Castro, Olga, Mainer, Sergi, and Page, Svetlana, eds. (2017): Self-translation and Power: Negotiating Identities in European Multilingual Contexts. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 302 p.

The sheer volume of publications on self-translation over the last decade, in the form of monographs, edited collections, and special journal issues, attests to how far we have come from the 2001 Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies entry which declared self-translation a phenomenon to which “translation scholars themselves have paid little attention” (Grutman 1998/2001: 17). In carving out a space for self-translation as a field of study in its own right, scholarship often starts from the tacit position of valorizing self-translation for its uniqueness as a practice, for its aesthetic interest, or for its utility in enabling writers to reach a wider readership. In what ways, however, can self-translation also be understood as a potentially problematic enterprise? Can we study self-translation while also questioning the conditions that make it possible? The volume Self-translation and Power broaches these questions directly and implicitly, aiming not just to situate self-translation as a theoretically rich field in its own right, but placing it in the direct lineage of current scholarship in translation studies. As its title suggests, the volume takes its cue from the 2002 collection Translation and Power edited by Maria Tymoczko and Edwin Gentzler, the latter of whom prefaces this volume, praising it as a “pioneering anthology” (Gentzler 2017: v). Following its predecessor, Self-translation and Power asserts that the act of translation is imbricated in power dynamics shaped by various cultural, institutional, and geopolitical pressures. Embedded as it is in multiple linguistic contexts, self-translation provides a “privileged position to problematise power and to negotiate identities” (p. 11), and even to challenge the very idea that, in practice, self-translation succeeds in “promot[ing] minorised cultures and nations” (p. 13). On the whole, the volume draws strength from its breadth. It is comprised of twelve original essays (including the introduction) written by a range of contributors, from seasoned scholars of translation to current doctoral candidates, and which model various literary and sociological approaches to the study of translation. It is also productively committed to a broad idea of Europe that extends beyond the borders of the European Union, with essays, for example, that focus on minorized European languages (such as Occitan, Basque, and Ladino), that connect Europe to other continental regions (South America, North Africa), and that bridge the divide between Europe and its neighbors (Turkey, Russia). As Olga Castro, Sergi Mainer, and Svetlana Page argue in their introduction, “This collection wishes to disperse an existing perception of Europe as a monolithic cultural and/or political space still largely pertaining to postcolonial critique” (p. 6)—an objective that the volume succeeds in achieving. The first section of the volume, “Hegemony and Resistance,” includes three essays that ask how language policies and political pressures shape self-translation practices. Rainier Grutman traces Belgium’s history of national independence to demonstrate the entrenched power dynamics at stake between French and Dutch. Identifying seventeen active self-translators from the end of the 19^th century to the present, Grutman argues that self-translation has been historically correlated with language policies “aimed at levelling the playing field between languages” (p. 45), and that, given the widening gap between regional identities in modern-day Belgium, self-translation seems to be in decline. Christian Largarde’s essay examines four cases of Occitan writers in the mid-20^th century and how the decision to self-translate, or not, reveals varying kinds of power dynamics—from pressures emerging from the literary field, from collective efforts to challenge French hegemony, and from personal aspirations towards literary autonomy. Lagarde does not ultimately advocate for one particular literary strategy, suggesting instead that the historical moment and literary skill of a writer require different modes for preserving Occitan linguistic …