Translating Dialects and Languages of Minorities: Challenges and Solutions 3034301782, 9783034301787

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N ew T r e n d s in Tr a n s l ati on S tud i e s

N ew T rends in T ra ns lat io n S t udies Vol. 6

The strength of the volume lies in the wide range of languages discussed, from Arabic to Turkish and from Italian to Catalan, as well as in its variety of complementary and contrastive methodologies. The contributions reveal the importance of exploring further issues in translating local voices. Discussing dialects and marginal voices in translation, the contributors encourage and challenge the reader to reflect on what is standard and non-standard, acceptable and unacceptable, thereby overturning accepted principles and challenging familiar practices. ‘Federico M. Federici has assembled an exceptional assortment of experts to reflect on the challenges of translating dialect and minority languages. From Federici’s meticulous overview of both the geo- and sociolinguistic status of “languages without a flag” and their translational implications, to Anissa Daoudi’s insights of the translation of what she terms “e-Arabic” within contemporary Arabic literature to Susanne Ghassempur’s lively account of German solutions to the swearwords in Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments, this book sheds light on both the nature of minority languages and their translation. This volume significantly develops scholarship in translation studies.’ — professor delia chiaro , Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Italy

Federico M. Federici is Director of the MA in Translation Studies at Durham University, UK. His publications reflect ongoing research projects covering the ideology of trans­­la­ tion, reception of Italian texts and audiovisuals in translation, and training of culturally aware translators. He is author of Translation as Stylistic Evolution: Italo Calvino Creative Translator of Raymond Queneau (2009) and editor of Translating Regionalized Voices in Audiovisuals (2009); he also co-edited (with Nigel Armstrong) Translating Voices, Translating Regions (2006).

ISBN 978-3-0343-0178-7

www.peterlang.com

Federico M. Federici (ed.) • Translating Dialects and Languages of Minorities

This book offers a range of analyses of the multiplicity of opinions and ideologies attached to rendering, in familiar or unfamiliar voices, languages known as non-standard varieties. The contributions include theoretical reflections, case studies and comparative studies that draw from the full spectrum of translation strategies adopted in rendering non-standard varieties and reflect the endless possibilities of language variation.

Translating Dialects and Languages of Minorities Challenges and Solutions Federico M. Federici (ed.)

Peter Lang

New Tr e n d s in Tr an s l at i on Stud i e s

New Trends in Tra ns lat io n St udies Vol. 6

The strength of the volume lies in the wide range of languages discussed, from Arabic to Turkish and from Italian to Catalan, as well as in its variety of complementary and contrastive methodologies. The contributions reveal the importance of exploring further issues in translating local voices. Discussing dialects and marginal voices in translation, the contributors encourage and challenge the reader to reflect on what is standard and non-standard, acceptable and unacceptable, thereby overturning accepted principles and challenging familiar practices. ‘Federico M. Federici has assembled an exceptional assortment of experts to reflect on the challenges of translating dialect and minority languages. From Federici’s meticulous overview of both the geo- and sociolinguistic status of “languages without a flag” and their translational implications, to Anissa Daoudi’s insights of the translation of what she terms “e-Arabic” within contemporary Arabic literature to Susanne Ghassempur’s lively account of German solutions to the swearwords in Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments, this book sheds light on both the nature of minority languages and their translation. This volume significantly develops scholarship in translation studies.’ — professor delia chiaro , Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Italy

Federico M. Federici is Director of the MA in Translation Studies at Durham University, UK. His publications reflect ongoing research projects covering the ideology of trans­­la­ tion, reception of Italian texts and audiovisuals in translation, and training of culturally aware translators. He is author of Translation as Stylistic Evolution: Italo Calvino Creative Translator of Raymond Queneau (2009) and editor of Translating Regionalized Voices in Audiovisuals (2009); he also co-edited (with Nigel Armstrong) Translating Voices, Translating Regions (2006).

Federico M. Federici (ed.) • Translating Dialects and Languages of Minorities

This book offers a range of analyses of the multiplicity of opinions and ideologies attached to rendering, in familiar or unfamiliar voices, languages known as non-standard varieties. The contributions include theoretical reflections, case studies and comparative studies that draw from the full spectrum of translation strategies adopted in rendering non-standard varieties and reflect the endless possibilities of language variation.

Translating Dialects and Languages of Minorities Challenges and Solutions Federico M. Federici (ed.)

Peter Lang www.peterlang.com

Translating Dialects and Languages of Minorities

New Trends in Translation Studies V ol ume 6

Series Editor:  Dr Jorge Díaz Cintas

Advis or y Bo ard: Profes s or S u san B assn et t M c G u i re Dr Lynne Bowker Profes s or Frede r ic C hau me Profes s or A lin e Re mael

PETER LANG Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien

Translating Dialects and Languages of Minorities Challenges and Solutions

Federico M. Federici (ed.)

PETER LANG Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Translating dialects and languages of minorities : challenges and solutions / Federico M. Federici (ed). p. cm. -- (New trends in Translation Studies; 6) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-3-0343-0178-7 (alk. paper) 1. Translating and interpreting. 2. Language and languages--Variation. 3. Dialectology. I. Federici, Federico M. P306.2.T7356 2011 418’.02--dc23 2011023640

ISSN 1664-249X (Print edition) ISBN 978-3-0343-0178-7 E-ISBN 978-3-0353-0169-4 © Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2011 Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland [email protected], www.peterlang.com, www.peterlang.net All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. Printed in Germany

Contents

Acknowledgements

vii

List of  Figures

ix

List of  Tables

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FEDERICO M. FEDERICI

Introduction: Dialects, idiolects, sociolects: Translation problems or creative stimuli?

1

HILAL ERKAZANCI-DURMUŞ

1

A critical sociolinguistic approach to translating marginal voices: The case of  Turkish translations

21

GIOVANNI NADIANI

2

On the translation fallout of defeated languages: Translation and change of  function of dialect in Romagna

31

SUSANNE GHASSEMPUR

3

Fuckin’ Hell! Dublin soul goes German: A functional approach to the translation of  ‘fuck’ in Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments

49

XOÀN MANUEL GARRIDO VILARIÑO

4 The paratranslation of  the works of  Primo Levi

65

vi

ESTHER MORILLAS

5

When dialect is a protagonist too: Erri de Luca’s Montedidio in Spanish

89

CATERINA BRIGUGLIA

6

Comparing two polysystems: The cases of  Spanish and Catalan versions of  Andrea Camilleri’s Il cane di terracotta

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7

‘Anche questa l’ho in quel posto’: Calvino translates Queneau’s popular language

127

ANNA FOCHI

8

The cultural issue in intersemiotic translation: The case of  Francesco Rosi’s Cronaca di una morte annunciata (1987)

153

MARTA ORTEGA SÁEZ

9

The publication of  Mrs Dalloway in Catalonia: Is it possible to reconcile commercial interests and culture?

171

ANISSA DAOUDI

10 Translating e-Arabic: Challenges and issues

187

Bibliography

205

Notes on Contributors

223

Index

227

Acknowledgements

This volume is the result of several years of enriching collaboration between the editor and the contributors to the volume. Drafts were discussed, ideas shaped, reformulated, and developed over time. By collecting materials that discuss dif ferences and diversity, one constant interrelation is the consideration of  translation as a social, economical, cultural, linguistic, and aesthetic event in which the active agents play an incredibly variable number of roles. The contributors’ diverse methodologies bring into the spotlight several questions: what can be profitably discussed from opposite sides? How do we establish what lies at the margins and at the centre? Do we discover that translational opposites are never too far apart? Along the way friends and colleagues entered into a dialogue with this collective volume as well as with the theoretical messages of the contributions included here. A first draft of the book with its articles formatted was put together with great care by Elizabeth Alpass; later on Michael Whitehouse of fered a substantial contribution to the revision of the proofs. My gratitude goes to Carlo Caruso, Delia Chiaro, Theresa Federici, Jeremy Munday, and Don Starr who read some of the contributions to be included in this collection with the interest and passion that distinguishes them. Durham Translators Limited employed Rachel Stephenson to translate Xoàn Manuel Garrido Villariño’s and Esther Morillas’ contributions from Spanish into English; Caterina Briguglia’s contribution was translated from Italian into English by the editor. The choral attention to reading and rereading the contributions for their content has left the editor solely responsible for any remaining typographical slips. Permission to republish the cover pages of  Primo Levi’s works has been granted by Einaudi Editore S.p.A; my thanks go to Dott.ssa Laura Passarolo of  the Einaudi copyrights of fice, as well as Dott.ssa Irene Soave of  the Centro Internazionale di Studi Primo Levi in Turin.

viii

Acknowledgements

Every ef fort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material in Chapter 4. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be grateful for notification of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of  this book.

List of  Figures

Figure 1 Original cover of  Se questo è un uomo (Turin: Einaudi, 1947). Source: De Silva, Biblioteca Leone Ginzburg, 1947. Reprinted with permission

72

Figure 2 Original cover of  Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity (New York: Collier, 1961)

74

List of  Tables

Table 1 Paratranslation data: Se questo è un uomo (Turin: Einuadi, 1958)

80–1

Table 2 Paratranslation data: La tregua (Turin: Einaudi, 1963)

81

Table 3 Paratranslation data: Lilít e altri racconti (Turin: Einaudi, 1981)

82

Table 4 Comparing Camilleri’s Sicilian to Italian, English, Spanish, and Catalan renderings

118–19

Table 5 First etymological attestations of  the insulting terms used by Queneau

140

Table 6 Sample of compared passages of  the 1930 and the 2003 editions

180

Table 7 Obsolete Catalan expressions used in the 2003 Mrs Dalloway edition 183

FEDERICO M. FEDERICI

Introduction: Dialects, idiolects, sociolects: Translation problems or creative stimuli?1

Critical definitions Beginning by ref lecting on the terminology used in the volume, this introduction discusses the challenges of rendering dialects and non-standard varieties of language. Terminology is necessary in a regulated and scholarly discussion; however, it is also regulatory and constraining when it comes to creativity. The search for solving problems of rendering non-standard varieties has to be perceived as a constructive, productive, and creative challenge. The overview of some ‘critical’ definitions of idiolect, sociolect, and dialect here included is intended not as an exhaustive study of  the terminology most commonly adopted, but as a means of engaging with the following contributions in the understanding that we may need to review our tools for translation criticism, especially if  they become limiting (see the light touch approach of author-translator Hofstadter 2009). The terminology is of course a good point of departure to ensure that we are all discussing the same features and to make reasonable observations. For this purpose, a look at the terminology, particularly taken from sociolinguistics and

1

Part of this introduction was given as a paper at the MultiDialecTranslation 2010, 4th International Conference on the Translation of Dialects in Multimedia at the Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna, Forlì campus, in May 2010. Several of these observations received feedback and stimulated questions also from the professionals of the British network of Japanese–English translators who kindly invited me to their annual workshop in June 2010. To all my listeners I owe a debt of gratitude as their questions helped me consolidate the points I make in these introductory notes.

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sometimes literary criticism, is due. The definitions below in their discourse immediately provide us with an overview of critical assumptions behind the notions of  ‘dialect translatability and untranslatability’. In 1988, speaking at a conference in Bergamo, M. A. K. Halliday discussed dif ferences between register and dialect in these terms: registers are ‘ways of saying dif ferent things’ (1990/2002: 169), whereas ‘prototypically, dialects dif fer in expression; our notion of them is that they are “dif ferent ways of saying the same thing”’ (p. 168). For experts of Italian dialectology this assumption shows some fundamental argumentative weaknesses, which are not relevant here (but would be solved by a reading of Grassi et al. 2003: 143–81; Berruto 2007: 181–90). Notwithstanding this relative weakness in the argument (it entirely depends on the linguistic system on which the linguistic discourse is focused; e.g. UK English vs Romance languages or Central Germanic languages), Halliday’s (1990: 169) definition is useful to introduce the problem in relation to translation acts: ‘we can translate dif ferent registers into a foreign language. We cannot translate dif ferent dialects: we can only mimic dialect variation’. Yet translation of dialectal and regional voices regularly achieves successful renderings of what strictly linguistic perspectives would consider impossible, even untranslatable. Is it, though, just a question of mimicking dialect variation? What do we intend by mimicking? To appreciate the often subtle distinctions made by the contributors to this collection, it is thus useful to highlight that definitions in many of the chapters come from sociolinguistics and literary criticism, but not only. An English definition of sociolinguistics is useful to contextualize Halliday’s observation a bit further. Crystal’s essential reference volume, Dictionary of  Linguistics and Phonetics (2003), is chosen here as a possible succinct definition (whilst we remain fully aware of the complexity for linguists to agree on the fine details of  these definitions). In a reduced version of  the full entry, the initial paragraph defines sociolinguistics as the following: A branch of linguistics which studies all aspects of the relationship between language and society. Sociolinguists study such matters as the linguistic identity of social groups, social attitudes to language, standard and non-standard forms of  language, the patterns and needs of national language use, social varieties and levels of  language, the

Dialects, idiolects, sociolects: Translation problems or creative stimuli?

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social basis of multilingualism, and so on. An alternative name sometimes given to the subject (which suggests a greater concern with sociological rather than linguistic explanations of  the above) is the sociology of  language. (Crystal 2003)

The second paragraph of  the entry includes a reference to dialect which would stir up a hot debate among the contributors, as it states: The study of dialects is sometimes seen as a branch of sociolinguistics, and sometimes dif ferentiated from it, under the heading of dialectology, especially when regional dialects are the focus of study.

In the Anglo-Saxon tradition, the standard language is a dialect. Berruto (2007: 188) points out that there are substantial dif ferences in the very definition of dialect in terms of continental European languages; this definition is more suitable also in terms of world languages (and particularly relevant in the diglossia of  the Arabic language). For this purpose, as editor I have discussed with the contributors the possibility of using the term ‘variety’ to discuss non-standard language. Even this agreement comes at a price: varieties are often defined in relation to or in opposition to a standard language, thus creating a hierarchical relationship even in the most accurate and careful of definitions. When we discuss translation of dialect, what do we consider? Is a regional voice an idiolect that gives recognizable connotations to narratives and their characters? Does giving regionalized voices to characters bring the marginal voices to the foreground and identify political and social issues? Is a minority language a regional voice? Can we define dialects as minority languages? Are idiolects minority languages or languages of a minority? Can it be said that regional varieties correspond to the political and cultural background of a recognizable social group in an identifiable socio-geographical setting? These questions have no single answer. Possibly they are important to ask while translating; however, it is unlikely that it will ever be possible to answer them in comprehensive theoretical terms. Solutions and reactions to individual cases allow translators to retain the essential multiplicity of choice that encourages creativity. When locating resources to define the terminology for the discussions proposed in this paper, questions abound and overlap. Multifaceted

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challenges characterize translation of non-standard varieties. To this multiplicity corresponds a huge range of methodological approaches, as well as useful rebukes and rejections of some methodologies. Investigating processes, perceptions, and policies behind intellectual and real challenges which af fect all translators of regional voices, in particular those who are rendering works of literature, this collection mainly focuses on prose works. As the chapters unfold, it becomes apparent that the main issue is indeed one of visibility of solutions. Rendering regional voices has an ef fect at all times. Hofstadter (2009) suggests one ‘express’ and relatively painless solution in recognizing that we all have a personal language, our idiolect. The discovery he found enticing was to become ‘aware of just how strange, even paradoxical, it was to use my native language – and, more specifically, my own deeply personal style of crafting, manipulating, and savouring phrases in my native language – to rewrite someone else’s book’ (ibid.: 6). It would be exceptionally ambitious and incredibly unrealistic to hope that this introduction could even attempt to propose answers to the puzzling questions above, yet the contributions that follow integrate several attempts aimed at answering many of  the questions proposed here. It is worth focusing on crucial areas of intriguing complexity that are connected with our definitions of idiolect, sociolect, and dialect. These issues confirm that translating regional voices calls for a re-think of translational competences and priorities when dealing with creative translation (as superbly demonstrated in Perteghella and Lof fredo 2006: 1–16). Critics’ aesthetical values and readers’ expectations on quality can be of fended by the output of some productions. Experts are thus asked to join forces and provide analytical frameworks to understand why translations often work as obliquely censored messages. In other words, messages poorly translated convey content that is impossible to interpret, if any content at all. Yet are these criticisms reasonable? In the preface of Translation, History, and Culture (1990: viii), Bassnett and Lefevere provided a crucial reminder that has inf luenced much of research into translation of creative texts: Translation is, of course, a rewriting of an original text. All rewritings, whatever their intention, ref lect a certain ideology and a poetics and as such manipulate literature to function in a given society in a given way. Rewriting is manipulation, undertaken in the service of power, and in its positive aspect can help in the evolution of a literature and a society.

Dialects, idiolects, sociolects: Translation problems or creative stimuli?

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The translation of regionalized narratives go through an additional level of scrutiny in terms of the perceived motives behind the use of vernacular, dialectal, popular, or local features of  the source language. Manipulating two ideologies becomes far two easy. Why are some sociolects cleansed even in those countries where far more provocative films are produced in the native tongue? Or else, why do sociolectal, or dialectal, tics, such as the Sicilian minchia in Camilleri’s Montalbano series become a far more taboo profanity, an f-word, in English? Are dialects, sociolects, and idiolects that include slang or profanities dangerous sociolinguistic mixtures? To look critically at the definitions, at the linguistic terminology that we use to refer to regionalized languages is a way to start. Terminology coming from other fields may in fact provide a restrictive grid of analysis more than a useful tool of categorization.

Definitions As I have already mentioned one of  the highly inf luential scholars of modern linguistics, M. A. K. Halliday, it is useful to go back to his article analysing two paragraphs of  Darwin’s The Origin of  the Species. Halliday suggested a system that allows us to discuss registers in all the genres. This system is a powerful tool that enables us to compare completely dif ferent texts and regional voices. Then, if our tool kit embeds Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics, our terminology set includes definitions from linguistics, but not only from linguistics. Some definitions of dialect, sociolect, and idiolect have gained momentum and importance in the analysis of  literary and multimedia texts; they are not set in stone and they have often emerged from Anglo-centric views. Without the scope for of fering a comprehensive review of significant and inf luential definitions in the literature, I move to emphasize contrasting features of the terminology that have an inf luential role when it comes to assessing the ‘problematic’ nature of rendering regionalized voices. The authority of standard varieties looms, yet its sociological implications were

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challenged, from Gramsci (1971), via Bourdieu (1990), to Berman (1984) in the discourse on sociology of language in the twentieth century. Yet the inf luence of a single and universal national language (a truly utopian idea) is still felt in most of  the definitions of  lects. These seem to imply notions of  hierarchical order in relation to the standard language. Linguists agree that the very notion of standard remains complex and often only a tool to manage abstractions from the study of  languages. Translation scholars, as Bassnett and Lefevere (1990: 3) put it, know that ‘the trouble with standards, it would seem, is that they turn out not to be eternal and unchanging after all’; an observation always pertinent in the study of  languages. This point is valid for linguistic and cultural standards alike. From the perspective of sociolinguists, the power struggle begins with the very notion of  ‘standard’; from the outset it refers to another controversial concept, the one of norm, which introduces the prescriptive view of the standard variety as ‘the’ correct and stable variety. Crystal’s (2003)2 respected reference book defines ‘standard’ as: A term used in sociolinguistics to refer to a prestige variety of language used within a speech community. ‘Standard languages/dialects/varieties’ cut across regional dif ferences, providing a unified means of communication, and thus an institutionalized norm which can be used in the mass-media, in teaching the language to foreigners and so on.

To identify the non-standards, the lects, we need a point of departure. Once again, Crystal’s (ibid.) definition on all lects shed light on the linguistic relationships between standard and non-standard features. Crystal points out that the definitions pertinent to the analysis of language varieties are equally important in what Halliday termed as stylistic linguistics in 1964. Thus identifying smaller variations for widely spoken language families allows the observers to qualify dif ferent aspects of  the culture that uses the language observed. Social relations, educational background,

2

The entries from Crystal’s Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics have been retrieved from which of fers access to the digital version of  the Dictionary. For this reason page numbers are not provided.

Dialects, idiolects, sociolects: Translation problems or creative stimuli?

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geographical identity, and so on become narrative clues. One useful variety is the sociolect, ‘term used by some sociolinguists to refer to a linguistic variety (or lect) defined on social (as opposed to regional) grounds, e.g. correlating with a particular social class or occupational group’ (Crystal, ibid). This definition is comprehensive and usable to criticize a literary or creative translation as, often, recognizable characters ‘exist’ in the world outside the pages. The references of  this definition to social components, social classes, and social status allow us to recognize speakers of a community (from mathematicians and scientists, to workers, to politicians). Their lect is a variety of discourse and language as well, with syntax and vocabulary shared by the group but not necessarily by non-members or all of  the members of  the group. From a narratological point of view, a sociolect is a useful resource to quickly depict an area and its population (for example, the Dubliners of  Roddy Doyle discussed by Susanne Ghassempur in Chapter 3). An even more formidable ally to authors is the idiolect. For idiolect, we have two main definitions. According to Crystal (ibid.), it is a term used to refer to the linguistic system of an individual speaker: One’s personal dialect. A dialect can be seen as an abstraction deriving from the analysis of a large number of idiolects. Idiolectal features are particularly noticeable in literary writing, as stylistic markers of authorship. Some linguists give the term a more restricted definition, referring to the speech habits of a person as displayed in a particular variety at a given time.

This definition of idiolect also embodies one that came from literary criticism and that may be said to have converged in stylistic linguistics. From the beginning of  the 1970s and continuing well into the 1980s, the rediscovery of  Bakhtin’s works on Russian literature prompted new forms of literary analyses of literature (see Ducrot and Todorov 1972). Stylistics took a new form, and linguistic perspectives gained ground, returning to classical rhetorics and oratory. Then, one of the terms to become of extreme significance in a new structured way to investigate characters and authors’ style was idiolect. Idiolect can be considered as the ensemble of  linguistic features, belonging to a person, which are af fected by geographical, educational, and even physical factors including class, gender, race, historical

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inf luences that contribute to shaping one’s ideological persona. Over the years, the term has taken a specific place in stylistics, and Wales (2001: 197) defines it as follows: The usage of an individual may well be constrained by his or her place of origin, but idiolect covers those features which vary from register to register, medium to medium, in daily language use; as well as the more permanent features that arise from personal idiosyncrasies, such as lisping, monotone delivery, favourite exclamations, etc. Idiolect thus becomes the equivalent of a finger-print: each of us is unique in our language habits. Such ‘voice-prints’ are of great value to dramatists or novelists as a ready means of characterization, along with physical attributes.

In Crystal’s view, individuals’ idiolects may be interpreted as belonging to larger sets that share similar linguistic features. Characters then not only have their own unique ‘voice-print’ but may embody the ‘voice-print’ of speakers located within another lect defined by similar characteristics such as geography, class, and so on, that is, a sociolect. Sociolects contribute to the characterization of emblematic characters from a specific background. Examples of  this use can be found in all literary polysystems. Seeing these as idiolects of larger communities, sociolects – but then also ethnolects, as in the case of  the Italo-American, African-American, Hispano-American ethnolects, and so on – are excellent resources to use as large paint brushes to give a setting and distinguishable features to a story. The characters do not necessarily and immediately become clearer or more memorable, but they are made recognizable through the language that portrays some features of  their identity. Defining dialect is harder, despite Crystal’s (2003) observation that dialect can be seen as an abstraction inferred from the study of individuals’ idiolects when these share linguistic characteristics. In ideological terms, all definitions of dialect vary considerably and need to deal with a successful language and a defeated language (to use Giovanni Nadiani’s reading of  Hagène, in Chapter 2). There is then a huge variance of approaches to study the local variations in dialectology. For example, Italian dialectology would take dif ferent views to the following definition by Crystal (ibid.):

Dialects, idiolects, sociolects: Translation problems or creative stimuli?

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A regionally or socially distinctive variety of  language, identified by a particular set of words and grammatical structures. Spoken dialects are usually also associated with a distinctive pronunciation, or accent. Any Language with a reasonably large number of speakers will develop dialects, especially if there are geographical barriers separating groups of people from each other, or if  there are divisions of social class. One dialect may predominate as the of ficial or standard form of  the language, and this is the variety which may come to be written down.

The distinction between a ‘written down’ and a ‘not written down’ language is extremely problematic in Italian dialectology, as well as in other traditions – such as the German and the French – despite a relatively recent of ficial recognition that several regional areas had bilingualism for legal documents, the text type that is often used as the tertium comparationis for the status of standard language. Irremediably, defining a dialect becomes a political and sociological issue as much as a linguistic activity. The distinction between the dialect achieving the status of standard language and other dialects is often the result of a political and linguistic power struggle. The categorization that sees sociolect as part of dialects or overlapping sets between the idiolects and the wider dialects is not free from contention. It may be argued that, if we accept the existence of a hierarchical order in relation to the standard language, this order has to be language-bound (in the example of terminological tools chosen here, they correspond to studies of accents, pronunciation, and usage of English dialects – often mainly referring to British English). Any of  these perspectives can be challenged. In order to move on to considering these varieties in terms of  translational activity, Hatim and Mason’s views (1990: 44) on the crucial definition of idiolect are quite interesting. In Discourse and the Translator, they cite O’Donnell and Todd’s definition of idiolect (1980: 62) that distinguishes between dialect and style: ‘“dialect”, as the kind of variety which is found between idiolects, and “style” as the kind of variety found within idiolects’. Any Italian linguists will fundamentally disagree with the distinction as posed by O’Donnell and Todd. Dialectal Italians, regionalized Italians, and dialects show linguistic features that, according to this definition, would have to be considered as varieties of style, which is not the case. Yet Xoàn Manuel Garrido Vilariño, Esther Morillas, and Caterina Briguglia in their contributions

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seem to confirm that in the translational activity specific regional varieties or idiolects can be rendered as more ‘general’ traits of style. What the terminology leaves us with is mainly one definition of constantly reliable use – almost uncontroversial – the one of personal language, as an idiolect. Idiolects are also recognizable authorial voices and become the potentially infinite ways of exploiting language resources.

Translation problems These linguistic definitions are blurred. They ref lect the complexity of sociolinguistic research and of sociolinguistic realities. For translators, either consciously or unconsciously, they are among the core issues challenging the quality of creative translations. How can translators deal with the linguistic features defined in this terminology? In the last ten years, stylistic linguistics turned to corpus analysis and computational systems so as to calculate and measure recurrence of collocations, occurrence of sentences, size and proportion of shared vocabulary, proportion of shared phrases, and so on (see Bernardini 2008, Louwerse 2004). Computational and corpus-based methods have been used to identify features of sociolects and even more so of  literary idiolects. Additionally, we translate dialects; and, contradicting Halliday’s assumption cited at the beginning, we may even translate them with dialects or sociolects of  the target language (as the contribution of  Marta Ortega Sáez points out). We can subdivide the types of rendering dialectal features of  fictional narratives into conservative and experimental approaches. When translators do not attempt to force the norms, they are conservative in respecting the target language expectations and avoid challenging it with non-standard variants (theoretically argued and explained in Hilal Erkazanci-Durmuş’s chapter). When translators try to reveal the dif ferences in the source language, such as in The Simpsons dubbed into Italian, which uses target language dialects ad absurdum (see Dore 2009), they are experimental.

Dialects, idiolects, sociolects: Translation problems or creative stimuli?

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In the classic textbook of several generations of  UK-trained translators, Peter Newmark glossed over the importance of sociolectal features in this way: On the whole the quirks and sports of idiolect are normalised by the translator: in particular, rather exaggerated or exuberant metaphors and extravagant descriptive adjectives. […] In some cases, it is not easy to distinguish between poor writing and idiolect […] but the translators does not have to make the distinction, and merely normalises. (1988: 206)

The two main macro-strategies, even social norms in Toury’s sense (1995), are either a standardization, or neutralization, reducing the relevance and significance of  the idiolect features, or a creative impetus to solve the impasse in entirely dif ferent ways. Although all experiments are at risk of failing, the creative path needs to be taken. Hatim and Mason’s (1990: 44) definition of dialect does not correspond to one I could adopt for Italian-related translations. I agree, though, with their emphasis on the characterization and intrinsic semiotic importance of  the idiolectal features: One’s dialectal use of  language is not unrelated to one’s choice of which standard, geographical, social or temporal dialect to use. It is also linked to the purpose of the utterance and will ultimately be found to carry socio-cultural significance.

The relationship with regional voices is central to depicting identities, or fragments of identities, in translation. Depicting specific identities, sociolects, dialects, and idiolects further limit the translators’ room for manoeuvre while at the same time they open up possibilities for creative solutions. At this point, it is time to engage further with what creative constraints mean in this perspective.

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From convergent creativity to creative constraints The challenge of  the multiple, perfectible solutions is one of  the intrinsic motivations and inner attractions for many translators of creative texts. Many translators enjoy the process of error elimination. There is a playful element well beyond the intellectual challenge. In 1992 Pym linked the continuous search for the best solution with translation theory. He described the translators’ ability to make multiple hypotheses as their natural and even unconscious competence in theorization. When proposing dif ferent translation solutions, translators combine language and, I add, cultural competence, with the ability to select ef fectively and swiftly the most appropriate one. In 2002, Chesterman (2002: 119–20) revisited Pym’s definition of  translators’ theorization identifying two forms of creativity: the formulation of hypotheses, or productive and generative ability, as ‘divergent creativity’ and the process of selection as ‘convergent creativity’. The thought of creativity as a set of productive stimuli brings this introduction to a perception of creativity that needs further investigation. The axiomatic assumption is that creativity is combinatorial. In translation, combining responses to more than one constraint, translators are visible even to a non-translation aware audience. Organization of verbal reference items and what Pedersen (2008: 102) defined as the ‘extraverbal culture-bound references’, such as props, geographical locations, popular cultural, sociological features, follow rules of combinatorics. The rules of combinatorics regulate production in the Oulipian idea of literary creativity. Oulipo is the acronym of  the Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle. The Oulipo is a literary group founded in 1960 in Paris by Raymond Queneau and the mathematical historian François Le Lionnais. Still active today, the group holds monthly meetings, which are open to anybody who is interested in discovering how the ‘potential workshops’ run and in experimenting with potential literature. The Oulipo manifestos – signed by Le Lionnais, but clearly supported by the other founder Queneau – illustrate how the Oulipo was conceived with the purpose of exploring the possibilities embedded in language for artistic creativity, when writing is subjected to

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arbitrary, combinatorial, and restrictive procedures. If we substitute writing with translating, the vision of constrained combinations of dif ferent creative forces acquires a powerful significance in translation. The procedures, or constraints, emphasize and take to their extreme consequences, notions and rules traditionally linked with rhetoric, conventions of genres, and all techniques of  fictional and creative writing. These procedures are described as ‘formal constraints’ embedded in each other as Russian dolls (Le Lionnais 1962: xviii). So does this notion of  Russian dolls have a place in translation and translation theory? It would seem that the answer is an emphatic yes. Eco (1984) comments on the polysemous layers within a narrative plot having an analogous polysemous function in translation that can permit the translator to arrive at creative solutions. In translating we are often reconstructing a story, in both its fabula, the set of events in a story that are narrated by what Eco calls macropropositions (ibid.: 27–9), and its plot, the net of  f lashbacks, anticipations, dreams, and changes of point of view that create the non-sequential and non-linear development of  the underlying fabula. When a dialect is perceived as a core element of a characterization, the immediate implication is that it becomes a macroproposition in the plot. More recently, Eco (2006: 8) made some observations regarding the role of macropropositions in translating: ‘If the macropropositions are so embedded (or embeddable), to which level is the translator empowered to change a superficial plot so as to retain a deep plot?’.3 Eco illustrates this point by referring to a translator of one of  his novels who was authorized by Eco to change the colour describing an object because in the target language there was a richer polysemy in describing that colour. Not the colour but the description was the core signifier of the meaning, becoming the macroproposition that carries forward the fabula. In translation, we all agree that several competences and constraints act at the same time on the same text. Venuti’s (1995) notion of ‘resistance’ has to be mentioned in this context (particularly pertinent in Nadiani’s chapter). It is undeniable that Venuti’s call for translation to ‘resist f luency’, 3

Translations from Italian into English are mine unless otherwise stated.

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which was the fortune and core debatable argument of his updated reading of  Schleiermacher and Berman, concerns translation of dialects. Translations that ‘resist f luency’ privilege the use of non-standard variants of  the target language. Is there a point of contact between non-standard varieties such as sociolects and dialects and this notion on non-standard language? Part of  Venuti’s notion of  foreignization could be of use in order to introduce the challenges of creative rendering in dealing with regional voices that I want to read as creative Oulipian constraints. Venuti (1995: 311) points out that: Recognizing the translator as an author questions the individualism of current concepts of authorship by suggesting that no writing can be mere self-expression because it is derived from a cultural tradition at a specific historical moment.

Oulipo members are obliged to write creative pieces while respecting linguistic and stylistic criteria and constraints that may seem arbitrary but still need to be logically respected. Through them the group invents new structures both for composing poems and for writing novels. Translation works on similar premises; the norms of creative writing are so similar to the constraints of  translation that it is no surprise that many Oulipians translate: from English into French, French into English, French into Italian, Italian into French …. The historical and cultural contexts have repeatedly demonstrated that translation decisions are, according to Katan, ‘domestic rather than universal’ (2009: 83). Norms and, more importantly, translators’ application of norms (see Schäf fner 1999), are material of analysis rather than of theorization, as in the time we spend constructing a valid theory of their application, new normative behaviour emerges and an entire generation of  translators will need to move forward before new revolutionary norms become accepted translation norms. Translators of creative texts apply rules and practices dictated by traditional, historical, and social conventions. Katan (2009: 83) goes on to say that: They govern all translation practice, from decisions regarding which texts are acceptable or accepted for translation, to the type of translation and assimilation/compensation strategies to employ, and to the criteria by which a translation is judged.

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In comparable terms, the Oulipians see the creative process as dominated by the constraints imposed, rather than by inspiration or experience. An external constraint is called to act as a giver of  logical internal coherence. In this perspective, as language artisans, translators acquire the same status as the author. Anthony Pym also points out that ‘translation constructs cultural borders, no matter how many translators might be operating in the overlaps around those borders’ (2010: 153). At the front line, even more so than other literary translators, those mediating non-standard varieties are often called to much bigger shifts of culture: from local, microculture to a dif ferent culture. Should they choose another micro-culture? Can they choose? A very interesting answer to this question is provided in Anissa Daoudi’s contribution to this volume. Should they use their sociolect to regulate and inf luence their idiolect (in line with Hofstadter’s view, 2009)? Similarly, most of  the time, sociolects, dialects, and idiolects work on the same constraining principle: if  the social class represented or the geographical areas represented are used for comical purposes or to carry forward the plot, how can these features be lost? Should we think of translation as a manifestation of dif ference only? Is there a stable meaning to carry across? The multiplicity of solutions corresponds to responses to the multiplicity of creative stimuli. The Oulipian relationship between finite quantity and infinite outcomes is a constant in translators’ activity. Cronin reminds us that ‘the incompleteness of any translation is the very principle of its future creativity’ (2003: 131). The potential number of stylistic permutations is infinite, as in any combinatorial game. Literary and translational norms become directives for a constrained but original creativity, within which the artists must find their recognizable, stylistic voices. The contributors of  this volume deal often with norms and rules; they also ref lect on the power of publishers, copy-editors, editors, and other functional agents who manipulate or change translations, without even considering the act of  translators.

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Complex yet rewarding challenges This introduction began by discussing definitions of regional varieties in linguistics and literature. Regional idiolects, ethnolects, minority languages (i.e. politically weaker regional standards), standards, and new electronic varieties are the focus of the essays collected here. The essays are a testament to the richness of approaches and solutions that can be found to the theoretical and practical problems faced by translators of regional varieties. The infinite combinatory possibilities of creatively rendering dialects with dialects, or sociolects with sociolects, allow translators to surprise and challenge readers and should be embraced not shied away from. Dif ferent and often contrasting traditions abound, as the ten chapters of  this volume show. In Chapter 1, Hilal Erkazanci-Durmuş’s observations and theoretical analysis ideally construct a potential framework for many of the case studies considered in the volume. Her chapter has been made into the opening chapter for its theoretically cohesive and all-encompassing approach to discussing the ideological struggle in the linguistic relation between standard and non-standard varieties, correct and incorrect language, acceptable and unacceptable norms. Almost provocatively, Erkazanci-Durmuş’s contribution leaves its readers asking many questions to the translators and their normative approach in Turkey. The very nature of  this theoretically rich contribution encourages questions such as what are the translators’ choices in view of  the implications of  the process of  linguistic standardization in Turkey? Is Turkey an extreme case in the standardization agenda? The answers to these questions are also sought in Chapter 4, Chapter 6, and Chapter 9 in particular. They are crucial to the discussion of  translation strategies, normative or conventional, commercial or creative, translatorled or industry-enforced spectrum of decisions on translating the local to a wider audience. With his ref lections on defeated languages, Giovanni Nadiani, in Chapter 2, emphasizes a further issue af fecting translators of minority languages: the importance of  translating from and into languages at risk of extinction. Romagnolo is a defeated language if the national standard is the winning language of the speakers’ community; as a result Romagnolo

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is treated as a dialect in opposition to standard Italian (once the dialect of  Florence). Yet Nadiani shows that the status of a minority language does not entail a defeat of  the linguistic resources for a defeated language. His contribution is enriched by the double perspective that Nadiani himself embodies: he is both a scholar interested in the status of  translation with regard to less-translated languages and dialects and a fine dialectal poet. Contributing to the revival of  the Romagnolo dialect as a poet, Nadiani is and sees translators as literary and cultural agents with an agenda. Yet the question his contribution implicitly asks is whether we should not recognize that for regional and minority languages to survive, translators need to have this agenda. His observations draw upon Hagène’s (2002) writings on defeated languages and contribute to explaining the complex dialectal and linguistic situation in Italy by of fering the point of view of a healthy and lively poetic tradition outside and yet inside the popular canon. Romagnolo and its poetical expressions have inf luenced Italian cinema and the poetry of  the region has filtered, as Nadiani’s ref lections show, into stronger varieties and even popular culture. In Chapter 3, Susanne Ghassempur describes the cautious and almost sterile approach of German translators to rendering the joyful and vibrantly colourful Hiberno-English of  Roddy Doyle’s characters. Doyle’s youngsters in The Commitments (1988) do not refuse profanities as a distinctive idiolectal feature, even though they understand, according to Ghassempur, that an element of social rebellion is implied in the usage of swearwords in singing. Her comparative analysis of  the two German translations reveals that the societal features as well as the linguistic functions of  the swearing have been strongly downplayed in the two translations. The choice of  forms of colloquialism within the main variety of standard German has fulfilled the market-orientation of  their publication – responding to the success of  Alan Parker’s filmic adaptation of  the novel in 1991 – but fell short of  the committed literary aims of  the source text. Xoàn Manuel Garrido Vilariño’s Chapter 4 opens the debate to the study of ‘paratranslations’. In his chapter, the literary translations of Primo Levi in English are considered with reference to the texts accompanying their publication and their modifications in successive re-editions. His approach to studying translations refers to the model put forward by the

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transatlantic research group Paratranslation, founded by Alexis Nouss. Active at the Universidad de Vigo in Spain, the University of  Montreal in Canada, and Cardif f  University in the UK, the group’s work on paratranslation integrates translation criticism with the analysis of the paratexts included to various published translations of seminal literary works. Garrido Vilariño’s analysis considers the translated texts in relation to the editorial decisions that had an impact on the way in which Primo Levi’s works were completed, published, and re-edited for English-speaking audiences. The paratextual analysis of fers a review of the ideological implications and decisions behind the publication of  Primo Levi’s literature of memory, which depicts and narrates his experience in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. The theme of  Levi’s writings, his personal philosophical views, and the historical conditions of publishing have left a mark on the translations; this mark is also visible in the strange ideological colourings of those paratranslations that Garrido Vilariño carefully select and explain. Esther Morillas’s Chapter 5 of fers a study of the Italian author Erri de Luca, whose Neapolitan dialect is a narratological feature intrinsically and aesthetically embedded in the author’s idiolect. Analysing the complexity of  the cultural and linguistic challenge of  transferring the napoletanità – the being Neapolitan – depicted by de Luca, Morillas shows how dialect and literary idiolect make up much of the content of Montedidio, her casestudy novel. The rich evidence presented in clear tables is accompanied by the analysis of its rendering into Spanish with particular attention to establishing whether equivalences between spoken and colloquial varieties can be profitably drawn or whether they risk losing the novel’s freshness in the translated version. In Chapter 6, Caterina Briguglia’s investigation of Andrea Camilleri’s Il cane di terracotta (1996) compares two complex realities: translating for a national language that is internationally spoken, such as Spanish, as opposed to translating into Catalan. The chapter pivots around two definitions: one concerning minority languages and minority cultures in which translation is integrated into the process of defining literary language; and the other concerning the definition of  the literary language of  Camilleri with a comparison of  the Italian, the Spanish, and the Catalan literary polysystems. The comparison draws upon the foundations and axioms of  Polysystem Theory so as to of fer a framework in which the analysed passages in translation are discussed and interpreted.

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In Chapter 7, Federico M. Federici’s analysis of  Italo Calvino’s translation of  Raymond Queneau’s popular sociolect, in the toned-down version that appears in Les Fleurs bleues as compared to Zazie dans le métro, is grounded in an understanding of  Calvino’s commitment to discussing translational practice. Literary translation is almost an exegetic and absolute form of literary critique. Calvino’s ref lections, published in essays and interviews, can be read in their complexity as his own poetics of  translation, at least at a specific moment in time: the early 1960s, when he was testing his ability to translate. The analysis of  the French and Italian texts in parallel focuses on popular terms and colloquial swearwords in order to discuss Calvino’s reaction to those in terms of his linguistic and creative choices. Many of his later writings are inf luenced by his poetics of translation. This chapter contextualizes Calvino’s poetics of translation, discussing his personal perception of  translating that grounded the strategies that he adopted in rendering Queneau’s non-standard and popular sociolects among the other lects the French author played with. Chapter 8, by Anna Fochi, puts forward a theoretical reading of filmic transpositions in relation to the cultural specificity of Gabriel García Márquez’s novel Crónica de una muerte anunciada. Fochi uses Péeter Torop’s theoretical perspective to discuss Francesco Rosi’s transposition of  the novel; the focus on idiolect is integrated into a background analysis of the double translation, a film adaptation and a linguistic translation, making Rosi’s text an intersemiotic act of linguistic, cultural, and aesthetical transfer. Innovative and grounded in the reading of  film as an intersemiotic transposition of  literature, this chapter focuses on Rosi’s achievements in playing with a semiotic system that proves dif ficult to discuss, even in research, as it sits in between disciplines and fields of study. In Chapter 9, Marta Ortega Sáez puts forward a very carefully crafted demonstration of conf lict of interest between book consumption and sales on the one side, and intellectual and translational aspirations and achievements on the other side, in the context of  translational practices in the Catalan publishing industry. This chapter and its conclusions can be read in opposition to or integration with Erkazanci-Durmuş’s contribution, as well as with Briguglia’s chapter, because the observations refer to the notion of normative and social behaviour as constrained by agents of  translation other than the translators. The sensitive nature of some of  the publishing decisions, as well as the significance of  translating and retranslating for

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updating literature in translation to new linguistic and cultural times, make her observations integral to the discussion of minority languages and the relationships between centre and periphery connected with any discussions of systems (Even-Zohar 1978; Toury 1995; Hermans 1999). Concluding the volume, in Chapter 10, Anissa Daoudi’s study of a current literary and linguistic phenomenon emerging from the Arabicspeaking world closes the circle by discussing some creative ways of escaping prescriptive and standard language by using alternative press and alternative publishing outlets. Ideally connected with issues that Garrido Villariño’s approach may see in terms of paratexts or paratranslations and with issues of publication policies, her article shows an incredibly complex reality when establishing the terms of  the relationship between the e-Arabic variety, a form of  ‘minority language variety’, and the linguistic system of  Arabic. The latter is a language in a context of diglossia, in which the standard variety, written and literary, is monitored and protected as a tool of social and cultural unity. Daoudi’s work focuses on the definition of  the variety that she terms e-Arabic. This variety of creative language relies on the use of  the internet, which provides the suitable virtual space for new forms of  Arabic language to be created or for regional forms of  Arabic to be integrated in new varieties of  language that have ‘lesser’ and non-written statuses compared to Modern Standard Arabic. Such forms and varieties have moved away slightly from the literary tradition of Modern Standard Arabic, thus creating new forms of literature. The article looks at concrete examples and their linguistic and cultural eruptive force in the context of  Arabic-speaking countries and communities. The structure of the collection is completed by this last chapter, as the depiction of an emerging powerful (and empowering) ‘minority’ variety within the language background of a majority language shows that there are potentially infinite creative solutions to linguistic constraints. There may be a literary and translation future in which experimentation with dialects and regional languages is perceived more in terms of a creative opportunity than in terms of a mere linguistic challenge.

HILAL ERKAZANCI-DURMUŞ

1 A critical sociolinguistic approach to translating marginal voices: The case of  Turkish translations

Introduction This article focuses on the Turkish translations of marginal voices which (i) act as a kind of anti-language by forming antithetical relationships with the norms of  the national standard language, (ii) ref lect specific socioideological conceptual systems dif ferent from those of society at large, and thereby (iii) imply, as Bakhtin (1981: 272) notes, that ‘[a]longside verbal-ideological centralization and unification, the uninterrupted processes of decentralization and disunification also go forward’. Adopting a critical sociolinguistic approach that focuses on the commodification of  the standard language and its relation to symbolic capital in the target language culture (in our context, the Turkish culture), this study seeks to account for the systematic standardization in the Turkish translations of marginal voices in literature.

A critical sociolinguistic approach to translating marginal voices Critical sociolinguistics consists of a critique of how language perpetuates inequitable social relations and why dif ferent varieties of  language have

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unequal access to social power.1 Therefore, it provides ample analyses of  translation through its methodology and insights. Critical sociolinguistics scrutinizes the power relations between stan­dard language and such varieties of  language as dialects, ethnolects, sociolects, and so on. Standard language, or in Bourdieu’s terms (1991: 53), legitimate language, refers to a language use that meets the criteria of gramm­aticality and which firmly displays, on top of what is being said, that it is said in a ‘proper’ way. A particular standard language is actually a language variety that is historically placed through political and national contexts in a special position above all the other varieties.2 On the other hand, language varieties that are labelled as marginal voices in political contexts are generally seen as ‘tensors’ or ‘nodes of pain’: such is the case with ‘the incorrect use of prepositions’, ‘the abuse of the pro­nominal’, ‘the importance of accent as a tension internal to the word’, and ‘the distribution of consonants and vowels as part of an internal discordance’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 23). Put dif ferently, marginal voices are generally regarded as a form of  ‘subcultural Sprache that has the ef fect of wounding [standard language] with the slings and arrows of warped speech’ (Apter 2006: 155). In literature, marginal voices act as an anti-language which can be defined as a device for ‘managing reality, creating the necessary counter-reality’ (Kress and Hodge 1979: 71) because they assume the role of an ‘oppositional language associated with explicitly ant­agonistic sociocultural meanings’ (Fowler 1979: 259). By the same token, people who speak or write through marginal voices are considered deviants because they are opposed to the dominant society, which makes their language involve ‘systematic inversion and ne­gation of  the structures and semantics of  the norm language’ (Fowler 1979: 263). 1

2

In this context, critical sociolinguistics dif fers from traditional sociolinguistics (i.e. sociolinguistics proper) in that while the latter would note that the way people use language ref lects their identity as a particular kind of social subject, the former sees language as ‘one of the things that constitutes [people’s] identity as a particular kind of subject’ (Cameron 1995: 15, emphasis in the original). In this study, the notion of politics takes as its key concern the notion of power, and sees power as functioning through all areas of  life. Therefore, the political context this paper refers to throughout this study is less related to political domains such as governments and state institutions and more related to the workings of power.

