Bilingual reading in self-translation

Abstract

This article explores bilingual reading of self-translated literature as a distinct type of reading experience. For bilingual readers, the awareness that both versions of the text are authored by the same writer in different languages activates a mode of reading that differs not only from monolingual reading but also from bilingual reading of allographic translations. Taking as its point of departure Elvira Dones’s Albanian novel Ditë e bardhë e fyer [Offended White Day]

and its self-translation into Italian, Bianco giorno offeso [Offended White Day] , the article examines how the transition from the first version to the self-translated second one produces substantial cumulative narrative differences that shape the bilingual reading experience, resulting in a third interpretive dimension.