierre Lepori

Mathilde Vischer

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Abstract

The work of Pierre Lepori, born in Ticino, Switzerland in 1968, stands at the crossroads where translation, self-translation and bilingual writing intersect. Lepori is a native speaker of Italian but has lived in Lausanne for about fifteen years. He translates from French into Italian and from Italian into French; he has written novels and poems in Italian, and novels in French; and he has translated two of his own novels and a collection of poems into French. For Lepori, writing and self-translation are at the heart of a process of destabilization: a process experienced by every writer as he works to (re)fashion his own language and develops a personal and original style; and a process initiated whenever one moves from one language to another. This article explores various facets of Lepori’s diverse and multilingual works. It begins with an overview of the concept of self-translation, after which Lepori’s own conceptions of writing and translation are described. Then, three of Lepori’s works are discussed: his self-translation of Grisù, entitled Sans peau (Skinless) in French, the four-part novel Sexualité (Sexuality), and the novel Silk, which Lepori wrote in French.

Keywords

Literary translation, self-translation, bilingual writing, Italian, French