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The norm language is imposed on all members (e.g. translators) of  the same language community in a way that ‘all linguistic practices are measured against the legitimate practices’ (Bourdieu 1991: 53). As for the translation of marginal voices, the ideology of  legitimate language may close of f  the target language to any kind of variation. Such an ideology may force the translator to adopt an ‘authoritative plain style’ which is (i) not simply a stylistic choice but ‘social gov­ernance’, and (ii) an outcome of  ‘the historical movement toward uniform spelling and grammar, with an ideology that emphasizes non-idiosyncratic, smooth transition, elimination of awkwardness’ (Bernstein 1986: 225, quoted in Venuti 1995: 5, 6). This is why some translators choose the strategy of suppressing the marginal voices in translation. This point also explains why many translators stick to the notions of correctness outlined by standard language in many cultures dominated by what Fairclough (1992: 51) calls ‘linguistic fetishism’. As a result, the use of a non-standard variety where the standard variety is expected constitutes a violation of communicative competence rules because, as Gumperz and Hymes (1972: 105) suggest, communicative competence rules actually guide the speaker (and by extension, the translator) to select, from a set of  linguistic forms, those which appropriately abide by the social norms that regulate behaviour in a social relationship. This value-laden approach to standard language involves three semiotic processes: ‘referential displacement’, ‘naturalization’, and ‘commodification’ (Collins 1999: 212). In referential displacement, the standard variety of  language claims to: Celebrate clarity and lexical precision against the supposed confusions of marginal voices; that is, truthful reference becomes the metric of good language, and social dif ferences become an unfortunate background noise. (ibid.)

As a result, a stereotyped set of forms of speech occurs through referential displacement. In naturalization, a simple relation is set up between ‘the denotational norm of standard (how things should be said) and the dialectal deviations from this norm’ (Collins 1999: 213). Using the standard variety as a norm to assess such deviations provides a ‘fixed perspective on social hierarchy,

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revealing a seemingly intrinsic link between deviant speech and social space’ (ibid.). The use of standard language hence comes to be taken for granted. The resulting as­sump­tion for standard language is that linguistic homogeneity is normal. This is why Bourdieu (1982: 28) qualifies standard language as ‘un produit normalisé’. The taken-for-granted superiority of standard language leads to commodification, i.e. objectification of  this variety which has a market value and its presentation as an object to be owned; that is, the ownership of standard language is viewed as necessary for ‘market success’ and for ‘economic competitiveness’ which create ‘legitimate hierarchy’ (Collins 1999: 214). Commodification of  language af fects translations because they are made to be sold and are the products of  the publishing market. Translators are not neutral mediators between the source language and the target language, but socially and historically constituted subjects (see Hatim and Mason 1990, Katan 2009). They interpret texts by placing them against their own background education and knowledge of words and phrases, existing statements, con­ventions, previous texts, that is, their general knowledge which is ideological (see Cunico and Munday 2007). For most translators, the standard variety becomes a language, a sort of sociolinguistic dogma, which puts them in the hierarchies of  language and social success. Given that the standard variety is a property which has passed the market test, any translator may be left with no choice but to conform to the belief  that the standard variety is the crucial medium of survival in the publishing market and for personal success. Such beliefs about language are not just plainly chosen by popular insight and public opinion. They are being reproduced by means of a variety of practices: language campaigns, education, advertisement, and publications (the media, literature, translation, art, and music). The following section further dwells on these points by illustrating the use of the Turkish language in the translations of marginal voices.

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The case of  Turkish translations As was suggested at the very beginning of  this study, marginal voices in literature have been regularly standardized in their Turkish translations.3 It is also significant to note here that sociolects, ethnolects, and other socalled marginal voices are very rarely used in Turkish literature. Therefore, the present study seeks, in the light of critical sociolinguistics, to (i) explore why the standard variety of language is legitimized in Turkish literature, and by extension, in Turkish translations; and (ii) examine what motivates the Turkish translators to act under certain ideological underpinnings which inf luence the translation of marginal voices. Language policies have always been one of the most sensitive issues in Turkish society. Many Turkish people often raise concerns about the state of af fairs, claiming that ‘inadequate standard [language] educa­tion’, ‘lack of language awareness’, and lack of ‘loyalty to [standard] Turkish’ result in language deterioration (Doğançay-Aktuna 2004: 14–15). These discourses prescribe legitimate language practices since they are sets of sanctioned statements that can exert a considerable inf luence on the way people (e.g. translators) act and think. Television and radio are also significant sources of discourse which help maintain an ‘ideal form of language’, that is, standard language (Wober 1990: 571). According to the Turkish Establishment of Radio and Television Enterprises and Their Broadcasts Law No. 3984 of 20 April 1994: 3

There are very few exceptions such as the translation of  G. B. Shaw’s Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts (1912). Since translation of drama entails significantly more dif ferent aspects (e.g. performance) than translation of novels does, the consideration of performance on stage may be one of  the reasons for the use of a language variety in the Turkish translation of  Pygmalion made by Sevgi Sanli (1987). However, it is significant to note that other heteroglossic plays such as Henry V are all translated into standard Turkish. Therefore, another reason may be that the very focus of  the play itself is on how the professor of phonetics teaches a f lower-girl to speak in standard language. This makes dialect inevitable in translation. Another possible reason is that the Turkish translator might have wished to get away from standardization and to introduce a new norm of recreating the linguistic otherness of  ST heteroglossia.

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HILAL ERKAZANCI-DURMUŞ [b]roadcasts shall use the Turkish language in its spoken form without destroying its characteristics and rules; shall ensure its development in the form of a modern cultural, educational and scientific language as a basic element of national unity and integrity [my emphasis].4

The statement above clearly acts as a restriction on any kind of marginal voice that ‘destroy[s]’ the ‘characteristics and rules’ of standard Turkish, which is an instrument of  ‘national unity and integrity’. It goes without saying that such statements ‘implicitly inf luence the translational strategies and act as an implicit censoring apparatus for the translators who translate marginal voices’ (Erkazanci 2007). The most significant event which inf luenced the public use of  language in Turkey is the of ficial circular (no. 19–383–16269) of  the government, released on 29 June 1984 (İmer 2001: 95). The circular states that (i) ‘anything that would damage the structure and beauty of Turkish shall be prevented’, and (ii) ‘it is obligatory to use Turkish by refraining from extremisms’ (ibid. 95–6). Obviously, this circular illustrates what Cameron (1995: 15) calls ‘verbal hygiene’, a term which refers to ‘legitimate concerns about language and value to be discussed, by experts and lay-speakers alike, in a rational and critical spirit’. The circular mentioned above was followed by a proposal in 1996 which was meant to ‘standardize the use of Turkish in everyday life’ under the ‘Law on the Use of Turkish’ (Doğançay-Aktuna 2004: 18). Throughout January 1997, the proposal was heatedly debated in the Turkish media. However, the proposal was later withdrawn, as it had given the idea that it might turn into ‘a suppressive policing/censoring tool from above’ (ibid.). What do such of ficial doc­uments imply for the Turkish translations of marginal voices in literature? The metalinguistic discourses in these documents lead to the establishment of expectancy norms concerning what the target language community (i.e. the Turkish community) expects from a target text, ‘regarding grammaticality, acceptability, appro­priateness, style, textuality, preferred conventions of  form or discourse and the like’, to use Chesterman’s words (1997: 17). 4

See the website [Accessed 10 June 2010].

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In instances where such discourses marginalize all variants as impurities, translators might hesitate to place themselves in a counter-cultural position that implies radical marginality. Therefore, the systematicity in the choices of Turkish translators implies that they refrain from marginalizing standard Turkish in order to avoid a counter-cultural position which might make marginalized sites of  language become modes of resistance. Mey’s (1985: 250) observations on standard variety are particularly apt to describe and discuss this Turkish context; this approach to the defining of the standard variety has given rise to ‘idealization or standardization of  language-in-use which always turns out to be one of  the most powerful means to maintain the “given” linguistic order’. In other words, as Milroy (2001: 538) also suggests, the ‘proper’ language has been maintained through ‘leg­itimacy’ which is conferred on it by public opinion and discourse. As a result, dialects, sociolects, ethnolects and other varieties of  language in numerous source texts have been systematically translated into perfectly standard Turkish. Most translators of  those source texts have not even let the Turkish readers know, through notes or a preface, that the originals were dialectal or written through marginal voices. The most striking example which illustrates this point is Aziz Üstel’s (2001) translation of  A Clockwork Orange (Burgess 1962). Most of  A Clockwork Orange is narrated in Nadsat which comprises Slavic (especially Russian), English, and Cockney in­f luences to display the subliminal power that the USSR, a communist state, was exerting on some young (British) people during the Cold War. Since the Nadsatspeaking characters live on the margins of  their society, their language is also marginal. That is, Nadsat develops out of an anti-social community which stands as a mode of resistance to mainstream society. Nadsat’s phonological and morphological dif ferences from Standard English show a dialectic relationship with the ‘norm society’, i.e. ‘a transactive relationship: the claimed privilege of deforming the standard’ (Fowler 1979: 265). As far as the structure of Nadsat is concerned, lexical trans­formations together with phonological, syntactic and semantic pro­cesses are most visible. As an anti-language, Nadsat involves an ad hoc use and transliterations of Russian for ef fect (e.g. ‘droogs’ for friends), over-lexicalization (e.g. the use of  ‘bandas’ or ‘gruppas’ or ‘shaikas’ for gang) and re-lexicalization

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which is either (i) the production of a new vocabulary peculiar to an antisocial mind style (e.g. the use of ‘pretty polly’ for money, ‘horrorshow’ for beautiful), or (ii) the adaptation of an existing word in such a way as to clearly show that a shift or reversal of values has occurred (e.g. the use of  ‘charlie’ for chaplain). It is then necessary to see whether the Nadsat-like ef fect is recreated in the Turkish translation. The question of the untranslatability of Nasdat can be left aside, as Brumm’s (1993) German translation shows us that Nadsat can be translated by (i) reproducing the Russian ef fect in the target language (e.g. the use of ‘maltschiks’ for guys [malchik in Russian], ‘tolchock’ for hitting [tolchok in Russian])and (ii) recreating the sociolectal neologisms (e.g. the creation of the adjective ‘gromkiger’ in German to translate the Nadsat adjective ‘grimmiger’ which means brutal). Furthermore, the Finnish translation by Konttinen (1991) confirms that the marginal voices of the Nadsat speakers can be successfully translated if the purpose of the translation is to acknowledge and portray marginality (Summala 2002). At this point, the main question is this: is Turkish society ready to tolerate an anti-language in translation that ends up with subversion of, and opposition to, the norms of standard language? In light of  this question, what determines the translation of  Nadsat into Turkish is whether the translator is willing or allowed by his social environment (e.g. publishers, audience) to create a kind of deviation from standard Turkish. Judging from the Turkish translation, Otomatik Portakal (2001), which systematically avoids re-lexicalization, over-lexicalization, and the Russian ef fect on language, the translator’s priority seems to respect the norms of standard Turkish (e.g. lexical, phonological, morphological, and syntactic rules of standard language). This is highly likely because, as Büyükkantarcıoğlu (2004: 50–1) suggests, the inf lux of marginal voices is thought to: Threaten the purity of  the mother tongue. […] They [the critics] emphasize that Turkish is fully capable to express meanings through its own resources; if new concepts are to be expressed, then new Turkish words should be coined, making use of  the Turkish etymological and morphological sources. Today the use of pure Turkish words is encouraged mostly by some conscientious linguists, educators, journalists, and writers.

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Applying Büyükkantarcıoğlu’s sociolinguistic analysis to the present context, this study argues that the translator’s decision to stan­dardize marginal voices in the Turkish translation of  A Clockwork Orange is governed by sociolinguistic considerations, which act as constraints on his/her translational creativity. Canonization of a particular form of language determines not only ‘the content and power of the category of unitary language in stylistic thought’, but also its ‘creative and style-shaping role’ in the majority of  literary genres (Bakhtin 1981: 668). Translations, no less than original works, may also be produced under such inf luences. Hence, the strategies for translating marginal voices in literature are usually determined by the ideological drive, shaped by the wider sociocultural environment to which the translator belongs (see Even-Zohar 1978/2004; Mason 1990; and Munday 2008). According to Bakhtin (2001: 279), this normative drive stems from an under­standing of literary language as ‘frequently socially homogenous’ at its very core. In such cases, the literary language is considered synonymous with the standard language: ‘the literary language as used uniformly over the cultural, political and geographical territory of  the nation’ (Bakhtin 2001: 279). It is significant to note here that the translator of A Clockwork Orange, Aziz Üstel, was awarded a translation prize for his use of language in his translation. Üstel’s translation was chosen as deserving ‘En İyi Çeviri Ödülü’ (The Best Translation Prize) in Turkey.5 This aspect of translating (the op­portunity of receiving the symbolic capital) also explains why Turkish translators regularly translate into standard Turkish. Returning to Collins’ notion (1999: 214) that commodification of standard language is based on its objectification as a market value which is necessary for ‘market success’, it may be argued that Turkish translators systematically respect the norms of standard Turkish as a canonical activity in order to acquire such symbolic capitals as social acceptance, cultural pre­stige, and economic profit. This in turn contributes to the standardlanguage canon which is a deliberate activity of preservation and sanctification of standard Turkish. 5

See the website: [Accessed 10 April 2011].

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Conclusion ‘[A]ll linguistic practices are measured against the legitimate practices’ (Bourdieu 1991: 53) in all fields of  life such as translations. The normative pressure of  linguistic practices makes the translators adopt particular strategies. The translators actually begin to use those strategies to the point where they internalize them. In this way, they develop a linguistic habitus. As time passes, the translators’ linguistic habitus becomes a set of automatic responses that guides their decision-making process towards the politically correct linguistic choices. This also explains why Turkish translators systematically exclude even references to the originals’ marginal voices from their translations. Turkish translators consistently stick to standard variety of Turkish that currently enjoys cultural and public prestige (i.e. symbolic capital) partly because the acceptance of  their translations implies the perpetuation of  their careers. A choice between standard language and dialect is ‘always a product of  the politics of representation’; and this involves ‘massive projections of power, status, values, norms onto the linguistic phenomenon at hand’ (Blommaert 1999: 431). Hence, Turkish translators are engaged in adopting an ideological stance in avoiding any strategy that would marginalize the standard language. This is why Blommaert (1999: 429) calls the translators ‘experts’ or ‘ideology brokers’ whose language activities can ‘willy-nilly’ support ‘state-ideological preferences’. Adopting a critical sociolinguistic approach to the translation of marginal voices, this paper concludes that (i) certain forms of  lan­g uage are legitimized in Turkish literature, and by extension, in lit­erary translation, and that (ii) Turkish translators who translate margin­al voices into perfectly standard language are acting under certain language-ideological inf luences by avoiding any translational strategy that would shake the sociolinguistic expectations of  the Turkish readers aggressively and destabilize their linguistic habits and expectations.

GIOVANNI NADIANI

2 On the translation fallout of defeated languages: Translation and change of  function of dialect in Romagna

Defeated languages and translation In his important work on the dif ferent aspects and functions of translation in an ever faster and more globalized society, Irish scholar Cronin (2003: 146) states that: For minority languages themselves it is crucial to understand the operation of  the translation process itself as the continued existence of  the language, and the selfperception and self-confidence of its speakers are intimately bound up with translation ef fects.

Cronin is aware of  how dif ficult and dangerous it can be to translate into a minor language when this language is in a situation of diglossia, meaning that such a minor language is less and less likely to be acknowledged as an autonomous linguistic entity that can have a future development, and is only bound to be a mere imitation of the source language. Yet, he strongly supports an ‘aggressive’ translation policy in all fields of knowledge, especially science and technology, i.e. translating not only for an aesthetic function but also a pragmatic one, even if  there is interference or ‘foreignization’, in order not to surrender to an overall stagnating ‘domestication’, where in fact the translation process is no longer a renewing factor of  the target language (Cronin 2003: 147). Pointing out that the translation process involves distinctness as well as connectedness, Cronin (2006: 121) claims that translation scholars should be at the forefront of  the promotion and

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protection of  the teaching of dif ferent languages, including ‘minor’ ones, as it would be pointless to work in the ‘connectedness business’ when there is nothing left to connect. In stressing how paradoxical it is to allege translation as inadequate, while it is in fact one of  the most important means for the defence of  linguistic and cultural diversity, he envisages a sort of a translational negentropy: What we would like to propose is precisely a way of thinking about translation and identity which is grounded in cultural negentropy. This negentropic translational perspective is primarily concerned with the ‘emergence of new’ cultural forms through translation practice and the way in which translation contributes to and fosters the persistence and development of diversity. (Cronin 2006: 129)

Current translation practice, strongly supported by the powerful technological tools now available, is at the centre of a significant ongoing project. As part of one of the most daring, compelling and forward-looking projects ever produced on the fostering of minority languages, the ‘Small Codes’ project, or the Excellence Platform for the digital treatment of  less-used languages, has already achieved some important aims. Its ‘aggressive’ Manifesto opens with stressing the importance of cultural diversity whose fostering is accomplished first of all through language, especially the written language, i.e. the one used in the translation process: – We believe cultural diversity must be defended. – We believe one of  the practical strategies for defending traditional, minority and indigenous cultures is that of modernising them while trying to keep some of  their specific features. – We believe folkloristic attitude and nostalgic praise for ancient times as well as projects aiming only at recovering traditional cultural features, in order to exhibit them in some kind of museum without providing them with the right instruments to cope with modernity, are in fact enemies, although unintentional, to these minor cultures. – We believe every well-thought-out project about the defence of culture should start with the defence of language, whose modernization requires a written form as consistent and shared as possible. – We believe digital technology is crucial to the modernization of languages and its promotion among the younger generations. – We believe technological standards as to data storage, saving and database formats etc. is necessary in order to guarantee an ‘electronic long-life’ to linguistic resources and an easier exchange of information, resources and technologies.

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– We believe circulation of  knowledge must be as extensive as possible without any limitation to access the cultural heritage of  humanity, especially as to linguistic resources, being language probably the most distinctive feature of human beings. (Zoli 2006: 3; translations from Italian and French are mine unless otherwise stated)

Among the results achieved by the proponents of  the Platform are some works of translation that were conceived especially for younger age groups, i.e. potential speakers of a minor language at the mercy of a major language (see Chiocchetti et al. 2007). These translations mostly deal with televised, audiovisual products and come in the wake of  French scholar Claude Hagège’s claims that linguistic diversity is a heritage of  humanity which could and should be preserved through processes and strategies that convey a positive image of a language in the minds of its speakers (see Tessarolo 1990). Hagège (2002: 107–8) suggests that prestige should be attributed to its speakers rather than to the language itself: Prestige, which involves the ideas of value and excellence, can be attributed only to human beings, given the implications these ideas have. Thus, when we talk about the prestige of a language, we talk about those who speak such language or about the books written in it. […] The prestige of a language is not something that can be objectively assessed. It belongs to representation and thus can only be assessed through the principles of reference of symbolic thought. These principles are established by the speakers, among whom the relationship between the languages brings about either a benefit or a crisis, in which case the language suf fers a loss of prestige.

It is such loss of prestige that generates a patoisement process which is often irreversible, as previously outlined by scholars such as Terracini (1996) and Lafont (1976). In particular, the patoisement process occurs in those situations of coexisting languages, where speakers of a specific language mentally and practically accept the devaluation of  their code; this code becomes seen as less prestigious and unlikely to be renewed, so they start abandoning it (Lafont 1976). This process happens in par­ticular to all those minority languages that could be described as defeated by other languages in some respects, i.e. mainly those codes which, because of such defeat, have remained with the status of dialect (or macro-dialect), allowing the winner to become a proper language:

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GIOVANNI NADIANI A language is the dialect among the relevant ones in a given circumstance which is imposed, together with its power, by a political authority in that given circumstance. If any administrative or literary function is carried out by some kind of writing, this one will serve such dialect. (Hagège 2002: 135)

Approaching it from this perspective, it could be argued that the very term ‘minority’ naturally relates to the idea of  ‘defeated language’. In fact, ‘minority’ is used here in the meaning explained by Venuti’s definition of  ‘minority’ that also covers the concept of  ‘dialect’. I understand ‘minority’ to mean a cultural or political position that is subordinate, whether the social context that so defines it is local, national or global. This position is occupied by languages and literatures that lack prestige or authority, the non-standard and the non-canonical, what is not spoken or read much by a hegemonic culture. Yet minorities also include the nations and social groups that are af filiated with these languages and literatures, the politically weak or underrepresented, the colonized and the disenfranchised, the exploited and the stigmatized. (Venuti 1998b: 135)

In other words, the dif ferences between language and dialect are not linguistic or structural ones, but social and functional ones: It is necessary to refer to external criteria, namely the political status of the concerned languages (Italian is the of ficial language of a state, while Milanese is not) or to the speakers’ conscience which determines the linguistic customs within the community. (Dell’Aquila and Iannàccaro 2004: 13)

In this article, however, the concept of defeated languages will be used in a broader meaning: defeated are all those languages with oral and written varieties and usage, which are not acknowledged as having any cultural or functional status by their own potential speakers. Often, these languages do not even obtain the of ficial status, which is granted to other ‘politically luckier’ minority languages1 that, if not yet dead, are undergoing a definitive sociolinguistic patoisement, as described by Hagège (2002: 66):

1

See, for example, those threatened minor languages that have the status of of ficial language of a country (e.g. Irish Gaelic), or even all those languages allowed to join the European Chart of regional and minority languages (the full list at ).

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A language is dead when there are no longer native speakers of it, i.e. speakers who learn it from the beginning of their life within the family and the society, whom are thus granted with what is called native competence. […] a dead language, if we want to use this term, is the language of a community in which the native competence has disappeared completely, where native speakers passed their knowledge imperfectly on to the following generations which, in turn, hand down an ever-fading attitude towards speaking and understanding the group’s language.

This is the situation for several more or less culturally prestigious Italian dialects. Yet, it has been happening that literary and multi­media works have been translated from these dialects into the main European ‘languages of culture’ as well as into minority ones, and, more and more frequently, vice versa (see Nadiani 2006). On the one hand, there is Cronin’s hypothesis (2003) that a translation practice in a modern pragmatic society seems utopistic or even impossible to be accomplished for many defeated languages. On the other hand, there is definite enthusiasm for translation as a tool for aesthetical exchanges and purposes; in this sense translation fully applies to a broader public acknowledgement (PA) of  the language concerned. This public acknowledgement weakens the negative image of  the defeated language among the speaking pedants, who had disowned it because of its lack of the afore-mentioned prestige, and among less-educated speakers as well as the younger generations of  ‘non-speakers’. Therefore, a definition such as translation fallout on linguistic aware­ness may not sound fitting, bearing in mind that linguistic awareness is not to be considered as opposing other varieties, but is seen as the expression of a complex cultural stratification of local identities facing the strict monolingual ideology, be it regional or national. Yet, translation work undoubtedly plays a major role in such acknowledgement, which has brought about a number of public and private initiatives in several linguistic regions of  Italy, which call for and envisage a change of function for defeated languages. This change is being set out mainly by intellectuals (as will be discussed below), overcoming the so-called functional restraint. Defeated languages, for various reasons connected to their specific situations, tend to be functionally restrained; unlike the winning languages defeated languages coexist within a certain area, they tend to break with any existing limitation and constantly take on new functions in all respects.

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Some of  these changes of  linguistic mindset will be outlined and described below as far as the Romagna region is concerned. However, these changes can be equally detected in many areas of Italy where dialects have managed to change their function as well as identify new scope and prospects for translation as a key element in a broader Reversing Language Shift (RLS) strategy. Fishman (1991: 1) of fers an innovative view on language evolution and death in the RLS strategy: What the smaller and weaker languages (and peoples and cultures) of  the world need are not generalised predictions of dire and even terminal illnesses but, rather, the development of therapeutic understandings and approaches that can be adjusted so as to tackle essentially the same illness in patient after patient.

However, the changes brought about by the revitalizing use of translation still ref lect the functional dif ference, in theory and in practice, between the coexisting languages.

The work of  the intellectuals as a driving force of PA of defeated languages May I be allowed a personal anecdote? In July 2007 I was in Antwerp as a guest of  the Flemish Pen Club. I was going for my daily 10km run in the Stadspark, the park in the city centre, in between downpours. At some point I saw a group of  Jewish children, with traditional Orthodox hats and hairstyles, rolling about wildly in a huge puddle. I stopped to watch the hilarious performance, and I noticed something as impressive. While their fathers were busy with their palmtops in English, the children were giggling and shouting cheerfully in a language that was not Flemish. After a number of runs, also listening to what the young Jewish mothers were saying to their babies in their pushchairs, my suspicions were confirmed: the language of those young couples and of those kids, among the variety of languages, food and clothing in that park, could only be Yiddish. This language, supposed to have disappeared after the Nazi exter­mination, is in fact alive, and a new generation of

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speakers is ensuring its future. This did nothing but corroborate Fishman’s argument (2001b: 455) that on one hand, the success of  RLS ‘depends on eliciting and activating the ethnocultural sympathies, conscious identities and overt loyalties of a threatened language’s traditionally associated ethnocultural population’; on the other, the real power of any attempt at RLS, despite all intellectual and technological work, remains the intergenerational transfer within a Gemeinschaft, within a proper community. Indeed, although cyber-space can be put to use for RLS purposes, neither computer programmes, e-mail, search engines, chat boxes, the web as a whole, nor anything directly related to any or all of  them can be a substitute for face-to-face interaction with real family embedded in real community. Ultimately, nothing is as crucial for basic RLS suc­cess as intergenerational mother tongue transmission. Gemeinschaft (the intimate community whose members are related to one another via bond of  kinship, af fection and communality of interest and pur­pose) is the real secret weapon of  RLS (ibid.: 459). As the anecdote shows, this is true for those small and isolated, yet actually very strong, cultural, ethnic, and religious identities. One wonders whether there could be any possibility of assuring survival of all those languages not ‘belonging’ to any precise political entity. One also wonders whether there is any possibility of regaining a non-defeated position for such languages, which have been led astray and stratified as to their principles, customs, and beliefs by modern society and whose strength lies in the very complexity and dynamism of the interactions within manifold aggregates of varieties. The only faint connection in this scattering, ironically, seems to be the ghost of the defeated language of any particular community that has been af fected in its recent history by geographical, human, ideological, and linguistic change. Such a ghost still lingers nowadays in dif ferent shapes and meanings, not only due to the ongoing vulnerable and faulty intergenerational transfer2 with episodes of ‘dialect comeback’ (e.g. in the 2

Particularly the generations born between the 1950s and the 1970s appear to be suf fering the social ‘sanction’ of  the lack of prestige of  their native dialect or of  the parallel language of  the disrupting community (see the intense account by Villalta 2005: 118–22).

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workplace, or on occasion of social and political gathering, depending on the region), but also due to the cultural prestige such ghost-language acquires through the quality and the cohesion of  the work carried out by the intellectuals. The work of  the intellectuals can be regarded as a sort of diachronic constant in the shaping and developing of a certain language in a certain area. Intellectual work per se, which is not ex­clusively linked to aesthetics, is given more ground (i.e. function) until it becomes a quantitatively less important feature compared to the linguistic functions covered by other sectors (e.g. economy, trade, mass media etc.). The cultural work of  ‘aesthetic intellectuals’, though, appears to be the main, if not the only, source of nurturing, forward movement, innovation and development of a defeated language. A definition of  ‘aesthetic intellectuals’ is here needed. I would like to suggest this convenient, if rather inaccurate, definition: ‘aesthetic intellectuals’ are here defined in the first place, with reference mainly to the Italian sociolinguistic situation, as those who work in the production of original literature, drama, music, cabaret, cinema, and audiovisual works in a defeated language (including translators, subtitlers, adaptors, etc.), regardless of  their own intrinsic aesthetic quality. Those who are taken into account only in the second place are the scholars dealing with defeated languages and their cultural domains at dif ferent levels, whose research is essential to the PA itself, as they (have to) work in the country’s of ficial language. In other parts of  Europe, where the defeated language has been able to develop special functions, this distinction is more subtle. It is possible to name as one striking example the theological work in Plattdeutsch (Low German) carried out in Northern Germany by many Lutheran scholars (see Nadiani 2006). If we look at culture as a structured repertoire of options able to organize social interactions and give every action its proper meaning within the group, and for the group it is the expression of belonging (see Even-Zohar 1997a, b; Shef f y 1997; Toury 2002), we will notice how only very few agents can actually create such a repertoire of options. In each group, there is a small minority who act as producers on the level of  the repertoire itself. Whether entrusted by the group with the task of doing so or whether self-appointed, it is mainly those persons who introduce new options, and hence act as AGENTS OF CHANGE (Toury 2002: 151).

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It is actually a small minority of intellectual agents who change the cultural repertoire related to many defeated languages through the change in function of such languages. In Italy, for example, there has been much talk in the literary world about a shift of dialect ‘from language of reality to language of poetry’ (see Brevini 1989). Such an overstatement does not depict the complex sociolinguistic variety in Italy; nevertheless it definitely sums up what has been said: that the language of everyday communication, intrinsically oral, has changed its function. In its local and individual varieties, with an inaccurate thus dif ferent spelling, it has taken on the function that is usually attributed to the ‘winning’ language in a country: being an instrument of written communication, even if only in the field of aesthetics, which can be thus codified, memorized and transferable, regardless of  the authors’ initial aim, who on the contrary are often concerned with pointing out the importance of  their hyper-literary idiolect, not to be identified with any mere localist attitude. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to talk about an unpredicted and massive occurrence of this further function, which in dif ferent ways has always occurred as a restricted phenomenon (see Brevini 1999), which will not be thoroughly analysed here. Through the work of important ‘multipliers’ (see Nadiani 2006) as is the case with Rom­agna, the aforementioned language change of  function has had an undeniable fallout ef fect on its PA. Such acknowledgement has been granted not only by the large attendance of speakers and ‘non-speakers’ at various important cultural and artistic events, which is crucial for raising linguistic awareness in users, but also by carrying out a number of public and private initiatives, including projects of a scientific and legal nature for the fostering of dialect involving various institutions such as schools, libraries, museums, local authorities and administration. Some initiatives worth mentioning for their insti­tutional acknowledgement of dialect at an institutional level are namely the Regional Law no. 45, 7 November 1994 (‘Protection and Fostering of the Dialects of Emilia-Romagna’) and the Protocol of Intent for the protection and the fostering of Romagnolo dialect agreed between the three province of Ravenna, Forlì-Cesena and Rimini in Romagna (further details on such initiatives and projects in Bellosi 2004).

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Romagnolo and translation One of the side ef fects of the aforementioned change of function of defeated languages is the increase of translational activity. Translations can be done from written dialects into the country’s ‘language of culture’, into other major European languages and also into other minor and/or defeated ones, and vice versa. This type of activity occurs within various linguistic situations in Europe; as for Romagna, this process is carried out by the aforementioned intellectual work. In other regions with more titled dialects as to literature and especially drama, such activity might be even prior to the works of  Pasolini and other so-called neo-dialect poets of  the 1970s and onwards, when the ultimate change of  function took place. Translation from Romagnolo into other languages has primarily a vehicular function, e.g. the translation into Italian accompanies most Romagnolo works, especially poetry, drama, or prose. In the translations of poetic works, as parallel texts or more often as foot-translations, all translation strategies are used: word-for-word ‘convenient’ self-translations, poetic-prose versions, even auteur translations or rewritings by other poets. In this respect, noteworthy are the experiences of  Roberto Roversi with Tonino Guerra (1970) and Loris Rambelli with Giuseppe Bellosi (1992). It is quite common for such translations to be carried out by the poets them­ selves (self-translation carried out by many neo-dialect authors is analysed in Villalta 1992; Zinelli 1999; and Nadiani 2002). The reasons behind this vehicular function will not be analysed here, except for pointing out the authors’ somewhat contradictory need to commun­icate with a broader imaginary audience far beyond their linguistic restraints so as to be entitled to belong to the wider whole of  Italian literature. Translation into other languages concerns first of all those authors who have been granted some kind of acknowledgement in their own country. Authors such as Tonino Guerra and Raf faello Baldini are legendary even outside Romagna. Tonino Guerra, despite his age of ninety, is still one of  the most famous and lively screenwriters at an international level; he has worked with Antonioni, Tarkowskij, and Anghelopolus, and wrote the

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screenplay for Federico Fellini’s Oscar-winning Amarcord, whose title is, by the way, in Romagnolo. His works of poetry, prose and drama have been translated into English, Russian, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, and Swedish. Raf faello Baldini, who died in 2005, achieved literary fame among all kinds of audience at a rather late stage and in such an unusually sensational way for a poet in Italy. There is a large amount of prestigious critical literature about him (for an overview see Martignoni 2004). His work has achieved immense popularity among people of all classes, also thanks to important TV and cinema multipliers such as Ivano Marescotti and Fabio De Luigi. His dramas (the immense popularity of  these works would deserve a separate analysis) have been translated into English and successfully performed in the United States. Moreover, American translations of  his selected poems are published in journals and col­lections and have been translated into German as well. Another playwright whose works were translated and published in the US is Ravenna-born Nevio Spadoni. Works by Tolmino Baldassari have been translated into French and into minority languages too. Poetry and drama are the favoured genres among men (and women) of letters in Romagna, although other literary forms like storytelling, cabaret, and jazz-poetry are being experimented with more and more. There are other poets, among whom Nino Pedretti, Gianni Fucci, and myself, whose selected poems have been published autonomously or in journals and collections translated into English, French, Spanish, Dutch, Irish, Alemannic, Low German, and Argentine Lunfardo. Romagna has recently experienced, for the first time, the sub­titling of a film from Romagnolo into Italian, French, and English. The film is Berbablù, by Luisa Pretolani and Massimiliano Valli, produced in 2004 by Vaca (Vari Cervelli Associati, lit. Various Associated Brains). The film competed in several independent film festivals around the world and had a surprisingly large attendance in Romagna despite receiving some criticism for its aesthetic value (see Nadiani 2007 for a bibliographic review). Translation work from other languages into Romagnolo, in its new function as a written language, concerns several texts such as the Bible; several Greek and Latin classics such as Homer, Plato, Plautus, Martial, and Greek lyric poets; Dante’s Divine Comedy, several sections from Boccaccio’s Decameron and Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, some ‘Canti’ by Leopardi and

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Pascoli, Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli’s sonnets; single poems by Ezra Pound and several other con­temporary Italian and foreign poets (see Bellosi 2007). Furthermore, it is worth noting the massive translation and adaptation of dramas (i.e. classics such as Plautus, Greek authors, Shakespeare and Molière, as well as Italian, dialect and foreign authors from the past and the present) carried out by theatre professionals and amateurs performing an extremely lively and successful theatrical activity. Translation into Romagnolo, mostly from classical lan­g uages and Italian classics, is proof of  the change of  function of dialect, cleverly moulded and wielded by skilful intellectuals so as to respond to the challenges of various complex translation tasks. One might wonder what such a task would be that ignited the will to communicate, over the last 150 years, through prestige-lacking, ‘minority’ languages, what more prestigious lan­guages had produced. The reason why written dialect is still widely used for literary purposes lies in the need to communicate in this basic language dug out from one’s own history and one’s own self, which one would like to pass on to those who are living the next dif ferent part of such history, bearing in mind that by losing it they would lose a part of  themselves. Lastly, another project worth mentioning is the translation and subtitling into Romagnolo of an Italian audiovisual product for children, the animation film La Pimpa (see Zoli 2007; Nadiani 2007), the ultimate proof of  the argument presented here, which can be the first step in envisaging future linguistic planning.

Translation and ultimate survival strategies A defeated language such as Romagnolo experiences a constant ero­sion of speakers, lacks important ethno-political-emblematic ‘stories’, and has no actual protection at an institutional level. Above all, it suf fers more than others under the pressure and prestige inf luence of  the language of  the capital (Pinter 1988), i.e. the language of  the administrative capital and of 

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the economic capitals, and thus of  their ideology and systems. Yet, a possible feeble chance of survival, the chance of a transfer even if inaccurate, lies in its change of  function, by fully exploiting the current Zeitgeist that has never been as favour­able as in the last few decades. These favourable conditions are attested to by the blossoming of poetry, on which there is now a large, scholarly, and specific bibliography (see Marri 2007), and which is welcomed by a number of crowded public readings. They are also attested by the increasing number of professional theatrical productions (together with the amateur ones), and various art forms such as musical, cabaret, and jazz-poetry. Furthermore, the larger number of requests for meetings in compulsory schools held in Romagnolo, not to mention the ‘popular’ movement inspired by the Friedrich Schürr Association named after the main scholar of  Romagnolo, Austrian philologist Schürr, which involves some thousands of people, clearly displays the new PA. Such is the widespread PA of some sort of cultural prestige, which was regained through the work of these cultural operators, that maybe it can be explained as originating from the need for regaining a stronger sense of  belonging. This need comes after the eagerness of  being globalized culturally at all costs in order to leave supposed provincialism and backwardness behind. Fishman (2001: 465), though, shows a sceptical attitude towards the role of  the intellectual and the attitude of  the media: Without an actual ethnolinguistic community home, the greater prestige of a thousand computer specialists constituting a virtual inter­active community, or a dozen Nobel prize laureates posting their work on the Internet, will not augur nearly as well for the future of [threatened languages] as a thousand intergenerationally related ordinary ‘rank and file’ daily speakers living in proximity to one-another.

Such scepticism may be proved wrong, or ill-founded, for example by looking at the work of a Yiddish writer such as Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer, and by the results achieved in certain situations (see AranaAzpillaga-Narbaiza 2007; Corominas Piulats 2007; Gruf f ydd Jones 2007; O’Connel 2007). Thus, bearing in mind that the community, however large or small, plays a major role in language transfer and welcoming the idea of integrating all the dif ferent functions and steps to walk up the socalled Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale, or GID (Fishman 2001:

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463–74) towards a potential RLS, a strategy could be envisaged so as to try and hold up language’s loss by reintroducing such language through its literary (literacy) function. In this way it would be kept within the compass of  the relevant linguistic environ­ment only, but it would be potentially transferable to the younger generations in the same way as a foreign language, with the help of  the digital technology available nowadays and some native speakers’ expertise, to make it at least a transient testimony of  the culture and the literature of a certain area. As long as commercial criteria apply, we cannot pretend to save the world’s less-used languages. However, if  those criteria are relaxed, if  the models of internationalization and localization can come across into zones of altruistic zeal, there seems to be no technical reason imposing any limitation to the number of language varieties able to be revitalized. The technologies can be used to bring those languages into the electronic sphere. That alone will not save languages from extinction (using a computer and surfing the web are still not major activities for social relation), but it should put pay to the ideologies of English as a killer language, working hand-inhand with technology. Localization processes can help the survival of more languages, not fewer, and they can do so by abandoning the nationalism of  the larger standardized languages (Pym 2004: 39–40). Three levels of intervention could be considered, namely (1) a circulation as wide as possible on digital and print of those con­temporary authors who contributed to refresh the image of dialect;3 (2) the creation, through criteria to be established carefully, of data­bases and corpora, which should include as many texts as possible from the past and the present; (3) the digitalization of all the existing dictionaries and of all the oral testimonies available as well as others that can be produced at present. All of  these should be easily access­ible through the internet, by integrating all linguistic resources,4 ac­cording to the ‘Small Codes’ manifesto quoted above, ‘with the 3

4

Noteworthy is the voluntary publishing work by Mobydick publishing house, and by Pazzini as an initiative with the support of  the province of  Rimini within the above-mentioned Protocol of Intent. However, these works should circulate for free in a much larger number of copies. ‘Linguistic resources are all the available data of a language in electronic format for computer processing, e.g. mono- and multi-lingual, terminological, texts databases,

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final aim of having all the linguistic resources of a language available online in a standardized and consistent form, and especially public and free’ (Zoli 2006: 6), for a virtual, imagined community and yet able to communicate and work. According to Anderson (1991: 6), a community exists because it is imagined by its members through the media: Anderson argued that national identity is ‘imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of  their communion’. ‘Such imagining of  the community is produced and reproduced in the media’ (Guyot 2007: 54). With such material, a reference corpus should be created with a standardized spelling according to easy-to-use criteria. There are precedents as this was done very successfully for Low German dialects with the so-called Funkplatt, the dialect for the media,5 in order to produce teaching and various audiovisual materials (better if catchy). These materials could circulate online (yet, in this respect, research on the enormous potential and the shortcomings of internet has already started, see Cunlif fe 2007) and of f line among ‘non-speakers’ and potential future users. The circulation should be encouraged through specific integrated strategies including schools and universities, and for other age-groups media, au­thorities, and institutions, thus hopefully making up intergenerational groups of speakers. The natural role of  translation has been too often underrated, in the past, in linguistic planning strategies. Yet, if any change in the cultural repertoire can be seen as a possible planning strategy, as has been asserted above and will be now described in detail, translation is perfectly eligible as a possible strategy: ‘Most important of all, trans­lation activities not only can, but very often do cause noticeable changes in current states of cultural af fairs, up to the repertoires themselves’ (Toury 2002: 153).

5

audio files for pronounciation or natural speech, frequency and concordance statistics, and so on’ (Zoli 2006: 6; my translation). ‘In order for this language to be understood, as to the Radio Drama in Low German it was agreed to use a “shared low German”, which carries features of the dialects both on the right and on the left of the Elbe river. However, local variations are accepted’ (Andersens 2007: online). The translation from German is mine.

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There are now several possibilities for translation work in its various incarnations to participate in forms of RLS. These include the traditional translation of foreign literature (as translation from Italian is unnecessary in this phase of fading diglossia, apart from the intrinsic need of a poet to ‘grasp’ the poetry of another Italian poet into Romagnolo); the dubbing and subtitling of various multimedia materials; even some localization (see Ar Rouz 2009), which is the easiest and cheapest way to circulate among users quality material coming from the systems and ideologies the younger generations were born into. In such cases, one could argue this would be nothing but homogenising a local original culture (a dif ference) with the inf luence of the media we are overwhelmed by all the time. Given the current situation, there is no alternative (not even for major national cultures) but to assimilate and reshape its national, or local, culture according to the features of  the place. In other words making it original again, making it the language of  the capital, in a modern society is the ultimate challenge. Languages and cultures looking back to the past are hardly of any interest to potential users: The media can function as a signifier that a community is fully modernised, capable of taking part in contemporary life. Since minority languages have been labelled by dominant cultures as backward and rural, this is a significant issue. (Guyot 2007: 54; see also Cronin 2006: 129)

In this respect, translation could be able to reshape the old ‘moun­tain language’ (Pinter 1988) through the ‘creativity’ and ‘inventive­ness’, where possible, of  those performing it. As Fishman (2003: 147) correctly points out, once a defeated language is granted some acknowledge­ment through change of function and media standardization, striving for the impossible is not appropriate, as might be the case for other more guaranteed minority languages for which Cronin’s assumption is true. However, being realistic, it is wise to concentrate on what is actually possible to achieve, e.g. trans­ lating some popular products within certain restricted linguistic domains, also because in our current history only very few languages (perhaps only one) are able to cover almost every domain (Fishman 2001b: 47–6; 2001c: 224). Eventually, the main purpose of  linguistic operators will not be to

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induce an unlikely RLS, but, at most, to keep the younger generations aware of  the existence of  the eroded language. The eroded language will have to respond to the need of its own variety of  language of  the media trying to pass the ‘present memory’ on to the new generations, letting them taste, even if watered down, the memory of a given language in a given place.6 This shift has to happen in Italy, a country where people say ‘one country, many cultures’ which are nonetheless submerged by the ‘of ficial’ culture of  the country, which is in turn overwhelmed by the global one. Due to its intrinsic ability to provide the relevant languages and cultures with non-existing textual models, generally speaking, that is pre-organized and ready-to-use instructions for future production (see Toury 2002: 154), translation could represent a major watershed to try to recover the ghost of dialect technologically. Or, more realistically, translation may slow down the pace at which the dialect is fading and allow speakers to keep hearing its feeble and often unrecognizable voice. Languages are created depending on the culture and the history of a given society and are thus subject to alterations and change of  functions, as opposed to the idea many users share according to which their own personal ‘idio-dialect’ is an unalterable and untouchable treasure. In order to achieve a first result of conservation, however, a concerted ef fort of all the available resources and a further change of opinions are needed. The combination of  these should bring about the PA through tangible actions, which should involve considerable capital and human investment, although the possible impact of such action is impossible to be assessed and measured, as research on minority languages and media, being very recent, does not have the suitable instruments yet (see Cormack 2007: 58). Unfortunately, a defeated language is too often the language of regions similar to Romagna, in which there are no ethno-political-emblematic 6

‘The so-called “dead language” is still “bound in the bond of the living”, as the Jewish memorial prayer puts it, whether anyone uses it or not. As long as people remember the now unspoken language, value it, yearn for it, weep for it and/or seek to undertake steps in order to re-utilise it, then the language is not dead. Like all aspects of culture, a language is still bound in the bond of  the living as long as the living feel a bond to it, in terms of af fection, responsibility and motivation’ (Fishman 2001c: 223).

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‘stories’ that could work as uniting agents. Users and even the most responsive operators and advocates of  the defeated language are often unable to overcome localist attitudes that keep divid­ing them, thus preventing them to act in favour of  their own cause and de facto resign themselves, both language and users, to their fate.

SUSANNE GHASSEMPUR

3 Fuckin’ Hell! Dublin soul goes German: A functional approach to the translation of  ‘fuck’ in Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments

Introduction Roddy Doyle is quite a phenomenon in the history of  Irish literature. Despite his great success as a writer he has been criticized for exten­sive use of  ‘bad language’ and for portraying the Dublin working class in an unrealistic and patronising way (O’ Faolain 1992). From the start, Roddy Doyle’s works broke the conventions and traditions of  Irish writing. Irish literature used to be dominated by concerns of nationality, Catholicism and the Irish language, and it almost exclusively dealt with Ireland from a rural perspective. The Dublin of  Joyce represents an exception to this general trend although it is also very dif ferent from today’s Dublin, where a growing social underclass is struggling with material hardship and social problems such as unemployment and drug addiction. Doyle was one of  the first writers to focus on urban themes and to use the vernacular of the Dublin working class in his books, which was a very unconventional style indeed. When he published his first novel The Commitments (1987), he held a mirror up to the Irish nation, in particular to the Dubliners. Finally urban Ireland got portrayed as it really was at the end of  the twentieth century, and a new concept of Irishness, that up to then had been ignored by most people, found literary expression. Born in 1958 in Kilbarrack, a northern suburb of  Dublin, Doyle was raised in a lower-middle class Catholic home. After graduating from University College Dublin, he started teaching English and Geo­graphy at a

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school in Kilbarrack. His main inspiration for The Commitments was his pupils and their language, so the novel was based on a reality and on an environment that was very familiar to him (White 2001: 15). However, Irish journalists only began to take a serious interest in Roddy Doyle in 1991 when The Commitments was made into a film and seen to be a great success abroad. In The Commitments, Jimmy Rabbitte believes that a band is not just for entertainment, it can also be a political force. He wants to use soul music as a language to unite Dublin, in particular the Dublin working class. Soul music was introduced in the 1960s as a way for black Americans to express themselves. Doyle uses many excerpts from songs, which most of the readers (Irish working class to British/American upper class) would have heard, and instrumental breaks are used to make the reader remember the tune and ‘hear’ it. The lyrics are ‘Dublinized’ so that the non-Irish reader should also become aware of the plight of the Dubliners. The Commitments’ version of  It’s a Man’s World sounds like this: – COS IT’S A MAN’S – MAN’S – MAN’S WORLD – BUT IT WOULDN’T BE NOTHIN’ – NOTHIN’ – WITHOU’ A WOMAN OR A GURREL – […] – YEH SEE – […] – MAN DRIVES THE BUSES –   TO BRING US ROUN’ AN’ ABOU – OU’ –   AN’ MAN WORKS IN GUINNESSES –   TO GIVE US THE PINTS O’ STOU – OUT – […] – AN’ MAN –   MAN HAS ALL THE IMPORTANT JOBS –   LIKE HE COLLECTS ALL THE TAXES –   BUT WOMAN –   WOMAN ONLY WORKS UP IN CADBURY’S –   PUTTIN’ CHOCOLATES INTO BOXES –

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  SO –   SO –   SO –   IT’S A MAN’S – MAN’S WORLD –   BUT IT WOULD BE NOTHIN’ –   NOTHIN’ –   FUCK ALL –   WITHOU’ A WOMAN OR A GURREL – (116–17)

When The Commitments was written, one third of the Irish population lived below the poverty line and a quarter of a million Irish were unemployed. This creates the necessary link between Dublin youth and the situation of  black Americans in the 1960s. In order to fully grasp the meaning of  the plot, the readers would have to know that Doyle is drawing a parallel with this situation. For people who are denied economic and social power, verbal power provides important compensation. Like black Americans, the Irish also had a turbulent history of enslavement and oppression. The destruction of  the Gaelic culture had as a consequence the enhancement of storytelling and the oral tradition (White 2001: 52). The aim of Dublin Soul is to give people who have no education and little future a sense of  hope, power and pride. Modified song lyrics contain references to Irish working class life, which makes the characters more accessible to a nonIrish, non-working class readership.

The language of  The Commitments Doyle has the gift of perfectly transcribing the Dublin working class vernacular. Non-standard language in the novel is marked phonetic­ally by the dropping of final consonants, vowels and syllables: tha’, wha’, whi’e or s’pose. Words are also spelled dif ferently: Jaysis in­stead of  Jesus or contracted: howyeh. The characters’ speech also contains non-standard Irish-English grammar (‘– Tha’ was a shite film, said Derek. – He was good but, said

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Jimmy,’ (17)), which gives the novel additional cultural distinctiveness. It is important to note, however, that the characters in the novel do not speak traditional Irish-English with its conservative Elizabethan features. Their language is highly colloquial, marked by ritualized swearing, and largely in­f luenced by American popular culture. Particularly in The Commitments, it is crucial to understand the characters’ speech, as there is very little description and hardly any authorial commentary. For Doyle this was a conscious choice: I’ve always wanted to bring the books down closer and closer to the characters – to get myself, the narrator, out of it as much as I can. And one of  the ways to do this is to use the language that the characters actually speak, to use the vernacular, and not ignoring the grammar, the formality of it, to bend it, to twist it, so you get a sense that you are hearing it, not reading it. That you are listening to the characters. You get in really close to the characters. I think it’s a stronger achievement, in the context of my books… because it gets you smack in the middle of it. (White 2001: 181–2)

Even though bad language abounds, the band members are well aware of  the social implications of  their language: ‘Yeh couldn’t say fucking in a song […] Yeh’d never get away with it. […] Not in Ireland anyway’ (12). Despite their otherwise constant cursing, the characters are conscious of  their ‘bad language’ and know their limits. They know that uncensored self-expression would mean transgressing social boundaries and that would ultimately destroy their community (Marsh 2004:147–9). However, the characters’ slang is not just a mere matter of  language register. Slang is their language, their mother tongue and they strongly identify with it. Sometimes they are unable to express themselves without using the word fuck because it is such an essential word in their language. In literature, non-standard varieties often serve as marked discourse forms; in the case of  The Commit­ments, however, they are text-constitutive.

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The Commitments in German The Commitments has been translated twice into German: in 1990 it was first translated by Oliver Huzly and published under the title Dublin Beat by German publishers Ullstein. Two years later, however, Ullstein decided to rename the book Die Commitments. In 2001 the book was retranslated by Renate Orth-Guttmann and issued by pub­lishers Krüger, again as Die Commitments. In both translations, the language of  the characters is standardized to a universal colloquial form of German and loses part of its original quality in the translation: Doyle: – Yis have to look good, said Jimmy. – Neat – dignified. – What’s fuckin’ dignified abou’ dressin’ up like a jaysis penguin? Outspan asked. (14) Huzly: – Ihr müßt gut aussehen, sagte Jimmy. – Adrett. Respektabel. – Was zum Teufel ist respektabel daran, sich wie ein gottverdammter Pinguin rauszuputzen? fragte Outspan. (25) [ – You have to look good, said Jimmy. – Smart. Respectable. – What the hell is respectable about dressing up like a goddamn penguin? asked Outspan.] Orth-Guttmann: – Es ist wichtig, dass ihr gut ausseht, erklärte Jimmy. – Adrett. Würdevoll. – Was ist daran würdevoll, wenn du aussiehst wie’n beknackter Pinguin? fragte Outspan. (18) [ – It is important that you look good, said Jimmy. – Smart. Dignified. – What is dignified about looking like a stupid penguin? asked Outspan.]

While it would have been very problematic to translate the original Irish working class slang into any ‘equivalent’ German dialectal form, there are, however, striking normalizations of  the original diction. By of fering one

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possible literary transcription of  the Dublin vernacular1, Doyle puts on paper the language of  the ‘real Dubs’, which usually can only be heard in the streets of  Dublin’s Northside. The authenticity of  the foul-mouthed characters creates a comic ef fect for the reader who is familiar with their reality. This ef fect seems to be impossible to realise in the translation. The text is highly culture-specific because of the setting, references, social conventions, humour and above all its non-standard variety of  English, and therefore we are faced with an inevitable ‘translation loss’. Translators are faced with several options when translating texts that are written in a non-standard language. They can translate a dialect into another dialect, which is usually very problematic as this strategy introduces the dilemma of choosing the dialect of  target language and the eventual choice might evoke stereotypes in the target language which do not correspond to those of the source text. Translating a dialect into standard language also causes an enormous translation loss and might even obscure the meaning of  the text. Some translators use footnotes to explain certain linguistic features but this approach is not a very good solution either, as footnotes are but a weak substitute for the information that is encoded in the non-standard language of the source text. The best compromise seems to be the translation of a dialect into a supraregional colloquial language that is universally understood by the readers in the target language.

1

Editor’s Note. Literary transcriptions of accents, dialect, and pronunciation were also described, with reference to vernacular variaties of American English, as ‘eye dialect’ by Bowdre (1971). The range of variations in these literary attempts at transcribing the dialect is huge; transcriptions of professional linguists tend to be more coherent as they refer to the International Phonetic Alphabet, whereas literary transcriptions of fer a range of spelling solutions that often deserve comparative approaches; Dolan’s Dictionary of  Hiberno-English is a crucial reference to analyse Doyle’s eye dialect.

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Swearing in The Commitments: The case of  ‘fuck’ Working class Irish sociolect is characterized by an extensive use of swearing (at least Doyle’s version; The Commitments contains approximately 275 instances of the word ‘fuck’) which largely serves a purely phatic function. Swearing is used to reinforce social bonds, to praise or humour the addressee, and occasionally a swearword can even become a term of endearment. This phenomenon is also known as ‘social swearing’ (see Crystal 1995: 173). The Irish fondness for the F-word is also commented on in Share’s Slanguage (2005: X): One has only to listen to a radio interviewee, who might in many social situations employ the word fuck and its derivatives with the unthinking frequency which has led the Irish to be regarded, by startled visitors, as the most foul-mouthed nation in Europe, struggling to edit the word out of  his conversational norm: like and like you know being commonly summoned into service as enclitics.

In their book Bad Language, Andersson and Trudgill (1990: 60) describe fuck as ‘one of  the most interesting and colourful words in the English language today’ that can be used to describe emotional states such as pain, pleasure, hate and even love. They identify thirteen dif ferent semantic areas in which the meanings of  the word fulfill a dif ferent function: Fraud: ‘I got fucked by my insurance agent.’ Dismay: ‘Oh, fuck it!’ Trouble: ‘I guess I’m fucked now!’ Aggression: ‘Fuck you!’ Passive: ‘Fuck me.’ Confusion: ‘What the fuck?’ Dif ficulty: ‘I can’t understand this fucking business!’ Despair: ‘Fucked again.’ Philosophical: ‘Who gives a fuck.’ Incompetence: ‘He’s all fucked up.’ Laziness: ‘He’s a fuck-of f.’ Displeasure: ‘What the fuck is going on?’ Rebellion: ‘Oh, fuck of f !’

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Initially, in English fuck fulfils many grammatical functions thanks to its morphological f lexibility. Most commonly it occurs as an adverb (fucking boring), adjective (fucked), or as an exclamation (Fuck! I forgot to lock the door), but also in compound nouns such as motherfucker. There are obviously more swearing functions to perform than there are actual swearwords. This constraint means that fuck is used over and over again in dif ferent situations and for dif ferent purposes. A person might say ‘fuck you’ or ‘fuck all’ employing the same swearword (at least in its dictionary meaning) in both exclamations; each one has a completely dif ferent meaning depending on the context. This variable semantic range is also linked to the fact that fuck has completely lost its literal meaning here, and has become a type of metaphor.

Swearing in translation Swearwords can be said to be a universal phenomenon because prac­tically all languages in the world exhibit expletives to some extent. There are however significant dif ferences in swearing behaviour between cultures, which poses potential problems for translators of literature. As mediators between cultures and languages, translators are often faced with the decision of whether or not to conform to the norms of the target or the source culture. This situation is also acknowledged by Baker (1992: 234) with particular reference to the social norms regulating ‘politeness’: Politeness is a relativistic notion and dif ferent cultures therefore have dif ferent norms of  ‘polite’ behaviour. They also have dif ferent ideas about what is and what is not a ‘taboo’ area. […] In some translation contexts, being polite can be far more important than being accurate. A translator may decide to omit or replace whole stretches of text which violate the reader’s expectations of how a taboo subject should be handled – if at all – in order to avoid giving of fence.

In this respect, translators find themselves in a position of power as they decide what kind of  linguistic behaviour will be imported into a target culture. This position of power is particularly relevant to the rendering of

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swearwords and expletives, an aspect of translation studies that is currently extremely under-researched. What little literature exists in this area mainly deals with the translation of swearwords in audiovisual texts and consists mostly of small-scale case studies that take a quantitative approach and yield very dif ferent results (see Fernández 2006, Fernández Dobao 2006, Pujol 2006, Chen 2004, Karjalainen 2002). The under-theorization of the translation of non-standard language forms therefore presents extraordinary dif ficulties for translators. To date, research in the area of  the translation of non-standard language in literature has primarily focused on language specific case studies, which examine the ef fect of neutralising non-standard terms in the target text. Solutions will vary from language to language since the main aim must be to try and create the same or similar ef fect the original had on the source language reader. Linder (2000), however, suggests that there is a general tendency among translators to neutralize and soften the language in the translation, which then does not have the same ef fect on the source language reader as the original had. Stylistic compensation (Linder 2000, Zauberga 1994) also seems to be a common strategy in many language combinations to adequately render the non-standard language of the original. Generally it can be observed that translators employ a twofold strategy when opting for this solution: first they look for equivalent non-standard terms in the target language, and where not possible, they compensate by inserting colloquial speech in other places in the target text in the hope of creating the same ef fect. Mateo and Yus (2000) point out that the translator of insults should aim to find expressions in the target language which interpretively resemble the thought of  the speaker even if  the literal interpretation of  the insults dif fers in both languages. Therefore they suggest three pragmatic aspects the translator of insults has to bear in mind. The target of the insulting activity may either be of fence-centred (the insult is uttered to relieve the speakers’ anger or tension), praise-centred (when the insult is uttered to underline positively some action performed by the addressee), or interaction-centred (to reinforce social bonds or the phatic strength of  the current conversational exchange) (ibid.: 114f f ). However, nowhere in the literature are the actual functions of swearwords and their respective translations examined in detail, with the exception of  Ghassempur (2009).

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Translation strategies in the German translations of  The Commitments Method of analysis According to Wajnryb (2005: 25–38) the three main categories of swearing are ‘catharsis’, ‘aggression’, and ‘social connection’. Cathartic swearing is directed at the speakers themselves and uttered almost ins­tinctively when something unexpected and unpleasant happens (i.e. you stub your toe and shout ‘bastard! ’). By doing this we release excessive nervous energy in a very straightforward way, which helps us to restore our emotional balance. With this kind of swearing the actual expletive used is functionally immaterial, which is highlighted by the secondary meaning of ‘expletive’ as ‘any syllable, word or phrase conveying no independent meaning, especially one inserted in a line of verse for the sake of  the meter’ (Collins English Dictionary 2003). The second category of swearing is abusive and can be as emotive as cathartic swearing, perhaps even more so. It dif fers from the first category in its aggressive intent and the necessary participation of other people. While cathartic swearing does not need an audience, the abusive swearers require a target because they want to insult or inf lict harm. Abusive and cathartic swearing can of course also be combined. An emotional release to an unwelcome event can easily upgrade to an outburst of abusive swearing and an abusive assault can help the swearer to let of f steam as well as verbally wound a chosen target. The domain of social swearing on the other hand is not directly related to the first two categories. In relaxed settings where people are comfortable with each other, their language might be characterized by a high degree of swearing, depending on such variables as social class and gender. These circumstances allow words that would otherwise be deemed ‘dirty’ to be used to express a multitude of dif ferent speech acts. ‘Fuck, you sure have brought a lot of  beer!’ or ‘She looks fucking lovely today!’ serve to express surprise, pleasant wonder or disbelief, rather than aggressiveness

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and frustration. A social swearword always originates as a bad word but becomes conventionalized in a recognizably social form. Such swearing might be directed at others but it is not derogatory. The translation of  ‘fuck’ and its functions In this section I will make use of Wajnryb’s (2005) classification of swearing to outline the dif ferent strategies employed by the two German translators when translating the frequently occurring four-letter word fuck. Cathartic swearing In the area of cathartic swearing both translators largely opted for functional equivalents of fuck, thereby ensuring that the utterance had the same ef fect in the translation: Doyle: – When? – Tomorrow week. – Fuckin’ hell! (37) Huzly: – Wann? – Morgen in einer Woche. – Heilige Scheiße! (51) [ – When? – Tomorrow in a week. – Holy shit!] Orth-Guttmann: – Wann? – Morgen in einer Woche. – Ach du Scheiße! (45) [ – When? – Tomorrow in a week. Oh bugger!]

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The German dictionary equivalent of fuck (ficken) is a very strong swearword that cannot fulfil the same functions in German. The most commonly used swearword in German is Scheiße, which in this case is also the functional equivalent of  fuck: Doyle: One of  Billy’s trouser legs was longer than the other. – Ah, fuck tha’, he said. (68) Huzly: Eins von Billys Hosenbeinen war länger als das andere. – O Scheiße, sagte er. (81) [One of  Billy’s trouser legs was longer than the other. – Oh shit, he said.] Orth-Guttmann: Bei Billy war ein Hosenbein länger als das andere. – So’n Scheiß, sagte er niedergeschlagen. (77) [One of  Billy’s trouser legs was longer than the other. – Oh shit, he said grumpily.]

Abusive swearing Abusive swearing also frequently occurs in the text and does not pose major challenges for the translators, who usually came up with very similar translations in this category. The German language has at its disposal a great variety of insults that can be used as functional equivalents for the abusive fuck. Consider the following examples: Doyle: – I’d bite your bollix of f yeh if yeh went near me, yeh spotty fuck, yeh. (90) Huzly: – Ich beiß dir die Eier ab, wenn du mir zu nah kommst, du pickliges Arschgesicht. (111) [ – I’d bite your balls of f you if you went near me you spotty butthead.]

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Orth-Guttmann: – Ich beiß dir die Eier ab, wenn du mir zu nah kommst, du pickliges Arschgesicht. (104) [ – I’d bite your balls of f you if you went near me you spotty butthead.]

In this example both translators used an equally foul German expression that did not neutralize the original. The insult remained quite strong and is very idiomatic in German colloquial speech. However, the translators did not always have functionally equivalent swearwords at hand: Doyle: Then he spoke. – Fuck yis annyway. Fuck the lot o’ yis. (137) Huzly: Dann sprach er. – Zur Hölle mit euch. Zur Hölle mit euch allen. (145) [Then he spoke. – Go to hell. Go to hell, all of you.] Orth-Guttmann: Dann machte er den Mund auf. – Ihr könnt mich mal. Alle. (140) [Then he spoke. – Up yours. To all of you.]

In this case both translators opted for a neutralization of  the original diction. The function of  the utterance remains the same but no swear­words or obscenities were used. This example provides support for the hypothesis that translators tend to tone down bad language in the target text. Social swearing The abusive and cathartic fuck only represents a small fraction of the characters’ frequent use of  this four-letter word. Social swearing is by far the most common category in the novel and when we compare the two German translations, we can see that in this area the translators employed very dif ferent strategies: Doyle: – You’re the same age as me fuckin’ da! (39)

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SUSANNE GHASSEMPUR Huzly: – Du bist ja so alt wie mein scheiß Vater! (49) [ – You are the same age as my fucking father!] Orth-Guttmann: – Du bist so alt wie mein Vater! (43) [ – You are the same age as my father!]

Oliver Huzly’s translation turned the social swearing of  the original into abusive swearing in German. Mein scheiß Vater implies that the speaker wants to insult his father, which is not the case in the English version. Fuckin’ is merely used as an intensifying adjective and has no derogatory meaning in Irish working-class speech. By translating the four-letter word on a one-to-one basis, the translator changed the ef fect of  the original. Conversely, Orth-Guttmann chose to omit the swearword and thereby neutralized the source text in the translation. Thus the second translation inevitably lost some of the original’s ‘slanginess’ in an attempt to maintain the function. Doyle: – There’s a little fucker on a scooter lookin’ for yeh downstairs. (27) Huzly: – Da unten ist so ein kleines Arschloch auf einem Motorroller, das dich sprechen will. (39) [ – There is a little arsehole on a scooter looking for you downstairs.] Orth-Guttmann: – Unten ist ‘n komischer Typ auf  ’nem Motorroller, der dich sprechen will. (35) [ – There’s a weird guy on a scooter looking for you downstairs.]

Little fucker is not abusive but used to ridicule a third person that is not in the room. In this example Huzly turned the utterance again into abuse by translating it with kleines Arschloch (little arsehole). Orth-Guttmann’s translation is once more toned down, does not contain any swearing but is phonetically marked (auf ’nem Motorroller) to maintain non-standard usage.

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Doyle: Joey The Lips was back. – Howyeh, said Jimmy. – Listen to this. O sing into the Lord, a new song, for he hath done marvellous things. Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise. Psalm Number 98, Brother Jimmy. – Fuck of f, Joey. Good luck. (141) Huzly: Joey die Lippe war wieder dran. – Noch dran, sagte Jimmy. – Hör zu. Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied; denn er tut Wunder. Jauchzet dem Herrn alle Welt, singet, rühmet und lobet! Mit Trompeten und Posaunen. Jauchzet dem Herrn, dem Könige. Psalm Nummer 98, Bruder Jimmy. – Fuck, Joey. Viel Glück. (150) [ Joey The Lips was back. – Still there, said Jimmy. – Listen to this. O sing into the Lord, a new song, for he hath done marvellous things. Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise. Psalm Number 98, Brother Jimmy. – Fuck, Joey. Good Luck.] Orth-Guttmann: Dann war Joey die Lippe wieder dran. – Was ist?, sagte Jimmy. – Hör gut zu. Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, denn er tut Wunder. Jauchzet dem Herrn alle Welt, singet, rühmet und lobet. Psalm 98, Bruder Jimmy. – Krieg dich wieder ein, Joey. Alles Gute. (148) [Then Joey The Lips was back. – What is it?, said Jimmy. – Listen to this. O sing into the Lord, a new song, for he hath done marvellous things. Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise. Psalm Number 98, Brother Jimmy. – Calm down, Joey. Good Luck.]

Huzly translated fuck only by means of a loan, which creates a foreignizing and probably also bewildering ef fect for the reader in the target language. Orth-Guttmann chose to yet again neutralize the translation but managed to preserve the function by using a colloquial German expression (krieg dich wieder ein).

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Conclusion Ritualized swearing is a typical feature of the Dublin working class vernacular and is very dif ficult to translate into any ‘equivalent’ German colloquial form, since the universal swearword fuck has no real counterpart in German. Despite the obvious neutralization of  Dub­lin slang in both translations, it can be noticed that the two translators employed completely dif ferent strategies when it came to translating the frequently occurring swearword fuck. The first translator, Oliver Huzly, had a tendency to faithfully reproduce the four-letter word, not taking into consideration the many functions it might have in present-day Irish-English colloquial speech. Especially in the area of social swearing, which is the most frequent swearing pattern in the novel, Huzly turned utterances that serve to signal social connection into abusive insults. This makes the target text lack authenticity and sound very rude, which might have led to the publisher’s decision to have the novel retranslated. Renate Orth-Guttmann’s translation is more target text oriented but the swearing is significantly toned down, which ref lects dif ferent swearing patterns in German non-standard speech. Ritualized swearing (usually manifested in the high frequency of fuck and its derivatives in modern-day Dublin slang) is not a typical characteristic of  German non-standard discourse. In Ghassempur (2009) we find that particularly in the area of social swearing the function of the frequently occurring phatic fuckin’ can be conveyed in the translations with the use of modal particles, intensifying adverbs, conjunctions and a change of sentence structure. This indicates that dif ferent ‘swearing patterns’ prevail in the German language and that emphasis does not necessarily have to be conveyed with an expletive as German uses dif ferent linguistic and grammatical means to express emphasis or intensification. Orth-Guttmann’s strategy of not substituting every instance of  fuck with an equally strong four-letter word in German therefore represents a much more functional approach to the translation of swearing in the contemporary Dublin working class vernacular, which ultimately results in a text that might have lost some of its ‘slanginess’ but ef fectively conveys the function of  the original.

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4 The paratranslation of  the works of  Primo Levi

Introduction The concept of paratranslation aims to become the centre of  knowledge of  the human being, of  the languages and cultures in our modernity. The concept responds to the need for an analysis of facts that are, from a formal translational point of view, inexplicable, and reacts to the intuition that translation is something more than a purely linguistic exercise. The concept also emerges as a reaction to the fact that translation is too much focused on the process of mediating between linguistic forms, obviating all extratextual conditioning factors, which in many cases are the centre of  the translational process and not merely its context. Following the epistemological trail laid by Alexis Nouss in his essay La modernité (1995), paratranslation aims to situate itself in one of the four forms of modernity, the so-called critical or aesthetic modernity, ‘à l’œuvre dans un âge où l’histoire a ébranlé les certitudes idéologiques’ [at work at a time when history has weakened ideological certainties], which is aporetically opposed to social modernity, or modernization (Nouss 1995: 31). Someone might fail to make the connection, unless they were told, that Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity is an English translation published in the United States in 1961 of Primo Levi’s Se questo è un uomo, the Italian original, first published in 1947 and reedited in 1958. As a matter of  fact, it has happened. Can this rendering be explained in strictly linguistic terms? The short answer is that it cannot be explained in linguistic terms. Ef fectively, the outcome of the rendering here is an interpretation, even a comment, conditioned by historical perspectives, which cannot be described in translational terms. This interpretation privileges

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values, intentions, and objectives. From the point of view of pragmatic linguistics, while one could ask whether it might succeed in conveying the essential information or not, as a matter of course this question could not be answered by reading the English title. This phenomenon cannot be described in terms of  linguistic signs, because its binary perspective does not take into account the existence of a third element, a third code that has no substantial presence, yet is nevertheless real: ideology. Paratranslation thus subsists on a hermeneutic, speculative, and dialogical behaviour which is, furthermore, according to Nouss (1995: 69, editor’s translation), the mark of modern or postmodern thought: Whereas structuralism favoured the existence of orders revealed and articulated by signs, hermeneutics emphasizes the truth as an event and a dialogue, as the relationship between subjects or cultures considered within their historical manifestation.

Towards a theory of paratranslation A scientific theory is not a fact but an instrument that allows us to generate predictions and new hypotheses. It is said that a good theory is, firstly, relatively simple, and secondly, that it allows verifiable and demonstrable predictions to be made. In this case, what shall be henceforth called ‘theory of paratranslation’ starts from a fact: the comparison of  the titles of  Primo Levi’s works, which belong to the genre known as Holocaust literature, from its origins in Italian to its destination in English and in other languages and cultures. From a translational point of view, there is no way of justifying such a radical change in the formulation of titles that have supposedly been translated into another language and culture; such a translation does not exist, amongst other reasons because there exists no original from which to translate (and yet it is based upon it). Furthermore, by ignoring its verbal formulation, it undermines the concept of source text (ST) and target text (TT).

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The title of a book and its pictorial framing (including the choice of image cover, colouring, font types, etc.) usually play an important role in creating the first impression on the potential reader. The title given to works in translation is more than a translation; it is an adaptation according to taste, conforming to the dominant ideology of the receptor society, its beliefs and values, and to the ideology of  the markets operating in the cultural industry of that society. The mediating individual who intervenes in the name of that society and decides how the cultural item to be received will be presented is not usually the translator but the editors, who act as demiurges for the receptor society.1 As a first approach we could define ‘paratranslation’ as a concept that can be used to describe the intentional cognitive processes (ideological forms and constructions) behind the mechanisms of cultural transfer. I reserve the term ‘translation’ for the mechanisms of verbal transference, or for when the transfer is strictly (inter)linguistic, although here too there can be paratranslation. On this basis, a hypothesis can be formulated: society, in accordance with its beliefs and values, decides how (and when and why) to incorporate a foreign item into its cultural heritage, and to this end it appoints certain intermediaries, the editors, who watch over its interests, and who from now on shall be referred to as ‘paratranslators’. Paratranslation has an interdisciplinary role inasmuch as it operates with dif ferent semiotic codes and predicts regular translational behaviour. For example, in a cultural item in the form of a book, paratranslators decide what kind of cover it will have (the design and editorial iconography), whether or not it is necessary to change the title, what sort of audience it will be aimed at, and if  the need arises, which parts will and will not be translated. Once the editorial translation project – that is, the editorial 1

Editor’s Note. When looking at the text as part of a network of processes within social systems and diverse forms of cultural production, texts have been studied as products derived from complex processes of negotiations (see Vermeer 1989). In particular, the complexity of including target, or translated, texts into the target culture has been considered by discussing the ways in which texts move, enter, or join new cultural and social systems (see Even-Zohar 1990). It may be of interest for readers to compare Garrido Vilariño’s notion with these theoretical stands.

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paratranslation project, in which the item to be received is already ideologically shaped and delimited – has been designed, the mediator-translator will be charged with the task of  transferring the artistic text itself. Currently, in addition to the various loyalties and the recognized (in)visibilities, translators are generally held responsible for all the good and bad decisions (and rather more often the latter) concerning the success or failure of a text, because it is their names that appear on the covers, or at least on the title pages. As we have seen, their ideological inf luence is much less than that usually attributed to them, but even here they can generate their own paratranslation in their translator’s notes. We listen to their voices and are able to evaluate their position of power in the work that they translate.

The origins of  the theory of paratranslation My study is based on the translation of Holocaust literature and on Primo Levi, the author who is most representative of  this genre, because they constitute a multilingual and even multinational phenomenon, but above all because this justifies my heuristic behaviour. Through the assessment and the comparison of a single text in dif ferent languages, there are truths to be discovered. The lines of investigation that we have had to open have been presented to us as being in need of analysis, but they have not arisen spontaneously. The Holocaust as an event led us to analyse history and its debates; Se questo è un uomo led us to Adorno, and from him to Walter Benjamin, and with Benjamin we discovered the necessity of generating a theoretical framework presided over by a Philosophy of  Translation. To include the term ‘philosophy’ in the scope of my study is fundamental when working with literature. From the premises of paratranslation illustrated above, the Holocaust can be better understood with a Philosophy of Holocaust Translation as it relates to specific ideologies surrounding its representations in

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literature and the circulation of the literature in translation. I also provide a set of parameters within a world view and it implies a policy, an ethic, and even a moral behaviour in the act and process of  translation. This idea of  translation rules out any possibility of  translational phenomena existing within the dependence or subsidiarity of a sealed compartment. Our idea of a Philosophy of  Translation has arisen from the seed planted by Benjamin (1980) and his works on Critical Theory that could lead to a ‘Critical Theory of  Translation’ and has responded to the necessity of connecting to reality. Just as relevant today as it was when first published in 1923, the theory introduced in ‘The Task of the Translator’ is still of a global and allencompassing nature as it continues to introduce, in the name of progress, a discourse that perpetuates the same type of power. Modernity or postmodernity find their strength in the globalization of their ideas, yet some classical power structures are still followed and perpetuated. Benjamin reads, interprets and translates a painting by Paul Klee that represents the angel of history to establish the ninth thesis of the Philosophy of History (see Löwy 2001) and to criticize an idea of progress founded on the ruins of civilization itself: by way of a linguistic code he describes a pictorial code. From the moment we discover this behaviour, we consider it to be the initiator of an intersemiotic translation and we follow its epistemological trail when we read, interpret, and translate texts and paratexts. This distinction between analysis spaces is established following the description proposed by Genette in Seuils (1987). According to Genette, paratexts are the elements that accompany any written work, such as the title, subtitle, intertitles, prologue, epilogue, notes, dedications, adverts, glossaries, graphical aspects – in short, all those verbal and non-verbal messages that are situated around the text and even outside it, such as interviews with writers, criticism, private correspondence, and so on. They are distinguished according to where in the work they are situated. On one side is the peritext, which includes those elements that appear physically in the work, alongside the text: the title, subtitle, intertitles, the prologue and epilogue, the notes, dedications, adverts and glossaries, and all the non-verbal graphic aspects such as, for example, the choice of  font. This is therefore an essentially spatial and material category. On the other side is the epitext, which includes those messages that are situated around the

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text, but at a certain distance, so that they are usually found outside the work, such as adverts in magazines or newspapers, interviews with the author, contemporaneous criticism, private correspondence, and lectures (ibid.: 7–10). Paratranslation brings an innovative perspective from which we are able to ref lect on translation and ideology. The novelty of this perspective lies in noticing that the ideology appearing in the texts is dif ferent from the ideology of the paratexts, perhaps because the translators do not intervene in these, or perhaps because even if  they do, the paratextual space has an exclusive ideological function. This leads us to delimit two spaces for the analysis: on one hand, there is translation activity for everything concerning verbal aspects; and on the other hand, there is paratranslation activity for everything af fecting a specific interpretation of non-verbal (iconic, orthographical, or typographical) aspects and of  those which arise from the inextricable combination of  these two: the verbo-iconic texts, such as the titles, the order of appearance of  translators’ names and editors’ names, and so on. Ideology runs through all these categories, but as the agents that intervene in each one are dif ferent – although on occasions they are imperceptible – the result of ideological manipulation dif fers as their interests fail to coincide. If the paratextual information is relevant for any type of literature, in the case of Primo Levi it is essential. Furthermore, Primo Levi’s literature becomes a paradigmatic case to illustrate the ways in which paratexts reveal and introduce into target cultures those that will later become canonical works. Paratexts constitute a privileged place within the pragmatic dimensions that inf luence the reading of a work. Prologues, dedications, or titles are all elements that, in the translation of literary texts, appear as the primary depositories of  the work’s ideology. Most paratexts are verbal, and even if  they do not consist of  text, they are still part of  the text. However, there are also non-verbal paratexts, such as graphics, designs, and illustrations that, at times, support the verbal forms, guiding the reading of  them and, at other times, are the primary elements that serve to determine the interpretations of  the TT.

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The importance of paratextual analysis in the work of  Primo Levi is motivated by the relevance of  these elements in the composition of a discourse on the Holocaust, from its reception in its source culture and, above all, in the cultures that will be receiving the translation (see Figure 1). The image of  the concentration camp, or even a photograph of  the writer in a striped uniform, communicate visually everything associated with the Holocaust, placing the reader within a series of situational coordinates. Barbed wire fences situate the readers spatially and temporally, of fering them some clues with which to interpret the text, which in another type of  literature would be less important (see Figure 2). This superficial description of a paratext of the Holocaust literature genre forms part of the sales strategy applied to a product, of fering veracity and authenticity and pointing out that this is not fiction but an authentic document. The verbal paratext, the iconic paratext, and the verbo-iconic paratext can be distinguished. The three constitute the object of paratranslation, whether they are translated literally or changed in some way (something that happens on most occasions). From these three paratexts, I focus on the paratranslation of the titles of Primo Levi’s works, and in particular of  Se questo è un uomo. The title, as the primary identifying mark of  the text, inf luences and guides the interpretation of it, expresses the content and the subject of the work, indicates the genre, and emphasizes the intentions of  the author. When the title does not reconcile all the above-mentioned elements, we can resort to the iconic paratext, that is, to the images in which the referent is clearly signalled. However, it may be that a title is a verbo-iconic unit consisting of a verbal statement and an iconic statement that are complementary. In such case, we are in the presence of a verboiconic paratext.

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Figure 1  Original cover of  Se questo è un uomo (Turin: Einaudi, 1947). Source: De Silva, Biblioteca Leone Ginzburg, 1947. Reprinted with permission.

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As I have said, translators are not responsible for the translation of  the peritext; neither are they responsible for the paratranslation. This is the role of other mediators, usually editors, commissioners or patrons of  the arts. In fact, in everything regarding the presentation and orthographic arrangement of the text, the inf luence of the translators will be negligible. Here other mediators come into the equation, such as the proof-reader, the reviser, and the editor (these can be dif ferent people or a single person who performs all three functions), who will follow certain lines of presentation and editing that conform to the norms set by the publishing house. Translators carry out the translation of the text and are responsible for any peritext, such as the translator’s notes. These two activities are exclusive to the translator(s) whose name(s) appears on the title page as translator. Little role might the translator play in the translation of such peritexts as titles and subtitles, the prologue, the notes, the quotations – usually glowing phrases extracted from reviews by respected patrons of the arts –, or in the selection of such peritexts as the cover designs and dust-jackets. The translators’ degree of responsibility for all of  these is variable. The parameters to assess changes to the ST or source paratexts need to be considered in order to decide whose ideology is visible. If a change has been made to one of  the elements, the person acting is the paratranslator, who decides the ways in which the work will enter into the target culture and who will act in accordance with that system’s existing discourse, ideology, and economic forces.

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Figure 2  Original cover of  Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity (New York: Collier, 1961).

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The book cover functions as a verbo-iconic depositary for ideology. The iconic and visual dimensions of the text become essential parameters that condition not only of  the form of  the translated texts but also, and more importantly, of  their reading and rewriting. When the publishers choose the titles and cover images they are following a communicative strategy that is full of ideology. This choice determines a reception, an ideological reading, and also delimits the type of readership. It may also sensationalizes the work through the use of images such as barbed wire fences, the Star of  David, the labour camp uniform, thus of fering, via generic ascription, indications as to the content and plot of  the book. Nowadays, these images are symbols and metaphors for Auschwitz and we believe that they are typically used when an author wants to reach the public already interested in this topic, thus possibly missing the possibility of attracting a new audience. The choice of another kind of cover, more abstract or minimalist, such as the original peritext of  the Italian version shown in Figure 1 above may suggest a dif ferent genre, one that seeks to merge with general literature (e.g. on the human response to torture, war, and death which are also topics covered in Levi’s novel). The rewriting or manipulation phase is where we find translation with an ideological charge, fused with the receptor society, so that the dominant ideology is in no way altered. Translation in this case helps paratranslators to reinforce the cohesion of the target culture by preventing the entry of any new ideological element that might alter or shock that culture and society. Therefore, it is in the service of  the dominant ideology. It allows only the penetration of values, thought systems, or opinions that, while thought to be innovations, are already present within that society. The mediator has minimal ability to inf luence the target culture or initiate changes, when paratranslators retain the power in rendering the fundamental peritexts that frame the literature. In the cases that I am analysing from the work of Primo Levi, I can state that some alterations give rise to total modifications. These are due to the manifest intention to introduce an ideological charge (which, on many occasions, the source text may not possess) in order to accommodate it into or improve on the target system, taking into account its existing structures. These changes are not brought about by the direct action of mediators, the actual people who sign their name

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under the translation, but rather by the other mediators of the translation, the ‘corporate body’, who act in the name of the receptor society and who are the stakeholders of  the dominant ideologies, of market forces and of political or pressure groups. As we contemplate translation from a global perspective, we pay attention to what is seemingly placed in the margins or the apparent periphery of the target text, but which, on occasions, is of as much importance as the interlinguistic translation of  the text itself in ideological terms. If we read and interpret these paratextual margins we will be producing a paratranslation. If translation is the reading, interpreting, and transfer of texts, then paratranslation is the reading, interpreting, and transfer of paratexts. The concept of paratranslation, and the theory of paratranslation, which is being developed and which this contribution begins to locate within the field, establishes analysis spaces. The theoretical groundwork intends to devise in the long term actuation hierarchies for the mediators of literature and might ideally give some indications on more general notions of translation behaviour that could be applicable and visible in other artistic media. It is also in a constant state of development, correction and refinement at the heart of  the ‘Translation and Paratranslation’ research group in the Department of Translation and Linguistics at the University of  Vigo2 which has promoted doctorate courses since 2004. Initially, the group research focused on ways to identify and describe the types of ideology present in texts and other media and thus to absolve translators of all responsibility for the manipulations that have traditionally been attributed to them. In subsequent studies, its members (Fernández Ocampo 2005; Garrido Villariño 2005; Nouss 2005; Yuste 2005) have laid foundations so as to consider (para)translation as the point of departure to study the contemporary age, as it describes and directs human identity/otherness.

2

Initiated by Alexis Nouss, the activities of  the Paratranslation Research Group are reported in the website .

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Primo Levi and translation As well as being the originator of a genre known as ‘Witness Literature’, Levi translated Kafka’s The Trial from the German into Italian, and collaborated very closely with the English and German translators of Se questo è un uomo. On both occasions he was active in the control of the translated text, but perhaps did not attach too much importance to his control of the paratext. It is not surprising that ultimately the decisions regarding paratranslational elements, such as titles, were not his to make, because when he tried to publish his first work he found himself obliged to bow to the ‘suggestions’ of his editors and to change the title that he had originally in mind. His translation practice includes a ref lection on its role in society, and in that sense he is somewhat apart from those translators who reject translation theory, claiming that it does not aid them in the development of  their work. Levi thinks of translation as an act for peace, a means of knowing the Other, and an antidote to the curse of  Babel. In 1985 in an article entitled ‘Tradurre ed essere tradotti’ (‘On Translating and Being Translated’ 1997a: 730–4), he evokes the book of Genesis, in which those who dared to defy God by building the Tower are punished by being made to speak dif ferent languages. Levi (ibid.) claims that the role of  the translator is to mediate and construct bridges so as ‘to limit the damages of  the curse of  Babel’.3 This ref lection stems from his experiences in the extermination camp. The confusion of languages being used in the camp, and the lack of knowledge of  them, was the first step, if not the most obvious one, towards annihilation or at least towards dehumanization. In the chapter of Se questo è un uomo entitled ‘Iniziazione’ (‘Initiation’), the multiplicity of  languages and their combinations makes the camp ‘an eternal Babel’ (Levi 1989: 33), but the act of  translating reconciles it with the human being in ‘Il canto di Ulisse’ (‘The Canto of Ulysses’) where Jean, 3

Editor’s Note. In this chapter, the editor has translated the quotations from Levi’s Opere from Italian into English.

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nicknamed ‘le Pikolo’, chooses the prisoner Levi to go with him to fetch the pan of soup and on the way asks him for some Italian lessons. To this end, Levi starts to recite in Italian and then translates into French the passage from Dante’s ‘Inferno’ in which Ulysses recounts his final voyage (Inf. XXVI). The ef fort of remembering the passage from the Divine Comedy is the source of many emotions and revelations. Firstly, it helps him to recover his humanity and to communicate as such with others. Furthermore, the canto reveals to him the power of poetry as an element of  life or giver of  life allowing him to forget for a few moments where and who he is. Above all, Levi (1989: 102) remembers the tercet in which Ulysses addresses his ‘little speech’ on the human need for knowledge. Translating becomes an act of resistance for Levi and Pikolo, a call not to let themselves be invaded by the Nazi brutality but to continue searching knowledge, each according to their ‘seed’. Ulysses defies God and steers his ship beyond the Pillars of  Hercules out of curiosity and desire for knowledge. In the motivation of  Homer’s hero Levi sees his own destiny and so he conveys it to Jean defying the order established by the Nazis. In that moment, the act of  translating helps him to survive a traumatic experience. On returning to civilian life he sees translation as a task akin to the struggle for life and the translator as the authentic hermeneutist: Alongside being a civic act and an act of peace, translating can give unique rewards: translators are the only people who really read a text, in depth, in all its nuances, weighing up and appraising every word and image, or perhaps discovering its vacuities and falsehoods. When they can find, or even invent, the solution to an issue, they feel free sicut deus without bearing the burden of responsibility that falls on the author’s shoulders. In this sense, the joys and toils of  translating are to those of creative writing as the joys and toils of grandparents are to those of parents.

Primo Levi (1997a: 731) shows a modern conception of  translation when he says that equivalences between vocabularies are uniquely imprecise, and he even of fers examples of  how dif ferent languages shape meaning under linguistic forms that appear similar but are not exactly the same, showing that translating implies a more transcendental act:

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The equivalence that many assure exists between the source language and its corresponding target language is hardly ever true. The fields of  their meanings can partially overlap but it is rare for them to coincide, even between languages that are structurally close and historically related.

On this subject, Primo Levi is the expert and he demands that the translators of  his works demonstrate in their creation the same pulchritude and clarity that he imposes on himself. This explains why his relationship with his translators is not without its occasional tensions and much discussion. The emotions that he (1997: 734) experiences on being translated are revealed in the final paragraph of  his article ‘Tradurre ed essere tradotti’, where, with a fine sense of irony and humour, he explains: Finding one of  his own pages translated into a language that he knows, the author feels, from time to time or at the same time, f lattered, betrayed, ennobled, x-rayed, castrated, f lattened, raped, embellished, killed. It is rare that he would remain indif ferent to the known or unknown translator who shoved his nose and fingers inside the author’s bowels. To the translator the author would happily send, from time to time or at the same time, his heart properly packaged, a check, a wreath of  laurel, or hit men.

Paratranslation into English The following tables enable us to visualize the chronology of  translations into English in which the English editions of Se questo è un uomo, La tregua, and Lilít e altri racconti are organized together. The title and year of publication in Italian appear as the heading of  the table. This information is needed because, in Italy as in the United States, the two usually appeared co-edited until the year 2000; in particular, in the USA there was even a case of  three versions being published at once.

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Year

Title

Publisher

Translator

1959

If  This is a Man

New York: Orion Press

1961a

Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity. Without the poem ‘Voi che vivete…’ Without ‘Per mia fortuna…’

London: Collier Books/ Collier-MacMillan.

1961b (printing date 1987)

Survival in Auschwitz. The Nazi Assault on Humanity. With translation of  the poem ‘Voi che vivete…’ Author’s Preface: translation of  ‘Per mia fortuna…’

New York: Collier Books/Macmillan Publishing Company.

1966

If  This is a Man.

London: Bodley Head

1979

If  This is a Man and The Truce (with an introduction by Paul Bailey).

Great Britain: Penguin Books, (380 pp.)

Stuart Woolf

1986

Survival in Auschwitz and The Reawakening: two memoirs.

New York: Summit Books, (p. 397)

Stuart Woolf

1986

If  This is a Man: Remembering Auschwitz. A 3-In-1 Volume by Primo Levi: Survival in Auschwitz, The Reawakening, Moments of  Reprieve. Includes: Author’s Preface: ‘Per mia fortuna…’ Poem: ‘Voi che vivete…’ ‘Afterword: The Author’s Answers to His Reader’s Questions’

New York: Summit Books.

Stuart Woolf Trans. Ruth Feldman

1987 (2001 issue)

If  This is a Man. The Truce. ‘Introduction’ by Paul Bailey; ‘Afterword: The Author’s Answers to His Readers’ Questions’

London: Abacus

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2000 (repr. 2003)

If  This is a Man. ‘Introduction’ by Frederic Raphael, engravings by Jane Joseph, ‘Afterword: The Author’s Answers to His Readers’ Questions’

London: The Folio Society

1993

Survival in Auschwitz: the Nazi Assault on Humanity including ‘A conversation with Primo Levi by Philip Roth’

New York: Collier Books; Toronto: Maxwell Macmillan Canada, (p. 187)

1996

Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity. Includes ‘A conversation with Primo Levi by Philip Roth’ pp. 175–87

New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Tokyo, Philip Singapore: A Touchstone Roth Book/Simon & Schuster

Philip Roth

Table 1  Paratranslation data: Se questo è un uomo (Turin: Einuadi, 1958) Year

Title

Publisher

Translator

1965

The Truce: A Survivor’s Journey from Auschwitz

London Bodley Head

Stuart Woolf

1965

The Reawakening: A Liberated Prisoner’s Long March through East Europe

Boston: Little Brown

Stuart Woolf

The Reawakening 1995b

2002

‘Afterword: Primo Levi Answers His Reader’s Questions’

New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Tokyo Singapore: A Touchstone Book/Simon and Schuster

The Truce. A Survivor’s Journey Home from Auschwitz. ‘Introduction’ by London: The Folio Society. David Mendel and engravings by Jane Joseph. Table 2  Paratranslation data: La tregua (Turin: Einaudi, 1963)

Stuart Woolf Ruth Feldman pp. 209–31 Stuart Woolf

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Year

Title

Publisher

Translator

1995a

Moments of  Reprieve. A Memoir of  Auschwitz. ‘Preface’ by the author, vii–ix

New York: Penguin Books

Ruth Feldman

Table 3  Paratranslation data: Lilít e altri racconti (Turin: Einaudi, 1981)

Looking at the peritextual information that we possess, we find out that the first edition of the only English translation still currently in use is dated 1959, was published in New York by Orion Press with the title If  This is a Man, and it does not include the translation of  the text that opens the original Italian edition, ‘Per mia fortuna…’ [By my good fortune]. In most of the original publications and translations into other languages, this text is included as a prologue or preface. Neither does the Levi’s poem (1959) beginning ‘Voi che vivete…’ [‘You who live…’] appear. Another edition was published in London in 1961 by Collier Books, entitled Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity, without the text ‘Per mia fortuna…’ or the poem ‘Voi che vivete…’ (Levi 1961a). It must be emphasized that on the title page of  If  This Is a Man, only New York appears as the place of publication, whereas Survival in Auschwitz cites London as its place of publication. This detail represents an important fact, as, in successive publications over the coming years, publishers were to privilege the title Survival in Auschwitz for the American market (Levi 1961b) and If  This is a Man for the British market (Levi 1987). It is surprising that such a significant change of title in this fundamental work was the object of so little attention and that the majority of scholars did not assess the ideological implications of the use of one over the other. In the last forty five years of successive English reprints there has not been the slightest change or correction to the text. Any changes made apply only to the paratext. What happens is that editorial manipulation converts into text things that should have been paratext, and vice versa. To clarify this editorial leap it should be born in mind that Stuart Woolf  translated Se questo è un uomo into English in close collaboration with Primo Levi. To this end, the translator went to the author’s house twice a week for a year and they discussed every sentence and every word (1997: 1590–1).

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They worked from the 1958 second expanded edition in Italian; together with the seventeen chapters that make up the book, they translated the poem whose first line is ‘Voi che vivete…’, which is also entitled Se questo è un uomo, and a page which in the Italian edition appears as a prologue, without being called such, and which begins with the phrase ‘Per mia fortuna…’ [‘By my good fortune…’]. However, when in 1987 Collier Books published a new edition, it included the two peritexts. The prologue appeared with the epigraph ‘Author’s Preface’, as well as a page with the title Survival in Auschwitz, and on the next page was the poem without any heading. This arrangement was identical to the Summit Books edition of the trilogy (Levi 1986), and to the subsequent American and British editions (Levi 1987, 1996). There was one exception: those editions that were entitled If This is a Man had the phrase as the title of  the poem while the others did not. Rather than confuse the issue, I should emphasize the fact that neither the author nor the translator controlled the paratranslation; other agents intervened in its presentation to the public, and from this we can draw several conclusions. The change in title from If  This is a Man to Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity is an editorial decision which is meant to explicitly convey the plot of  the book. The title and subtitle situate the plot spatially and temporally, with the intention of showing to the book’s potential buyers that they are going to read a story set in the concentration camps. Other prominent information stresses the fact of survival, the positive side; whoever is telling this story has succeeded in overcoming adversity and inhumanity. It resembles an imitation of a survival manual. Another observation refers to the manipulation of the paratext. In the initial American editions, the poem Se questo è un uomo does not appear. This is because its inclusion could be interpreted as sacrilegious, especially for the many potential Jewish buyers, as it is constructed in the manner of  the Hebrew prayer ‘Shemà Israel’ [‘Hear, O Israel’], which Levi presents like a warning or admonition to Man. However, as it does not imitate the content but the form it could even be interpreted as homage to the Jewish faith. Due to its tone, the prologue beginning ‘By my good fortune, I was deported to Auschwitz only in 1944’ is not included. Levi’s sentence, implying that he had been lucky to have been deported to Auschwitz when

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the Nazi killing machine was at its peak, reads ambiguously. However, the carefully chosen wording is the author’s way of explaining the fact that he is still alive. To write ‘Auschwitz’ and ‘lucky’ in the same sentence could be interpreted as a taboo or even a blasphemy; in the United States this striking literary device was not admissible. Furthermore, Levi does not clearly explain in the rest of  the preface why he says that he was lucky to be deported to Auschwitz in 1944. The rewriting of titles depending on their intended readership continued with other works that had the Holocaust as their subject. The second book, La tregua (1961), was published in Britain as The Truce: A Survivor’s Journey Home from Auschwitz (Levi 1965; published by The Bodley Head) and in the United States in the same year as The Reawakening: A Liberated Prisoner’s Long March through East Europe by a Boston publisher called Little Brown. In this case there was just one text and one translator, Stuart Woolf. It could be argued, both textually and thematically, that the alteration of  the title for the American market is not of  the same degree as the case of  Se questo è un uomo because the final chapter in the Italian original is entitled ‘Il risveglio’ [‘The Reawakening’] (Levi 1989: 322–5). La tregua is the description of  the time that passed between Auschwitz and Levi’s return home. It is the truce after the horror that allows him to assimilate that horror. With the anthology of short stories Lilít e altri racconti (1981), we witness a change of  title that was to be the same text for all English-language markets, Moments of  Reprieve (1986). On the cover and dust-jacket (but not on the title page) it bore the subtitle: A Memoir of  Auschwitz (Levi 1995a) through which the theme of the book and therefore its genre were made explicit. Another peritextual manipulation whose agent is not clear is the inclusion, as an opening to this collection of short-stories, of the poem ‘The Survivor’, from the anthology Collected Poems (1988), which did not originally appear in other translations. This is perhaps explained by the fact that Ruth Feldman is the translator from the Italian of  both works.

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The creation and paratranslation of a peritext: ‘Appendix to Se questo è un uomo’ In 1976, Primo Levi published an appendix to the school edition of  Se questo è un uomo, entitled ‘Appendice a Se questo è un uomo’ (Levi 1989: 327). He wanted to write it because of  the need that he recognized in his readers, especially the younger ones, to know more about the causes of the extermination, about the protection of  the individual against dictatorial regimes, about the possibility that history might repeat itself, et cetera. The appendix, in the form of a questionnaire, acknowledges the anxieties and ref lections that most often arose when he gave talks in secondary schools and was asked about the books he had written on what he had witnessed. What was conceived as a an authorial peritext with an educational intent, destined for a certain sector of  his readership, became in subsequent Italian editions a part of  the text to be read as another chapter of  the book. As further evidence of this, it was included in almost all of the translations that were published later. The English translation of the appendix follows a particular structure that merits detailed explanation, as it is an example of editorial manipulation in the paratext and of  total manipulation in the text, ideologically speaking. This approach is an emblematic example of paratranslation that was obviously not included in the first English-language editions, as it had not yet been written (the original was written in 1976). This delay is explained by the fact that in the early 1980s, Primo Levi had proved an emphatic success in the United States and publishers went in search of  further original works to of fer to a market thirsty for more of  this type of  literature. The appendix was published for the first time under the title ‘Afterword: The Author’s Answers to His Reader’s Questions’. It is noticeable that it was not linked to Se questo è un uomo as this gave the text an independent existence, which allowed American companies to publish it either as an addition to Survival in Auschwitz, or to any other text, as for example when they included it with The Reawakening (the translation of La tregua;

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Levi 1995b: 209–331). Also, by altering the title, without indicating that it was originally conceived for a school edition, they were inf luencing the reading of  the English translation. Returning to that first publication of  If  This is a Man: Remembering Auschwitz in 1986, it is interesting to note that it appeared in a volume of  the three works that Primo Levi had so far written on the Holocaust. In The 3-In-1 Volume By Primo Levi: Survival in Auschwitz, The Reawakening, Moments of Reprieve, ‘Afterword…’ is located between these two last titles (Levi 1986: 280–301), but it forms part of  The Reawakening, as indicated by the heading on every right-hand page. In the British editions too, the appendix is located after the translation of La Tregua, and we must remember that at this point in time it is not called The Reawakening, but The Truce. However, in more recent editions it accompanies If  This Is a Man. Although its position within the book changes, the text always remains the same, as does its translator, Ruth Feldman. There are dif ferences between the Italian original and its English translation, as the latter is an adaptation and an abridged version of  Levi’s original. For example, in question number seven, the English translation summarizes everything concerning the history of anti-Semitism in Europe and focuses on developing the dialectics of comprehension-justification of Nazi extermination (Levi 1995b: 226–9). The fact that this is one of  the most summarized questions, and is focused on an opinion, directs its reading in ideological terms. At first, there is suspicion that a biased translator might have manipulated the text, because she might believe that the American public could only be interested in that part of  the author’s line of argument. However, if we look at the peritextual information on the title page, it tells us that the book is ‘Published by arrangement with Primo Levi’ (Levi 1986). The issue here seems that the author had given his consent to this manipulation or re-working in the translation, or had simply given his approval to the publication of  the ‘Afterword’. If the ideological pressure had reached such an unbearable level as to become too visible, a possible strategy could have been to omit the question and its answer. The translator’s manipulation, though, is more subtle. Of course, ideological manipulation, by way of textual reorganization, achieves its most ef fective results with changes of  the magnitude of  those visible in the compared Italian and English versions below:

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Sono piú pericolosi gli uomini comuni, i funzionari pronti a credere e ad obbedire senza discutere, come Eichmann, come Höss, comandante di Auschwitz, come Stangl comandante di Treblinka, come i militari francesi di vent’anni dopo, massacratori in Algeria, come i militari americani di trent’anni dopo, massacratori in Vietnam. (Levi 1989: 348) More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions, like Eichmann; like Hoss, the commandant of Auschwitz; like Stangl, commandant of Treblinka; like the French military of twenty years later, slaughterers in Algeria; like the Khmer Rouge of  the late seventies, slaughterers in Cambodia. (Tr. by R. Feldman, in Levi 1995a: 210)

This paragraph is found in the final part of the answer to question number seven, in which Levi calls on the reader to meditate and to remember that it is everyone’s duty to ref lect on what happened at Auschwitz and to remember that Hitler and Mussolini were followed by millions of people who were seduced not by what they said, but by how they said it. It must be remembered, says Levi, that the followers of  these dictators did not hesitate in executing the most inhuman orders, and that they were not mad, nor were they monsters (with a few exceptions). They were normal men, ‘functionaries’, as the American translator calls them, who were prepared to obey without asking questions. With this message, Levi conveys that what happened once could repeat itself and was at the time repeating itself in Vietnam, and will continue to repeat itself. Obviously, this goes against an ideology of the Holocaust that maintains the exceptional nature of that event, relates it to a single moment in history and that does not allow any kind of revision. In this case, it does not allow that the obedience of American soldiers in Vietnam can be compared with that of  Nazi leaders.

Concluding remarks Why are these visible examples of manipulations not omitted from the English translation? The answer is: because what we can see here is a central synthesis of Levi’s thoughts on the Holocaust. Given that in question

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seven other arguments are omitted, something similar could have been done in this final part, but its thematic centrality prevents this and it was necessary to seek other referents that would not implicate America. Who is responsible for this paratranslation? The finger of blame should be pointed in the first instance at Ruth Feldman, whose name is on the translation. We could accuse her of  being unethical and unprofessional and of  being unfaithful to the original, amongst other things. However, as has been argued in this chapter, there are many other intermediaries who may have intervened in the text and whose names appear nowhere. The editors may have intervened and decided that this was not going to be admissible for the American public and suggested a substitution. Changing ‘American soldiers’ to ‘Khmer Rouge’ is perfectly admissible from a historical point of view, and Levi himself called the events in Cambodia genocide, but not in 1976, because what he was lamenting then was that, at the very moment of writing, fresh horrors were being committed before the eyes of  the world without anyone reacting, just as had happened at Auschwitz. Although applied to a relatively small sample – i.e. Levi’s novels on his experience of  the Holocaust – the theory of paratranslation reveals some aspects of its potential when dealing with several publishing issues. The most important issue relates to the uncontrollable and so far little known or little considered workings of  the paratranslators. Furthermore, ref lections on the paratextual apparatus uncover issues of ideology that the theory of paratranslation can discuss following an alternative framework of analysis that may be considered as complementing current approaches to discuss translation ideology (see Hatim and Mason 1990, Simeoni 1998, Baker 2006, Cunico and Munday 2007). The impact on translations of  the ideologies of paratranslators seems to have been underestimated. This article intends to contribute to stimulating further research by resorting to analytical tools devised within the theory of paratranslation, which focus on translational and paratranslational phenomena at the same time. Translated from Spanish by Rachel Stephenson

ESTHER MORILLAS

5 When dialect is a protagonist too: Erri de Luca’s Montedidio in Spanish

Montedidio is the name of a district of Naples that Erri de Luca, in his novel named after the area, presents to us through the eyes of the protagonist, a Neapolitan boy who is on the verge of passing from childhood to maturity. On a roll of paper that Don Liborio the printer has given him, the boy writes down his everyday experiences, using the Italian he has learned at school and in the books that he reads. We hear, through his writing, the voices of  Mast’Errico, the teacher in the carpentry workshop where the protagonist works; of Rafaniello, a Jew who speaks Yiddish and who works in the same place, but as a shoemaker; of Maria, the boy’s neighbour, and later his girlfriend; of  the boy’s parents; and of other people in the district. The boy writes in Italian, despite being a dialect speaker, because he finds this language softer, ‘calmer’ than the Neapolitan dialect. From the beginning of  the novel, the characterization of  Italian compared with Neapolitan is clear: Italian is a silent language learnt in books, whereas Neapolitan is the noisy tongue that the residents of  Montedidio use to communicate between themselves; Italian is written and Neapolitan is spoken. Neapolitan is defined as f luid, lively and alert like the protagonist’s good eye; his other eye, the slower one that can barely see, is the Italian eye (p. 14). Structured in short chapters, rarely more than a page in length, both the Italian edition (2001) to which we are referring and the Spanish translation by César Palma have the same page layout, so that at the end of each quotation, it is suf ficient to cite in brackets only the page number of  the original. The story is set during the years of internal emigration, when Naples had until recently been occupied by American troops, the years preceding the full Italianization of the peninsula. Language and dialect are placed in

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opposition at first to exemplify two dif ferent worlds: Italian is spoken by educated people and Neapolitan by the ordinary people. There is a scene near the end of the book (p. 133) in which the protagonist is moved when he sees his father reading syllable by syllable from the newspaper. When his father makes an ef fort to speak Italian, it sounds like ‘una lingua della domenica’ [a Sunday language; p. 85], and this is the other dimension of the comparisons between dialect and language: past and future, father and son, illiteracy and study. Education is seen as progress, leading to an improved quality of  life and the possibility of people bettering themselves. Grassi at al. (2004: 244–5) point out that from Unification onwards, the Italian education system should have of fered a common language to Italians, but it was not able to achieve this because of the disastrous situation in schools. Badly-prepared teachers barely understood the language they were supposed to be teaching, and absenteeism in some areas of the south approached one hundred per cent. Furthermore, the Catholic Church was opposed to educating ‘tutti codesti branchi di zotici contadinelli, di garzonetti di bottega, di monelli da strada’ [all these herds of uncouth young peasants, workshop ‘assistants’, stray good-for-nothing urchins – cited in Lanuzza 1994: 66], as revealed in Civiltà cattolica, a magazine printed in Naples by the Jesuits. All this brought about two ‘vices’ that endured for a long time (almost until today, we might say): an Italian language that was based on purist and literary models, and a strong ‘dialectophobia’ in Italian schools which, the authors summarize, could be considered symbolically annulled in 1962 with the establishment of  free, single-medium, and compulsory education. De Mauro (2005: 22–3), for his part, in an in-depth interview with Francesco Erbani that is very useful in understanding Italian cultural evolution, emphasizes that in Italy (according to data from 1999), barely fortytwo per cent of the adult population between the ages of twenty-five and sixty-four possess the equivalent of  GCSEs (the proportion in Spain and Portugal is even lower), that more than two million adults are completely illiterate, almost fifteen million semi-illiterate, and another fifteen million partially literate. This is the legacy of a system that did not function well for many years:

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I lived in Naples until the age of eighteen. Naples had the highest infant mortality rate in Europe and children were only provisional, they were only taken into consideration once they had managed to survive. They started to work very early, at the age of five or six, and then they were seen as people. Every time a child died, the church bells rang out in celebration because, they said, an angel had been called to heaven. I was a lucky child in my neighbourhood, Montedidio. I could go to school because my family was middle class. This made me a little uncomfortable. (González, 2004)

These are the words of Erri de Luca in an interview with González (2004) for the cultural supplement of  the Spanish newspaper El País. De Luca explains that Montedidio ‘arose from the memory of a roof terrace’, but that it is not exactly an autobiographical novel, because the main character is not him, although ‘the autobiographical material is all in the neighbourhood’. The protagonist of  the novel is also lucky in a way, because he has been able to study more than other children, and of course, more than his own father. L’istruzione obbligatoria va fino alla terza elementare, lui [il babbo] mi ha fatto studiare fino alla quinta perché ero malatino e poi così avevo un titolo di studio migliore. […] Fa lo scaricatore al porto, non ha studiato, solo adesso sta imparando a leggere e scrivere alle lezioni serali della cooperativa degli scaricatori. Parla il dialetto e ha soggezione dell’italiano e della scienza di quelli che hanno studiato. (7) Spanish target text

Back translation of  TT

La educación obligatoria llega hasta tercero de primaria, él [mi padre] me ha hecho estudiar hasta quinto por mi delicada salud y porque, además, así tendría un título mejor. […] Trabaja de estibador en el puerto, no tiene estudios, está aprendiendo a leer y a escribir en las clases vespertinas que dan en la cooperativa de los estibadores. Habla dialecto; el italiano, las ciencias y la gente que ha estudiado lo asustan.

Compulsory education continued until the age of eight, but he [my father] made me study another two years because of my delicate health and because then I would have a better qualification. […] He worked as a stevedore in the port, he didn’t go to school, he’s learning to read and write at evening classes that the stevedores’ cooperative organizes. He speaks dialect; Italian, science and people who have studied frighten him.

Now, I would like to examine the translation, as well as the content of this quotation, anticipating what will be repeated on further occasions in this article. I have already explained that the Italian of Montedidio is supposed

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to be the Italian of someone who has not mastered it perfectly, who is still studying it and who, above all, does not speak it. It is the Italian of books. We have seen that the Italian learnt in school is equally cumbersome because of  the af fectation of its literary works; it is not a spontaneous language. César Palma, the Spanish translator of Montedidio, raises the register of the original, probably taking these considerations into account. ‘Ero malatino’ [I was sickly] is translated as ‘mi delicada salud’ [my delicate health], an inappropriate phrase in my opinion, considering the character and education of  the thirteen-year-old protagonist. His father ‘fa lo scaricatore’ [works as a docker] in the port. This is translated by Palma as ‘estibador’ [stevedore], which could indeed be ‘scaricatore’, but in a more refined register, more similar to the Italian term ‘stivatore’. Then, ‘lezione serali’ [night school] is translated as ‘clases vespertinas’ [vespertine classes] instead of  the more commonly used ‘clases nocturnas’ [evening classes], and here, together with being a choice of register, it is perhaps a more pragmatic language issue. In the final sentence too there is a small error, because what frightens the boy’s father is not ‘Italian, science and people who have studied’ but ‘the Italian and the science of  the people who have studied’, but this type of slip is not one that is repeated throughout the translation. I believe that translating Montedidio presents the translator with a fundamental problem, beyond the mix of Italian and dialect, and this has its roots in the presence of constant colloquial and discursive elements. These elements manifest themselves not just at the lexical level but also at the morpho-syntactic level (the constant use of the present tense, and, for the past, of  the perfect or imperfect tenses; the absence in some places of punctuation), and in the adoption of tactical narratives: direct and indirect styles mingle depending on how Montedidio’s protagonist is relating the things that happen to him, and consequently the text alternates between Italian and Neapolitan. This mix is not mere whim on the part of de Luca: the characters speak in dialect because that is their mode of expression, and the Italian that appears is written by someone who speaks dialect as their mother tongue, which, as we have said, will leave its mark on the colloquial and informal registers.

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In Montedidio, just as in many instances in Italian literature, dialect signifies an attachment to the immediate reality and serves to illustrate the real language of  the characters and their milieu. The mixture of  Italian and dialect means that the translator has to follow a consistent strategy in his choices, but also has to consider whether it is always possible or relevant to reproduce the linguistic structure of  the original. This is a dif ferent challenge to that posed by the translation of  the sonnets of  Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli (see Duranti 2006; Morillas 2006, 2007), or the linguistic experimentation in an already paradigmatic case such as the works dedicated to Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano (see Caprara 2004). It also applies to Chapter 6 by Briguglia in this volume, in which the relationship between language and dialect(s) is completely dif ferent, starting with the contemporaneity of  the stories, and as such of  the linguistic relationships. In Montedidio it is more a case of paying attention to the connotations of code mixing. Allow me to reproduce a rather extensive fragment which will help us to understand these connotations: Sento strilli e voci napoletane, parlo napoletano, però scrivo italiano. ‘Stiamo in Italia, dice babbo, ma non siamo italiani. Per parlare la lingua la dobbiamo studiare, è come all’estero, come in America, ma senza andarsene. Molti di noi non lo parleranno mai l’italiano e moriranno in napoletano. È una lingua dif ficile, dice, ma tu l’imperarerai e sarai italiano. Io e mamma tua no, noi nun pu, nun po, nuie nun putimmo.’ Vuole dire ‘non possiamo’ ma non gli esce il verbo. Glielo dico, ‘non possiamo’, bravo, dice, bravo, tu conosci la lingua nazionale. Sì la conosco e di nascosto la scrivo pure e mi sento un po’ traditore del napoletano e allora in testa mi recito il suo verbo potere: i’ pozzo, tu puozze, isso po’, nuie putimmo, vuie putite, lloro ponno. Mamma non è d’accordo con babbo, lei dice: ‘nuie simmo napuletane e basta’. Ll’Italia mia, dice con due elle d’articolo: ll’Italia mia sta in America, addò ce vive meza famiglia mia. ‘A patria è chella ca te dà a magna’, dice e conclude. Babbo per scherzare le risponde: ‘Allora a patria mia si’ tu’. Lui non vuole dare torto a mamma, da noi non si alza la voce, non si litiga. Se lui è contrariato mette la mano sulla bocca e si copre mezza faccia. (20)

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ESTHER MORILLAS Oigo chillidos y voces napolitanas, hablo napolitano, pero escribo en italiano. ‘Estamos en Italia’, dice papá, ‘pero no somos italianos. Para hablar el idioma tenemos que estudiarlo; es como en el extranjero, como en América, pero sin irse allí. Muchos de nosotros nunca hablaremos italiano y moriremos en napolitano. Es un idioma difícil, dice, pero tú lo aprenderás y serás italiano. Yo y tu madre no, nosotros nun pu, nun po, nuie nun putimmo’. Quiere decir ‘no podemos’, pero no le sale el verbo. Se lo digo, ‘no podemos’, muy bien, dice, muy bien, tú conoces el idioma nacional. Sí, lo conozco, y a escondidas incluso lo escribo y me siento un poco traidor del napolitano y entonces digo para mí su verbo poder: i’ pozzo, tu puozze, isso po’, nuie putimmo, vuie putite, lloro ponno. Mamá no está de acuerdo con papá, ella dice: ‘Nuie simmo napulitane e basta’. Mi Italia, mi Italia está en América, donde vive la mitad de mi familia. ‘“A patria è chella ca te dà a magna”’, la patria es la que te da de comer, dice para concluir. Papá, con ánimo de bromear, le responde: ‘Allora ‘a patria mia si’ tu’, entonces, mi patria eres tú. No quiere contrariar a mamá, en nuestra casa no se levanta la voz, no nos peleamos. Si él se opone a algo, se lleva una mano a la boca y se tapa media cara.

I hear shouts and Neapolitan voices, I speak Neapolitan, but I write in Italian. ‘We are in Italy’, Papa says, ‘but we are not Italians. To speak the language we have to study it; it’s like abroad, like in America, but without going there. Many of us will never speak Italian and will die in Neapolitan. It’s a dif ficult language,’ he says, ‘but you’ll learn it and you’ll be Italian. Not me and your mother, noi nun pu, nun po, nuie nun putimmo. He meant ‘we can’t’, but he couldn’t think of  the verb. I say ‘we can’t’. ‘Very good,’ he says, ‘very good. You know the national language.’ Yes, I know it, and I even secretly write it, and I feel as though I am betraying Neapolitan and so I say the verb to myself: i’ pozzo, tu puozze, isso po’, nuie putimmo, vuie putite, lloro ponno. Mama does not agree with Papa. She says, ‘Nuie simmo napulitane e basta.’ My Italy, my Italy is in America where half my family lives. ‘“A patria è chella ca te dà a magna”’, your country is what feeds you, she finishes. Papa replies, jokingly, ‘allora ‘a patria mia si’ tu’, so you are my country. He doesn’t want to annoy Mama, in my house we don’t raise our voices, we don’t fight. If  he disagrees with something, he raises his hand to his mouth and covers half  his face.

This quotation, which is in fact an entire chapter, illustrates what we have just seen, and shows the dif ferent ways of introducing dialect, in de Luca’s case, and of translating it, in Palma’s. The protagonist’s father makes great ef forts to speak Italian but sometimes gets the words wrong, as they do not come to him spontaneously. Of course, de Luca could relate all this without resorting to dialect, but the expressive force, the representation of reality would not be so faithful or realistic, if we can define it as such,

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because the father of the protagonist speaks Neapolitan, just like the fisherman, the pizza chef, the washerwoman or Mast’Errico. Throughout the translated novel we come across instances of speech in Neapolitan accompanied by translations or paraphrases, as well as phrases which are not translated because, even though they are in dialect, they are understandable to the Spanish reader. I think that de Luca does not, for a moment, lose sight of the importance of the comprehensibility of the text, thinking above all of  his Italian readers, those for whom he is primarily writing. However, he is also thinking, I dare to suggest, of his readers elsewhere, since he knows his work will be translated into dif ferent languages (he has been very successful in France). This is, furthermore, a characteristic common to much contemporary narrative, since it means, above all else, abandoning the excesses of neorealism, in particular, of the Neorealist cinema. In Montedidio, the dialect is not a philological presence, or a taperecorder but a constant call to pay attention to linguistic realities. In a first rapprochement, we could say that César Palma makes the Spanish text behave like the Italian: when the dialect is explained, he explains it, and when it is not, he leaves it alone, but later we see that if  the speeches are extensive, he suppresses them, and if  he thinks that the Spanish reader will not be able to decode the dialect, he explains that too, as de Luca himself does on other occasions. Thus, in the previous example, we can see that he specifies the meaning in Spanish for two of the phrases in dialect, but not of  ‘Nuie simmo napulitane e basta’ [we are Neapolitan and that’s that], probably because he thinks, like de Luca, that it is not necessary to explain its meaning. As for the metalinguistic notes, that is to say the references to the present tense of  the verb ‘potere’ [to be able to], Palma does not translate them, because he thinks that here also it is possible to deduce from the context what is meant, and he suppresses the allusion to the pronunciation of  the double ‘l’, probably so as not to tire the reader. Quantity is very important. It can be very tedious to read a text that contains constant jumps of  language and dialect and therefore constant linguistic couplets, the number of which increases substantially in translation, although the jumps that pepper Montedidio serve as frequent reminders that we are in Naples at the end of  the 1950s, with Neapolitan people who have a particular relationship with Italian:

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ESTHER MORILLAS Per esca ci vuole la cozza, una volta me l’insegna, lui dice: ‘Te l’imparo’. (22) Hay que usar mejillón como cebo, ya me You have to use a mussel as bait, he shows enseñará, dice: ‘Te l’imparo’. me one day, he says: ‘I learn you.’

In this case, we are faced not with a mixture of Italian and dialect but with an error typical of someone who does not speak a language well. Here, an explanation would have been helpful, since a reader of Montedidio in Spanish might not know that ‘te l’imparo’ means ‘I learn you’ rather than the usual ‘I teach you’. This produces an ef fect akin to listening to the speech of a small child, although in this case the speaker is a grown man. Furthermore, we see that the narrator puts in the mouth of the protagonist’s father the present tense, ‘una volta me l’insegna’ [one day, he teaches me], since the future tense would be more dif ficult for him – adding emphasis on the lexical slip on the verb to learn wrongly replacing to teach. The translation presents this phrase in more standard Spanish, using the future tense: ‘ya me enseñará’ [he will teach me]. This is not the only instance that demonstrates the father’s dif ficulties with speaking Italian. Babbo faceva raccolta di bacche di eucalipto, un nome che non sa pronunciare, calìpesso dice. (72) Papá recogía bayas de eucalipto, un nom- Papa was collecting berries from the euca­ bre que no sabe pronunciar, calippeso, lyptus, a name he couldn’t pronounce. dice. Calippeso, he said. Siamo entrati, babbo, ti sei messo a leggere il cartello della spiegazione, che ‘la solfatara è una esaltazione vulcanica’. La parola buona era ‘esalazione’, ma non te l’ho aggiustata. (86) Pasamos, papá, tú entonces te pusiste a leer el cartel con las explicaciones, ‘la solfatara es una exaltación volcánica’. La palabra correcta era exhalación, pero yo no te corregí.

We went in, Papa, then you started to read the explanations on the notice, ‘solfatara is a volcanic exaltation’. The correct word was exhalation, but I didn’t correct you.

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In the first case, ‘calìpesso’ (the father’s mispronunciation of eucalyptus) becomes, with a shuf f ling of double consonants, ‘calippeso’ in the Spanish version. The second is an illustration of something that occurs throughout the translation: there is an alteration in the register of  the novel. ‘Parola buona’, literally ‘good word’ is translated as ‘palabra correcta’ [correct word], and ‘non te l’ho aggiustata’, literally ‘I haven’t fixed it for you’ becomes ‘yo no te corregí’ [I didn’t correct you]. Furthermore, ‘tú entonces’ [then you], which is not in the original, is introduced between two phrases as a connective, a nexus, and adds logical cohesion to the discourse. Perhaps this strategy aims to make even clearer the division between language and dialect, and, whether or not we agree with this strategy, it is at least coherently maintained throughout the translation.

Dialect as the language of sentiment Neapolitan is the language of celebration, of  family conversations and of  life in the streets, a language without protocol, a brazen language: Poi se ne va strillando per Montedidio quella sua gridata del mestiere che mi fa ridere: ‘Pièttene, pettenésse, pièttene larghe e stritte, ne’ perucchiù, accattáteve ’o pèttene’, che va bene in napoletano che sta comodo dentro un’insolenza, ma in italiano non vende neanche una forcina uno che va in giro per l’Italia a dire: ‘Pettini, pettinini, larghi e stretti, ne’ pidocchiosi compratevi il pettine’. La voce è forte e aggiunge in fondo alla gridata: ‘Don Rafaniello ’o scarparo è ’o masto ’e tutt’e maste e fa cammena’ pure li zuoppe’. (54) y en seguida se va tarareando por Montedidio esa canción de su oficio tan graciosa: ‘Pièttene, pettenésse, pièttene larghe e stiette, ne’ perucchiù, accattáteve ‘o pèttenesse’, que el napolitano acepta porque encaja bien las insolencias, mientras que dicha en italiano no valdría ni para vender una horquilla: ‘Peines,

and thereupon that funny song of his trade goes la-la-la-ing through Montedidio: ‘Pièttene, pettenésse, pièttene larghe e stiette, ne’ perucchiù, accattáteve ‘o pèttenesse’, which is fine in Neapolitan where the insolence fits in well, but when said in Italian it wouldn’t even have been able to sell a hairpin: ‘combs, little combs,

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ESTHER MORILLAS peinecitos, anchos o estrechos, piojosos, compraos un peine.’ La voz suena con fuerza y añade al final de la canción: ‘Don Rafaniello ‘o scarparo è ‘o masto ‘e tutt’e maste e fa cammena’ pure li zuoppe’, don Rafaniello el zapatero es un maestro de maestros y hace caminar hasta a los cojos.

wide and narrow combs, louse-heads buy yourselves a comb’. His voice rings out strongly and he adds to the end of  the song, ‘Don Rafaniello ‘o scarparo è ‘o masto ‘e tutt’e maste e fa cammena’ pure li zuoppe’, Don Rafaniello the shoemaker is a master of masters and lets you walk till you’re lame.

As well as the dif ference between the Italian text and the Spanish version (‘stritte’ is misspelled as ‘stiette’) there are also several changes in the initial apostrophes (‘o instead of ’o, for example) here and in other examples. This does not in any way make the text more dif ficult to understand, but it is perhaps evidence on the part of  the publisher that the proofs have been corrected without reference to the original. Again, César Palma adds exegesis to the original text, inserting the translation of the final phrase in dialect. However, he also omits a phrase from the original text, possibly to compensate for the explanation of the phrase in dialect and avoid making the translation too long. In terms of  lexis, attention is drawn to how in the original the comb seller is ‘strillando’, literally ‘screaming’, but in Palma’s Spanish version he is ‘tarareando’ [la-la-la-ing] which is a gentler verb. Equally, the term ‘gridata’ [shout’], a simple word, but one that is not so simple to translate directly, becomes ‘canción’ [‘song’], though perhaps ‘vocerío’ [clamour] might have been better. In this sense, although the translator’s lexical choice is debatable, because it again smoothes out the colloquial tone of the text, I must say that his skill is noticeable when it comes to manoeuvring the text and of fering equivalents to all those words derived from Italian that, as indicated in the case of  ‘gridata’, are easy to understand but which do not have an immediate translation. Once more, we see a change in the nexus; the very frequently used ‘poi’ [then] is rendered as the more literary ‘y en seguida’ [and immediately afterwards]. The following example shows more than ever how the original governs the choices of  the translator who usually opts for economy when it comes to paraphrasing or translating dialect, as we have already seen,

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although the previous example refutes this. The fact that the person speaking, Mast’Errico, is described as speaking ‘napolitanamente’ [in a Neapolitanal way], exonerates the translator from having to of fer as many dialect phrases as translations and allows him to present the text to us directly in Spanish. Furthermore, the fact that he translates the imperative ‘scinne’ [come down!], as ‘animal’ seems to me to be a solution that combines linguistic authenticity with compensation: Allora mast’Errico ha messo fuori il brutto e ha urlato: ‘Scinne’, scendi. Scendi e vattene a casa con le gambe tue se no salgo io e te le spezzo. L’ha detto napoletanamente così forte che si è zittito il vicolo. […] Io sono uscito per spazzare i calcinacci: ‘Statte fermo tu, mi ha detto, l’adda fa’ chillo’. La cosa si metteva seria. ‘Nun date retta, mast’Errì, nun ve pigliate veleno, lasciate fare o’ guaglione,’ la voce di don Liborio il tipografo ha calmato mast’Errico. ‘Venite, pigliammoce nu cafè’. (81) Entonces el maestro Errico perdió los papeles y se puso a gritar: ‘Animal’, baja. Baja y vete a tu casa con tus propias piernas, que si subo te las parto. Se lo dijo napolitanamente tan fuerte que todo el callejón se quedó en silencio. […] La cosa se ponía fea. ‘No se enfade más, maestro Errico, ya está bien, deje que limpie el chico’, la voz de don Liborio, el tipógrafo, calmó al maestro Errico. ‘Venga, vamos a tomar un café’.

Then mast’Errico lost it and started to shout, ‘Animal’, come down. Come down and go home on your own two legs, because if I have to come up there I’ll rip them of f. He said it neapolitanally and so loud that the whole alley fell silent. […] Things were getting ugly. ‘Don’t get angry, mast’Errico, it’s alright, let the boy clean up’, the voice of Don Liborio the printer calmed mast’Errico. ‘Come on, let’s go and get a cof fee’.

The same thing can be seen in the following examples, in which Neapolitan is compared with Italian as a sign of strength, determination, and also rage (that is, emotion). Here, its presence also determines the translation strategy: ‘Adesso me lo dite, don Diccio, m’o ddicite mò?’ Maria scatta dall’italiano al napoletano, che le esce con la forza di uno schiaf fo, più è corto il napoletano più piglia spunto dal rasoio, don Ciccio inghiotte zitto. (111)

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ESTHER MORILLAS ‘¿Me lo dice ahora, don Ciccio, m’o ddicite mò?’ Maria pasa del italiano al napolitano, que le sale con la fuerza de una bofetada; cuanto más corto es el napolitano, más se parece al filo de una navaja; don Ciccio traga sin rechistar.

‘Will you tell me now, Don Ciccio, m’o ddicite mò?’ Maria moved from Italian to Neapolitan, which comes out of  her mouth with the force of a slap; the shorter a phrase in Neapolitan, the more it feels like the blade of a knife; Don Ciccio swallows without a word of complaint.

And also: Faccio di sì con la testa e sento due lacrime pizzicare in cima al naso per uscire. Mi fanno il solletico di piangere, mi volto svelto, mi sof fio il naso nelle dita poi lo butto a terra nella segatura, ci paso la scopa, faccio forza nelle mosse per vergogna e ci carico sopra pure un poco di napoletano, sempre buono in caso di bisogno: che chiagne a f fà, mi dico e sputo in terra, ma si spiccicano lo stesso le due lacrime, se ne accorge mast’Errico, ‘guagliò ti scorre la parpétola’, la valvola della palpebra perde, mi dice di non stare in fondo alla bottega, mi manda a chiedere un mezzo barattolo di grasso per macchine alla tipografia di don Liborio. (35) Hago un gesto afirmativo con la cabeza y en eso noto que dos lágrimas reclaman paso sobre la nariz. Me hacen las cosquillas del llanto, me vuelvo veloz, me sueno la nariz con los dedos y lo que me sale lo tiro al serrín, paso la escoba, me muevo con ímpetu por vergüenza y digo incluso algo en napolitano, que parece válido en caso de necesidad: ‘che chiagne a f f à’, me digo y escupo al suelo, al final caen las dos lágrimas, el maestro Errico se da cuenta, ‘guagliò ti scorre la parpétola’, se te ha abierto la válvula de los párpados, me dice que no me quede en el taller, me manda a buscar media lata de grasa para máquinas en la tipografía de don Liborio.

I nod my head and as I do so I notice that two tears are making their way down my nose. I feel the prickly urge to cry, but I quickly wipe my nose with my fingers and drop what comes out into the sawdust. I sweep up, moving quickly out of shame, and I even say in Neapolitan, which seems valid in time of need, ‘Che chiagne a f f à’. I say it to myself and I sweep the f loor, and finally the two tears fall. Mast’Errico notices. ‘Guagliò ti scorre la parpétola’, your eyelid valve has opened. He tells me not to stay in the workshop and sends me to look for a half-tin of machine grease in Don Liborio’s printing workshop.

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Perhaps ‘che chiagne a f f à’ [what’s the use of crying?] should also have a translation, or maybe the Spanish reader would be able to divine its meaning. Neapolitan is the language of  the street, of celebration, the language of arguments, but of course it is also the language of childhood. In one of  the short chapters, the protagonist recalls a song that his mother used to sing him to sleep, which we read here in a less ‘dialectal’ version than others found on the internet (see bibliographic references). It is a lullaby from the Campania region, which is given directly in Spanish in the translation, and Palma could have taken the opportunity to translate ‘strofe’ [verses] as ‘nana’ [lullaby], a more commonly-used term than ‘cantinela’ [old song]. For an Italian speaker, the meaning of  the lullaby would be clear even in the regional Italian used by de Luca. César Palma has not reproduced the original alongside his translation, probably in order not to dilute the expressive force of the image or the immediacy of the action as the mother sings to her son to sleep: Mi ricordo le strofe di mamma che si fermava un minuto seduta a cantarle sul mio letto dopo le preghiere: ‘Oi suonno vieni da lo monte / viènici palla d’oro e dàgli ’nfronte / e dàgli ’nfronte senza fargli male’. (56) Me acuerdo de la cantinela de mamá, que se quedaba un ratito sentada en mi cama cantando después de las oraciones: ‘Ay, sueño, ven de los montes, / ven, bola de oro, y dale en la frente, / y dale en la frente sin que le duela’.

I remember Mama’s old song. She used to stay for a while sitting on my bed and singing after prayers, ‘Oh, sleep, come from the mountains, / come, ball of gold, and strike his brow, / strike his brow without hurting him’.

On the subject of  Neapolitan as the language of af fection, when the protagonist’s mother falls ill, his father decides not to involve him too much in his mother’s illness, protecting him from suf fering. He tells his son why: Non ti mettiamo in mezzo, è una cosa tra noi, una cosa antica di quando andavamo al ricovero sotto i bombardamenti e ci facevamo il giuramento di non farci dividere manco dalle bombe: nisciuno c’adda spàrtere. (84)

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ESTHER MORILLAS No te queremos meter, es algo entre nosotros, algo antiguo, de cuando íbamos al refugio bajo los bombardeos y nos jurábamos que ni las bombas podrían desunirnos: nadie nos separará nunca.

We don’t want to involve you, it’s something between us, something old, from when we went to the shelter during the bombing and we swore to each other that not even the bombs would separate us. No one will ever separate us.

In this case, I believe that the translatorial economy must have been dif ferent. The phrase in dialect is brief, and could well have figured in the translation, giving it a further sentimental, linguistic dimension, because here dialect is the language of  love, of confidence, of  family. This is what the translator does in the following example, in which the protagonist’s father recalls his recently-deceased wife, and starts by speaking in Italian, the language of solemnity, but finishes, as if with a sigh of anguish, by speaking in Neapolitan: Babbo rientra per cena, trova il vino e prima di versarsi da bere spiega, cerca l’italiano: ‘Finché è stata viva ho fatto la guardia alla sua vita, l’ho scippata alla morte giorno e notte’, beve un sorso e dice secco: ‘Mò nun pozzo fa’ niente cchiù’. (129) Papá vuelve a la hora de cenar, encuentra el vino y, antes de servirse, explica, busca el italiano: ‘Mientras vivió fui el centinela de su vida, se la arrebaté a la muerte día y noche’, bebe un sorbo y continúa con sequedad: ‘Mò nun pozzo fa’ niente cchiù’, ya no podía hacer más.

Papa comes back at supper time, finds the wine and, before serving himself, he explains, looking for the words in Italian, ‘while she was alive, I watched over her, I kept her away from death, day and night.’ He takes a sip and continues drily, ‘Mò nun pozzo fa’ niente cchiù’, I couldn’t do any more.

Cultural elements The presence of napolitudine (pride in being Neapolitan) manifests itself  through dialect or, as we have seen, through the interference between dialect and Italian, with references and metalinguistic ref lections, as in the

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case of  the double ‘l’ that the protagonist’s mother uses when she talks of  ‘ll’Italia’. César Palma usually ignores these metalinguistic references, as he does too in the case of the dif ference between ‘sogno’ [dream] and ‘sonno’ [sleep] in Italian: La voglio imparare, mi voglio allenare per fare un lancio, stanotte quando mamma e babbo pigliano sonno, suonno. Ho visto che in italiano esistono due parole, sonno e sogno, dove il napoletano ne porta una sola, suonno. Per noi è la stessa cosa. (9) Quiero conocerla, quiero entrenarme I want to know her; I want to train myself para hacer un lanzamiento, lo haré esta up to take a shot. I’ll do it this very same misma noche, cuando mamá y papá se night, when Mama and Papa fall asleep. queden dormidos.

The term ‘suonno’ (both ‘sleep’ and ‘dream’) appears in Neapolitan again in the example below. Had the translator translated it in the first case as ‘he visto que en italiano existen dos palabras, sonno y sogno, donde el Napolitano tiene una sola, suonno, sueño’, [I have seen that in Italian there are two words, sonno and sogno, but Neapolitan has only one, suonno], it would have been possible then to say ‘lo que he aprendido in suonno, en sueños’ [what I learnt in my sleep, in my dreams], and thus maintain the dialectal referencing with more consistency. Whereas the source text in the passage above of fers a mixture of  Italian and some interference from the dialect, no interference appears in the following passage where the standard Italian ‘mi sto zitto’ [I shut up] becomes in the translation ‘callo’ [I keep quiet] rather than the more colloquial ‘me callo’ [I shut up]: Gli vorrei dire quello che ho imparato in suonno, ma mi sto zitto (29) Me gustaría decirle lo que he aprendido I would like to tell him what I have learned in dreams, but I keep quiet. en sueños, pero callo.

There are further examples of  the presence of  Neapolitan within Italian. Here the protagonist and his girlfriend, Maria, are talking:

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ESTHER MORILLAS Noi dobbiamo fare all’amore, me lo dice però in napoletano: ‘Avimma f ’a ammore’, con due emme perché così e più tosto, più materiale. E io dico: già lo facciamo, lei dice no, è un altro amore, tutti e due nudi dentro il letto come gli sposi. (69) Nosotros tenemos que hacer el amor, pero eso me lo dice en napolitano: ‘Avimma fa’ ammore’, con dos emes porque así es más fuerte, más material. Y yo digo: ya lo hacemos, ella dice no, es otro amor, los dos desnudos metidos en la cama, como los esposos.

We have to make love, but she said this to me in Neapolitan: ‘Avimma fa’ ammore’, with a double ‘m’ because that way it is stronger, more physical. And I say, ‘We already are.’ She says no, this is dif ferent love, two people in bed, naked, like husband and wife.

‘Ammore’ [love], with the double ‘m’, is ‘más fuerte, más material’ [stronger, more physical], but in the Spanish version we only see it on this one occasion (whereas it appears five times in the original text), wasting the semantic charge of a term which is again comprehensible to a Spanish speaker. Asor Rosa (2000: 9) af firms very strongly that ‘the language of nineteenthcentury Italian literature sees the absolute predominance of connotation over denotation’, (editor’s translation). Extrapolating this to the use of dialect and to the connotations of that usage, this af firmation seems entirely validated. By not maintaining ‘ammore’, the translator has lost another opportunity to intensify the emotional content of  the text. Similarly in the following example, ‘ammore’ makes a connotative reference to Neapolitan songs that is missing in the translation: Maria, chiedo, è questo qui l’ammore che sta nelle canzoni? (92) Maria, pregunto, ¿éste es el amor del que ‘Maria,’ I ask, ‘is this the love they talk se habla en las canciones? about in songs?’

The fragment that we see next describes a typical element of  Neapolitan culture – the love of gambling in its many forms. Note that here ‘totìp’ [betting on racing] is translated as ‘tragaperras’ [slot machines], but could more accurately have been ‘apuestas’ [betting] or ‘carreras de caballos’ [horse racing]. This piece also demonstrates a typical syntactic feature characteristic of southern Italian speech, the use of  the imperfect subjunctive, something that is lost in the translation. I would suggest that this loss is

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inevitable, since such features are most dif ficult to maintain in the translation of an original such as the one that we are examining: Com’è che la tua famiglia non riesce a pagare la pigione e sta meglio della mia, chiedo. S’inguaiano col gioco, il lotto, la sisàl, il totìp, stanno coi debiti, dice. ‘Ma io non ci vado più a portare i soldi mancanti al padrone di casa, che li conta e dice che sono pochi. Li portasse lei.’ (49) Cómo es que tu familia no puede pagar la renta si está mejor que la mía, pregunto. Se entrampan con el juego, la lotería, las quinielas, las tragaperras, tienen deudas, dice. ‘Pero yo no pienso volver a llevar el dinero que le deben al casero, lo cuenta y siempre dice que falta algo. Que se lo lleve ella.’ (49)

‘How is it that your family can’t pay the rent if  they’re better of f  than mine?’ I ask. ‘They get into debt with games, the lottery, sports, slot machines,’ she says. ‘But I’m not going to take the landlord the money they owe again. He counts it and always says there’s some missing. She can take it herself.’

The following cultural references are easier to resolve through metonymic processes: Domani mi arriva la treccia di Agerola, l’hai assaggiata mai, guagliò? (77) ‘Mañana me traen queso de Agerola. ¿Lo ‘Tomorrow they’re bringing me cheese has probado alguna vez, chico? from Agerola. Have you ever tried it, boy?’

And also: ‘L’altro giovane di mast’Errico nun senteva maie ’a messa e mo’ sta a Poggioreale, fatte capace guagliò’, dice donna Assunta […]. Poi s’allontana e io dico lo scongiuro per Poggioreale: sciòsciò, sciòsciò, e dico pure canánore, che ho imparato da poco. (103) El otro muchacho del maestro Errico no iba a misa y ahora está en la cárcel, pórtate bien, chico’, dice doña Assunta […]. Luego se aleja y yo digo el conjuro contra la cárcel: sciòsciò, sciòsciò, y también cananore, que aprendí hace poco.

‘Mast’Errico’s other boy did not go to Mass and now he was in prison, so behave yourself, boy’, says Doña Assunta […]. Then she leaves and I say the spell against prison: sciòsciò, sciòsciò, and also ‘cananore’, which I have just learned.

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In the second example, we have the words ‘canánore’, which in fact the protagonist has only learnt some pages previously when Rafaniello tells him that, in his language, it is a way of warding of f bad luck, and ‘sciòsciò, sciòsciò’, an onomatopoeic phrase used for shooing chickens and other animals, and by extension, people or things thought to be annoying or dangerous. Here, incidentally, we see another element of  Neapolitan culture: superstition. In this case Palma might have omitted to translate the onomatopoeia because the text itself explains that it is ‘un conjuro contra la cárcel’ [a spell against prison], here, Poggioreale, the main prison in Naples – and, although it is not strictly Neapolitan, it does provide a similar emotional charge, something that has on occasions been eliminated. We will finish with another typical element, the ‘cafetera napolitana’ [Neapolitan cof fee pot] which is contrasted with the ‘cafetera moka’, as used in Spain. The question is whether the reader knows what a ‘cafetera napolitana’ is, in which case they will have no dif ficulty in understanding the following lines, or whether it would have been better to of fer an explanation for those who know nothing about the dif ferent types of pot: Mi sveglio, lei sta già in cucina, ha bollito l’acqua e la fa scendere sul filtro del caf fè. A casa sua si fa con la macchinetta moka che fa uscire il caf fè da sopra. Io l’ho sempre visto scendere, il caf fè, dico, se va in salita arriva stanco. (124) Me despierto, ella ya está en la cocina, ha hervido el agua y la pasa por el filtro para el café. En su casa se prepara en la cafetera que lo hace salir por arriba. Yo el café siempre lo he visto bajar; digo, si tiene que subir llega cansado.

I wake up, and she is already in the kitchen. She has boiled the water and poured it through the filter for the cof fee. In her house they make it in a pot where the cof fee comes out of  the top. I’ve always seen cof fee come out of the bottom. I say, if it has to go up, it’ll arrive tired.

As we have seen, napolitudine shows its presence in many ways in the text, whether directly through dialect, through linguistic interferences that cause syntactical irregularities, or simply through the presence of cultural elements. As indicated in the title of  this article, this napolitudine constitutes the basis of  the novel insofar as it is dialect rather than the national language that is the true protagonist. In the 1950s and 1960s, literature

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used dialect to highlight a sphere of reality that until that moment had not been much mentioned – the world of  the countryside and of economic dif ficulty. For many authors, then, dialect constituted ‘a sociological distinguishing mark’, to quote Segre (2005: 92), and, we could add, an ideological one. Now, with that function redundant, and apart from its use as a humorous element, dialect is simply a marker of narrative verisimilitude, and de Luca is in agreement with Pasolini and other writers in using it to ref lect ‘the appropriation of  the linguistic sense of  the characters and the environment in which they act, the assimilation of their ethos and of their mental behaviour (ibid., my translation). However – as stressed throughout this article – dialect is also, and fundamentally, an emotional heritage. Dialect, as Coletti (1993: 348, editor’s translation) points out in reference to Meneghello’s novel Libera nos a Malo [Deliver us from Evil] ‘is not, however, merely the linguistic marker of popular reality; it is also the past, memory, nostalgia, and myth’. In that novel, ‘dialect becomes a protagonist of the story, a theme of the narrative that explains and ref lects on it’. This is precisely the case, mutatis mutandis, with Montedidio. Translated from Spanish by Rachel Stephenson

CATERINA BRIGUGLIA

6 Comparing two polysystems: The cases of  Spanish and Catalan versions of  Andrea Camilleri’s Il cane di terracotta1

One of  the most interesting features of studying translations is the possibility of establishing profound links between the translation strategies adopted and the extra-textual issues encountered when the translations enter into the target cultures. In Translation Studies, from Even-Zohar (1990) and the Tel-Aviv School, recent suggestions tend to privilege a multidisciplinary study and defend the role of  translating as part of  literary and cultural polysystems in which each element is linked to the other. For this reason, when discussing translation, it is undoubtedly necessary to refer to the historical circumstances experienced by a specific community, as they determine its identity and feed the expressive forms in which that community expresses itself, including its use of translations. This first observation leads to the immediate consequence of having to deal with the descriptive analysis of  translations. The analysis should not be limited to scrutinizing only the outcomes, or to assessing the strategies adopted, but should also attempt to find out the reasons that motivated the choice of one strategy over another, so as to study the internal norms of translation (see Toury 1980, 1995; Hermans 1999). Yet it would be dif ficult, perhaps not even desirable, to of fer conclusions only based upon one translation; clearly this type of corpus would be too reductive.

1

At the time of conducting part of the research for this contribution, I was af filiated to the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. My thanks go to my colleagues there for the advice and guidance with this project.

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Nonetheless, the inexhaustible quantity of descriptive studies carried out over the last decade works in our favour as we are able to draw on them in order to further expand the corpus. In this sense, this chapter intends to present further evidence that comes from the direct comparison of  translations of  the same work into two dif ferent polysystems. Visible divergences in translation strategies adopted by translators represent the point of departure to discuss the internal factors that play a role in the completion of a translation. In this perspective, dif ferent studies may privilege dif ferent aspects of the polysystem focusing for example on linguistic, literary, or social ones. Here, I of fer a general overview of  the challenges that occur in the translations into Catalan and Spanish, two very distinct communities although constantly in close contact. The general overview is explained in the context of the linguistic and stylistic features of Andrea Camilleri’s novel in order to read it as it was written within the polysystem of  the source culture.

The linguistic context of  Il cane di terracotta I focus on the novel Il cane di terracotta (1996) by the Sicilian author Andrea Camilleri. The novel has been chosen because of Camilleri’s particular language, which is a mosaic of standard Italian, regional Italian, colloquial Italian, and Sicilian dialect. Prior to devoting our full attention to the analysis of the translations of this complex linguistic texture in Spanish and Catalan, it is appropriate to give a succinct explanation of what we mean when we talk of these varieties of the Italian language. The linguistic context in the Italian peninsula is extremely complex; dif ferent linguistic varieties coexist in a language continuum that makes them dif ficult to distinguish. In Italy, following the Law 482/1999, twelve languages are acknowledged and safeguarded alongside the Italian language: Friulan, Ladin, German, Slovene, Occitan, French, Franco-Provencal, Albanian, Greek, Sardinian, Catalan, and Croatian. However, in this study I focus on the relationship between

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the variety commonly considered as Standard Italian and dialects. Standard Italian is the only variety considered as a [national] language which is the outcome of a direct intervention of society, consisting of processes of selection among the existing varieties (in this case in favour of the Tuscan one), formal codification, and its acceptance by the whole community of speakers that uses it and communicates through it. If  the concept of  Standard Italian is strongly debated – as is any notion of standard language to some extent – then the concepts of Regional Italian, Popular Italian, and Dialect are debated to an even greater extent. There is no scope to join this debate, a slippery slope that has seen linguists and sociolinguists debating for years without coming to any agreement. I identify some relevant definitions to which I refer in this chapter (Sabatini 1985; Telmon 1993). The variety termed as Regional Italian describes a type of  ‘interlanguage’, a diatopic variety of  Standard Italian; in the case of  the novel here considered, the variety spoken in Sicily. According to Telmon (1993: 100), regional Italians are ‘intermediary systems of autonomous, coherent, dynamic, and relatively structured dialects, in which the interference comes from the primary layer of dialect’. Whereas most linguists’ definitions of regional Italian converge, identifying and distinguishing its varieties remains a far more complex issue. For example, in 1963 De Mauro identified four main varieties of regional Italian: the Northern, the Tuscan, the Roman, and the Southern varieties; in 1977, Lepschy identified more than twenty varieties, more or less one per administrative region. The main dif ference between the two models lies in the level of detail of the linguistic analysis. We could thus distinguish one sub-variety of the regional Italian of Sicily for each provincial capital, or remain at a broader level of definition by simply alluding to the variety of regional Italian of Sicily. The latter broader sense is the most common variety in Camilleri’s novels; the narrator’s voice speaks through it and it features both in direct and indirect speech. Although an outsider of the events, the narrator belongs to the same socio-cultural and linguistic universe. Any reader feels that ‘a spectator, present in the story yet not involved [is speaking], an individual who is perfectly integrated in the context’ (Demontis 2001: 102). To illustrate the variety that shapes the narrative voice, I use the opening lines of  Il cane di terracotta, an eloquent sample of its linguistic complexity:

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CATERINA BRIGUGLIA A stimare da come l’alba stava appresentandosi, la iurnata s’annunziava certamente smèusa, fatta cioè ora di botte di sole incaniato, ora di gelidi stizzichii di pioggia, il tutto condito da alzate improvvise di vento. [To look at how dawn was [p]presenting itself, the day announced to be certainly smèusa, made, that is, of  blows of dogged sun, now of  freezing stizzichii of rain, all dressed by sudden raises of wind.]

The local Sicilian dialect is, though, a diatopic variety that does not derive from Italian, but from a variety of spoken Latin or ‘vernacular’ spoken in Sicily. Spoken Latin evolved in every region with dif ferent linguistic features depending on the autochthonous languages previously spoken in the area. In Camilleri, this variety is used by the ordinary characters, or at least those of inferior education. Dialect is used for the proper names of places, characters, and local dishes of  Sicilian cuisine. Finally, the variety termed as popular Italian is a type of dog language, a diastratic variety only recently studied by linguists. Considered as a learning interlanguage, it is spoken by those, native speakers of a dialect, who are learning Italian. The result in literary terms is a comical style with a language that tends to use imperfect pronunciation of words and simplifies dif ficult structures, much in the same way as happens to those who want to use an elegant form of Italian but do not have the linguistic competence to do so. Whatever the accepted definition of any variety eventually may be, their use in Camilleri’s novels forces translators to accept the seductive yet mammoth challenge of rendering the complex mosaic of the source language into the target language. The main function of this linguistic mosaic is to define characters according to the context in which they live and, especially, to the way in which they see the world. All characters have a particular way of expressing themselves and their linguistic idiosyncrasy serves as their description – as the author rarely dwells on physical descriptions – and as a way to identify them in relation to others participating in the fictional universe. The linguistic pastiche not only serves an expressive function but also a referential one. Camilleri wants to pay a tribute to Sicily and its identity; in part it can be considered as the author’s own way to return to his personal roots, to the world that the writer left in order to continue his career in Rome and that he has now rediscovered. In this perspective, the use of dialect aims to

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Give a sense of  belonging and their land back to those who have seen themselves taken away from their roots at speed, only to find themselves projected into a technological, Anglophone, and globalized cultural model that has no history. (Palumbo 2005: 122)

The sense of belonging to the homeland is evident also in his exclusive reference to Sicily; he sets all his stories in this land and gives his characters the typical traits of  the Sicilian people. Camilleri himself defines Vigàta, the imaginary small village in which the novel is set, as the most invented village of the most typical Sicily. Not only the setting and the spirit animating the characters but also the literary tradition of reference are Sicilian. Verga, Capuana, De Roberto, Pirandello, and Sciascia are the founding fathers whose footsteps he follows, as if drawing an endogamic circle in which the sicilianità is depicted and understood by borrowing from fellow countrymen of the past. This spirit impregnates the ideological architecture of his novels; their situational information is provided through the chosen language, the development of  the main characters, and lastly the implicit cultural grounding of fered by the places in which events take place and characters stage their behaviour. Overall, as with his characters, Camilleri is sparing in adding descriptions of places. The landscape is painted with few brushstrokes: the nineteenth-century minute description is substituted by a few details that firmly put the readers in Sicily. A Saracen olive tree with silvery leaves, a field of  bleak land and sun scorched, dried grass, a sweep of vineyards, even more so sand, a lighthouse, and the sea with its intense ‘ciavuro’ [full smell] unequivocally point to the Sicilian landscape. Camilleri provides the readers with these allusions so as to allow them to imagine the nature surrounding his characters. We find a series of elements of content and style that intervene to give its geographical colour to the novel and unmistakably underline his intention of ref lecting the Sicilian microcosm. These features could be analysed in terms of  their position within the Italian literary polysystem, but it is outside the scope of  the observations of fered here. The focus remains on how these features of sicilianità, of Sicilian identity, so deeply rooted in Camilleri’s novel can be tackled in relation to two very dif ferent polysystems, the ones of  Catalan and Spanish literature.

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A polysystemic comparison In order to exploit our interpretative framework based upon the polysystemic theory of  translation, we need to ask the following question to the chosen translations of the novel: how is this stylistic and cultural legacy rendered in interlingual translations, in particular in Spanish and Catalan? Il cane di terracotta was first published translated into Spanish and Catalan in 1999; Ediciones Salamandra published it with the title El perro de terracota (twice reprinted in 2003) and Edicions 62 published the Catalan translation entitled El gos de terracota. This endeavour was taken on by a translator of both English and Italian literatures, Maria Antonia Menini Pagès for the Spanish version; and Pau Vidal, writer, journalist, and translator of some of  the most important authors of contemporary Italian literature, for the Catalan rendering. From the very opening sentence, the approaches show their substantial dif ferences: A stimare da come l’alba stava appresentandosi, la iurnata s’annunziava certamente smèusa, fatta cioè ora di botte di sole incaniato, ora di gelidi stizzichii di pioggia, il tutto condito da alzate improvvise di vento. [ Judging from the way in which dawn was appearing, the day promised to be smèusa, that is made up of scorcing sun and of  freezing and pungent rain, all seasoned by sudden gusts of wind.]

Menini Pagès’s (1997: 7) approach is clear from the very beginning. The opening sentence of  the novel is rendered in Spanish as follows: A juzgar por la forma en que se estaba presentando el amanecer, el día se anunciaba decididamente desapacible, es decir, hecho en parte de enfurruñados golpes de sol y en parte de helados chubascos, todo ello aliñado con repentinas ráfagas de viento. [ Judging from the form the morning was taking, the day promised to be decidedly unpleasant, that is partly made up of sulking blasts of sunshine and partly of freezing heavy showers, all seasoned with sudden gusts of wind.]

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The language is plain, standard, using refined terms with unusual collocations of nouns and adjectives but a standard syntax. The narrator’s voice stays like this throughout the novel showing neither a geographical origin or belonging to a recognizable social class. Vidal’s (1999: 5) approach is similar regarding the narrator’s voice and Catalan readers enter the story in this way: A jutjar per com es presentava l’alba, la jornada s’anunciava certament moguda, o sigui feta ara de cops de sol espetegador, ara de gèlids ruixims de pluja, tot plegat amanit amb ràfegues imprevistes de vent. [ Judging by how dawn presented, the day promised to be certainly varied, so made of  blows of punishing sun, and gushes of icy rain, all spiced with unexpected gusts of wind.]

Once again, at least at the beginning, the choice of a standard language is noticeable: the central Catalan variety. If the style is plain in both cases, dif ferent approaches are reserved for the proper names, family names, and other cultural references on which the intrinsic qualities of the novel rest. For instance, the name of the protagonist, Salvo Montalbano, often used as ‘Salvù’ is rendered dif ferently in the two translations. The Spanish rendering always maintains the original form, that is, the Italian words are kept in Italian giving an exotic feel to the text, so as to allow the readers to perceive them as dif ferent from their own culture. The Catalan rendering, though, naturalizes names and surnames in the target language: ‘Salvù’ becomes ‘Salvet’ or ‘xato’, a term commonly used by the Catalan speakers when talking to a friend, a relative, or somebody to whom they feel very close. Another example is the comical policeman, Agatino Catarella, who is sometimes called ‘Catarè’: in Spanish remains the same just as the original, whereas in Catalan he becomes ‘Agatinet’ (similarly to ‘Salvet’), adopting the productive suf fix that refers to a full range of Catalan diminutives and adds to the appellation a further connotation of closeness and familiarity. In addition, another important element needs to be emphasized; Camilleri’s use of honorific terms, which is widespread in Italy, in particular in the South, and their rendering. Walking in the centre of an Italian town,

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it is common to hear appellatives such as ‘dottore’ [doctor], ‘ingegnere’ [engineer], and ‘avvocato’ [solicitor] referred to the person one is speaking to, even when the given title does not correspond to the reality. In Camilleri’s novels, honorific terms appear on almost every page; normally the ‘commissario’ [inspector] Montalbano is called ‘dutturi’ or ‘duttù’ (Sicilian variants of ‘dottore’), and there is a ‘cavaliere Misuraca’, whose knighthood is doubtful. In keeping with her exoticizing strategy, Menini Pagès keeps these terms italicized in Sicilian, even though ‘doctor’ and ‘caballero’ have dif ferent connotations in Spanish. In the Catalan rendering, Vidal opts for ‘mestre’ and ‘cavaller’ that, according to Catalan rules of conversation, are used in a similar way to Camilleri’ meaning. The source text is rich in words in the regional Italian of Sicily towards which the translators have an ambivalent attitude. The small sample discussed below is a selection from the corpus collected during the full analysis of Il cane di terracotta. A few observations focus only on the terms ‘tabisca’ (p. 68) and ‘farlacca’ (p. 93) respectively a type of pizza dough, ‘tabisca pizza’, and the gangplank to board a boat. Menini Pagès leaves the words in italics in their original form, whereas Vidal leaves ‘tabisca’ and translates ‘farlacche’ [gangplank] into ‘tauleres’ [planks]. This may seem as a banal example, yet it ref lects the constant attitude of the two translators: Menini Pagès always leave the Sicilian terms in their original form, whereas Vidal hesitates and oscillates between two strategies. Vidal either maintains the cultural references of  the source text, thus of fering the Catalan readers a text charged with foreignizing elements, or domesticates the components that convey the Sicilian nature of  the source text. Camilleri regularly intervenes to explain the meaning of  the Sicilian words and, so, Italian readers who are not from Sicily initially encounter a moment of unintelligibility, with an alienating function, and only later truly understand the meaning of what is being said. The author aims to leave the readers faced with an obscure crossword that will be resolved in the subsequent paragraphs. It may be inferred that the translator decides not to translate the Sicilian words, with the intention of provoking the same ef fect on Spanish readers, thus keeping the same alienating function as the source text. Menini Pagès uses a functionalist approach; in other

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words, she focuses on reproducing the same information of the source text and adopting the purpose of  the source text. The two approaches are sometimes at the opposite ends of  the scale; yet to complicate matters, one has to consider the narrative functions of  Camilleri’s shifts in linguistic varieties.

Dif ferent varieties for dif ferent narrative purposes To recapitulate, the narrative voice of  the source text uses the regional Italian spoken in Sicily (though with borrowing from proper Sicilian dialect) and is translated both in Spanish and Catalan into their respective standard varieties. I alluded above to the only exceptions, the terms that are usually kept in their Sicilianized form in Spanish, while they are normalized in Catalan. With regard to the varieties of  Standard Italian and popular Italian, they are converted into two standard varieties of the target language; therefore, I shall not focus on them as their analysis will not provide any valuable results. It is enough to point out that the translators adopt the same neutralizing technique. The case of  the translation of  Sicilian dialect is far more intriguing because it brings out the most visible divergences in the strategies adopted by the two translators. How does one translate such a marked style? How can it be distinguished from the other varieties in the novel? Is it possible to ignore its presence? Camilleri utilizes Sicilian in very concrete contexts: as a way of distinguishing less educated characters, or as pointers to unique cultural references belonging to the cultural heritage of the island. The following Table 4 comparing ST and its translations of fers scope for ref lections.

118 Sicilian

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English

Spanish

Catalan

Madunnuzza beddra! Pazzo niscì! L’osso du coddru si ruppe!

Madonna santa! È diventato pazzo! Si è rotto l’osso del collo!

Oh my God! He is gone mad! He broke his neck!

¡Virgen santísima! ¡Loco se nos volvió! ¡El hueso del cuello se nos rompió!

Mare de déu santíssima! Està ben guillat! Es deu ‘ver trencat la carcanada!

Il prigattere Fassio mà dito chi ogghi vossia sini torna a la casa.

Il brigadiere Fazio mi ha detto che lei oggi torna a casa.

Brigadier Fazio told me that you are going home today.

El teniente Fassio ma dicho que oy usía vuelve a casa.

El prigada Fassio ma dit qu’avui vós torneu acasa.

Scopare in piedi e camminare sulla sabbia, portano l’uomo alla rovina.

Shagging standing up and walking on sand lead to men’s destruction.

Follar de pie y andar sobre la arena, dejan al hombre hecho una pena.

Cardar dempeus i trepitjar la sorra engeguen l’home a la porra.

della vigna, lumachine chiocciole lumache lumaconi’

of  the vineyard small slugs snails slugs large slugs

de viñedo, tapahuecos, caracoles de huerta, babosas, caracoles comunes

de vinya, de bosc, de prat, de roca (omission)

lumache al sugo

Snails with Bolognaise sauce Pasta pie, timbale

Direct speech

Proverbs Futtiri addritta e caminari na rina, portanu l’omo a la ruvina. Lists of synonyms vignarole attuppateddri vavaluci scataddrizzi crastuna Typical dishes attuppateddri al sugo pasta ‘ncasciata

timballo di pasta

Tapahuecos con salsa Pasta ‘ncasciata

Corns de pues amb salsa pasta gratinada amb formatge

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Comparing two polysystems Proper nouns Tanu u grecu

Tano il greco

Tano the Greek Tano el griego

Il Piccolo crasto

Little crasto

Tano es grec

Toponymy U crasticeddru

El crasticeddru

La Banya

Table 4  Comparing Camilleri’s Sicilian to Italian, English, Spanish, and Catalan renderings

First of all, the transfer from Sicilian into Italian is a litmus test to illustrate the huge gap between the two varieties and concedes the status of independent language to Sicilian, which developed over the centuries through a parallel and distinct journey from Italian feeding on the linguistic background of  the island. The translation into Spanish shows with great clarity, as expected from what I mentioned above, the features that have been emphasized so far. Menini Pagès coherently adheres to her decision to adopt Standard Spanish; there is no dif ference of style between the translation of the Sicilian Italian variety and of  Sicilian. Yet we notice in the first example the decision of placing the verb at the end of the sentence, so as to ref lect a typically Sicilian construction. However, this position is non-standard and quite artificial in Spanish. This is a syntactic calque: a construction of syntax mirroring the norms of the source language. According to van Leuven-Zwart (1990: 75), in similar situations ‘the unusual, unnatural syntactic ordering af fects the text’s readability, creating a distance between the reader and the fictional world, while the narrator’s speech seems to block the reader’s entrance into this world’. The second example shows a sentence written on a piece of paper by the protagonist’s waitress whose message, together with being in Sicilian, accumulates spelling mistakes and we notice the attempt of reproducing them in the code of  those who do not master the spelling of  their own language. All other examples ref lect the coherent adoption of the translation strategy choosing between terms from the lexis of the standard language and foreign terms. The translator does not dare to transgress the grammatical rules of  her own language yet she assumes an open-minded

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attitude towards the foreign language. For example, she keeps the Sicilian terms for the nouns of food (see ‘pasta ‘ncasciata’) or for the places in which the action takes place (‘El crasticeddru’), so that the target-language readers face the same feeling of alienation and distance felt by the source language readers thus guaranteeing the exoticism of  the novel. In Catalan we notice a new attitude towards the source text. Although with a random approach, Vidal tries to translate Sicilian into a non-standard language. In the first example, the sentence shows features far removed from the style found in the analysis conducted so far; ‘es dèu ‘ver’ corresponds to a willingness to render into a dif ferent register, belonging to Barcelona, that is very colloquial. Furthermore, the expression ‘trencar la carcanada’ ef fectively renders the popular tone of  the dialogue and keeps the same colourful image. The dif ference of dialect, and the diatopic variety, becomes a dif ference of register and, thus, a diastratic variety. In general terms, Vidal finds a working solution by rendering the narrator’s voice into Standard Catalan and Sicilian into a more colloquial register of  Catalan. In this perspective, the translation of  the name ‘Tanu u grecu’ [Tano the Greek – using the Sicilian article ‘u’ for the Italian ‘il’] into ‘Tano es grec’ [Tano the Greek] is a curious exception, as it points to the dialect of Mallorca and thus to another diatopic variety. This option appears to be regulated by the mechanical equivalence of one island for another one. However it is only an isolated instance and the choice of another register usually prevails. The rendering of  typical dishes of  local cuisine and of  toponymy are also interesting, as these are constantly translated into Catalan – see ‘pasta gratinada amb formatge’ [pasta au gratin with cheese] or ‘La banya’ [the horn] – and the readers, comfortably seated in their armchairs, receive them with a sense of  familiarity and with the feeling of experiencing a journey in the known and liked Catalan cuisine. This attitude of domestication is also supported by the choice of avoiding any direct reference to Sicily and Sicilian. There are times, and they are numerous, in which Camilleri introduces comments on the character of  his people or of  his language, in particular at the arrival of characters from other Italian regions, who therefore do not understand Sicilian as a language and its idiosyncratic linguistic context. In such instances, the intervention of the Catalan translator is more visible, possibly even dangerously adventurous. The visibility of  the translator is increased when the comment is made by Montalbano,

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with whom the readers identify. This issue of translator visibility could be one of  the reasons used to justify the omissions or the choice of dif ferent nuances highlighted in the examples below. The Spanish version does not show any change to the original and the references stay the same. It is, however, worth comparing some examples from the source text and their Catalan equivalent: Example 1, p. 144: (Montalbano:) Ma quanto ci piace babbiare a noi siciliani! [But how much mocking is liked by us, Sicilians!] Però mira que ens agrada, en aquest país, fer criaturades! [But look what we like in this country, being silly!]

In the second example Montalbano, arguing with Livia, his girlfriend from Genoa, uses a Sicilian word forgetting that she cannot understand him: Example 2, p. 227. (Montalbano:) Ma magari tu potevi addunaritìnni. (Livia:) Non mi parlare in siciliano! [(Montalbano:) But you could have noticed! (Livia:) Don’t speak to me in Sicilian!] (Montalbano:) Tu també podies vigilar, carat! (Livia:) Ja t’he dit que em parlis de manera que t’entengui! [(Montalbano:) You could have also been checking, dear! (Livia:) I asked you to speak to me so that I understand you!]

In Example 3, the narrator’s voice focuses on the language: Example 3, p. 263. Conzare, apparecchiare. Rizzitano disse quel verbo siciliano come uno straniero che si sforzasse di parlare la lingua del luogo. [Conzare, to lay the table. Rizzitano pronounced that Sicilian verb as a foreigner who is making an ef fort to speak the language of  the place].

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CATERINA BRIGUGLIA Apariar, parar taula. En Rizzitano va pronunciar aquell verb com un estranger que s’esforcés a parlar la llengua del lloc. [To lay the table, to set the table. Rizzitano pronounced that verb as a foreigner who strives to speak the language of  the place.]

In Example 4, the Police Chief asks Montalbano for the meaning of  the word ‘farlacca’. Example 4, p. 93. (Police Chief:) Cosa sono queste farlacche? (Montalbano:) Non mi viene la parola italiana. [(Police Chief:) What are these farlacche? (Montalbano:) I cannot find the Italian word for them.] (Police Chief:) Què són aquestes tauleres? (Montalbano:) No sé com es diu ben dit. [(Police Chief:) What are these tables? (Montalbano:) I do not know how to call them properly.]

Many other examples could be added to show the attempt of  hiding this type of references. There is an important distinction to make between those passages that refer to Sicilian or Italian, and others that give cultural references. The choice of  hiding references to Sicilian is justified by the decision of rendering everything in Catalan. This decision, in turn, makes the metalinguistic references to Sicilian very dif ficult to interpret for somebody who is reading a text fully written in Catalan. However, omitting cultural references has as an immediate consequence the loss of significant features. It seems as though the translator wants to reassure the readers of  the possibility of moving around in a familiar environment and of identifying with the characters. In this case, the constant references to the Sicilian microcosm would break the illusion of  belonging to that environment and thus sharing the events that take place there. However, literature is fiction and rests on the tacit agreement with the readers that the story which is narrated in their language is possibly taking place in a dif ferent country, in a dif ferent culture, and in a dif ferent language. Our considerations so far emphasize two dif ferent translation approaches: the rendering into Spanish is more open to the foreign elements

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and more agreeable to embedding them in the target text. El perro de terracota shows the intention of reproducing the colour and environment of  Sicily. The choice of  keeping the names of people, places, local dishes, honorific terms, and even words such as ‘via’, ‘piazza’, ‘vicolo’ that indicate the names of streets, together with the other solutions discussed above, contributes to maintaining a high degree of sicilianità and Italian-ness, respecting, in such a way, one of  the main functions of  the source text. From my point of view, this translation preserves a functional equivalence with the source text and respect the spirit of the author. I agree with Caprara (2004: 48) when he af firms that ‘Maria Antonia Menini Pagès’ only “fault” perhaps is of not having created a Creole language, as it happens in other translations’. The rendering into Catalan defends an attitude, that is, on the one hand, more conservative as it refuses to leave words in their original form. On the other hand, at the same time, it is more transgressive as it accepts the idea, as present in Camilleri’s novel, of using linguistic codes that are not normally present in literary works; an approach that is rapidly increasing in acceptability. Thereby, an equivalence of stylistic variety occurs at the expense of a loss of  local feeling. In addition to the descriptive analysis of the translation, an attempt to understand the reasons that motivate the selection of one strategy over the other needs to be made. There is no evidence that allows us to draw scientific conclusions on the issue at this stage; interviews with the translators and a larger corpus will be the next stages of  this research. Nonetheless, though at a preliminary stage, on the basis of  the analysis it is possible to ref lect and discuss the research avenue in the light of  the findings so far and in relation to the functioning of  the two polysystems.

Concluding remarks Translations into Catalan often have recourse to a non-standard language and to domesticating the source text, which are common strategies; the motivations to do so may be dif ferent and of  linguistic, cultural, or social

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nature. The translations of the works by Carlo Emilio Gadda and Pier Paolo Pasolini should suf fice as examples of  linguistic transgression. Gadda’s poly-dialectal novel Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana was translated by Josep Julià Ballbé into Catalan with the unusual, and normally not recommended, strategy of substituting a ‘dialect for a dialect’. Also the Roman-dialect in Pasolini’s novels takes the sound of a very popular Barcelona dialect in the translation by Joan Casas, with inf luences of Spanish, ref lecting the peculiar linguistic and cultural context of the bilingual city of  Barcelona. An example of  total domestication of a text, if not adaptation, can be found in the translation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion in which cockney becomes the ‘xava’ variety, typical of Barcelona, and the story loses any reference to London and the English society, becoming a linguistic tale of  Catalan and of  Barcelona. The Catalan polysystem features specific components that derive from its peculiarities as the culture of a minority, within and in relation to the state in Spain, and from the history and political events that made it a minority culture. During the years of  Franco’s regime and over the twentieth century, a painful silence was imposed to the language and culture of  Catalonia, from which derives an ancestral legacy that encourages its population to constantly defend and assert Catalonia’s cultural heritage and its identity. Bilingualism and nationalism on one side and the lack of a recognized and univocally accepted cultural model on the other side are factors bearing evident consequences on the current practice of translation. A powerful sense of identity may lead to an attitude of rejection towards the Other and to a domestication of the foreign, or its adaptation in the translations. The history of translation into Catalan of fers multiple examples of  texts that were adopted in order to satisfy the needs of  the target culture, as translating becomes the favourite instrument to react to an intellectual and cultural void. Joacquim Mallafrè (1991: 40–1), currently one of  the best Catalan translators, af firms that the Catalan language: Has often used translation as a way of  ‘saving its own words’ whenever it was possible, by absorbing the world of other languages and preserving its own character and, eventually, a cultural – and subsequently political – autochthonous body.

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For all these reasons (and we are aware of having mentioned several issues that are intricate and dif ficult to answer) and for the continuous contrast with Spanish, the linguistic awareness is far stronger than in other communities; a transcendental function is given to the Catalan language – thus making Catalan translations shine for their pristine quality. It must be added that the phenomenon does not occur uniquely in Catalan, but it is usually found in other regions of  the world, everywhere where there is a minority culture and language. In these regions, the act of  translation plays a fundamental role, even more than in other communities. Translating is a support that gives them life, as they survive and keep a connection with the outside world. At the same time, only by translating can they grow and increase their ‘cultural heritage’. It is not by chance that new trends in Translation Studies began in Israel and in the Netherlands… In the case of  Spanish and the polysystem of comparison used here the situation is dif ferent. Spanish represents a majority culture which does not need to protect its own language – nonetheless there is an institution which looks after the evolution of the Spanish language, the Real Academia Española – and its values and which can have an open and experimental attitude towards language, without using its own material but borrowing from the foreign source language. There are many factors at play; all of  them are deeply rooted in the geographical context and are strictly related to each other but are all tangled up to such an extent that the very core is hidden by the various threads so that it is impossible to find. All the possible research pathways open up to an underlying world of immense fascination, tied to issues that bear deep social implications and that reverberate in any aspect of the life of the polysystem. Whichever the reason or reasons that force us to have a certain attitude towards the source text, it is clear that, as it is not a random choice, Translation Studies ought to begin to further focus on the norms that bring it about. I agree with this af firmation by Álvarez and Vidal (1996: 5): ‘behind each choice lies a voluntary act that reveals its story and the socio-political environment that surrounds it, in other words, its own culture’. Translated from Italian by Federico M. Federici

FEDERICO M. FEDERICI

7 ‘Anche questa l’ho in quel posto’: Calvino translates Queneau’s popular language

Introducing Italo Calvino’s notions of creative translation, this chapter discusses some of  Calvino’s renderings of  Raymond Queneau’s regionalized language in Les Fleurs bleues (1965), with particular reference to popular expressions and ‘vulgar’ expressivity. By pointing out translation strategies and overtranslations of  Queneaunian language, I intend to give an overview of  Calvino’s ref lections on language that lay behind his stylistic and poetical choices. Calvino’s own discomfort with the abuse of dialect in literature was expressed several times, yet in the 1960s he used translating as a declaration of poetics by translating Queneau’s colourful, polyphonic language (see Mengaldo 1989; Federici 2006, 2007, 2009). As Eruli also suggested (2008), this translational activity was a challenge, perceived as a way to explore the notion of semantic expressivity that appeared in so many of his writings, but in contrast to Eruli, I would argue that Calvino’s translatorial activity is of quality and part of a well-defined linguistic and stylistic programme. Les Fleurs bleues is a novel vaguely based on the Oulipian principle that strict mathematical constraints support creative writing: from beginning to end, its plot follows two stories proceeding in parallel in dif ferent narrative planes and dif ferent epochs. The story of Cidrolin, who lives in a riverboat in Paris in 1964, intertwines in his dreams with the life of a traveller in history, the Duc d’Auge, from the Valley d’Auge in Normandy. The Duc lives in dif ferent epochs and appears in many eventful ages in French history, from 1264 to 1964 appearing every 175 years, in a Cabbalisticly meaningful twenty-one-chapter novel (three chapters per each letter of Queneau’s seven-letter name and surname). In its intertextual game, the novel portrays a philosophical quest in a literary universe, which bridges the French literary tradition from its classics such as Du Bellay, Rabelais, Molière, to Apollinaire and the (then) latest novelists such as Robbe-Grillet.

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Divided into four sections, this chapter provides a succinct discussion of the essential views on creative translation held by Calvino in relation to the translation of Queneau’s philosophical novel, written in an expressionist linguistic pastiche in which archaisms mixed with regionalisms and popular argot. I will provide some examples of  Calvino’s renderings of spoken and regional varieties of  French (for other selections, see Taddei 1993; Federici 2009). The first section gives a synoptic view of Calvino’s conception of translation, as expressed in his essays; it focuses on Calvino’s views on the act of  translation as an artisan’s task and an issue for copy-editors. The second section carries out an analysis of some examples of re-creative translation as a form of tribute to Queneau and as an assertion of poetics. The third section introduces some of  Calvino’s ref lections on translation as a creative literary act that deals with the long-debated issue of intertextual borrowings and with the concept of a ‘robbery’ when authors parody or rewrite authors they admire (Calvino 1980: 1808). In the final section, observations on the evolution of  Calvino’s notion of  translation after his work on Les Fleurs bleues in the 1980s are located in relation to his poetic aim and to his stylistic concerns, with translation of regionalized language caught between linguistic and literary notions of rewriting.

Calvino’s conception of  translation As a copy-editor Calvino often supervised other translators’ works in unof ficial and internal proofing procedures, but also in of ficial reviews. Good examples of this activity are his papers ‘Poe tradotto da Manganelli’ (‘Edgar Allan Poe translated by Manganelli’, 1983), ‘Il dottor Jekyll tradotto da Fruttero & Lucentini’ (‘Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde translated by Fruttero and Lucentini’, 1983). In his role of  translators’ supervisor and guide, he collaborated with and praised the ability of  the Einaudi translators, as in the obituary ‘In memoria di Sergio Solmi’ (‘In Memoriam Sergio Solmi’, 1981) and exchanged letters with many of the most well-known of Einaudi translators (several with Franco Quadri, translator of  Queneau, Adriana

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Motti, and many others). There is a clear phase when Calvino, whose wife Esther Judith Singer was an Argentinean translator working for international organizations such as UNESCO, seemed to develop a growing attention to translation in the early 1960s (see Federici 2007, 2009). Some of  Calvino’s most elaborate articles and letters on translation date to this period, spanning from 1963 to 1965, including ‘Sul tradurre’ (‘On Translating’, 1963). In the 1980s, another set of articles seem to ref lect Calvino’s attention to the fresh, new ideas that were circulating at this exciting early phase of  the academic discipline and from then distinct field of research named Translation Studies. The titles of  his essays of  this period are also significant: ‘Furti ad arte (Conversazione con Tullio Pericoli)’ (‘Robberies in Style [Conversation with Tullio Pericoli]’, 1980), ‘Tradurre è il vero modo di leggere un testo’ (‘Translating is the true way to read a text’, 1985); this was a time in which he explicitly discussed his translation of Les Fleurs bleues both in a newspaper article and in the afterword to the second edition (see Calvino 1967, 1984a, a discussion in Taddei 1993, and full discussion in Federici 2009: 71–f f ). The chronological ordering of  these writings provides the backdrop to appraise the dif ferent perspectives in which Calvino explored complex concepts of translation. His writings on translation include ref lections on literary as much as non-literary, scientific translation and can be divided into those which preceded and those which followed Calvino’s translation of Queneau’s Les Fleurs bleues. Calvino translated Francis Ponge, Georges Perec, and was completing his translation of Queneau’s long poem Le Chant du styrène when his life came to a sudden, untimely end. Yet Queneau’s novel was by far his longest, if not the most dif ficult, achievement in terms of what can be defined as ‘creative translation’ and the translation of fictional prose that he endeavoured to complete. His writings preceding such translation become invaluable as they give a representation of his background as a translator. Paraphrasing the title of one of his essays collections, Calvino’s tendency to ‘lay a stone on his previous ideas’ seems to be partially subverted by the chronology of  Calvino’s ref lections on translation. His first theoretical observations date to the beginning of  the 1960s; they typify his background as a translator when faced with the linguistic remains of  Queneau’s néo-français (1955). Furthermore, his experience with Les Fleurs bleues inf luenced his later thinking and writings on translation.

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Together with this chronological ordering, which is internal to the author’s career, there are external factors to be considered. It is not coincidental that Calvino’s most elaborate thoughts on translation were published as part of  the re-edition of  Les Fleurs bleues in 1984. This event is important for two reasons: first, it took place when Einaudi reprinted it within a new series, ‘Scrittori tradotti da scrittori’ [Writers translated by writers], advocated, supported, and defended by Calvino (also see Eco 2003: 119). The promotional campaign for the new Einaudi series partially interfered with Calvino’s linguistic analysis of  his rendering. His article published in La Repubblica entitled ‘Dal fango sbocciano i fiori blu’ (‘From mud the blue f lowers blossom’, 1984b: 1431–5) presented the second edition of Queneau’s novel in the new series, and has rather triumphal tones, rare in Calvino. These tones become more significant in light of  his view point on translation as a creative activity, a literary rewriting. If on one side Calvino’s observations on translation are inf luenced by the promotion of  this publishing endeavour, on the other the second significant reason of  his ref lection is clearly the fact that they coincided with the debate on Translation Studies, as an academic discipline. In 1984, Calvino ref lected on his own rendering of 1967; his ref lections came at the same time as the worldwide academic awakening to the new discipline of  Translation Studies, with the analysis of  the translation process significantly postdating his translatorial activity but perfectly timed in terms of  Calvino’s attention to inf luential and innovative debates on translation as a field of research. It is extremely important to point out that Calvino’s revision of the translation is not important in relation to debates on ‘translation’ as a literary endeavour. Within the Italian context, but also more widely even by just looking at the critical literature on the Greek and Latin classical cultures, writing on translation is clearly age-old. Within the boundaries of  Italian, Dante’s ref lections on vernacular renderings in the De Vulgarii Eloquentia and Convivio are a background reading to any Italian literati. The importance of  Calvino’s observations is in relation to the academic and intellectual debates of  the late 1970s (stemming from James Holmes’ essay ‘The Name and Nature of Translation Studies’, 1972) and the early 1980s on the new academically visible field of  Translation Studies. It potentially coincided though with the beginning of his second endeavour: Le Chant du styrène.

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Calvino translated Les Fleurs bleues when he was already a famous writer in Italy and had obtained good circulation in translation. Why did he risk his reputation with a work of translation? Writing about writing, the metalanguage of narrative and narration was becoming one of  Calvino’s interests at this time. Gian Paolo Biasin (1983) notices a new linguistic interest in Calvino starting from Cosmicomiche and Ti con zero, which chronologically date to the years immediately before the translation (their gestation took a long creative time possibly starting in the early 1950s after Calvino completed his work on the Fiabe italiane, see Scarpa 1999). Particularly valuable, in this perspective, is Biasin’s (1983: 222) annotation on the infinite narrative of  Ti con zero where ‘the all-inclusive need (the entirety or spherical nature of language) is present at another level, not as manipulation of dif ferent lexical varieties, but as an explicit, intellectual contemplation of  the “works written in all the languages”’).1 Translating opens a dialogue with other styles and, especially for this creative phase in Calvino, with a variety of idiolects that he could explore transforming into linguistic action, the linguistic potential that he was developing. However, if linguistic multiplicity was not yet in Calvino’s style – as much as it would later be in Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore, for instance – as Biasin noted, linguistic inclusivity entered into Calvino’s metalinguistic analysis of narrative. Calvino’s (1967b: 318) sense of inclusion is typified, according to Biasin (ibid.), in the following passage from Ti con zero: Ogni secondo è un universo, il secondo che io vivo è il secondo in cui io abito, the second I live is the second I live in, bisogna che mi abitui a pensare il mio discorso contemporaneamente in tutte le lingue possibili se voglio vivere estensivamente il mio istante-universo. [Every second is a universe; the second in which I live is the second in which I live in, the second I live is the second I live in, I need to get used to think my speech in all the possible languages at the same time, if  I want to live extensively in my instantuniverse.]

1

For all the original quotations in Italian of  this chapter, I have used my translation unless otherwise indicated.

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Calvino’s essays shed some light on this question, as they allow us to track the growth of  Calvino’s embryonic translation theory. When Calvino focused on translation, he was always concerned with the connection between publishing issues and translation issues. It is essential to connect his observations about issues of  translation with the publisher Einaudi, which played an inf luential role in the twentieth century as a mediator of contemporary American and European literature for an Italian readership (see Nocentini 2006). After the Second World War, the writer Cesare Pavese was chief editor of  Einaudi and in 1946 he invited Calvino to join the editorial board of the publisher. Studies devoted to the role of translation in Italy during the first decade of  the twentieth century have shown the role of publishing houses such as Einaudi (see Billiani 1999, 2000), and it must be noted, without oversimplifying, that translating also became an act of socio-political significance: message and form of  literature could change society (see Asor Rosa’s definition of Calvino’s literature as a ‘civic literature’, 2001: xii). The notion that ‘literature matters’ was strongly upheld by both Einaudi and Gallimard. This notion inf luenced the editorial policies allowing us to draw a crucial parallelism between Calvino and Queneau, as translators of works that may have a significant socio-cultural impact. Within the prestigious editorial board of Einaudi, Calvino was much concerned with choosing talented and skilled translators. For example, Pavese as a translator from English translated John Steinbeck’s Of  Mice and Men (1937), the literary masterpiece which had also immediately become part of  the literary canon established by left-wing intellectuals; in fact, Queneau as a translator of stories with socio-political content, such as Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here (1937), also wanted to translate Steinbeck’s novel. The intellectual af finity and similar agenda establish a connection with Queneau, who entered Gallimard as a translator in 1937 and only later became a member of the editorial board. Calvino followed a reverse path, entering Einaudi in 1946 as a writer and editorial member first, before beginning to translate. Among Calvino’s models, another editor had initially great inf luence on him: Elio Vittorini, who worked for Mondadori in Milan; he too was also a translator and encouraged a very young Calvino to translate Conrad’s Lord Jim (Belpoliti 1991: 69). Calvino translated no more than a

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few chapters of Lord Jim before giving up this first attempt at the end of the 1940s. The connection is important as the authors show the care that they took when selecting either a book to translate or a translator to translate a book, following the editorial policies of their respective publishers. Issues of translation and mediation were important priorities. Yet it is clear that both envisaged translation not so much as a semiotic act of interpretation (see Eco 2003: 233–4) but as a tool for linguistic revolution, as plausible forms of commitment according to Eruli (2008: 107), and as an authorial opportunity to rewrite a work that they would have liked to author themselves in the first place. Indeed Calvino (1963: 1785) was committed to the idea that, by their editorial choices, the professional reader-reviewers of  Einaudi could engage with the readership through their publications: ‘what we like and enjoy in editorial work is the very possibility of proposing perspectives which do not correspond to the more obvious ones’. This af firmation corresponds exactly to the readership he had in mind when he wrote ‘Sul tradurre’. ‘Sul tradurre’ contains the most accomplished and most profound theoretical ref lections on translation that Calvino published before translating Les Fleurs bleues. Here, Calvino expressed his admiration for the Einaudi translators and his own apprehension at assuming the role of  translator. The article is a polemical answer to a completely negative criticism which the critic Claudio Gorlier (1963) wrote in Paragone about a translation by Adriana Motti of  E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India, just published by Einaudi. The polemical and, at the same time, dismissive tone of Calvino’s (1963: 1786) last sentence deserves attention: ‘We continuously write about literature, while we never discuss these questions of publishing cuisine, that, nonetheless, take up so much of our time and worry us so much’. Apparently, problems of translating are reduced to questions of tricks of the trade; this was Calvino’s sarcastic metaphor that stands for a criticism of the marginal role that translations were (and are?) given in the Italian publishing industry, despite their financial importance for publishers. The metaphor reveals his attention to the complex and under-appreciated translatorial tasks. In his opinion, the critic had been far too judgmental and through a superficial analysis failed to appreciate the translator and her ef forts to solve the translation problems, simply because the critic had found two mistakes (in

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a book of 355 pages, as Calvino harshly underlines). This polemical article was written after he had spent three days in thoughtful isolation following a ‘furious fit of rage’ as noted by Nocentini (2006), possibly related to the fact that the chosen title for E. M. Forster’s novel was Calvino’s own translation. What Gorlier had criticized as a superficial inaccuracy in the title given to A Passage to India (‘Passaggio in India’) was but a faithful ambiguity, respecting the intention of the source text (ST) by interpreting its full linguistic potential which becomes a form of respectful loyalty and fidelity to the literary intention of  the original (see Eco 2003: 15). In his article, Calvino explains some interesting elements: (1) at the time, as copy-editor he felt entirely responsible for the quality of a translation; (2) the translator has to produce a natural target text (TT), where the ST is completely de-foreignized; (3) before the 1960s, in Italy, the policy (or custom) regarding the translation of book titles was quite loose and allowed their complete rewriting (Viezzi 2004: 133–67). In turn, all these factors justify the challenge Calvino took on in translating Les Fleurs bleues. First, as an editor, he was responsible for the quality of  the translation. Second, he did not want any of  Queneau’s refined and spontaneous wordplays to be lost. Third, he laboured intensively on the adjective (Fr. bleu ≠ It. blu) of  the title before naturalizing it with the adjective that refers to a dark blue colour instead of  the peculiar azzurro (Fr. bleu) of  the petals of  the Centaurea cyanus (its common name is fiordaliso, cornf lower). ‘Sul tradurre’ is an article that disapproves of  literary criticism based on translations, as opposed to working on the ST, just as it describes a set of positive features and qualities for the good translator. In the article, Calvino goes inductively from general issues to particular problems. A translator should combine a complete knowledge of  the source language (SL) with this ‘cleverness in style’, which Calvino (1963: 1778) described as a compound skill: on the one hand, the translator must ‘understand the stylistic peculiarities of the author to be translated’; on the other hand, the translator must ‘be able to find Italian equivalences in a prose that reads as if it were thought and written directly in Italian’ (ibid.). At the time, the idea of domesticating the ST into the TT still prevailed unchallenged and still does in good quality translations. Despite having translated three lyrics by Ponge, Calvino’s (1963: 1778–9) false modesty compels him to admit, possibly because of  his fear of  being a visible translator, that:

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The writer of  this letter [Calvino’s letter to Gorlier] is someone who has never had the courage to translate a book in his life; he shelters himself, precisely, behind his lack of  these peculiar moral aptitudes, or rather lack of a methodological and nervous resistance. However, he suf fers already enough from his own work as a slayer of  translators, from others’ suf ferings and his own, just as much for the bad as for the good translations.

Most importantly, in this passage Calvino blamed himself  for a lack of methodological or intellectual courage. The Montian tradition of  the rewriter translator, but also Folena’s (1991) teaching of volgarizzazione [vulgarization] as a superb form of imitation of the classics that works on the canon inf luencing it top to bottom within the hierarchical perspective of a source language that is superior and enriches the target language, lie behind Calvino’s ref lections. In this mea culpa, the blame is amplified as, in addition, he (1963: 1779) set challenges and trials for young writers: ‘once writers used to translate, especially the young writers. […] However, are we certain that the Italian language of  the writers would be better?’ Translation appears as a form of creative writing and as a manifestation of skills, moral aptitudes, methodological and creative talents. In general terms, Calvino thought that translating required the same skills, talent, and working conditions as writing. Rendering a literary text is a creative translation in these terms. In the context of  his analysis of  Les Fleurs bleues, Calvino’s (1981b: xxi) observations on Queneau are particularly pertinent: ‘during his battle in favour of the new French [Queneau] debunks the pretended immutability of  the literary language so as to make it closer to a truthful spoken language’. A sociolinguist might argue whose spoken language? Of which region of  France? In fact, Queneau’s omnivorous pastiche avoids this risk to his translators as he set his spoken language in a mixed, unreal regionalized French, which ranges from Norman pronunciation to archaism often collecting the two in one (e.g. châtieau, LFB: 67, 74, 105, archaism as the ‘i’ commonly marks the Picard dialect in Old French and a Norman pronunciation of the twentieth century). This linguistic distance can be interpreted as an almost insurmountable gap; in fact, Eruli (2008: 104) describes Les Fleurs bleues as a ‘translation’, argot and regionalised language were used to render Queneau’s philosophical meditations and observations into a ‘stile quotidiano’ [everyday style] the complexity of  thought is embedded in the narrative through this style. Yet she sees Calvino’s renderings as inef fective because:

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FEDERICO M. FEDERICI The author of  the Baron on the Trees has a classical idea and use of  language, thus Queneau’s continuous battle to introduce the lively usage of spoken language in the marble-like French language seems to be a care that is substantially far removed from [Calvino’s] sensitivity and his literary projects.

Regarding this very point, my reading and interpretation of  Calvino’s translatorial voice diverge from Eruli. Driving Queneau’s experiments into the sociolinguistic evolution of written Italian becomes part of  Calvino’s game with his own literary language. The references and intertextual word plays (replacing Rabelais with Ariosto, transforming nonsensical jokes into poetic commonplaces based on Foscolian lines, and so on) attest to Calvino’s own attempt at making his literary Italian a new literary language that could contemplate multi-register writings. This language of multiple idiolects prepares his readers for the combinatorial story-telling of  the Castello dei destini incrociati [The Castle of  Crossed Destinies] and the Taverna dei destini incrociati [The Tavern of  Crossed Destinies], the multiple story-telling of  Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore [If  On a Winter’s Night a Traveller], and even games on complexity and simplicity of Palomar’s look on the world. Moving from a classical ideal of precision and accuracy, Calvino takes Queneau’s regionalism and embedded argot into a new form of multilingualism that becomes part of  his own experiments with the Italian language. This movement takes Calvino to allegorical representations of semiotic renderings and semiotic meaning, such as the famous example of  the museum-like cheese shop. Tridimonti (2006: 45–65) convincingly argues that in his short story ‘Palomar nel museo dei formaggi’ [‘Palomar in the cheese museum’], Calvino is talking about editing and translating, he is referring to the written world and the unwritten world that Calvino would have liked to have written or at least translated, when he is choosing among the infinite possibilities of cheese of fered in the Parisian shop. In linguistic terms, a mature cheddar of syntax, a refined camembert of  lexis, and a precise parmesan of grammar contributed to creating a form of Italian that could respond, without a neo-standard, far away in the future, to Queneau’s multiple registers of archaic literary and current spoken languages.

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This perspective is substantiated by Calvino’s well-known views on the entire process of  translation, that one only truly reads a book when translates it (1980: 1807, 1985f: 1825–31). Calvino tried then to experiment with a new literary style of his own, yet not adopting a rendering which was based upon a dialect or derived from oral forms as Queneau’s néo-français. Although it could be argued that Calvino’s observations link to his own experience as a translated author, he implies that translation is a creative act. The paradoxical premise permits us to understand the extent to which Calvino’s interest in translation was already developing. The art of rewriting what one reads is the best way to understand what one is reading, as well as changing one’s own style of writing. In ‘Sul tradurre’ Calvino focused on techniques and technical issues such as ‘ambiguità’ [ambiguity] and ‘svista’ [slip], showing his degree of competence in translation theory, as he knew that all the dif ferent levels of reading, and even the ambiguity of  the ST, must be maintained in a careful translation. One could argue that this title, Passaggio in India, is nothing but Calvino’s interpretation as ‘model reader’ (Eco 1994: 31) of the book. This focus demonstrates that Calvino was already thinking about titles as a translator does. The dif ference was that, for Calvino, slips were losses of concentration and every slip (when they happen in a handful of cases) exemplifies the dif ficult process of  translating. In other words, for Calvino, the presence and visibility of slips magnify their general absence: what is perfectly translated is not dif ficult to recognize, as it reaches its target, whereas secondary or small mistakes are evident because a perfect balance between ST and TT exists in all the cases in which there is no slip. It may be interesting to compare Calvino’s notion of visibility to Venuti’s famous, as well as debatable, definition of  translator’s visibility (1995). Calvino was both supporting his own argument in the rebuttal of the critic and formulating some premises governing what he would have done when translating an entire novel. Calvino’s very clear opinions on translating were firmly established before translating Les Fleurs bleues, but he also acquired a new perspective on writing as a creative act of  translation while rendering Queneau’s French. The idea of a creative challenge lies behind all of his ref lections, as well as behind his translation solutions.

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‘Encore un de foutu’: Language in use and usable language Calvino had not only a form of disenchantment on the narrative potential of regionalized language, but also on vulgar, obscene expressions. Both dialect and profanity, in small doses, for him represented a source of strong expressivity when no standard expression could provide a connotative alternative of similar force. In one article in Corriere della Sera, Calvino (1978: 374) wrote: It is undoubted that popular language of profanity, of aggressive obscenity, has a markedly conservatory meaning of distancing, of devaluation, of af firmation of superiority on an inferior world. Evidence is that foul language has never freed anyone; nor one can say that in our regions were the spoken dialect is richer in interjections and obscene locutions one could find more earnest and freer customs than elsewhere.

He then goes on to say that the ‘semantic transparency of a term is in inverted proportion to its expressive connotation’ (ibid.). On the one, negative, hand, sexism, unhealthy relationships with sexuality, and homophobia are behind vulgar expressions according to Calvino. These he considered as the ‘conservatory and regressive’ features of profanities, yet he also praised three characteristics such as their ‘expressive strength’, their ‘direct denotative value’ (identify the sexual act or organ), and their ‘situational value’ when used in a public speech with the intention of revolutionizing traditional hierarchies of register (ibid.: 373–4). Queneau’s French in Les Fleurs bleues corresponds to an intention to attack linguistic hierarchies using obscene language, when, using Eruli’s expression, ‘everyday style’ is used to become more expressively revolutionary in dealing with complexity of  thought (in this case of philosophical and existentialist thought). Queneau’s terms are expressive and archaic; they are charged by historical, narrative, regional values whose absence would leave a considerable void in the texture of  his language. They serve a humorous function by their accumulation and juxtaposition that are worthy of a careful etymologist as was Queneau. Maybe these uses made Calvino think that the French profanities are somewhat more elegant than Italian ones.

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Calvino’s creative response to a series of ‘popular’ insults can be exemplified by recourse to an exceptional sequence of insulting couplets – obviously the ST is echoing once again Rabelais’s style. The insults are growled from a furious crowd in a representation of philosophical and historical paradox: Duc d’Auge, aggressive and violent feudal sire and authority, is leading a religious revolution against his higher authorities for questions of pure ethics and individual interest (including detachment from history, existential refusal of committal to the present times, and so on). The French ST and Calvino’s attempt of recreating the insults that the Duc d’Auge receives in 1264 when he refuses to embark in the King Louis IX’s new (yet another for the Duc d’Auge) crusade of fer a rich resource for exemplification: – Hou hou, la salope (a), qu’ils criaient, oh le vilain dégonf lé, le foireux lardé (b), la porcine lope (c), le pétochard af freux (d), le patriote mauvais, le marcassin (e) maudit, la teigne vilaine (f ), le pleutre éhonté (g), le poplican (h) félon, la mauviette (i) pouilleuse, le crassou (l) poltron, l’ord couard (m), le traître pleutre (n) qui veut laisser le tombeau de sire Jésus aux mains des paiens et qui répond mal à son roi. Vive Louis de Poissy! Hou hou, la salope! (Les Fleurs bleues, Paris: Gallimard, 1965, henceforth abbreviated in the examples into LFB: 26) – Uh, uh, schifezza (a)! – gridavano, – oh il villan rigonfiato, il cagone lardellato (b), la lurida checca (c), l’atroce spetezzatore (d), il cattivo patriota, il maledetto porco (e), la malarogna (f ), lo spudorato battifiacca (g), lo scriba fariseo (h), il fottuto lavativo (i), il crasso paltoniere (l), l’orrido codardo (m), che vuol lasciare la tomba di nostro signor Gesù nelle mani dei pagani e che risponde male al proprio re. Viva Luigi di Poissy! Uh, uh, schifezza! (I fiori blu, nella traduzione di Italo Calvino, Turin: Einaudi, 1984, henceforth abbreviated in the examples into IFB: 16)

Table 5 shows the first attestation of  the noun in the adjective plus noun couples of insults, according to the Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales. From the Table, it is possible to follow Queneau’s tribute to Rabelais in which he mixed insults that could have not been used in 1264 with the result of emphasizing this obscene accumulation. It is also impossible to resist from noticing that Calvino has responded with prud­ ish­ness. All sorts of translation strategies recur in Calvino’s lexical choices with predominance of reductions in terms of obscenity and an attempt of

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Adjective – when uncommon

foireux lardé (b)

nominalized end of 12th century foiroux adj, 1155

porcine lope (c)

1889

end of 1st quarter of 13th century

pétochard af freux (d)

1947

–

marcassin maudit(e)

1496

–

pleutre éhonté (g)

1750

1762

poplican felon (h)

2nd par of 10th century and common in chivalric poetry

mauviette pouilleuse (i) 1651

1176–81 adj. Chrétien de Troyes

crassou poltron (l)

1509, as lazy, then in Rabelais from It. Poltrone

l’ord couard (m)

beginning – 12th century

Table 5  First etymological attestations of  the insulting terms used by Queneau

rendering the variety of  the SL registers. The popular term ‘salope’ (a) for prostitute changes into an unexplainable ‘schifezza’ that refers to general rubbish or filthiness, but does not have any of the sexual connotations and the figurative meanings of the source. From what has been often considered an example of dubbese, the translationese of Italian dubbers ‘fottuto’(i) for the ever present US-American ‘fucking’ to Dante’s echo in malarogna (f ) Calvino’s responses indicate a dif ferent lexical approach to Queneau’s accumulation of insults from dif ferent epochs. For farcical more than humorous reasons, Queneau juxtaposed of fensive appellations in an accumulation that was only partially intended to work as real profanities. While rendering Queneau’s inventions, more than two decades before Translation Studies formed as a discipline and the terminology I adopt here came into fruition (see Malone 1988; Taylor 1998), Calvino carefully considered the smallest elements which must always be translated together and in the same way, because meaning is conveyed by the status of  these elements as ‘units of meaning’, or ‘chunks’ as defined by Taylor (1998: 73).

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From this theoretical perspective, Calvino was using translation strategies such as parsing the TT according to what is called ‘minimal semantic bracketing’ (ibid.), when Calvino (1984a: 268) exemplified his translational approach to Les Fleurs bleues: There are contemporary localisms. For example, Queneau calls a character who works as a bus driver ératépiste, from the abbreviation Ratp (Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens); I have tried to keep at least the rigidity of  this denomination by calling him always ‘Public transport employee’.

According to Taylor’s (1998: 73) translation terminology, the ‘minimal semantic bracketing’ Involves breaking up a text into as few meaningful ‘chunks’ as possible […]. If  the surface meaning of single grammatically-parsable units changes when those units appear in longer word groups or expression, then the translations of  those units should be held over until an unambiguous ‘chunk’ of meaning emerges.

In the ‘rigidity of  the denomination’ Calvino is actually recognizing a parsed, meaningful chunk and establishes a form of complete textual consistency. Calvino proposed some very interesting observations on the dif ficulty of  translating regionalisms, also in modulating the language and in rendering the dif ferent varieties of  the ST. He (1984a: 268) was particularly concerned about ‘deviation towards vulgarity’ that he felt was ‘a risk that is always there, when one looks for Italian equivalents to popular French expressions’. Experienced by most translators, ‘modulation’ is a common strategy adopted in translation at the word level and Vinay and Darbelnet defined it (1958/1995: 88) as ‘a variation of word class when the transfer from the source to the target language cannot be made directly. […] These variations involve a change of point of view’. This change of point of view corresponded, for Calvino, to a deviation into a more vulgar lexis in the target language: Cidrolin’s repeated self-commiserating expression ‘encore un de foutu’ becomes ‘anche questa l’ho in quel posto’ [and even this is up my back], which makes the figurative message explicit in turn rendering the expression more vulgar.

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Yet Calvino only partially shies from reproducing the French colloquial variants drawing on ‘merde’, such as ‘emmerdeur’ and ‘s’emmerder’, terms that have great value in the description of  Cidrolin’s character, as a daydreamer, layback person who engages in conversation with any passerby but tends to annoy them with his philosophical and unfinished, interrupted ref lections: – Quel emmerdeur! Il n’y a pas de conversation possible avec un emmerdeur comme vous. (LFB: 46) [– What a pain in the neck! It is impossible to talk with a nuisance like you.] – Oh che rompiballe! Con un rompiballe come lei non si può mica far conversazione. (IFB: 36) [– What a pain in the arse! With an arshole like you is impossible to talk.]

Discussing the situational usage of ‘merde’ and ‘merda’ with Carlo Caruso, he brought to my attention even further the significance of replacing ‘merde’. French can make a somewhat more liberal use of  the term, even in semi-formal conversational situations, while Italian still uses it quite closely to its physical and denotative meaning, even in its metaphorical and obscene uses. ‘Emmerdements’ ([hassles] LFB: 50) become ‘rotture di scatole’ ([bummers] IFB: 39), and ‘emmerdeur’ ([pain in the neck] 61, 65) is ‘rompiballe’ ([pain in the arse] 239, 257), yet ‘casse-pieds’ ([bore] 20) and ‘jean-foutre’ ([jean fuck] 175) too become ‘rompiballe’ (respectively 10 and 163). Calvino’s renderings then provide additional lexical consistency to mirror Queneau’s original repetitions. Queneau also makes recourse to Rabelais for ‘embrener’ ([to annoy] LFB: 70) a literary term of  low register, which replaces ‘s’emmerder’, and is etymologically significant because it is found for the first time in the 1532 edition of Pantagruel (see CNRTL 2008). Calvino opts to maintain the linguistic cohesion of  the archaic subtext by compensating with ‘legulei’ ([pettifoggers] IFB: 61) what he lost in keeping his own lexical cohesion by repeating ‘rompere le scatole’ as a rendering of  ‘embrener’. Yet in (c) below the decision is again for Calvino to protect his own style by going for an amplification of the ST insult, so that the force of the initial insult increases considerably for an added level of expressivity that

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plays on the historical ‘bravery’ of attacking the religious establishment by painting Pre-Adamite pictures in a cave: – Pourquoi il aurait peint tout ça? – Pour emmerder (c) les curés. (LFB: 221) [– Why would he have painted all of  this? – To annoy the clerics.] – E perché l’avrebbe fatto? – Per fare incazzare (c) i preti. (IFB: 206) [– Why would he have done it? – To piss of f  the priests.]

For ‘merde’ (LFB: 195, 241) Calvino mainly use its Italian calque ‘merda’ (IFB: 182, 226); with an important exception (a) which creates a more expressive ef fect as the reduction becomes syntactical when the relative pronoun qui is substituted with a more generic expression that could have come directly from comic strips (c): – Merde (d), dit-elle à mi-voix. Qu’est-ce qui (e) a encore bien pu arriver (f )? – Un immeuble en construction s’est écroulé, répondit un passant qui venait en sens inverse. Il était inhabité, naturellement, puisqu’il était toujours en construction. Il n’y avait que le gardien. (LFB: 269) [– Damn, she said softly. What else could have happened? – A building under construction collapsed, said a passerby who was coming from the opposite direction. It was uninhabited, obviously, as it was still under construction. There was only the site guard.] – Mannaggia (d), – disse a mezza voce. – Cos’altro (e) diavolo è successo (f )? – È crollato un casamento in costruzione, – rispose un passante che veniva in senso contrario. Non era abitato, naturalmente, dato che non era ancora finito. C’era dentro solo il guardiano. (IFB: 255) [– Darn – she said softly. – What the heck more could have happened? – A tenement in construction collapsed, said a passerby who was coming from the opposite direction, It was not habited, obviously, as it was not finished yet. Inside, there was only the site guard.

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‘Altro’ (e) is a solution for an ambiguity of  Queneau’s text which creates a subtext of references not so much with ‘what else could have happened’ but with the appearance of other strange travellers beyond the Duc d’Auge: ‘who else could have happened to come here’. In (d) we have a reduction, followed by (e) and (f ) that clearly changes the point of view, modulating the ST. Calvino is cleaning up the novel, also according to Eruli (2008: 114), but I would argue that he is making it more Calvinian. At the same time, as his concern is with the properties and qualities of  the Italian language, he is refraining from adding vulgarities and profanities. It may be possible to argue that lexical variation is reduced for an increased accuracy in characters’ representation. As repetitions are structural features of the novel, and, if we agree with Francois-Deneve’s (1999) explanation, also narrative devices achieving comic ef fects and pseudopoetic results that reconnect with Queneau’s encyclopaedic dream of an Über-novel weaving an intertextual fabula while entertaining the readers. ‘The true repetition can involve circumstances, places, sentences, or characters that are repeated after some lines, some pages, or same chapters’ (ibid.: 47). The specific form of repetition that involves vulgar language is used as a narrative device to characterize both Cidrolin and the Duc d’Auge’s personalities. The lexical cohesion supports the cyclic repetition of  the story, the device to mirror the cyclic progression of history, as interpreted by Queneau. Francois-Deneve also sees Les Fleurs bleues as Queneau’s rewriting of the Odyssey and the Iliad in which travelling and static heroes juxtapose in a series of sketches, which in their verbal evolutions mirror duels continuing the Rabelaisian parodist genre. As such ‘the principle of repetition often has a comic ef fect; developing the virtuous circle of  the “I guess that he guesses” ad infinitum’ (ibid.: 48). The repetition of situations as well as of vulgar and colloquial expressions increases the implicit consistency and the cohesion of  the novel as a whole. Based on an interruptory mechanism (see Usher 1990 on Calvino) in which dreams stop and start taking the readers from the historical and narrative plane of one character to the other, unexpectedly and beyond the boundaries of chapters, the lexical repetitions absolve many functions, including one of coherence and cohesion that Calvino, creative translator, did not underestimate and decided to emphasize by losing variety in the type of expressive language which he felt needed to be used with restriction anyway.

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Queneau’s Normandy sporadically comes to the surface and becomes part of the pseudo-poetic language contributing to the overall comic ef fect, as in the following simile: Lamélie se trouva rejetée hors du f lot des attentistes, comme une touf fe de varech sur une plage normande. (LFB: 50) [Lamelie found herself thrown out of the stream of onlookers, as a clump of seaweed on a beach in Normandy.] Lamelia si trovò scagliata fuor dal pelago attendista come un cespo d’alghe su una spiaggia di Normandia. (IFB: 40) [Lamelia found herself  hurled out of  the open sea in waiting as a clump of seaweed on a beach in Normandy.]

Calvino has perceived the regional and classical nuances and rendered them in the change from the stream of queuing passengers into the ‘pelago’ [open sea] of a much higher register. Berruto would class pelago at the highest end of the diastratic, diamesic, and diaphasic variety of Italian, the highly formal aulico, traditionally based on the standard of poetic language. Yet, the term reminiscent of Dante’s Divine Comedy would not be totally unfamiliar either to most Italians, as Calvino in fact is using a ‘popular’, to some extent, anthological form of intertextuality. Their linguistic inspirations diverged in the quest for expressivity. Queneau’s polemical stand with the postulation of his néo-français variety points to a literary and semiotic necessity for languages to possess expressivity. In contrast to this view, Calvino’s attention was to achieve expressivity with syntactic innovations more than with regionalized, popular, or slightly vulgar language. Yet expressivity is neither automatic in dialect nor in vulgarity (see Calvino 1959: 1521–9); a usable language is, according to Calvino (1978: 375), a language that retains some semantic force: ‘Only in the word that shows an ef fort of rethinking things doubting current expressions it is possible to recognize the beginning of a liberating process’. From a new form of literary constraint (see Eruli 2008: 107), Calvino moves to a translatorial commitment: he wants to enrich his own language through a translation from an innovative powerful model. A stance that sounds not too much of an innovation after all: Cicero’s De Optimo genere oratorum, I, 35 is the quintessential reference to the translator as cultural interpreter

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and linguistic innovator. Cicero’s most quoted passage in translation studies draws upon the notion of working as an orator and not a professional, thus here reads practical interpreter, but as stimulated by the important intent of devising a new linguistic model. Calvino’s need is not for a model as much as for a new variety of  Italian.

Calvino’s views on the act of  translation Calvino’s modulations converge with his linguistic plans for Italian, a language that he believed to be in need of  becoming more accurate and less abstract (1965b: 146–53, 1965a: 154–9; for his use of  translation to this intents, see Federici 2006) and his later observations on his translation activity confirm a consistency of perspective. In the proceedings of  the conversation/lecture ‘Furti ad arte (Conversazione con Tullio Pericoli)’, written after Calvino had translated Les Fleurs bleues, Calvino described the importance of  tradition and imitation. He (1980: 1803) stated general principles, for instance emphasizing that he took it for granted that ‘a criterion of imitation of other works is obligatory, it is prescribed for the artist as for the poet. […] I think that there is always an imitation at the beginning of  the apprenticeship both of an artist and of a writer’. The idea of stealing or imitating is not intended in any sense as plagiarism. The article is entirely based on a metaphorical level in which Calvino and Pericoli explain the relationship established between dif ferent artistic productions which might imitate or reproduce one another. From this perspective, the most recent works of art do not exist without their most ancient models. Calvino explained that, from the beginning of his career, he wrote constantly paying tribute to his favourite authors. Then, in the 1960s, the theme of stealing and imitating ‘becomes an important theme of  the literary problematic: the re-making of writing’ (ibid.: 1806). What Ricci (2001: 216) emphasizes by writing that ‘Calvino’s borrowings are to be regarded as a matter of semiotic integration’ is valid in this perspective (see Usher 2008: 649–51 on Calvino’s ‘classics’). Any

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example of writing is a robbery and a tribute, and the push to imitate is driven and explained by an impulse to integrate linguistic, semiotic, and artistic signs. Calvino observed that imitation creates a correspondence among works of art produced in dif ferent epochs. This correspondence is not self-centred; it does not rest on the author’s personality, but belongs to the common intellectual heritage (Calvino 1980: 1810). Such common intellectual heritage then seems to benefit from a language that can be translated and refrain from excessive regionalism (Mengaldo 1989; Federici 2006) stemming from an Italian that needs to find a new standard. Maybe Berruto’s (1987) acknowledgement of neostandard is the ultimate success of Calvino’s linguistic crusade: Italian could be modified in literary pieces so as to establish a language which is new, refined, yet not less complex but more adherent to its spoken variety. Translating is a phenomenal act of self-criticism, underpinned as it is by a commitment to revise one’s own style to the most refined and accomplished form so as to respect the ST while demonstrating one’s own sophisticated style. Rephrasing the dialectal expressions, Cidrolin’s néo-français and the Duc D’Auge’s archaisms with a Normand patois, with the standard equivalent is then a struggle. What Serrao (2007: 7) sees as a personal struggled in terms of self-translation and poetics is valid for Calvino too: Translating, then, in the proved conviction of  ‘untranslatability’, often remedied with some, any, lexical, grammatical, or syntactic means of ‘poor’ rendering into the Italian standard, is an act of poetic-literary self-harm.

Translating regionalized and hybrid French was Calvino’s enemy when embracing Les Fleurs bleues. In their conversation, Pericoli asked a direct question about Calvino’s translation of  Les Fleurs bleues. Calvino’s (1980: 1807) answer is essential to any understanding of  his idea of  translation in relation to Queneau’s novel: Translating is the most absolute system of reading. One needs to read a text while considering the implications of every word. My experience of  translation has been peculiar as I very often had to substitute wordplays with other wordplays, in an attempt to maintain in the text the same rhythm, the same lightness, also the same internal coherence.

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Calvino emphasized the importance of maintaining the internal coherence of the TT, as he explained that he considered it as an act of rewriting, which follows the best reading possible. If imitation begins with reading and translating is the ultimate act of reading, then the imitation of  the author of  the ST should prevail over the translator’s personal style. But this does not happen, because translating is for Calvino a form of rereading, a translation in a broader and (technically) looser meaning. Calvino (1980: 1808) explicitly elucidated the ef fect of rereading his own works in translation: I am then forced to try understanding why I have written that certain sentence in that way, what has not passed into the translation, namely, I have to ref lect on what I have written: I have put this adjective here and not there, I have used this construction, which is not the most common, why? Ah, yes, it is because I had that intention.

The ef fect of  these structural questions is justified in Calvino’s translation I fiori blu where the translator’s ‘cleverness of style’ prevails over the author’s style. The intertextual game of the ST has passed to the translator who cannot be inf luenced for the most natural and obvious reason: a oneto-one equivalence between languages does not exist. The imitation and rewriting is possible and creative when an intertextual game ‘corresponds to an idea of art that does not rest on the author’s personality, but in which every work of art is a common heritage’ (1980: 1810). This is completely Oulipian. Queneau’s idea of encyclopédie littéraire in the perfect novel, a work which presents together all the possible and eternal intertextual rereadings and rewritings, encompassed the idea, common to Calvino, that authors participate in the making of a product of art, in a cyclical attempt to represent and understand the process of creation as well as the creative product. As Calvino (ibid.: 1811–12) puts it, the artistic process involves ‘participating in a collective creation, as something that began before us and that will probably continue after us, gives us the impression of a force that goes through us’. In the rereading of a work of art, translating mediates this passage not chronologically but geographically. As mentioned above, in the 1980s, Translation Studies took a new direction by gaining a degree of autonomy from linguistics and, at the

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same time, by acknowledging as a necessity its own interdisciplinary nature. Certainly, the resonance of  this academic debate fascinated Calvino to the extent that he gave a paper at a conference about translation in 1985: ‘Tradurre è il vero modo di leggere un testo’ (‘Translating is the true way to read a text’). In the resulting article, Calvino focused on literary translation – and again on translating as the perfect act of reading and as an act of permitted imitation. The paper constructs its theory around the link that Calvino perceived between intertextuality, imitation, and translation. They are an expression of original creativity: ‘Translating is an art: the transmission of a literary text into another language, whatever the value of  the text, each time needs a miracle of some kind’ (1985: 1826). Calvino (ibid.) argued that literature always depends on what is not transmissible in words, in what is dif ficult to say. Therefore, a translator of literature ends up always ‘translating the untranslatable’ (ibid.: 1827). In this article, Calvino proposed some important considerations about the relationship between author and translator, and between the languages concerned. During the conference of  UNESCO translators at which Calvino (ibid.: 1828) gave the paper that forms the basis of the article, he expressed this belief: ‘I firmly believe in collaboration between the author and the translator’. From this perspective, he covered in some detail the importance of translating Queneau’s French into a literary Italian. There were at the time, and many still remain, considerable dif ferences between Standard Italian, spoken Italian, and written Italian – in particular, written literary Italian. Calvino (ibid.: 1829) in the conversation with Pericoli made it clear that writing Italian is dif ficult for Italian writers because ‘writing is never a natural act; it has almost never a connection with speaking’. In this unnatural connection, Calvino perceived the impossibility of reproducing what has been called an ‘authentic text’, a transcription of an oral conversation – recorded when the speakers are unaware they are being recorded. Not only can an authentic ‘spoken’ literary text not exist, because it loses the visual and contextual stimuli that surround a natural conversation, but Calvino also lamented an additional level of inadequacy: Italian cannot even provide an established form of written Italian that would be recognizable as some literary form of codified spoken Italian of  the twentieth century; as we have seen he did not want to replace this with an excess of 

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‘expressivity’ drawing upon dialect or vulgar language. This linguistic dead end crushed any possibility of adopting a regionalized language so as to render Queneau’s linguistic inventions. He (ibid.:. 1830) critically observed that ‘Spoken Italian in a conversation tends to disappear continuously into nothing, and if one had to transcribe it, one would always have to have recourse to suspension points’. In Zazie, Queneau had tested the limits of  his theory of a phonetic reproduction of  French and had abandoned the idea. Calvino (1985: 1830) had to begin with an even stronger limitation: ‘the Italian writers live always or almost always in a state of linguistic neurosis. They have to invent the language in which to write, before they invent the things to write’. In ‘Poe tradotto da Manganelli’ (1983), Calvino commented on the translator’s work. He underlined the way in which Manganelli played with Italian. In particular, he emphasized the importance of  Italian as a TL, because this language allows a f lexible rendering and of fers many possibilities of syntactic freedom. He (1983b: 930) thought of  this as its predominant feature: ‘a translation can easily demonstrate what endless resources of richness, precision, expressivity, agility, pace, creativity our language of fers to whoever can use it’. In this passage the attention to the translator’s style also demonstrates what Calvino (ibid.) intended to do while translating Les Fleurs bleues: to test his own ability with the TL in order to show the ‘endless resources’ of Italian. In Manganelli’s translation of  Poe’s works, Calvino praised Manganelli’s creativity, the naturalness of  the f low of Italian; he admired the imagination that Manganelli had shown in finding experimental solutions in his TT. This comes as no surprise, as Manganelli, a ‘kindred spirit’ of  Calvino (Usher 1996: 182), shared his passion for linguistic and structural experiments. Calvino (1983b: 934) emphasized Manganelli’s creativity: If one compares this to the English original, one sees that [these solutions] come from Manganelli’s own repertoire, although they do not contaminate Poe’s primary materials, meaning that the English text would have admitted even more anodyne and impersonal translations.

Calvino preferred the rendering of invention with original re-creations rather than with faithful, functional, or communicative translations.

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Both in 1963 and again in 1983, when Calvino wrote the article ‘Il dottor Jekyll tradotto da Fruttero & Lucentini’, he deplored the fact that translation was no longer a common activity among young Italian writers (1983a: 981). He explained the abandoning of this task by referring to the many commitments of  the new generation of writers. It might be questioned why Calvino seemed to reduce the work of  literary translation to a dutiful – if not generous – intrusion of a writer rather than considering it as a highly qualified task; that is, for Calvino all good Italian authors should feel the cultural duty of translating, although this activity would be a generous concession of their time normally dedicated to creative writing. However, Calvino complained of the diminished value of translations and he answered his own rhetorical question about why young Italian writers no longer translated with a subtle combination of reasons. He explained their reluctance by arguing that translation, as a literary and moral commitment, had diminished its importance (Queneau actually ceased his committed translations in 1953) and that only a few writers would have really been qualified translators (ibid.: 982). The polemical attack depended, again, on the promotion or defence of some work of  translation, mainly within the Einaudi entourage. Calvino (ibid.) praised Fruttero and Lucentini’s translation solutions as an act of critical interpretation’ a feature which concerned him greatly when translating Les Fleurs bleues. Once more, Calvino (ibid.: 983) underlined his conception that a good translation achieves the rendering of  the ‘spirito del testo’, namely the Crocean and idealist, indefinable spirit of  the ST.

Concluding remarks Queneau the translator has been scrupulously and methodically studied (see Velguth 2006) but Calvino the translator remained rather in the background of scholarly research until recently. With few exceptions, critics have discussed Calvino’s poetic and stylistic journey, or his abilities and talents in relation to his literary models, without considering the experimental and

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fundamental nature of  the translational experience as a training ground to move his own poetic language in a new direction. Calvino as translator is a secondary figure compared to the writer, the journalist, and the critic. Many excellent studies on Calvino mention his I fiori blu, declaring that the translation of  Les Fleurs bleues links Calvino’s experience with Queneau’s philosophical fictional world, or the Oulipian experience, and the later Calvino. Beyond these established views, the translational perspective becomes noteworthy in the context of what Biasin’s termed as Calvino’s ref lections on his metalanguage which helped Calvino to develop the narratological devices used in the invention of  the combinatorial stories. Until recently only a few published essays were solely dedicated to Calvino as translator of  Queneau (Taddei 1993, Nocentini 2006, Eruli 2008). Of  the latter two, Nocentini focused on the analysis of  Calvino’s writings on translation with particular attention to his own work in translation, and Eruli’s work provides references to Les Fleurs bleues with some criticism of  Calvino’s renderings of  Queneau’s obscenities and puns in French. I would like to finish by drawing attention to the evidence that shows how the very lexical and syntactic work on Les Fleurs bleues represented both a catalyst and turning point in Calvino’s career. Calvino’s target text, his rewriting of  Queneau’s novel, is his most accomplished translation, whilst his discussion of  the personal translation process took place in a significant phase of development of Translation Studies. Calvino shielded his linguistic evolution behind this translation in order to forge himself a new style and literary language. He had left the regional background as a poetical device when abandoned his neorealist clothes, but he was happy to draw upon (even potential) spoken features. He thus embedded features of a ‘popular’, or, better, scholastic literary variety of  Italian echoing commonplaces of  the canon as if spoken in the centre of an Italian town. Maybe the regional challenge was far too hard and a language of use was a safer bet in the form of unpredictable evolution that the neo-Spoken Italian of  the 1960s was going through, oscillating between powerful forms of written, spoken, and dialectal diglossia.

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8 The cultural issue in intersemiotic translation: The case of  Francesco Rosi’s Cronaca di una morte annunciata (1987)

Translation implies the crossing of  borders. This notion implies not only borders between languages and cultures, but also borders between one semiotic system and another, thus amplifying dramatically the perspective of analysis when the focus is on film transposition of  texts from another literature. It was Jakobson who first spoke of  ‘intersemiotic translation’, introducing this terminology when, in his 1959 essay, he identified three main forms of  translation: intralinguistic, interlinguistic and intersemiotic (the interpretation of a linguistic semiotic system by means of nonlinguistic semiotic systems). Much more recently Torop (1995) has been working fundamentally along the same lines while developing his theory of  translation as a total process.1 Obviously, there is much debate surrounding such an approach. The common objection to viewing cinematic adaptations as translations is that films and books are autonomous works in their inner coherence and cohesion, based as they are on dif ferent semiotic systems. Of course, nobody could deny this definition. However, the awareness of the specificity of the two semiotic systems does not necessarily exclude dif ferent and sometimes even opposite approaches, fundamentally based on contrasting notions of  language. For example, conceiving language as ‘constitutive of thought and meaning’, that is, believing that meaning is indivisibly bound to the particu-

1

Torop’s work Total’nyj perevod (1995) was translated into Italian by Bruno Osimo first as an article in Testo a Fronte (1999) and then as a volume (2001). To my knowledge, Torop’s text has not been translated into English yet.

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lar signifying system used for its embodiment, the French cinema expert Mitry in the 1960s denied any possibility of real ‘translation’ between the two types of  texts. He sees them as utterly dif ferent in both the ‘signifier’ and the ‘signified’, with the consequence that the idea of  transferring the forms of  literary expression into those of  the cinema would be nonsense (1965, in Dusi 2003: 14). Yet, starting from the same principles, the great French critic, Bazin, stated that adaptation should not be viewed as a film production somehow comparable to the novel: according to him, the film becomes a new aesthetic entity which ‘like the novel is multiplied by cinema’ (see Bazin 1951, in Dusi 2003: 15–16). In this way, Bazin outlines an approach that is later theoretically fully developed and supported by Dusi (2003). The core issue of Dusi’s theoretical model is the possibility of developing varied modes of reciprocal interdependences (subtle, but vital relazioni traduttive, translation relations) between texts created in both linguistic and non-linguistic semiotics. In other words, Dusi (2003: 4) defends the possibility that two texts representing autonomous and distinct ‘semiotic entities’ can develop an interdependence which may be deep and ultimately also aesthetic:2 In intersemiotic translation the issue is more complex than the mere transfer of the forms of contents together with, whenever possible, the forms of expression from the source text. Following a dynamic view of  translation, we should rather think of activating again and selecting the system of relations between the two levels [level of contents and level of expression] in the source text, and then adequately translate these relations into the target text. (My translation)

2

Dusi (ibid.) shows that he has originally developed the concepts put forward initially by Eco (2000, 2003). However, on the complex relationship between ST and TT in both interlinguistic and intersemiotic translation of particular importance are the contributions by Stam and Raengo (2004, 2005). See also Rutelli (2004) and Venuti (2007).

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Reading the cultural transposition Such an approach can be particularly stimulating for the ‘reading’ of France­ sco Rosi’s film transposition of  Gabriel García Márquez’s Crónica de una muerte anunciada, which represents an important encounter with a distant culture, the Colombia of the original novel. Translation, in both its interlinguistic and intersemiotic forms, is never a neutral act of communication. All this implies great potentialities, but equally great risks, as translation can develop very dif ferent types of encounters, from ‘mutual interpretation’ to ‘cultural hegemony’, assimilation or even suppression. Such a delicate role of  translation can be perceived whenever the transfer involves literature from outside the Western world, that is, when translation implies unbalanced contacts between cultures and languages. In addition, Rosi’s film shows another particularly interesting encoun­ ter, although of a dif ferent kind: on the one hand, the writer, Gabriel García Márquez, who has become a cult figure, and is often referred to as ‘the soul of  Latin America’; on the other, Francesco Rosi, a well-experienced Italian director, engagé and with his own personal style of direction. This case study, therefore, intends to widen the perspective of  translation criticism by providing an example that tests the possibility of joining a cross-cultural approach with an intersemiotic reading of  translation. Apparently, little research has been conducted into this aspect, with the exception of the specific subfield of Screen Translation studies. Here, for example, the interesting notion of ‘trans­adaptation’ has been developed as a means of recognizing the multi­dimensional (i.e., beyond the merely linguistic level) cultural qualities in­volved in the translation of audiovisual materials (Gambier 2003: 178).3 When in 1987 Francesco Rosi directed the film transposition of García Márquez’s novel, of which he had also written the screenplay together with Tonino Guerra, he already had an established reputation and was universally regarded as an interesting Italian auteur, for directing such films as

3

As another example of cultural intersemiotic translation criticism, see Fochi (2006).

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Salvatore Giuliano (1961), Le mani sulla città (Hands Over the City, 1963), Il caso Mattei (The Mattei Af fair, 1972), Lucky Luciano (1973) and Cadaveri eccellenti (Illustrious Corpses, 1975). Through these films, Rosi had come to be identified with a very recognizable form of  film-making, which was part documentary, part investigation, part denunciation, and part political thriller: an auteur engagé par excellence. However, in 1975, Cristo si è fermato a Eboli marks an unexpected turn in Rosi’s filmography, showing how Rosi was trying to widen his artistic repertoire, which he continued to explore in his subsequent films. A true experimental director such as Rosi avoids sticking to ‘worn out’ solutions, and keeps trying out alternative solutions, searching, and taking risks. This attitude perhaps helps to explain why the original path of development traced by Rosi’s films has generally been little understood and not fully appreciated in his home country of  Italy. The perception of  his art abroad, particularly in France, but also in the USA, has been dif ferent. Foreign critics, especially in the last few decades, seem to have been more perceptive and receptive towards his films. This is also the case for Cronaca, which met mostly with indif ference, bordering on hostility, among Italian commentators. Rosi’s interest in the film transposition of literary works does not start, nor end, with García Márquez’s novel. If we do not want to include Tre fratelli (1981), since it is only very freely based on a literary text (Andrej Platonov’s short story, Tretij Syn), and Dimenticare Palermo (1990), an equally free transposition of a novel by Edmonde Charles-Roux, his filmography includes five film transpositions of  famous novels, plus a film transposition of an opera. In 1970, with Uomini contro (Just Another War), Rosi works on Emilio Lussu’s Un anno sull’altopiano. Then in 1976, he produced Cadaveri eccellenti based on Leonardo Sciascia’s Il contesto, followed in 1979 by Cristo si è fermato a Eboli from Carlo Levi. In 1984 he undertook a cinematic version of Georges Bizet’s opera, Carmen; in 1987 he took on the new challenge of  Garcia Márquez’s novel; and finally, in 1996, his last film, which is another important film transposition, La tregua (The Truce) based on the homonymous text by Primo Levi.

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This explains the special focus on the film/novel relationship in, for example, Rosi’s long conversation with Carlo Testa.4 Here, he is specifically asked to explain his position regarding the dif ference between translating a pre-existing literary text into a film, and a film based instead on a free creation: Certainly, there is a dif ference between the two patterns. […] The script of a film arising from the direct observation of reality […] enjoys a freedom that comes to fruition by the use of all available sources of information and inspiration. […] By contrast, a novel or book has already carried out its own process of historical sedimentation of a given topic. Therefore, when one turns to a book by a great author, one is forced to move within narrower, predetermined bounds. Using a book as a source and as a point of reference carries with it the obligation to respect a certain narrative structure. […] Surely, this narrative structure will eventually, when translated into images, have to muster the specific demands made upon them by the images themselves, which are dif ferent from those imposed by words. Thus it is that the film also eventually becomes an act of writing [scrittura], to the extent that the creative process involved in a film is autonomous with respect to its literary antecedent. (Testa 1996: 145–6)

At first sight it would seem that Rosi follows a ‘separatist’ approach to film transposition, mentioning only the narrative structure as the element of  the source text to reproduce. Grif fith introduced the notion of ‘separatist approach’ in 1997, according to which the transfer of a text is always possible, since it is accepted that in a text both ‘story’ and ‘discourse’ can be separated, and that there is a universal code of narrative devices which transcends the discourse system (1997: 30). However, Rosi continues with a remark concerning the very nature of the transfer process, which is rightly identified as a scrittura (a proper act of writing), thus alluding to a more complex position. This position is asserted by another passage from the same interview: Let me begin by saying that, as far as I am concerned, whenever I shoot films drawn from works of  literature I always try to transpose those books which (with all the due, respectful distance I acknowledge between myself and the authors of  those

4

Interview conducted in Rome, 24 May 1994. Transcript translated and edited by Testa (1996: 138–54).

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Here, Rosi, commenting on the deep and intimate relationship he has always developed with the transposed novels, highlights the possibility of an interconnection that, because of its very nature, cannot be limited to the narrative structure. What then were the reasons that attracted Rosi towards García Márquez’s text? Zambetti defines Rosi’s interest in this novel as ‘symptomatic’, and goes on to observe that the novel appears to be structured like Salvatore Giuliano or Il caso Mattei (in Mancino and Zambetti 1998: 135). First of all, the novel has a non-chronological ‘editing’ of  the story. Although the title of  the novel alludes to journalism and to the practise of  feature story writing, the narrative structure of the novel, unlike a proper crónica, gradually builds up a text, which is actually more synchronic than diachronic, characterized as it is by frequent and deliberately unsettling anacronías, prolepsis, f lash-backs and f lash-forwards, and made even less linear by recurring repetitions of  the same event. Examples of  the latter include Santiago’s murder (‘the end seems endlessly repeated’, to use Parkinson Zamora’s [1985: 109] phrase), and repetitions of  the same sentences or single words, anaphors, allusions, and so on. Despite the fact that the story is told with precise references to time (an almost ‘rigid adherence to the exact hour and minute’, but not to the year and month), the time line is deliberately and arbitrarily ‘jumbled’ and haphazard, and there is a sense of simultaneity, even if the narrative is moving forward (Pelayo 2001: 117; Mellen 2000: 36; Parkinson Zamora 1985: 109). Another element of interest for Rosi must have been the fact that the novel is clearly a hybrid. When the story begins, from the very first sentence, the name and destiny of the victim are disclosed, and Santiago Nasar’s fate is doomed when we meet him at the very opening of the ‘curtains’, since it is immediately revealed that he is going to be killed on that very day, and even the killers’ names and the cause of  the murder are reveled within a

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few pages. However, the author/narrator, who presents himself as a friend of  the victim, and a witness to the events, guides the reader through an intricate and detailed labyrinth of surprises, which symptomatically do not lead to any clear and tangible conclusion. Thus, although the plot would suggest that Crónica de una muerte anunciada is in the tradition of  thrillers and detective stories, the novel is actually much more of a hybrid genre. Williams (1998: 103) describes it as ‘a mystery novel in reverse’, and Kercher (1985: 93) fundamentally agrees, speaking of  the ‘demystification of detective and Gothic novel’, whereas Mellen (2000: 134) defines the text as ‘an epic in novella form’. Mellen’s definition stems from his account of an interview in which García Márquez himself emphasized another aspect of  his novel referring to it as a ‘terrible love story’. Campanella (1982: 426) even speaks of a modern Latin American transposition of classical Greek tragedy, while Pelayo (2001: 113, 116) points out that Crónica de una muerte anunciada is a combination of dif ferent genres, journalism, documentary writing, realism and detective story, to conclude that it is a ‘hybrid’. Finally, Crónica de una muerte anunciada is also characterized by a deliberate absence of psychological depth in characterization. Equally relevant is the presence of civic and social notes (the cruelty of the code of  honour, and the hidden but strong hostility against the rich), which are all aspects that show an interesting af finity with Rosi’s cinema. In Salvatore Giuliano, Rosi had already revealed a new way of making cinema: a blending of cinematic and journalistic techniques, between documentary and dramatization, or TV investigation and historical-narrative reconstruction (Mancino and Zambetti 1998: 11). Up to Cadaveri eccellenti, the stories of  his films were developed without chronological editing or a traditional structure, that is, without a clearly identifiable beginning, crescendo, climax or conclusion. Another distinctive trait was that Rosi’s films clearly skipped the ‘private’ and psychological dimensions, rather focusing on the ‘public’ and collective ones.

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Voicing the local However, notwithstanding all the points of contact mentioned in the previous section, the film transposition of García Márquez’s novel proved to be a very hard task almost from the very beginning. Rosi, about to start to shoot the film, remarks that, although at first sight the novel seems to be ‘written for the cinema’, it is instead a very complex literary text, which develops along a metaphysical, rather than a mysterious dimension (Bolzoni 1986: 38). To Ciment (1986–7: 19) interviewing him after two months of shooting in Colombia, Rosi admitted that it was the most dif ficult film he had ever directed, later adding that ‘this is García Márquez’s most literary achievement. In his book, the characters hardly ever speak, which helps to create a more visual film but makes it dif ficult to explore individual psychology’. Actually, the main problem lies in the deep cultural dimensions of this novel. What greatly contributes to giving García Márquez’s narrative style its unique ‘f lavour’, its being anchored to the popular tradition of  telling stories based on his grandmother’s voice, as García Márquez has explained on several occasions. If this is true of his style in general, it is even more so in Crónica de una muerte anunciada, which involves a whole coastal town in the North of Colombia and almost eighty characters. With so many of its inhabitants acting as a classical Greek chorus through their continuous and direct comments, the language of the source text is strongly characterized both in social and geographical terms. However, it would not be correct to say that the novel is written in a regional language or in a dialect: it is rather the whole narrative language which is subtly imbued with localisms, ranging from common occurrences of the variety of South American Spanish to more localized vocabulary from Northern Colombia. Obviously, it is not just a matter of vocabulary or syntax; it is the whole text that is ‘imbued’ with the f lavour of  local culture. This feature alone explains García Márquez’s distrust and scepticism regarding the transferability of his own works. The Colombian writer has de facto prevented any cinematic transposition of  his masterpiece, Cien años de soledad, and his

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reply to those who once asked him about his other famous novel, El amor en los tiempos del cólera, is particularly revealing: I don’t mind as long as it’s a Latin American movie. By that I mean one that is directed by a Latin American, that exudes the atmosphere of  Latin America, that shows our character, our way of being, our society, because those are the things that define this drama. (in Mellen 2000: 115)

He is aware that he could not be satisfied with any transposition of  his works, and therefore wisely concludes that the best solution for him is to absolutely avoid getting involved, which is exactly what he has preferred to do with Rosi’s film too. Mellen (2000: 114–15) tells how, when Rosi proposed to show García Márquez his screenplay, the novelist replied, ‘Don’t show it to me because if  I read it, the film will probably never be made. I am thinking of my book and you are thinking of your film. I wrote the book alone; you make the film alone’. Later, Rosi thanked him. This is also confirmed by Ciment (1986–7: 20), who reports Rosi’s comment of implicit perfect understanding of  García Márquez’s view: We are close friends and we have a mutual esteem. But, like all writers who know about cinema, he is well aware that a film is autonomous in relation to a literary work. He said to me very clearly, ‘The book is mine, the film is yours’.

Certainly, when García Márquez stresses that his works ‘need’ to be transposed by Latin American directors, because of their intimate cultural connections, he shows how this necessity makes the task all the more dif ficult for Rosi. His af firmation, even better, shows how risky and arduous the task can be. However, the Italian director seems to thrive on challenges (Ciment 1986–7: 19). Apparently, he develops a complex strategy, having recourse to very dif ferent, sometimes even opposite, solutions. For example, at the level of script and dialogues, Rosi’s filmic transposition does not opt for a functionally equivalent rendering of the regional voices of the Colombian novel. Thus, the variety of  Italian spoken in the film is a standard, almost ‘sanitized’ language, with neither regional nor social inf lections. On the other hand, remaining faithful to the teaching of  his great mentor, the director Luchino Visconti, Rosi decided to shoot on location, even if this

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decision turned out to be a nightmare because of awful climatic conditions and criminal threats (each actor had to be given a bodyguard). Part of the film is shot in Cartagena de Indias, but most scenes are shot in Mompox, which Rosi had chosen for its old Spanish colonial architecture, as this is the town in which the Spanish soldiers took refuge and built impressive cathedrals and rich mansions (Crisanti 1987: 10). Thus, the setting is fundamentally authentic throughout the film, with only some exceptions, such as the huge square that stages Santiago Nasar’s murder, which is not the actual square in Mompox, because this was not big enough for the miseen-scene Rosi was conceiving. Yet, although the square is a setting and not the real one, it remains a faithful and realistic reconstruction of it to a larger scale and took five months of work for 150 workers to reconstruct the actual square to the scale needed by Rosi. An evident consequence of shooting on location, and of his meticulous attention to detail, is the great relevance that realia and cultural markers possess in the target text (see Osimo 2000: 2). From the very first sequences of the film, a highly multiracial society with signs of a strong hybridization of cultures is portrayed. The evidence is given accumulating carefully chosen images of everyday life; as well as showing its architecture and characteristic form of urbanization; the peculiarity of local customs, celebrations, music and dancing; the exuberance of  tropical vegetation; and the abundance of and contact with a myriad of exotic animals. In this view, the opening sequence preceding the film title already provides the audience with very important clues that immediately help to localize the story. The sequential accumulation of the f luvial sequence, with the size of the river, the paddle boat, the abundant tropical vegetation on the banks, the presence of blacks and mestizos, paddling on long canoes and wearing straw hats, the contrast between slums and elegant white colonial buildings, could already evoke a Latin American background. However, to make the localization more accurate, the third shot of  the opening sequence shows the Colombian striped f lag waving in the foreground. The yellow-blue-red f lag will be a crucial presence again in another important initial sequence, the visit of  the Bishop. We could even say that the Colombian landscape, marginally described in the novel, in the film shifts from mere background to be the protagonist in more than one case. Such is certainly the case of  the long

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love sequence on the river, with shots focusing on either tropical plants or animals (iguanas, large lizards, river otters) and above all birds (parrots, cranes, cormorants, storks, kingfishers, and so on). These visual clues are then strongly confirmed by authentic music and dancing, which are artfully and repeatedly introduced especially in the first half of the film, thus evoking typical Caribbean rhythms and movements. For example, the wedding sequence is expanded in the filmic text where one of its key scenes becomes the dancing of  the very popular Caribbean song El manisero. All these elements help viewers to identify and colourfully define the setting, to the point that, at least in this regard, we can clearly speak of a translation strategy of  ‘exotization’ (Torop’s table ‘The Translatability of  Culture’, Torop 1995/1999, in Osimo 2000: 1). We can comment here that, with its need to overtly stress cultural elements (which instead would definitely be redundant in an intracultural transposition), the film actually reveals the ‘hand’ of a foreign director who is aware of pre-conceived expectations of exotic emotions from his international audience. The local voice is emphasized for this very ef fect of narrating its exotic uniqueness. However, as we have observed, the cultural complexity of García Márquez’s text is not easy to convey, and the awareness of  this leads Rosi to stress personal interpretation and to make courageous choices, trying to develop subtle relazioni traduttive [translation relations] with the source text. Making personal choices implies to be willing to take risks. The danger of producing a text that may lack internal cohesion or that perhaps may not be fully understandable in its objective are real. Neither being a commercial or an artistic success, nevertheless Rosi’s Cronaca is certainly a rich filmic text, and, from the point of view of the study of film transpositions, proves to be a case worthy of greater attention. An example can be seen in the way the film decides to stress the social and racial elements already present in the source text. It is interesting to notice that the poor and the common people, all of whom are either blacks or mestizos, are clearly presented as external to the main story. Unlike the novel, the film begins with the voyage of  the narrator, Dr Cristo Bedoya, a white middle-class man like all the other main characters, who from the ferry-boat gazes intently at the poverty-stricken outskirts of  his native town, next to which a rich mansion stands. This mansion is the residence

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of  Santiago Nasar’s powerful family, who belong to that same class of  the narrator and the other main characters. Thus, before really entering the story, the guiding gaze of  the narrator lingers a little bit longer on life ashore. The poor, the workers, and the ordinary people are introduced in these initial scenes of  the narrow crowded streets of  Mompox, and will only appear again, this time in the foreground, at the end of  the film, in the dramatic scene of the murder of the protagonist, Santiago. In between, almost framed by the presence of the mestizos and the blacks, there is the incongruous f lowing of the life of the upper and middle classes, with their elegant houses, absurd moral codes, and tragic destinies. This life excludes and victimizes the poorer classes, who are witnesses and implicit judges of  the final punishment of a member of the af f luent class. At least, this seems to be the strong message of all those powerful portrait shots at the end of  the film, a long gallery of faces impassively watching the ritual sacrifice of a representative of  the white rich who is slaughtered by other members of  the same middle class, although less rich than him. It could be observed, however, that Santiago Nasar is killed for other reasons (the breaking of  the code of  honour), rather than for his responsibility as a member of a social class, and therefore his crime should not even directly af fect them, the poor and the mestizos. But, if it is true that the code of honour is experienced as a common moral value by the whole town, the poor are left outside the story, as a frame to it, so that the shared moral code would not seem to justify the stern gaze and guilty lack of assistance that is shown by all the by-standers, which is so powerfully and vividly highlighted by the camera. However, through the superb photography (colour contrasts, ef fects of  light/darkness, framing) and very ef fective editing, which contributes to create a dramatic alternation and contrast between the increasingly anxious looks of the victim and the impassive and cruelly severe faces of the witnesses, the film implicitly makes these low-class blacks and mestizos play a more direct role than that of mere spectators. Actually, their silent presence at the beginning and end of the story seems to turn them into sinister ‘avengers’, thus increasing the social and racial tensions latent in the story. New possibilities of meaning and interpretation are opened up. This translational emphasis on the silenced voices of  the marginalized is, of course, the director’s and his editor’s subjective

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choice in order to transfer the director’s attentive but personal reading of  the text through what is therefore a proper ‘act of writing’. Nonetheless the film fundamentally adheres to the interpretative stimuli provided by the source text at thematic and narrative levels, simply multiplying its semantic potentialities even in line with authoritative interpretations. It is not necessary to have a sociological reading of Crónica de una muerte anunciada to understand that the author’s focus is not on the individual, although the story may seem to be so individualized […]. In this perspective, Santiago Nasar, incarnating specific values of a group, is killed by involuntary emissaries of other values. He was endowed, in excess, with the high qualities of a social class. His natural talent, shown in dif ferent moments of  the story, has nothing to do with his death. Undoubtedly, it is evidence of a ‘superior justice’, the man, who is waiting to own Divina Flor’s virginity as his perfectly natural right, will be murdered to revenge an act of dishonour which he certainly has not committed. […] Aeschylus’s and Sophocles’ heroes are responsible for either their own acts or the acts of their ancestors; Santiago Nasar is responsible for his class. (Campanella 1982: 426–7, my translation)

Let me conclude with another example of  the possibility for dif ferent semiotic codes to develop subtle translation connections between texts. As critics have highlighted, García Márquez’s novel is characterized by the occurrence of repetition, to the point that it clearly becomes a formal device for conveying the idea of how things eternally repeat themselves in contrast to the natural f low of  human life, revealing disruptive tensions between chronological and linear time, which inexorably marks human life (the historical view), and circular and mythical time (the popular and fabulous view). There are many examples of  the recurrence of  themes, motifs and actions within this single text, as well as repetition of syntax structures or of nouns and phrases (‘textual repetitions’) and even repetition between texts of the same author (‘autointertextual repetitions’, see Waters Hood 1993). This distinctive feature in the Colombian writer’s style equally becomes a relevant element in Rosi’s Cronaca di una morte annunciata. Obviously, Rosi does not resort mechanically to the same motifs and typology of repetition, and he also introduces his own ‘autointertextual’ references.

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Signs voicing metaphors In Rosi’s film, textual repetition actually interweaves a subtle and complex web of echoes that cannot be missed even on first viewing. Some acquire an undeniable metaphoric resonance, such as the almost obsessive presence of birds. Birds are constantly present throughout the film, and their recurrence is made more complex by the introduction of  the sub-theme of  the contrast between caged birds and wild birds. The theme is first introduced by the protagonist, Santiago, on the occasion of the expected pastoral visit of  the bishop. Being annoyed because, as usual, the bishop has not even bothered to land and meet the people (his ‘f lock’) gathered on the bank to welcome him, he metaphorically ‘frees’ his justified frustration by materially ‘freeing’ the caged cocks intended for the bishop. This same metaphor is taken up again by the first view the mysterious lover, Bayardo San Roman, has of his future wife Angela, who appears on the balcony hanging cages of  birds on the outside wall of  her house. A similar scene occurs in the final sequence of their tormented love story. The two lovers are aged now, but the situation and even the perspective are the same: Bayardo is looking up to Angela who walks along the balcony to hang small cages with birds. This association of  Angela with caged birds, which circularly frames her story with Bayardo, not only throws an ominous light onto an otherwise happy ending for their relationship, but also stresses how Angela is not destined to f ly away from the cruel ‘cage’ that society has created for a young woman like her. Such symbolic meaning is strengthened by another important sequence at the beginning of  their dif ficult relationship, a romantic but not joyful boat excursion, which is marked by repeated images of  birds f lying away from the silent and selfabsorbed couple on the boat. Even more persistent is the theme of water, appearing as rain and more often as f lowing river water. The film opens with Cristo Bedoya embarking on what is perceived to be a painful voyage back, somehow reminiscent of  Conrad’s journeys into darkness, a voyage upstream, both materially and metaphorically (Cristo Bedoya is going back, upstream and towards his

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past). Innumerable are the images of  life along and on the river, together with the arrival and departure of the ferry-boat, openly evoking the idea of eternal repetition. But one shot, which strategically marks the shift from the first part of  the film to the next, masterfully expresses the figurative value attributed to the river in this film. The first part of  the film is focused on Santiago Nasar’s looming destiny, and concludes with the announcement of  his tragic murder. The second important part is about to start with the arrival by boat of the mysterious stranger, Bayardo. However, this entrance of the charming lover chronologically introduces a remoter event than the time of  the murder. In between, there is a short, but highly meaningful scene in the present, with the narrator, Cristo Bedoya, sitting immobile under a big tree (which will appear again in the final part of  the film) and looking at the f lowing water of  the river, but clearly absorbed in his thoughts. The initial long shot shows in the foreground the artistically sinister, tangled and dark roots of mangroves, which occupy three quarters of the frame. In the washed-out background we can see the man from behind, silently looking at the river. In the top left corner, already partly out of  frame, a long boat is steadily moving and then completely goes out of sight and out of frame. With a matching cut, the camera follows the man’s gaze, and focuses on a f loating bundle of vegetation which is passing by, with an elegant heron standing motionless on it. Then there is a new cut, and a very subtle f lashback to only a few seconds before. Actually, it is a similar shot of  Cristo Bedoya from behind, but this time it is a middle shot and the perspective is from another angle, so that he appears to be on the right of  the frame, and at that moment nothing is f loating on the water. Then, suddenly, the bundle of vegetation with the heron, that very bundle that had just passed by, re-enters the frame and the camera pans and follows it, so that it is now the man who disappears from the frame. Then there is a new cut again, with a close up of the man in profile, who then turns towards the invisible spectators, and, staring into the camera, picks up the storytelling again, which, in voice-over, leads into the sequence of the arrival of Bayardo. The skills demonstrated in the film narrative are the perfect way of conveying the idea of contrast between movement and stillness, entrances and exits, linear f lowing and eternity. Both man and bird are motionless; the bird

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however is moving thanks to the movement of water, which continuously, though inadvertently, goes out of the frame and continuously re-enters it, always dif ferent and always the same, following the f low of  the river. The bird itself seems to have already passed by, but then arrives again and continues to f loat down the river. We do not see it finally go out of the frame, unlike the boat in the initial shot, but we know it will do the same. When Cristo Bedoya finally starts speaking, in one single sentence he matches Santiago’s killing and Bayardo’s arrival from the river, in an eternal circle of death and life.

Concluding remarks The scene described above epitomizes the way in which, in its interaction with the source text, Rosi’s film is looking for equivalences both at symbolic and semiotic levels. His equivalences draw upon the resources of editing and framing and through the use of such culturally connotated themes as the incessant f low of a river. If  the frequent occurrences of repetition in García Márquez’s novel can be seen as a form of ‘figurative rendering’ of a complex idea of  time, the film shows an analogous and equally elaborate system of relations amongst narrative, discursive and enunciative structures. This attempt to recreate the system of relations between text levels can make the dif ference and help identify forms of ‘intersemiotic translation’ distinguishing them from more common cases of commercial adaptations. In this regard, it can be interesting to follow Dusi (2003) in his subtle distinction between ‘transposition’ and ‘adaptation’. Working on the etymologies of  the two terms, the Italian scholar stresses the value of  the prefix ‘trans’ in ‘transposition’ (going over but also transgressing) with the underpinning meaning of ‘going beyond’ the source text, or rather, multiplying its semiotic potentialities, while, according to Dusi’s (ibid.: 16) reading, ‘adaptation’ implies ‘adapting’, that is, ‘fitting’, and therefore inevitably ‘reducing’ to a dif ferent form, without respecting the dif ferences or the internal coherences of either the source or target texts.

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Although here Dusi is not following the prevailing terminology used within Film Studies, I think that his approach is particularly appropriate in this case, as what is at stake is the rendering of a highly individual narrative voice, so intimately and evocatively interwoven with a culture. ‘Cultures do not translate easily’, as Rabassa (2002: 89), García Márquez’s English translator, aptly observes. Rabassa is referring to interlinguistic translation only, but we have seen that the dynamics enacted are fundamentally the same in intersemiotic translation. Rosi’s film eloquently shows this, in its conjoining of elements of overt ‘exotization’ with more subtle forms of relazioni traduttive [translation relations] derived from the director’s awareness of  the responsibility of producing a text which aims to ‘transpose’ another text, striving to go over marginal and local ‘borders’, bridging national languages, distant cultures, as well as distinctive semiotic codes.

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9 The publication of  Mrs Dalloway in Catalonia: Is it possible to reconcile commercial interests and culture?

Introduction On 15 May 2003 the director and copy-editor of  the Catalan publishing house Proa,1 Isidor Cònsul (2003: 6), wrote a reply in the supplement of  the journal El País, Quadern to the article by the writer and translator Carles Miró, which had appeared some weeks before in the same publication. Miró’s observation, that the recently released translation of Virginia Woolf ’s Mrs Dalloway was simply a copy typed anew from the 1930 original translation of  the text by Cèsar August Jordana with the hardcover of an image of the film The Hours, infuriated the publisher. The copy-editor and director of  Proa, the late literary critic and writer Cònsul, assured in his article that ‘it is not true that the edition in circulation [of Mrs Dalloway] is the one from 1930’.2 After of fering a comparison of  the first translation into Catalan of  Mrs Dalloway with the 2003 translation of  the same text, I will show to what extent Cònsul’s claim is accurate. Furthermore, taking into account Lefevere’s (1997) descriptive approach to Translation Studies, I will emphasize the evident reminiscences of  the period in which the first Catalan translation was produced, namely, the Noucentisme, and the ideological positioning of  the translator, Cèsar August Jordana. 1 2

Edicions Proa, founded in 1928, has been one of the leading publishing houses interested in promoting the Catalan language and culture. Translations into English are mine unless otherwise stated.

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Descriptive approach to the translations Descriptive Translation Studies In order to substantiate my analysis of the translations of Mrs Dalloway, it is pertinent to devote part of my writing to outlining the foundations of my theoretical approach, which is situated within Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS). DTS approaches require of  the analyst some knowledge of the target culture context and highlight the importance of the figure of  the translator as a key factor in the decision-making process in translation. Descriptivism is, according to Holmes’s (1972/2000: 176) terminology, ‘the branch of the discipline [within translation studies] which constantly maintains the closest contact with the empirical phenomena under study’. Therefore, it is derived from or relating to experiment and observation rather than theory and focuses on the function (Function-oriented DTS), the product or output (Product-oriented DTS), or the process of translation (Process-oriented DTS) – always following Holmes’s terminology. Out of these three possible foci, I will focus on the function-oriented and the product-oriented perspectives. The former deals with the context in which a translation is produced and the latter attempts to map, describe, and explain the translation. I will not focus on the third, process-oriented DTS, as this approach deals with the mental operations carried out by the translator and it is beyond my field of study. From the function-oriented point of view, we can deduce that the translation act is contextualized and culture-bound. Descriptivism shifts the focus of attention away from the source text (ST) and places it on the target pole, namely the receiving culture. The intended objective of  the trans­lation in its new environment is what determines the shape of  the target text (TT). Therefore, in order to match the requirements of the target context, linguistic – which includes ‘semantic content, […] formal contour of  the original, […] aesthetic features’ (Bassnett 1980: 6) – and conceptual modifications may take place in translation. In any event, the function of  the translation is decided by the translator, or by whoever

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commissions the translation, identified by Lefevere (1997: 29) as ‘the professional’ who is within the literary system, including ‘critics, reviewers, teachers and translators’. Lefevere (ibid.) also talks about a second force, which can determine the function of  translation: The person who controls everything from outside the literary system; a patronage understood as something similar to the powers (people, institutions) which can promote or constrain the reading, writing or re-writing of  literature.

Finally, the third factor that controls the function of  literary translations is the ‘dominant poetics of a period’ within the target culture (ibid.: 34). Taking this view into consideration, Hermans (2002: 1) states that, ‘This kind of  translation studies stands to the practice of  translation in essentially the same way as, say, […] the way in which literary theory or literary history stand to literature’. Consequently, some equivalence can be established between descriptivism in Translation Studies and a cultural materialist approach to literature. Both approaches include an analysis of  historical material – literature included – within a politicized framework, which includes gender studies. Descriptivism also focuses on the product or output obtained after the translation process. It does not intend to judge or evaluate translations, but tries to draw conclusions regarding the particular decisions made by the translator. Translation scholars who work from this approach try to answer who translates what, when, how, for whom, in what context, and with what ef fect, as well as trying to explain why these aspects are all as they are. These explanations, of a hypothetical nature, can be found in the culture for which the translation was made, and do not attempt to be prescriptive, which implies that there is no attempt to interfere with the way in which translators go about their task. Descriptive scholars in translation try to discover the motivation of the choices made by a translator, or a generation of  translators. This aim implies inquiring into the priorities and strategies which have determined the preference for certain options over others which were also available.

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Contextualization of  the Catalan translations Virginia Woolf ’s fourth novel, Mrs Dalloway (1925), promptly arrived in Spain in 1930. Only five years after the publication of  Mrs Dalloway in Great Britain, Cèsar August Jordana, produced the Catalan translation of  the text for the publishing house Proa, thus making the text available to the Catalan-speaking readership. The translation into Catalan was not only the first translation of a text by Virginia Woolf into Catalan but the first text by Woolf introduced in the Spanish State. The context in which the novel was translated is known as the Noucentisme. The Noucentisme is a cultural movement, with political repercussions, which began in Catalonia in around 1906 and came to an end with Primo de Rivera’s coup d’état in 1923. The term ‘Noucentisme’ was coined by the writer and critic Eugeni d’Ors to designate the beginning of  the twentieth century. The term is a playful reference to established literary periodization and it recalls the Italian Quattrocento and Cinquecento. Furthermore, ‘nou’ means ‘new’, the opposite of ‘old’, and refers to expectation that the recently begun century will bring freshness. In terms of form, the Noucentistes rebuked the romanticism and the realism of  the nineteenth century and were inspired by the features of classicism. Furthermore, Noucentisme encouraged a return to order and normality after the excesses of radicalism, bohemianism, and individualism that had characterized some of  the major figures of modernism. In spite of  their attempt to imitate the classics as regards simplicity, Noucentista literature bordered baroque because of its contrived use of  language. In terms of genres, the Noucentistes were not particularly interested in the narrative genre and they were against the form of a well-made novel. They considered the language used in novels dialectal and full of shortcomings, a premise totally unacceptable for such a group of authors who took a special care in creating a refined and polished Catalan language. In terms of innovations, anti-novels became very important at the time of  Noucentisme. In these anti-novels, the deconstruction of  the narrative genre is remarkable in so far as writers decided to break with previously valid parameters (the fables written by Eugeni d’Ors in his Glosari or Carles Soldevila’s L’abrandament of 1917 illustrate the ef fects of this phenomenon).

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Thus, the novel became a minor genre during the time of  Noucentisme, although Narcís Oller and Joaquim Ruyra were outstanding novelists of  the period. The most important narrative genres were the short stories and the tales, which thrived in the literary panorama of  this movement. Both genres are shorter and the ideas are more concentrated. In addition to these, other exploited genres were poetry, essays, and oratory. The group of intellectuals and writers animating the Noucentisme attempted to reach perfection both linguistically and thematically. Literature was the outcome of an intellectual process, only available to minorities. Thus, art became elitist and classist. The Noucentista period is characterized by introducing and pro­moting high numbers of translations into Catalan from dif ferent lan­guages. Jordana (1938: 357–8) defines this period as ‘the Golden Age of our translations’. During those years, many Catalan writers and professional translators translated ‘canonical’ authors from other literary systems: Josep Lleonart translated Goethe; Marià Manent translated Kipling; and Jordana translated Shakespeare, Woolf, and Dickens. Pericay and Toutain (1996: 258) af firm that: The Noucentisme makes translation the privileged experimental field upon which the most inf luential literary Catalan prose of the twentieth century will be shaped. The noucentistes look towards the classics and towards the traditions of foreign cultures, enviably consolidated since many centuries ago, and the procedure employed to carry out their project is very similar to the one used during the Renaissance of  the dif ferent European cultures: the recuperation of the Greek and Latin tradition and the interchange with the surrounding cultures through translation.

The authors continue by emphasizing that the forms of Noucentista prose are inherited from the type of prose used in the Noucentistes’ translations. These translations, they go on to say, use a distorted and exaggerated language (ibid.: 260). The particular use they make of language characterizes the Noucentistes’ writings. The search for ‘purity, correctness and the refinement of the language’ and the ‘obsession for writing an aseptic Catalan of an immaculate and diaphanous academicism’ (ibid.: 115) can be considered the key inspiring concepts embraced by this movement.

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Hitherto I have been dealing with the context in which the first translation of  Mrs Dalloway into Catalan was produced. The second context to bear in mind for the subsequent analysis is the one in which the fourth edition of Mrs Dalloway was released (2003). This last, and still the current, edition was published after the success of the film The Hours. Directed by Stephen Daldry and released in 2002, The Hours was itself  based on the novel of  the same name by Michael Cunningham, published in 1998 and receiver of  the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The translator: Cèsar August Jordana i Mayans Cèsar August Jordana i Mayans (Barcelona, 1893 – Buenos Aires, 1958) studied engineering, although he only exercised his profession for three years. Afterwards, he worked in dif ferent fields of  the arts: as a contributor to journals such as La Publicidad, Revista de Catalunya, and Opinió; as an employee of the Generalitat de Catalunya (the autonomous Catalan government), where he was the Director of  the Oficina de Correcció de Textos (the Of fice of Correction of Texts, dealing mainly with administrative language), as well as a writer. Among his writings, his most relevant publications are: Quatre venjances (Four Revenges, 1923), El collar de la Núria (Núria’s Necklace, 1927), Una mena d’amor (A Kind of Love, 1931) – considered his true masterpiece – Resum de literatura anglesa (A Summary of  English Literature, 1934), Tres a la reraguarda (Three at the Rearguard, 1940), and El Rusio i el Pelao (Rusio and Pelao, 1950). Furthermore, he translated widely from English into Catalan the works of well-known authors such as Aldous Huxley (The Perennial Philosophy, 1947; Ape and Essence, 1951), William Shakespeare (Macbeth, 1928; Julius Caesar, 1930; Anthony and Cleopatra, 1930; Romeo and Juliet, 1932; Othello, 1932), Thomas Hardy (Tess of the d’Urbervilles, 1929), H. G. Wells (Love and Mr Lewisham, 1930), George Meredith (The Tragic Comedians, 1934), Walter Scott (Ivanhoe, 1936 [s.d.]; The Black Dwarf, 1936), Mark Twain (Tom Sawyer, 1934; Detective, 1934), and R. L. Stevenson (The Master of  Ballantrae: A Winter’s Tale, 1953). He also translated from French, producing renderings of some of  Voltaire’s philosophical short stories, in collaboration with Carles Soldevila

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and Pere Gimferrer. Additionally, he translated into Basque and Galician. He also knew Spanish, German, and some Esperanto. He was particularly interested and active, as were the other writers in the Noucentisme, in making the Catalan language a tool that dignified the autochthonous literary genres in order to open the Catalan culture up to European standards. His commitment to the recovery of  the Catalan language and culture is evident if we take into account that he was involved in dif ferent groups and institutions designated to promote the Catalan culture. In 1936, with the outbreak of  the Spanish Civil War, he became the president of  the Agrupació d’Escriptors Catalans (Society of  Catalan Writers) and a member of  the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes (Institution of  the Catalan Arts). At the end of  the Spanish Civil War in 1939, before the nationalist troops reached Barcelona, Jordana, like many other Catalan writers, went into exile. He never returned to Catalonia and died in Buenos Aires. The publishing house: Edicions Proa The publishing house Proa, created in 1928 by Marcel lí Antich and Josep Queralt, was a driving force behind the increase of  Catalan translations. According to Hurtley (2001: 297): Proa (Prow) was designed to promote a rise of  the novel in Catalan following its low ebb during the Noucentista period when the novel was frowned upon. […] As the Noucentista movement declined, then, the novel rose and Proa was a product, in 1928, of  the new surge of interest in the novel on the part of writers and readers. Proa took on the publication of  Catalan authors, both canonical and emerging, as well as the translation of established nineteenth-century foreign classics.

Along the same lines, Coll-Vincent (1999: 117) assures that ‘the range of novels which appeared in the early years of  the fiction series “A Tot Vent” (Editorial Proa) constitutes a remarkable achievement’. Proa’s catalogue included translations of works by such authors as Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, George Meredith, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Aldous Huxley, Frank Swinnerton, Maurice Baring, Virginia Woolf, and Margaret Kennedy.

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After the stagnation that the Catalan novel had undergone during the Noucentisme, the fundamental mission of  Edicions Proa, as with other publishing houses such as Editorial Alfa, Editorial Catalana, and Editorial Barcino, went beyond commercial purposes. Although it is undeniable that Proa was interested in selling books, their purpose was, above all, to forge a tradition of novels in Catalan in order to put them on a par with the European narrative.

Comparative analysis of  the first and the last editions of  Mrs Dalloway in Catalan My interest does not lie in comparing the ST in English with a translation into Catalan, in so far as studies on the subject already exist.3 What follows is an exhaustive comparison between the first translation of Mrs Dalloway into Catalan in 1930 (MD1) and the last edition from 2003 (MD2). The aim is to reveal whether Isidor Cònsul’s statement, that the 2003 version is not the same as the one from 1930, may be considered accurate. In the article previously alluded to, the publisher of  MD2, Cònsul (2003: 6) declared that: Cyclically, Mrs Dalloway has been published in the series A tot vent by Proa, and the dif ferent editions have sold out regularly. Mrs Dalloway was reprinted in 1970, in 1985 and since the last years of  the decade of  the 1980s it has been published in diverse pocket editions. Before that, the characteristic elements of Noucentistes translations were slightly polished up from the text due to the fact that in their attempt to domesticate the text, to make it more Catalan, [Noucentiste translators] domesticated everything including cultural references.

3

For more information, see Hurtley (2001) in which she rigorously compares some sections of  the first translation into Catalan of  Mrs Dalloway with the original by Woolf.

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As a matter of fact, the first translation (MD1) presents a recurrent domestication of most of the proper names that appear in the ST. Perhaps this phenomenon, very common in the Noucentista movement, could be labelled as ‘Catalanization’, a calque on the Catalan term ‘catalanització’. In El malentès del Noucentisme. Tradició i plagi a la prosa catalana moderna, Pericay and Toutain (1996: 277) consider this ‘Catalanization’ in translations during the Noucentisme ‘a typical feature of this generation of translators’. Therefore, Lucy becomes Llúcia; Peter Walsh is now Pere Walsh; John is Joan; Elizabeth is Elisabet; Georges, Jordis; Hugh, Huc; and so on. However, the 2003 Catalan edition of Mrs Dalloway (MD2) restores the terms used in the ST, adding to the text a foreignizing element in most of the cases, although with some exceptions. For example, in the case of  two ref­erences to someone called Wickam that we find on the very same page of MD1 (p. 81), the 2003 edition uses both, Wickam and Vickam (p. 61), the latter being a spelling more charac­teristic of the Catalan language which rarely employs the letter ‘w’. It is highly probable that the reason for this inconsistency is due to a misspelling of  the word and thus has no particular purpose. Despite the fact that it is easily recognizable as a typographic error, this lack of cohesion in the criteria of domestication may cause confusion in the readers, who could think that the text is referring to two dif ferent people. Similarly, references to English culture have been given a Catalan translation in MD1 but are left in English in MD2: the Big Ben is the Gros Ben (MD1: 6) ‘gros’ meaning ‘big’; and the Broad Walk becomes the literal ‘Passeig Ample’ (MD1: 29). Likewise, titles of  books appear in English in the revised version of 2003 but were translated into Catalan in the 1930 text: ‘Jaunts and Jollities de Jorrocks; […] Soapy Sponge, Memoirs de Mrs Asquith […] Big Game Shooting in Nigeria’ (MD2: 15) and ‘Sortides i Joliveses de Jorrocks; […] Esponja Sabonosa, les Memòries de Mrs Asquith […] Casa Major a Nigèria’ (MD1: 13–14). Apart from the ‘Catalanization’ of proper names and cultural references in MD1, the second modification that regularly recurs in the comparison between MD1 and MD2 lies in the use of miscellaneous vocabulary and expressions. There are numerous archaic expressions in MD1 which have been modernized in MD2. Table 6 below presents some of the changes introduced in MD2:

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EX no.

SOURCE TEXT (1925)

TARGET TEXT 1 MD1 (1930)

TARGET TEXT 2 MD2 (2003)

1

Stood looking ahead of  them (58)

Miraven fit davant llur (68)

miraven fit davant seu (54)

2

a presentiment of something that was bound to part them (39)

d’un pressentiment de quelcom que les separaria (46)

d’un pressentiment d’alguna cosa que les separaria (38)

3

he rapidly endows them with womanhood (64)

ràpidament els dota de donia (76)

ràpidament els dota de condició de dona (59)

4

He could see Clarissa (66)

Li semblava de veure Clarissa (78)

Li semblava veure Clarissa (61)

5

Water-closets (80)

water-closets (95)

wàters (73)

6

snob (82)

snob (97)

Esnob (74)

7

envelopes (28)

envelops (33)

sobres (29)

8

Pity she asked of  Maisie Johnson, standing by the hyacinth beds (31)

Compassió demanava de Maisie Johnson, dreta vora el parterre dels jacints. (37)

Demanava compassió a Maisie Johnson, dreta vora el parterre dels jacints. (31)

9

thought how the entry love (34)

pensà com el senyors s’estimen (40)

Pensà com s’estimen els senyors (33–4)

10

Give out what the frank daylight fails to transmit (27)

lliuren allò que la claror franca del dia falleix a transmetre (32)

Lliuren allò que la claror franca del dia no pot transmetre (28)

11

The country reverts to its ancient shape (28)

el país reverteix a la seva forma antiga (32)

el país torna a la seva forma antiga (28)

12

She wrote reams of poetry those days (84)

escrivia raimes de poesia en aquell temps (100)

escrivia molta poesia en aquell temps (76)

13

Huddled up in Bath chairs (27)

arraulits en cadirals de rodes (31)

arraulits en cadires de rodes (28)

14

Not this way… (30)

No per ací… (35)

No per aquí… (30)

15

Regent’s Park Tube Station (91)

l’estació de Regent’s Park del subterrani (108)

l’estació de metro de Regent’s Park (82)

16

smoking-room (82)

fumador (97)

sala dels fumadors (74)

17

she would give him everything (172)

li ho daria tot (207)

li ho donaria tot (151)

Table 6  Sample of compared passages of  the 1930 and the 2003 editions

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Table 6 presents a small scale yet representative sample of  the modifications that can be found between MD1 and MD2. Needless to say, there are others, but the ones selected above are particularly worth commenting on, as they are changes in which some of  the characteristic features of  the Noucentisme have been replaced by other expressions. To begin with, there have been some morphological modifications. In example 1, the possessive ‘llur’, which can only be used to refer to ‘their’ in Catalan, appears largely in translations during the Noucentisme whilst it has been substituted in some occasions by ‘seu’ in MD2, a much more common use of the possessive in standard Catalan. A similar thing occurs in example 2 with ‘quelcom’, which means ‘something’ in English and has been modified by ‘alguna cosa’ in the 2003 translation. A further morphological feature of  Noucentisme consists of using loans and calquing morphological structures from other languages. In the texts we are dealing with, there are calques from the English language, such as the tendency to nominalize, which is quite contrary to the Catalan tradition. Thus, in example 3 we find the translation ‘donia’ in MD1 as a loan translation of  ‘womanhood’, whereas in MD2 ‘condició de dona’ has been used more along the lines of  Catalan language. Another loan, this time from French, appears in the use of  the preposition ‘de’ [of ] before infinitives. A case in point is example 4, where ‘li semblava de veure Clarissa’ (MD1) becomes ‘li semblava veure Clarissa’ in MD2, which for the current reader sounds more appropriate than the first translation from 1930. Another dif ference that can be found when comparing the two translations is the lexical modifications, found in the substitutions of the foreign terms which appeared in MD1 for Catalan ones in MD2. In the 1930 Catalan TT the use of foreign terms does not seem to be coherent throughout the translation. As I have already mentioned, all the proper names and cultural references were translated into Catalan, given the Noucentista eagerness to ‘Catalanize’ everything; nonetheless some terms were kept in English but later translated into Catalan in the 2003 version. In the examples 5, 6, and 7 we find clear illustrations of  this phenomenon: ‘water-closets’ has been replaced by ‘wàters’, adapting the term to the Catalan language; ‘snob’ has been substituted for ‘esnob’ in so far as Catalan words do not tend to begin with a ‘s’; and ‘envelops’ is a loan from English which has been changed in the 2003 translation by the Catalan term ‘sobres’. In addition to these

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features, we find an attempt to use terms that are as dif ferent from their Spanish counterparts as possible. Examples 11 and 12 are obvious displays of  this. One last remark on lexicon regards the substitution of archaisms; MD2 abandons forms in disuse and dated terms for more up-to-date ones, as visible in examples 13 to 17. ‘Cadirals’, ‘ací’, ‘subterrani’, ‘fumador’ and ‘daria’, from MD1, are terms which are no longer used in standard Catalan, whereas in MD2 the terms employed are much more common for the current reader: ‘cadires’, ‘aquí’, ‘metro’, ‘sala dels fumadors’ and ‘donaria’. Syntactically, translations made during the Noucentisme attempt to reproduce the word order of  the source text. The result of  this tendency is that target texts derived from this approach sound bizarre and far from the current use of Standard Catalan. Examples 8 and 9 in MD1 reproduce word by word, in the exact same order, the expressions and terms used in English: ‘Compassió demanava de Maisie Johnson, dreta vora el parterre dels jacints’. MD1 adopts here an inversion of  the position of  the direct object and its verb; in Catalan they usually go in the reverse order as one can see in MD2. In example 9, there is again an inversion in MD1, which might have resulted unfamiliar to the current Catalan reader had there not been a modification in MD2. Notwithstanding the number of changes mentioned above, there are many instances in the 2003 text that have been left exactly the same as in the 1930 translation, which, needless to say, lends the 2003 text a style that is artificial, superseded, and on many occasions hard to follow. As Miró (2003: 6) points out, MD2 is written in ‘an orthopaedic Catalan […] in a language preposterously incomprehensible’, and goes on to af firm that: Whether the reader accepts that he/she is dim and does not know enough Catalan to access that wonder [of  Mrs Dalloway] as if  he/she suspects that he/she is being laughed at, the result is exactly the same: the feeling – the certainty – that he/she is being driven out of the sacred field of Catalan literature, including Catalan translations, which are a very important part of  the books which come out in the Catalan language.

First of all, the common use of the full verbal form ‘ésser’, instead of ‘ser’, is characteristic of the Noucentisme. This form appears on several occasions in MD1 and it has remained untouched in MD2, even though, currently, this is not a frequently used form of  the verb.

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Expressions that were not modified in the 2003 translation and maintain dated terms instead of using more current words in Catalan also deserve some attention. For example, the term for ‘glass’ in Catalan, ‘vas’, (MD1: 197; MD2: 144) does appear in dictionaries but it is not of current and frequent use nowadays. The term generally employed is ‘got’. A similar pattern of leaving the revised version untouched can be found in the example synoptically presented in Table 7 below. MD1

MD2

English

Current Catalan

cap a mercat (p. 12)

cap a mercat (p. 14)

past the market

Cap al mercat

una deu de llàgrimes, (p. 13)

una deu de llàgrimes (p. 15)

a well of  tears

un munt de llàgrimes; moltes llàgrimes’

miraven fit davant ells (p. 67)

miraven fit davant ells (p. 53)

marched with their eyes looking ahead of  them

miraven fixament davant ells

va enviar-li na nota per conducte de Sally (p. 85)

va enviar-li na nota per conducte de Sally (p. 65)

He sent a note to her via Sally

va enviar-li una nota a través de Sally

onsevulla (p. 91)

onsevulla (p. 70)

wherever

en qualsevol banda

comsevulla (p. 94)

comsevulla (p. 72)

somehow

de qualsevol manera

de mena simbòlica (p. 127)

de mena simbòlica (p. 95)

interrogatively

de forma simbòlica

Table 7  Obsolete Catalan expressions used in the 2003 Mrs Dalloway edition

The list of obsolete Catalan expressions still present in the MD2 given in Table 7 could have continued for pages. Just to demonstrate the extreme resemblance of  the 2003 version to the first one produced seventy years before, I reproduce the opening paragraphs of  both translations in parallel:

184 MD1 Mrs. Dalloway va dir que ella mateixa compraria les f lors. Perquè Llúcia ja tenia proa feina. Els homes de can Rumpelmayer havien de venir a treure les portes. I després, pensava Clarissa Dalloway, quin matí més fresc! – com fet expressament per a nens a la platja. Quina delícia! Quin cabussó! Vet ací la impressió que tenia sempre quan, amb un petit grinyol de frontisses, que ara estava sentint, obria de bat a bat la porta balconera i es llançava vers Bourton i l’aire lliure. Que fresc, que tranquil, més quiet que ara, és clar, que era l’aire de bon matí; com el toc d’una onada; com el bes d’una onada; fred i esgarrifador i tanmateix (per a una noia de divuit anys com ella era aleshores) solemnial, sentint com ella sentia, dreta allí al balcó obert, que alguna cosa terrible era a punt d’esdevenir-se; mirant les f lors, els arbres que es deseixien de la broma, les cornelles que pujaven, baixaven; dreta allí mirant fins que Pere Walsh va dir: ‘Rumiant entre vegetals?’ – era això? – o bé això: ‘Prefereixo els homes a les colif lors’? Devia dir-ho un dia després d’esmorzar, en sortir ella a la terrassa – Pere Walsh. (Woolf 1930: 5)

MARTA ORTEGA SÁEZ MD2 Mrs. Dalloway va dir que ella mateixa compraria les f lors. Perquè Lucy ja tenia proa feina. Els homes de Rumpelmayer havien de venir a treure les portes. I després, pensava Clarissa Dalloway, quin matí més fresc! – com fet expressament per a nens a la platja. Quina delícia! Quin cabussó! Vet ací la impressió que tenia sempre quan, amb un petit grinyol de frontisses, que ara estava sentient, obria de bat a bat la porta balconera i es llançava vers Bourton i l’aire lliure. Que fresc, que tranquil, més quiet que ara, és clar, que era l’aire de bon matí; com el toc d’una onada; fred i esgarrifador i tanmateix (per a una noia de divuit anys com ella era aleshores) solemnial, sentina com ella sentia, dreta allí al balcó obert, que alguna cosa terrible era a punt d’esdevenir-se; mirant les f lors, els arbres que es deseixien de la broma, les cornelles que pujaven, baixaven; dreta allí mirant fins que Peter Walsh va dir: ‘Rumiant entre vegetals?’ – era això? – o bé això: ‘Prefereixo els homs a les col-i-f lors.’ Devia dir-ho un dia després d’esmorzar, en sortir ella a la terrassa – Peter Walsh. (Woolf 2003: 9)

Concluding remarks After having compared the first translation into Catalan of Mrs Dalloway from 1930 with the 2003 edition, I can conclude that the 2003 translation is roughly a mere copy of the translation produced during the Noucentisme. This finding contradicts the comments of  Proa’s late director and copy-

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editor, Isidor Cònsul. I have showed the modifications and lack of modifications made by the reviser – not translator, as there is lack of evidence to show that a new translation was produced – to the 2003 text in order to see whether the af firmations by the publisher of  MD2 are accurate. Furthermore, my analysis leads me to the conclusion that, firstly, MD2 is not a new translation; secondly, that MD2 has not been well revised; and, finally, that Edicions Proa must have been only motivated by commercial interests in publishing MD2. MD2 is almost the same text as the 1930 translation with a new cover that reproduces a shot from the film The Hours, showing the popular actresses Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore. All things considered, I dare to say that Cònsul’s categorical defence of the 2003 edition was inappropriate. Such editorial practices may be common, as they are also in other languages including hegemonic languages like English, but the ef forts to blindly defend them against all visible evidence are debatable. They are also debatable for the unwanted, potential negative impact they could have on the development and spread of common and frequently used forms of minority languages, such as Catalan, when translations with obsolete expressions clash with current linguistic norms based on frequency of use among the speakers. By privileging commercial interests over the truth, publishing houses such as Proa, once known for its ef forts in defence and support of the Catalan language, may eventually also risk undermining their own pioneering work in support of the lingua-cultural system of Catalonia. With this shift of policy, Proa has dented the trust of its customers and seems to be trying to make fools of the readers by using a new and glamorous cover to attract a wider audience and, at the same time, of fering a text written seventy years previously and stating that it is a new translation. Were the 2003 edition to be promoted and publicized as a reprinted and revised version of  Jordana’s original rendering, the commercial interest might be reconciled with its original cultural objectives. However, when the editorial policy seems to be a cover-up – in Cònsul’s words: ‘it is not true’ that Proa was reprinting – then, there are other issues at stake because leading cultural promoters appear to be giving in to mere commercial interest.

ANISSA DAOUDI

10 Translating e-Arabic: Challenges and issues

Introduction In 1991 Bassnett observed that: ‘No two languages are ever suf ficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which dif ferent societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with dif ferent labels attached’ (1991: 13). Her argument is further reinforced by quoting Sapir–Whorf (ibid.: 14): ‘no language can exist unless it is steeped in the context of cultures; and no culture can exist which does not have as its center, the structure of natural language’. The natural language includes its spontaneous uses, such as imagery and figurative expressions that represent the cultural aspects of every language. This can be illustrated by examples of  two images that mean the same thing, but have a dif ferent cultural background. For example, the Arabic idiomatic expression     [to cool/freeze my chest] expresses feelings of happiness and satisfaction, as the feeling of coolness is much appreciated in the hot climates that predominate in many of the Arab-speaking countries. The equivalent expression in English is ‘to warm my heart’, in which warmth has positive connotations due to the coldness of the British weather. Thus, idiomatic and figurative conventions dif fer across cultures, and the straightforward images in one culture are not self-evident in another. In other words, a metaphorical concept in one culture does not necessarily call up the same conventional scenes in another (Daoudi 2007). Similarly ‘apparently straightforward spatial relationships may not correspond to prepositions that match those of other languages’ (Malmkjær 2005: 42). In the same vein, Bhabha (2004: 3) argues that ‘the representation of dif ference must not be hastily read as the ref lection of pre-given ethnic or cultural traits set in the fixed tablet of tradition’, particularly that there are dif ferent ways of

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reacting to conceptualizing dif ference (see Cronin 2006). These debates led to the realization that there are various versions of relativism and that people growing up in dif ferent cultures and dif ferent languages may have more or less dif ferent world views (Malmkjær 2005: 43). As Katan (2009: 74) notes, ‘by 1952, Kroeber and Kluckhohn had recorded 165 definitions of culture’. He observes that initial definitions of culture were simple: Culture referred exclusively to the humanist ideal of what was civilized in a developed society (the education system, the arts, architecture). The meaning of culture has changed over time to include the way of life of a people, and also includes forces in society or ideology. (ibid.)

The dynamic evolution of the term ‘culture’ became increasingly problematic not only according to whether we intend the term in the anthropological sense (what humans do in their daily lives), or in the aesthetic sense (what humans do in terms of their creative expression), but particularly in the context of  how individual cultures understand firstly the term itself, and secondly, one another (see Cronin 2006). Earlier definitions of culture were broad; for example, Sapir (1949: 79) argued that ‘culture is technically used by ethnologist and culture historians to embody any socially inherited element in life of man, material and spiritual’. In 1957, Lado (in Bahameed 2008: 43) defined culture as ‘structural systems of patterned behaviour’. This vision implies that culture is a ‘cumulative experience, which includes knowledge, belief, morals, art, traditions, and any habits acquired by a group of people in a society’ (ibid). Clearly, any definition of  ‘culture’ is an attempt to unify numerous interrelated elements within a single term. As far as the distinction between language and culture is concerned, according to Katan (2009), two main views have existed historically and he succinctly goes on to cite major figures linked to either sides. The first view makes no distinction between language and culture, ‘as translation is seen as a universalist encoding-decoding linguistic activity, transferring meaning from SL to the TL. This means that culture and cultural dif ferences can be carried by the language without significant loss’ (ibid.: 74). The second view, on the other hand, proposes that ‘context actually provides more distinction of meaning than the term being analyzed’ (Nida 2002: 29). This

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opposition often interpreted as binary, leads Katan (2009: 75) to express the view that ‘meaning is not “carried” by the language but is negotiated between readers from within their own contexts of culture’. This intellectual paradigm and Bassnett’s and Katan’s definitions inform my analysis in this chapter. They are relevant for two reasons. Firstly because I discuss the authors’ constantly revised and negotiated ‘meanings’ between themselves and their readers within the context of their own culture. Secondly because they use a language that is dif ferent from that used by mainstream writers in the Arab world, outside the tradition of  the Modern Standard Arabic, the MSA. In this chapter, I discuss a significant phenomenon emerging in the Arab world as a result of globalization, the internet and its impact on the Arabic language in its standard and vernaculars varieties. I highlight how the internet facilitates access to an idea of global culture, provoking engagements and negotiations with both the local and the global, sometimes in an attempt to reach a state of hybridity (see Cronin 2003). Bhabha (2004: xxiii) argues that ‘the social articulation of dif ference, from the minority perspective, is complex, on-going negotiation that seeks to authorize cultural hybridities that emerge in moments of historical transformation’. The impact on the Arabic language is so important that it cannot be neglected any further; the scale of inf luence on Arabic is significant to the point of claiming the emergence of a new variety, which I refer to as e-Arabic. This language is culturally representative of a large section of  the Arab society, which is the younger generation. One of  the main features of e-Arabic is the proposed mixture of styles, languages, scripts, and registers, which is worth analyzing in various contexts. In some cases, the e-Arabic variety is a medium through which some Arab voices make themselves heard for the first time (e.g. those of minorities in the Arab world). It is the linguistic variety that represents the ‘hybridity’ or ‘in-between’ concept as developed by Bhabha (in Batchelor 2008). The perception of the world as a new place where the local reasserts itself against the global can help us understand the e-Arabic phenomenon and the idea of  belonging in more than one space, both literally and symbolically. As this e-Arabic variety is making its way into Arabic literature, the importance of this chapter lies in analyzing the challenges of  translating material that has e-Arabic as its central and pivotal component.

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The emergence of e-Arabic as the ‘youth language’ I have selected two novels which serve to highlight the phenomenon of  lingua-cultural change in marginal voices within contemporary Arabic literature. The first of  these is a novel by twenty-four-year old dentist, Rajaa Al Sanea, who has only recently emerged onto the literary scene, and whose work has already provoked heated debates in both academic and non-academic circles.1 Banat Al Riyadh (Al Sanea 2005) is the first novel by this Saudi female writer; the narrative takes the form of published emails. The novel is a bestseller despite (or possibly because of ) its censorship in Saudi Arabia (Amirah 2007), and has been reprinted seven times in three years. In 2007 it was translated into English by the author in collaboration with Marilyn Booth, and published by Penguin as Girls of  Riyadh. The second book was produced by a group of Lebanese women, members of a lesbian organization in Lebanon called Meem. Written in English, funded by the Heinrich Böll Stiftung Fundation, and published by Meem in 2009, the book is entitled Bareed Mista3jil [express mail]. The title itself embodies the features of the new variety, the e-Arabic; not only is it written including Latin-alphabet letters, but it also includes the numeral 3 in place of a letter which has no equivalent in the Latin alphabet. The book has since been translated into Arabic (2009). Just as Banat Al Riyadh, this book too, both in its English and Arabic versions, stirred up controversy when it first appeared. What unites these books and their writers is not the issues they chose to highlight nor the battles they decided to wage, nor the ‘fame’ that these publications have brought them, but rather, they share their way of using the internet so as to engage with local and global audiences. They both 1

Further information on the heated debates about Al Sana’s book can be found on the following websites: ; . Rajaa Al Sanea’s website is also a source of information ; as is its section dedicated to the book [accessed 11 April 2011].

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use what I term e-Arabic, a form of  Arabic that has emerged recently as a result of  the rapid advancement and dissemination of  Information Technology (IT). This language variety is mostly used by younger generations of internet users; it mixes, adapts, borrows, and uses numbers, characters from the Latin alphabet, Arabic script characters, emoticons, and words from other languages (e.g. English or French) to engage not only with the globalized discourse, but also to examine the specific ways in which the local frames the global. It is important to make a distinction between the dif ferent linguistic variations that co-exist in the Arab-speaking world, including Modern Standard Arabic, also known as fus’ha, and vernacular (colloquial) Arabic known as ’aamiya. The dif ference is in that while the former (MSA) is associated with the written form, used in formal settings and is the of ficial language in the Arab world; the latter is the spoken form and is used in everyday speech. As far as language status is concerned, colloquial Arabic is considered of ‘low’ status whereas literary/standard Arabic (which could be classical or modern) is considered of ‘high’ status. Literary/standard Arabic derives its ‘high’ status from its association with Islam and the pre-Islamic period (see Eid 2002) As for colloquial Arabic, the situation is more complicated, as there is no single colloquial language; instead, there are many variations depending on geographical location, e.g. Algerian Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, Gulf Arabic, etc. Moreover, within the same variety of Arabic, for example within Algerian Arabic, one can find age-related, class-related and geographical variations such as the dif ference between the language spoken in the north and the south, and the language used by older generations as opposed to that used by the young generations.

Banat Al Riyadh versus Girls of  Riyadh Al Sanea and many authors of her generation are making use of the internet in order to engage with the global discourse on their chosen subject matter, and also to represent their societies in the most dynamic and spontaneous

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way possible. Her book Banat Al Riyadh is one of  the most controversial publications in Modern Arabic literature and reactions to this novel range from literary concerns (i.e. whether or not one can include this novel under the category of  ‘literature’) to religious condemnation, specifically the issuing of a fatwa to kill the writer, as she is perceived as promoting a type of westernized femininity that is devoid of morality. Aside from this controversy, one area that has not yet been suf ficiently explored is the language used by this author and many others like her, who channel their ideas through the internet. Al Sanea’s use of e-Arabic demonstrates the creative challenges posed to the status of formal standard Arabic by the younger generations in Arabspeaking countries. The great f lexibility of the e-Arabic variety encourages the use of simplified and hybrid variations in the written language, including the use of colloquial Arabic, Latinized Arabic (using characters of the Latin alphabet to represent Arabic letters), and the mixing and switching of codes to convey these writers’ ideas. The younger generation in Saudi Arabia is distinct in terms of motivation and action, even within its own culture, and in global terms, as Al Sanea declares in the first chapter of her novel: ‘we all live in this world but do not really experience it, seeing only what we can tolerate and ignoring the rest’ (Al Sanea and Booth 2007: 1). Thus, a far more dynamic and contemporary language was used, far from the traditional restrictions imposed by the use of the standard form of writing, used in mainstream Arabic literature. These features are not the author’s own invention, but part of  the repertoire of  the e-Arabic variety at large. However, by exploiting new dialectal, vernaculars, and marginal voices for the Arab world, not only does Al Sanea break the rules and discard the traditional status of using MSA in the written form, but more importantly, she widens her readership, thereby reaching a far larger proportion of  the population and not restricting her readership to the social elite. Her work embodies the principle that language is a means of communication and not an end in itself (see Cronin 2003). The plot of Banat Al Riyadh revolves around four young women who challenge strict social and sexual conventions of  Saudi Arabia; it talks openly and directly about sex, lesbianism, and young women’s desire to lead and have control over their lives. The story of  these girls and their

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dif ferent perspectives on life is told to us by an anonymous narrator through a series of weekly e-mail postings in an email listserv format. On her personal website the author describes herself as ‘a modern Scheherazade who narrates these stories every weekend’. The idea of  ‘unveiling’ and disclosing the ‘harem’, as conceptualized in Malek Alloula’s The Colonial Harem (1987), is an old cliché which the author uses to frame her exploration of  these themes and to captivate her readers. The characters in the novel are Sadeem, Gamrah, Michelle, and Lamees, four girls who are bound by a strong friendship despite their dif ferences. Each one of  them explores her own dif ficulties and failures through the course of  the novel and the author cleverly manipulates their stories to illustrate the struggles that Saudi Arabian women face within Saudi culture (Saleh 2006). The novel reveals many contradictions in Saudi society, particularly the hypocrisies that arise from insisting on the maintenance of an Islamic state while at the same time attempting to keep pace with the global community. As predicted by the narrator in the novel, the e-mails stir heated debates in the media and among the whole of  Riyadh’s population. The following section discusses significant elements in the rendering of  the novel Girls of  Riyadh translated into English by the author Al Sanea and Marilyn Booth in 2007. It aims to highlight the challenges and hindrances of translating e-Arabic. The novel starts with the author’s note about her reaction to and ref lection on her book. She says: It seemed to me, and to many other Saudis, that the Western world still perceives us as either romantically, as the land of  Arabian nights and the land where bearded sheikhs sit in their tents surrounded by their beautiful harem women, or politically, as the land that gave birth to Bin Laden and other terrorists, the land where women are dressed in black from head to toe and where every house has its own oil well in the backyards! Therefore, I knew it would be very hard, may be impossible, to change this cliché. (Al Sanea and Booth 2007: vii)

The author’s reference to the ‘old stereotypes’ or ‘old orientalism’ (see Said 1978) of  the West towards Arabs is, in my opinion, a cliché that by its own nature reinforces an outdated and naïve portrait of  the Arab world. Al Sanea’s work supports Said’s ideas about the power of  ‘narrative’ and how it can be utilized to af firm identity (see Baker 2006). Said (1994:

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xiii) argues that ‘stories are at the heart of what explorers and novelists say about strange regions of the world; they also become the method colonized people use to assert their own identity and the existence of their own history’ (also explored in Translation Studies by Gentzler 2006; Tymoczko and Gentzler 2002).The two versions of  this novel are designed to appeal to dif ferent readerships; while Banat Al Riyadh is aimed at young Saudi readers, it appears that the English version, Girls of Riyadh, is aimed at an adult readership and intended to convince the Western world and Western readers of  the existence of a new ‘young’ Saudi Arabian identity. The Arabic version shows an author that is in touch with the younger generation, coming from the same social class and belonging to the same category of people who ‘inhabit’ this world but do not really ‘experience’ or ‘live’ in it. This is a factor which the author used to justify the dif ference between the Arabic and the English versions. The cultural ‘dif ference’ was glossed for the readers a year later in an article by the co-translator (Booth 2008), who brought to our attention the discrepancies between her first English version and the changes made by the author and the publisher to the final product. In an attempt to achieve Katan’s intercultural mediation, Booth’s translation notes contribute to Al Sanea’s discourse on identity. In translating Banat Al Riyadh, Booth’s task was not only one of rendering the work into the target language, but also, as she rightly contends, of interacting with the cultural requirements of context in which the work exists, including its politics, religion, ideologies, gender, language issues, and so on (Booth 2008). What gives this novel its power is not only its informal style, or the themes it discusses, but rather, its strength lies in its embodiment of a new literary form ‘suggesting that liberation from sanctioned discursive practices is inseparable from a willingness to open up the politics of sexuality to discussion’ (ibid.: 206). However, Girls of  Riyadh distorts and blurs features of  Al Sanea’s e-Arabic in particular, and renders the text into ‘generic’, traditional, and even ‘boring’ language. In the source text, there is an experimental mixture of  transcriptions, such as we can see in the use of  English transcribed with Arabic letters of  the following sentences: ‘                  ‘ ’ [nobody can tell the dif ference]. This section which contains English mixed with the Saudi dialect

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at the beginning of  the phrase ‘       ’ [no one notices you, in English] is omitted completely. Another striking example is chapter one, in which the beauty of  the language is lost as the writing is rendered into very plain language:   ‘                                !’ (Al Sanea 2005: 13) [For God’s sake! Tell Gamourah [nickname] to calm down… nothing happened! People are still stuck here, no one will run away, after all, all cool brides these days stay late/start things rather late, suspense! Oh, brides! What can you say?] Please, tell Gamrah to calm down! It’s nothing to worry about; no one is going to leave. It’s only one A. M.! And anyway, all cool brides these days start things on the late side to add a bit of suspense. Some never walk down the aisle before two or three A. M.! (Al Sanea and Booth 2007: 4)

Here, the use of Lebanese Arabic is not ref lected in the translated version, which makes it dull. There is an implicit sarcasm by using the Lebanese dialect, which is known for being ‘f lirtatious’.        [stuck] in particular, translated as ‘no one is going to leave’ does kill the sense of  humour, the sarcasm employed by the author. This rendering also omits all the experimental and funny sides of  the story, which is the mixing of  two Arabic dialects as well as using English in Arabic scripts, by f lattening its e-Arabic nature. Furthermore, the use of  ‘Gamourah’     the name of one of  the main characters instead of  ‘Gamrah’, as translated in English, removes the f lirtatious atmosphere in the story. In the same expression ‘           ’, there is another example of e-Arabic, which is the combination of  two Arabic dialects ‘     ’ in Saudi [it is still early] and the rest of  the expression ‘        ’, in Lebanese Arabic where ‘   ’ is played down as ‘to leave’. Yet the translators attempt to clarify the text by adding more information, e.g., ‘Some never walk down the aisle before two or three A. M. [sic]!’. Another example where the translation of e-Arabic is rendered into ‘an informal’ language is:

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ANISSA DAOUDI                                 ’ (Al Sanea 2005: 48) [If  the employer knew, I’m finished] If  the principal finds out, I’m screwed! (Al Sanea and Booth 2007: 39)

Here, the word ‘      ’ is an English verb adapted to the Lebanese dialect, from /fannash/, deriving from English ‘finish’, and used in the future tense. This word is very often used by expatriates in the Gulf to refer to the relationship between ‘employer’ and ‘employee’. Furthermore, in Banat Al Riyadh, in addition to e-Arabic, Al Sanea uses some Qur’anic verses (Classical Arabic), poetry and love songs to show that modernity and new global media, such as blog writing and the internet, do not necessarily exclude tradition and religion. Modern Standard Arabic derives much of its prestige status from its association with the Qur’an; and Al Sanea’s e-Arabic seeks to af firm this linguistic value, as in the first chapter of Banat Al Riyadh, which includes a Qur’anic verse at the beginning. In the translation however, the verse is on a separate page on its own. The rest of  the chapters in the translated version do not include any such epigraph, which is a subtraction from the original text that uses them as lead-ins to the chapters. Here the epigraphs serve to define the chapters thematically. Therefore, the translation fails to expose its readers to the context of  the source text and, by excluding the ‘cultural’ side (poetry, Qur’anic verses, etc.); its readers are missing out on the richness of  the culture, particularly in a society (Arab) where poetry and religion have a very significant position. For example, in Chapter 23 of  Girls of  Riyadh, Al Sanea and Booth (2007: 137) introduce the chapter by explaining the importance of  the Qur’anic verses: Qur’an verses, hadith of the prophet – peace be upon him – and religious quotations that I include in my emails are, to me, inspirational and enlightening. And so are my poems and love songs that I include. Are these things opposite to each other, and so is this a contradiction? I don’t think so.

However, the translation does not contain the cultural input that appears in the original. The reference to Qur’anic verses in the translated version without actually including them, makes the reader wonder what part of 

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the book is missing. Could these omissions be considered a mono-cultural assumption on the part of  the translators? Is an assumption of shared knowledge made by the author? Booth (2008) discusses at length the role played by the omissions in the translation process but not their potential consequences. As mentioned above, at the core of my focus lies the mixture of  languages used at the beginning of each chapter or email, particularly in Banat Al Riyadh. Al Sanea starts each chapter using English in the email format, even using the typographic abbreviation of  ‘at’, the @ symbol, then characters of  the Latin alphabet for Arabic words, and numerals for letters that have no equivalents, e.g. number seven for /h/, numbers for the date of sending the email and part English and part Arabic phrases, e.g. in the ‘subject’ heading: Subject:        

(I Shall Write of  My Friends).

The English version does not have the same impact, as everything is in English. Therefore, the linguistic impact is lost entirely in the translation. As for the cultural aspects, despite the translators’ explanation of  listserv, published originally as seereehwenfada7et [memoirs disclosed], some are also inexplicably omitted. For example, the translators’ reference to the cultural side of  the prophet’s way of  life seems unnecessarily convoluted. They explain that their background research into cultural references, in order to translate the word sirah or ‘way of  life’, led them to resolve this lexical issue by going back to the Prophet’s way of  life; when in this case the term might simply be referring to a Lebanese TV programme that used to be very popular in the Gulf, with the title of  Seereh we infatahit       [a story disclosed]. This TV programme was similar to Oprah in North America and was a kind of reality show where guests were members of the public who came to share their stories/concerns with the audience. In one of  the shows, an Arab transsexual talked openly about his experience and the suf ferings of  the LGBT community in the Arab world. This kind of  theme is not commonly allowed as a subject of debate in most of  the Arab countries.

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Lebanese Arabic is used intentionally, and sometimes used sarcastically as, for example, when Al Sanea refers to Lebanese female TV presenters as being ‘pleasant’, using a Lebanese Arabic term ‘     ’. She (2005: 44) says in a stereotypical manner:            ‘                                                                 ’ ‘Bonsoir to you’ who do you reckon the mysterious personality would be? Could it be… Sadeem or Michelle, or may be Lamis? … Call us or send us SMS on the numbers written on the screen (2008: 35)

In Girls of Riyadh, the whole section containing the use of Lebanese as the ‘f lirtatious’ language and at the same time ‘stereotyping’ Lebanese manners is absent. This cultural dif ference between the Saudi and Lebanese dialects is related to widely-spread ‘stereotyping’ perceptions of the Saudi dialect as being ‘rough’, whereas the Lebanese is seen as being ‘sweet and f lirtatious’. As mentioned before, in her 2008 article, Booth explains the dif ficulties she had with the author who insisted on taking a bigger role in the translation process. She admits that ‘the language of the translation has become disconnected from the social fabric that the text draws upon and simultaneously works to shape’ (2008: 205). In terms of  Translation Studies, this means the omission of the dynamic equivalence factor, which should be based on the principle of equivalent ef fect, i.e. ‘the relationship between receptor and message should be substantially the same as that which existed between the original receptors and the message’ (Nida 1964: 159; see also Bassnett 1991: 26). Levý, as referred to by Bassnett (ibid: 30), goes further to say that ‘any contraction or omitting of dif ficult expressions in translating is immoral’.

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Language, translation and the cyberspace: Bareed Mista3jil The translation of Arabic ideas and concepts for English-speaking cultures or readers is the main objective of some Arab writers, such as those involved in the book Bareed Mista3jil (2009), written by women belonging to a lesbian group in Lebanon who have chosen to use English to address the Arab world. The motive behind their writing is not to become ‘traditional literary writers’ but to describe, inf luence, and ‘translate’ new behaviour relating to civil rights within their own societies. Their work engages with three fundamental taboos in Arabic culture, known as        / al thālūth al muharram/, a catch phrase originating from the title of a well known book by Ali Yassine (1996) meaning the ‘three sins not to be touched’. They are sex, religion, and politics. Cyberspace is a shelter that protects Arab-speaking cyber users from their own societies as well as connecting them with the rest of  the world, and gives them the opportunity to engage with global audiences and perspectives while navigating within the local culture. Internet users in the Arab world are using the virtual space and community to create a public sphere in which to connect with and disconnect from their governments and the civil society they live in. The internet allows them to address issues, particularly those which have been taboo for a long time (e.g. the three sins). The power inherent in online literature and social networks has led authoritarian governments in the Arab world to block, ban, or imprison bloggers, as in the case of  the Tunisian blogger Fatma Riahi (Aljazeera 2009). The message of these new authors is important; they want to be heard in local and global contexts, consequently their choice of  language ref lects the societal change which their work embodies and seeks to describe. Hence, the use of e-Arabic, a revolutionary language variety that appeals to the younger generation in particular. Bareed Mist3jil as a novel illustrates the way in which e-Arabic is used by the younger generations to make their ideas more accessible to a wider ‘Arab’ society and to disseminate them globally. This publication is one output of  Meem, the first openly homosexual organization in the Arab world that has a legal status. Meem is a community of LGBT in Lebanon. Bareed Mista3jil

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has stirred much controversy, as it openly challenges values and taboos of  the ‘traditional’ society, which has never been willing to acknowledge this section of  the population. Similar voices have begun to emerge in other areas of the Arab world (for instance in Egypt, see Abdel’al 2008), calling for their rights to be recognized as ‘Arab citizens’. Marginalized elsewhere in the Arab world, these voices in most cases use the internet as a refuge and a means for making their voices heard (e.g. Diary of a Lesbian).2 This group of activists orbiting around Meem is resistant to their oppressors, but they also employ forms of creativity referring to cultural hybridity, as described by Bhabha (2004: 9), to ‘translate’, and, therefore, reinforce the social imagery of modernity. Here, the act of translating is used in its broadest sense of translating feelings, human lives, cultures of nations, and so on into imagery and literature. Bareed Mista3jil, though written in English for an Arab readership, is itself a cultural ‘translation’. The language of Bareed Mista3jil is a means of ‘translating’ a message. The first pages are dedicated to explaining and justifying the writers’ choice of  language to avoid conf licting ideologies which would divert attention from their real fight. The book is a collection of  true stories told by lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgendered people in Lebanon, who suf fer the abuse and intolerance of their societies. Not even e-Arabic could help them to voice their discontent and they feel compelled to write in English, as they claim that Arabic does not have a word that can define them without negative connotations, such as the commonly used word ‘shaaz’ that literally means ‘deviant’. This book was written first in English and then translated into Arabic. Beyond the representation of  Arabic letters in Latin alphabet and the use of numbers in the title, in the actual text, the authors use both English and Lebanese Arabic in Latin characters, again, with numerals for the missing letters. The translated version is written in MSA and Lebanese Arabic. Whereas the authors found MSA remarkably distant and disconnected from their daily lives, they found Lebanese Arabic to be useful and necessary, as, according to them, it was more authentic. This mixture of  languages and language varieties in both the Arabic and

2

Cf. the blogspot, [accessed 11 April 2011].

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English versions corresponds to the essential features of what has been here termed as e-Arabic. Examples of e-Arabic in this particular book are lexical units such as ‘sou7aqiyyeh’ [lesbian], ‘mista3jil’ [express], ‘shaab walla bint’ [a boy or a girl]. The word ‘sou7q’ is written in Latinized Arabic, where the character for number seven substitutes the /h/ in Arabic. In the Arabic version, the word is translated as     , which is the word for ‘female homosexual/lesbian’. The mixing of  English with Latinized Lebanese Arabic is also used, as in ‘3am bitrakkiz 3a darsa ou 3al activities, ma bela bil msa7abi’, translated into English as a footnote as ‘she is focused on her studies and activities. Relationships are the last thing on her mind’. The sentence combines Lebanese Arabic written in letters from the Latin alphabet, substituting the missing sounds with numbers, as well as using English (e.g., ‘activities’). In both versions of  Bareed Mista3jil, English and Arabic, the authors discuss their feelings of uneasiness and their dif ficulties dealing with euphemisms and scientific words to discuss sexuality, while avoiding the use of slang expressions and terminology. Referring to Arabic, the authors claim that this language ‘has not adapted itself to create new words or a more comfortable use of existing words to describe things related to sexual expression’ (LGBT 2009: 6). One could add that dif ficulties in the coinage of neologisms for new concepts are not uncommon and are not just limited to taboo subjects, such as sexuality. Such dif ficulties are intrinsic to any emergent form or concept that has to enter into the of ficial forms of the Arabic language. Of course, this does not mean that the concept of homosexuality is imported from the West and does not exist in Arab culture. On the contrary, Abu Nuwas (750–810), one of the greatest Arab poets, was known for his satire and for openly referring to the taboos which Islam clearly forbids, such as illicit sex (homosexuality included), wine drinking, and masturbation (LGBT 2009: 6). The prestigious status of Standard Arabic exerts pressure on the various vernaculars in the Arab world and creates a wide gap between local identities and the global perception of Arab culture. Thus, the translation of localized languages faces obstacles from Standard Arabic and must rely on the use of newly coined words either from vernaculars or from lexical borrowings. New technology has sped up this phenomenon and made possible the new literary contributions discussed here.

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Furthermore, e-Arabic has become a source of freedom and empowerment among a large section of the population in the Arab world; it has contributed to raising awareness of the manipulation and control of language exerted by political actors who reinforce the status of  Standard Arabic. Language and power have always been intimately connected and have played fundamental roles in ideological battles throughout the world.

Conclusion Over the last decade and a half the internet has revolutionized communication. The diversity and f lexibility of online communication and expression is directly ref lected in the emergence of new literary and linguistic forms in Arabic. The novelty and dynamism of  this new forum for expression supports emergent languages and varieties such as e-Arabic, which seek to discuss traditional values and also taboos, according to new linguistic and cultural frames of reference. Furthermore, a common theme of the authors discussed in this chapter is their determination to translate their views into a language which can not only be understood within their own cultural context but by a broader global readership, and this involves developing a new language with which to explore subjects which have been taboo historically. Rajaa Al Sanea’s novel, Banat Al Riyadh, shows that challenging her society and translating her ideas into a language that could be understood by a high proportion of its members (the younger Saudi generation) was the motive underlying the writing and publication of her work. The same driving force underlies the literary and linguistic experiments of the Lebanese Lesbian group Meem, who chose to translate their ideas into English not only for the benefit of  the Anglophone world, but also, as they state, for the same Lebanese society, which they refer to as ‘heterosexual and homophobic’ (LGBT 2009: 2). The works discussed here, both in the original texts and their translations, were both heavily inf luenced by the desire to clearly express ideas and ideologies rather than carrying out the transfer of a ‘product’ from one

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language into another. The authors chose to express themselves via a new linguistic framework and through stylistic experiments which represent a revolution within their societal tradition, as well as an act of  liberation and a call for freedom from the constraints of elite literary language and established literary forms. Observing the use of the e-Arabic variety, it seems evident that this variety is becoming a means of channelling new, original, and often revolutionary ideas. In other words, the authors’ are aware that the road to ‘freedom’ depends on escaping from the ‘walls’ of Standard Arabic. This ‘divorce’ from Standard Arabic leads to a movement away from the religious and cultural beliefs that restrict the liberties of  the authors (and of  their intended readers). However, this escape does not require a complete divorce from religion or from other traditional cultural phenomena, as referred to by Al Sanea (2005; and also by Al Sanea and Booth 2008) in the first chapter of  her book and by the authors of  Bareed Mista3jil. In both texts the implied message is that hybridity is the way forward to live in within their cultures and take part in the global one. The conclusion of this chapter necessarily centres on e-Arabic. All the novels discussed here deal with unsettling issues, including the issue of the metalanguage, the e-Arabic variety in itself. This new literary voice from the margins of  the standard language of  literature can lose its ef ficacy and significance in translation through the change of its intended readership. A case in point was the editorial decisions made by Al Sanea in the translation of  her novel in collaboration with Booth: she opted for removing most of  the e-Arabic features of the source text. Obviously some formal constraints exist: the translation had to render the words borrowed from the English language back into English; and such a move could not accurately ref lect the adaptations that occur to the borrowed word in the source language. However, the issues lay elsewhere: in particular, in the fact that Al Sanea favours a generic neutral English over a more experimental and challenging rendering in varieties of non-standard, non-neutral English. In Bareed Mista3jil, the authors’ use of e-Arabic follows a reverse path, decreasing its importance and visibility when the English version was translated into Arabic. Some features of Lebanese dialect remained, but this type of vernacular commixture is not something new in Arabic writing. Again, the e-Arabic variety, a new, powerful, and f lexible means of giving voice to minorities in Arabic literature, has lost its cultural and linguistic ef fect in translation.

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Notes on Contributors

Caterina Briguglia was born in Palermo, Italy, in 1979. She studied Spanish and Arabic philology at Palermo University. She presently lives in Barcelona, where she obtained a PhD in ‘Multilingual Communication: Translation, Literature and Linguistics Studies’ at Pompeu Fabra University. Her thesis, entitled ‘Dialect translation in contemporary Catalan literature (Translations of Pasolini, Gadda and Camilleri)’, focuses on the translation of dialects in literature, a specific field of  Translation Studies, with particular attention to translation norms in the Catalan polysystem. She is currently af filiated with the Universitat Autònoma in Barcelona, Spain, where she teaches and carries out research. Anissa Daoudi holds a PhD from the University of  Leeds, UK. Currently a research associate at Durham University, her research projects are focused on the impact of globalization on Arabic language and, in particular, on Arabic dialects. From a sociolinguistic perspective, she is particularly interested in IT related words, collocations, and phrases. Emphasizing the emergence of a ‘new’ form of Arabic language as a direct result of computer use (Computer-Mediated Communication, CMC), her research interests brought her to define the linguistic variety of  ‘e-Arabic’ through analyses of  CMC in ‘new’ literary works in Arabic published in blogs and emails. Her research projects include the study of various uses of ‘e-Arabic’ on the internet as well as on printed material. She has published Idiom Decoding and Encoding: An Empirical Study by Arab Learners with Particular Reference to Bilingual Dictionaries (Arabic–English–Arabic) (2010), and several chapters in edited volumes and journal articles. Hilal Erkazancı-Durmuş after graduating from the department of  Translation and Interpreting at Hacettepe University, Turkey, in 2001, began to work as a research assistant. In 2003, she obtained her MA in Translation and Interpreting at Hacettepe University, with research conducted on the ef fects of  lexical and syntactic strategies on simultaneous interpreting. She

224

Notes on Contributors

was awarded her PhD in 2006 from the School of  Language, Linguistics and Translation Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK. Since then she has been working as an assistant professor teaching English–Turkish translation at undergraduate level at Hacettepe University. Her research interests include pragma-stylistics in translation, language and identity in translation and interpretation, critical sociolinguistics, and critical language awareness in translation and interpretation. She is a translator into Turkish and English. Federico M. Federici (1977) studied English and French literature at the University ‘La Sapienza’ in Rome, Italy, where he developed an interest in Translation Studies. At the University of  Leeds, UK, he was awarded a doctorate for research into the inf luence of creative translation on Italo Calvino’s style. Senior Lecturer in Italian, he is the Director of the MA in Translation Studies at Durham University, UK. Together with chapters and articles, he wrote Translation as Stylistic Evolution: Italo Calvino Creative Translator of  Raymond Queneau (Rodopi 2009) and edited Translating Regionalized Voices in Audiovisuals (Aracne 2009); he also co-edited with Nigel Armstrong Translating Voices, Translating Regions (Aracne 2006). His current research projects focus on ideology of  translation, reception of  Italian texts and audiovisuals in translation, and training of culturally aware translators. Working as a freelance translator since 2001, he enjoys translating from French and English, as well as translating seventeenthcentury Italian manuscripts into English. Anna Fochi holds a Laurea from the University of  Pisa, Italy; she was awarded a PhD from the University of  Glasgow, UK, for a thesis investigating the theory and practice of interlingual and intersemiotic translation. Since 2009, she co-operates with the School of  European Studies of  Cardif f  University as Lettore di ruolo (funded by the Italian Ministry of  Foreign Af fair). Her main research interests lie in Translation Studies; she also has other research interests in Comparative Studies, English and Italian Studies. Her articles have appeared in Translation Studies, Studi di filologia e letteratura, Italianistica, Critica letteraria, Contesti, Lingua e letteratura, Educazione permanente, Westerly, Iter, Lend. She is the editor and translator of an anthology of  John Keats’s letters (Oscar Mondadori: Milan).

Notes on Contributors

225

Xoán Manuel Garrido Vilariño was awarded a PhD in Translation and Interpreting in 2004 from Vigo University with a thesis entitled ‘Translating Holocaust Literature: Translation and Paratranslation of  Primo Levi’s Se questo è un uomo’ (Vigo University Doctoral Dissertations 2004–5. Vigo: Vigo University, CD ROM). Full-time researcher and member of  the Research Group Translation and Paratranslation, he is a lecturer (French–Galician–French) for the Degree on Translation and Interpreting, Vigo University. He lectures in the Master of  Research on Translation and Paratranslation, for which he is the director of  the seminars on ‘Memory, Metissage and Migration’ and ‘Empirical Research in Community Interpreting and Conference Interpreting’. Susanne Ghassempur holds a degree in Interpreting (German, English, Italian) from the University of  Graz, Austria, and a PhD in Literary Translation from Dublin City University. She is currently working as a freelance translator and interpreter in Dublin, Ireland. Giovanni Nadiani holds a PhD in Translation Studies at the Alma Mater Studiorum, University of  Bologna, Italy. Researcher in German language and literature, he currently holds a post of ‘Professore aggregato’ at SSIT of  Bologna-Forlì. Writer, translator, and poet, he has published collections of poems, CDs with narrative poems and music (collaborating with the bluesjazz band Faxtet), volumes of short stories and many theatre plays, as well as monologues and dialogues for cabaret. As a writer he was awarded prestigious literary prizes (Premio ‘Pascoli’, ‘Marin’, ‘Noventa’, etc.). He translates contemporary German, Dutch, Spanish poets and storytellers. In 1999 he was awarded the ‘Saint Jerome-Prize’ by the Italian Association of Professional Translators and Interpreters. His research interests include translation theory, multimedia translation, minority languages, and text genres. In these fields he has published monographs, articles, and essays. He is editor-in-chief of  the Italian online-journal for translation studies inTRAlinea () and of literary magazine ‘Tratti’ (from 1985).

226

Notes on Contributors

Esther Morillas is an assistant professor of Translation Italian/Spanish at the University of  Málaga, Spain. Her publications focus on literary translation, the reception of Italian literature in Spain, and translation stylistics. She has translated Franco Loi, Sandro Veronesi, Giovanni Pascoli, Attilio Bertolucci, and Umberto Saba into Spanish. Visiting professor in dif ferent Italian universities, Esther Morillas is a member of the Research Group Traductología e interculturalidad, which works on Translation Studies and cross-cultural studies. She is the editor of  TRANS. Revista de Traductología, the journal based in the Department of Translation and Interpreting Department at the University of  Málaga. Marta Ortega Sáez is an associate professor of  English literature at the University of  Barcelona, Spain. She is currently writing her PhD on translations produced during the Franco dictatorship, which are still published today. She has published articles about the reception and censorship of women writers in English in the postwar period in Spain, including Louise May Alcott, Charlotte Brontë, Radclyf fe Hall, Rosamond Lehmann, and Vita Sackville-West. She has also published a biography of one of the most prolific translators of the Franco dictatorship, Juan G. de Luaces, in Arbor.

Index

Abdel’al, Ghada  205 Adorno, Theodor W.  68 Al Sanea, Rajaa  190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 196, 197, 198, 202, 203, 205 Banat Al Riyadh  190, 191, 192, 194, 196, 197, 202 Girls of  Riyadh  190, 191, 193, 194, 196, 198, 205 Alloula, Malek  193, 205 Álvarez, Román  125, 205, 222 Andersens, Erich  205 Anderson, Benedict  45, 205 Andersson, Lars  55, 205 Apollinaire, Guillaume  127 Apter, Emily  22, 205 Ar Rouz, David  46, 205 Arabic language, the  3, 20, 189, 201 Arana, Edorta  43, 205 Ariosto, Ludovico  41, 136 Orlando Furioso  41 Armstrong, Nigel  205, 211, 212, 213 Asor Rosa, Alberto  104, 132, 206 Azpillaga, Patxi  43, 205 Bahameed, Adel Salem  188, 206 Baker, Mona  56, 193, 206 Bakhtin, Mikhail  7, 21, 29, 206 Balderston, Daniel  206, 219 Baldini, Raf faello  40, 41, 217 Baltrusch, Burghard  206 Balzac, Honoré de  177 Baring, Maurice  177 Bassnett, Susan  4, 6, 172, 187, 189, 198, 206 Translation, History, and Culture  4

Batchlor, Kathryn  206 Bazin, André  154, 206 Belli, Giuseppe Gioacchino  42, 93, 211, 217 Bellosi, Giuseppe  39, 40, 42, 206 Belpoliti, Marco  132, 206, 216 Benincà, Paola  220 Benjamin, Walter  68, 69, 206, 216 Berman, Antoine  6, 14 Bernardini, Silvia  10 Bernstein, Charles  23, 207 Berruto, Gaetano  2, 3, 145, 147, 207, 220 Bhabha, Homi  187, 189, 200, 207 Biasin, Gian Paolo  131, 152, 207 Billiani, Francesca  132, 207 Binder, Leonard  207 Bizet, Georges  156 Carmen  156, 205 Blommaert, Jan  30, 207 Boase-Beier, Jean  207 Boccaccio  41 Decameron  41 Bolzoni, Francesco  160, 207 Booth, Marilyn  190, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 198, 202, 203, 205, 207 Bou, Enric  207 Bourdieu, Pierre  6, 22, 23, 24, 30, 207 Bowdre, Paul H.  54, 207 Bravo Villasante, Carmen  207 Brevini, Franco  39, 207 Briguglia, Caterina  vii, 9, 18 Brower, Reuben A.  207, 214 Brumm, Walter  28, 207 Bruni, Francesco  207 Bucaria, Chiara  218

228 Burgess, Anthony  27, 207, 220 A Clockwork Orange  27, 29, 207, 208, 220 Nadsat  27, 28 Butler, Judith  208 Büyükkantarcıoğlu, Nalan  28, 29, 208 Calvino, Italo  19, 127–52, 206, 208, 212, 217, 219, 220, 221 Castello dei destini incrociati  136 Cosmicomiche  131 Fiabe italiane  131 Palomar  136, 221 Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore  131, 136, 221 Taverna dei destini incrociati  136 Ti con zero  131, 208 Calzada-Pérez, Maria  209 Cameron, Deborah  22, 26, 209 Camilleri, Andrea  5, 18, 93, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 120, 123, 209, 211, 218, 220 Il cane di terracotta  18, 109, 110, 111, 114, 116 Montalbano, Commissario  5, 93, 115, 116, 120, 121, 122 Campanella, Hortensia  159, 165, 209 Caprara, Giovanni  93, 123, 209 Capuana, Luigi  113 Caruso, Carlo  vii, 142, 209, 221 Casas, Joan  124 Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales (CNRTL)  139, 142, 209 Chambers, J. K.  209 Chan, Sin-wai  209 Chen, Chapman  57, 209 Cheshire, Jenny  209 Chesterman, Andrew  12, 26, 209, 221 Chiaro, Delia  vii, 218 Chiocchetti, Nadia  33, 209

Index Cicero  145 De Optimo genere oratorum  145 Ciment, Michael  160, 161, 209 Civiltà cattolica  90 Coletti, Vittorio  107, 209 Coll-Vincent, Silvia  177, 210 Collins, James  23, 29, 58, 206, 209 Conrad, Joseph  132, 166 Lord Jim  132, 133 Cònsul, Isidor  171, 178, 185, 210 Cormack, Michael  47, 205, 210, 213, 218 Corominas Piulats, Maria  43, 210 Crisanti, Andrea  162, 210 Cronin, Michael  15, 31, 32, 35, 46, 188, 189, 192, 210 negentropic translational perspective  32 Crystal, David  2, 6, 7, 8, 55, 210 Dictionary of  Linguistics and Phonetics  2 Cunico, Sonia  24, 210 Cunlif fe, Daniel  45, 210 Cunningham, Michael  176 The Hours  171, 176, 185 Dante  41, 78, 130, 140, 145 Convivio  130 De Vulgarii Eloquentia  130 Divina Commedia, Divine Comedy  41, 78, 145 Daoudi, Anissa  15, 20, 187, 210 Darbelnet, Jean  141, 222 Darwin, Charles  5 The Origin of  the Species  5 de Luca, Erri  18, 89, 91, 92, 94, 95, 101, 107, 210, 213 Montedidio  18, 89, 91, 92, 93, 95, 96, 97, 107 De Luigi, Fabio  41 De Mauro, Tullio  90, 111, 210 de Rivera, Primo  174

Index De Roberto, Federico  113 Deleuze, Gilles  22, 210 Dell’Aquila, Vittorio  34, 209, 210 Demontis, Simona  111, 211 Dickens, Charles  177 Doğançay-Aktuna, Seran  25, 26, 211 Dolan, Terence Patrick  54, 211 Dore, Margherita  10, 211 d’Ors, Eugeni Glosari  174 Dostoevsky, Fyodor  177 Doyle, Roddy  7, 17, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 211, 213, 216, 222 Die Commitments  53, 211 The Commitments  17, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 58 Du Bellay, Joachim  127 Ducrot, Oswald  7, 211 Duranti, Riccardo  93, 211 Durham Translators Limited  vii Dusi, Nicola  154, 168, 169, 211 Eco, Umberto  13, 130, 133, 134, 137, 154, 211 Ediciones Salamandra  114, 209 Edicions Proa  171, 174, 177, 178, 184, 185, 218, 222 Eichmann, Adolf  87 Eid, Mushira  191, 211 El manisero  163 Erbani, Francesco  90, 210 Erkazanci-Durmu, Hilal  10, 16, 19, 211 Eruli, Brunella  127, 133, 135, 136, 138, 144, 145, 152, 212 Even-Zohar, Itamar  20, 29, 38, 67, 109, 212 Fairclough, Norman  23, 212 Federici, Federico M.  vii, 19, 127, 128, 129, 146, 147, 205, 211, 212, 213 Feldman, Ruth  80, 81, 82, 84, 86, 88, 215, 216

229 Fernández, María Jesús  212 Fernández Dobao, Ana Maria  57, 212 Fernández Ocampo, Anxo  76, 212 Fishman, Joshua A.  36, 37, 43, 46, 47, 212 Reversing Language Shift  36, 37, 44, 46, 47, 212 Fochi, Anna  19, 155, 213 Folena, Gianfranco  135, 213 Foscolo, Ugo  136 Forster, E. M.  133 A Passage to India  133, 134 Fowler, Roger  22, 27, 213 Francois-Deneve, Corinne  144, 213 Friedrich Schürr Association  43 Froula, Christine  213 Fruttero, Carlo  128, 151, 208 Fucci, Gianni  41 Fuster, Joan  213 Gadda, Carlo Emilio  123 Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana  124 Gambier, Yves  155, 213 García Márquez, Gabriel  19, 155, 156, 158, 160, 161, 163, 165, 168, 169, 215, 217, 218, 222 Cien años de soledad  160 Crónica de una muerte anunciada  19, 153, 155, 156, 159, 160, 163, 165, 218 El amor en los tiempos del cólera  161 Garrido Vilariño, Xoàn Manuel  vii, 9, 17, 18, 20, 67, 76, 213 Genette, Gérard  69, 213 Gentzler, Edwin  194, 221 Ghassempur, Susanne  7, 17, 57, 64, 213 Gimferrer, Pere  177 Glassé, Cyril  213 González, Enric  91, 213 Gorlier, Giorgio  133, 134, 135 Gramsci, Antonio  6, 213 Grassi, Corrado  2, 90, 213

230 Grif fith, James  157, 213 Guattari, Felix  22, 210 Guerra, Tonino  40, 155, 213 Gumperz, John J.  23, 213 Guyot, Jacques  45, 46, 213 Hagège, Claude  8, 17, 33, 34, 35, 214 Halliday, M. A. K.  2, 5, 6, 10, 214 Hardy, Thomas  176, 177 Tess of  the d’Urbervilles  176 Hatim, Basil  9, 11, 24, 214 Discourse and the Translator  9 Heinrich Böll Stiftung Foundation  190 Heiss, Christine  218 Hermans, Theo  20, 109, 173, 214 Hodge, Robert  22, 215 Hofstadter, Douglas  1, 4, 15, 214 Holman, Michael  207 Holmes, James S.  130, 214 Holocaust, the  68, 71, 84, 86, 87 Holt, Peter  207, 213, 214 Homer  41, 78 Iliad  144 Odyssey  144 Höss, Rudolf  87 Hurtley, Jacqueline  177, 178, 214 Huxley, Aldous  176, 177 Brave New World  176 The Perennial Philosophy  176 Huzly, Oliver  53, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64 Hymes, Dell  23, 213 Iannàccaro, Gabriele  210 İmer, Kâmile  26, 214 Institució de les Lletres Catalanes  177, 214 Irish Gaelic  34 Jakobson, Roman  153, 214 Jiménez Carra, Nieves  215 Jordana, Cèsar August  171, 174, 175, 176, 177, 214, 215, 222 El collar de la Núria  176

Index El Rusio i el Pelao  176 Quatre venjances  176 Resum de literatura anglesa  176 Tres a la reraguarda  176 Una mena d’amor  176 Julià Ballbé, Josep  124, 215 Jürgen, Wasim Frembgenn  215 Karjalainen, Markus  57, 215 Katan, David  14, 24, 188, 189, 194, 215 Kennedy, Margaret  177 Kercher, Dona M.  159, 215 Kluckhohn, Clyde  188 Konttinen, Moog  208 Kress, Gunther  22, 215 Kroeber, Alfred Louis  188 Labov, William  215 Lado, Robert  188 Lafont, Robert  33, 215 Lambert, José  214 Lambton, Ann K. S.  214 Le Lionnais, François  12, 13 Lefevere, André  4, 6, 171, 173, 206 Leopardi, Giacomo  41 Canti  41 Leppihalme, Ritva  215 Lepschy, Giulio  111, 215 Levi, Primo  17, 18, 65, 66, 68, 70, 71, 75, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 156, 215, 216 La tregua  81, 84, 156, 216 Se questo è un uomo  68, 71, 77, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 216 Lewis, Bernard  214, 216 Lewis, Sinclair  132 It Can’t Happen Here  132 LGBT  203, 216 Bareed Mista3jil  190, 199, 200, 201, 203, 216 Linder, Daniel  57, 216 Lof fredo, Eugenia  4, 218

231

Index Logos Dictionary  216 Lörscher, Wolfgang  216 Louwerse, Max M.  10, 216 Löwy, Michael  69, 216 Lucentini, Franco  128, 151, 208 Lung, Rachel  216 Mallafrè, Joaquim  124, 216 Malmkjær, Kirsten  187, 188, 216 Malone, Joseph L.  140, 216 Mancino, Anton Giulio  158, 159, 216 Manganelli, Giorgio  128, 150, 208 Marescotti, Ivano  41 Marri, Fabio  43, 216 Marsh, Kelly  52, 216 Martial  41 Martignoni, Clelia  41, 217 Mason, Ian  9, 11, 24, 29, 214 Mateo, José  57, 217 Mayoral Asensio, Roberto  217 Mellen, Joan  158, 159, 161, 217 Menini Pagès, Maria Antonia  114, 116, 119, 123 Meredith, George  176, 177 The Tragic Comedians  176 Mey, Jacob  27, 217 Milroy, James  27, 217 Miró, Carles  171, 182, 217 Mitry, Jean  154, 217 Molière, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin  42, 127 Morillas, Esther  vii, 9, 18, 93, 217 Motti, Adriana  129, 133 MultiDialecTranslation  1 Munday, Jeremy  vii, 24, 29, 210, 215 Nadiani, Giovanni  8, 13, 16, 17, 35, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 217, 222 Narbaiza, Beatrix  43, 205 Newmark, Peter  11, 217 Nida, Eugene A.  188, 198, 217 Nocentini, Claudia  132, 134, 152, 217 Nord, Christiane  218

Noucentisme  171, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 182, 184, 218 Nouss, Alexis  18, 65, 76, 218 Nuwas, Abu  201 O’Connel, Eithne  43, 218 O’Donnell, William R.  9, 218 Oí’Faolain, Nuala  49, 218 Oller, Narcís  175 Ortega Sáez, Marta  10, 19 Orth-Guttmann, Renate  53, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64 Osimo, Bruno  153, 162, 163, 218, 220 Oulipo  12, 14 Palma, Cèsar  89, 92, 93, 95, 98, 101, 103, 210 Palumbo, Ornella  113, 218 Parker, Alan  17 Parkinson Zamora, Luis  158, 218 Pascoli, Giovanni  42 Pasolini, Pier Paolo  124 Pedersen, Jan  12, 218 Pedretti, Nino  41 Pelayo, Ruben  158, 159, 218 Pericay, Xavier  175, 179, 218 Pericoli, Tullio  129, 146, 208 Perteghella, Manuela  4, 218 Pimpa  42, 209, 222 Pinter, Harold  42, 46, 218 Pirandello, Luigi  113 Plato  41 Platonov, Andrej  156 Trtij Syn  156 Plautus  41 Poe, Edgar Allan  128, 150, 208 Pollard, David E.  209 Pretolani, Luisa  41, 221 Pujol, Dídac  57, 218 Pym, Anthony  12, 15, 44, 218 Quadri, Franco  128

232 Queneau, Raymond  12, 19, 127, 128, 129, 130, 132, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 144, 145, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 208, 212, 213, 219, 221 Le Chant du styrène  129, 130 Les Fleurs bleues  19, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 133, 134, 135, 137, 139, 141, 144, 146, 147, 150, 151, 152, 213, 219 néo-français  129, 137, 145, 147 Zazie dans le métro  19 Rabassa, Gregory  169, 219 Rabelais, François  127, 136, 139, 140, 142, 219 Pantagruel  142 Raengo, Alessandra  154, 220 Rambelli, Loris  40 Riahi, Fatma  199 Ricci, Franco  146, 219 Robbe-Grillet, Alain  127 Robinson, Douglas  219, 222 Rodinson, Maxime  219 Rosi, Francesco  19, 153, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 165, 166, 168, 169, 207, 210, 216, 220 Cadaveri eccellenti  156, 159 Cristo si è fermato a Eboli  156 Il caso Mattei  156, 158 Le mani sulla città  156 Lucky Luciano  156 Salvatore Giuliano  156, 158, 159 Uomini contro  156 Ruiz Figueroa, Manuel  219 Rutelli, Romana  154, 219 Ruyra, Joaquim  175 Sabatini, Francesco  111, 219 Said, Edward  193, 219 Saleh, Heba  193, 219 Sánchez, María T.  219 Sanli, Sevgi  25, 219 Sapir, Edward  187, 188, 219

Index Scarpa, Domenico  131, 219 Schäf fner, Christina  14, 219 Schleiermacher, Friedrich  14 Schürr, Friedrich  43 Schwartz, Marcy  206, 219 Sciascia, Leonardo  113, 156 Il contesto  156 Scott, Walter  176 Ivanhoe  176 The Black Dwarf  176 Segre, Cesare  107, 219 Serrao, Achille  147, 219 Shakespeare, William  42, 175, 176 Anthony and Cleopatra  176 Henry V  25 Julius Caesar  176 Macbeth  176 Romeo and Juliet  176 Share, Bernard  55, 220 Shaw, George Bernard Pygmalion  25, 124, 219 Shef f y, Rakefet  38, 220 Small Codes Project  32, 44, 222 Sobrero, Alberto A.  90, 213, 220 Soldevila, Carles  174, 176 L’abrandament  174 Solmi, Sergio  128, 208 Sorgi, Marcello  220 Spadoni, Nevio  41 Spaggiari, William  209, 221 Stam, Robert  154, 220 Stangl, Franz  87 Starr, Don  vii Stein, Dieter  207, 209 Steinbeck, John  132 Of  Mice and Men  132 Stella, Francesco  222 Stephenson, Rachel  vii Stevenson, Robert Louis  176 Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde  128, 151, 208 Summala, Antti  28, 220 Swinnerton, Frank  177, 210

233

Index Taddei, Silvia  128, 129, 152, 220 Taylor, Christopher  140, 141, 220 Tel-Aviv School, the  109 Telmon, Tullio  90, 111, 213, 220 Terracini, Benvenuto  33, 220 Tessarolo, Mariselda  33, 220 Testa, Carlo  157, 158, 220 Todd, Loreto  9, 218 Todorov, Tzvetan  7, 211 Tolstoy, Leo  177 Torop, Peèter  19, 153, 163, 220 Toury, Gideon  11, 20, 38, 45, 47, 220 Toutain, Ferran  175, 179, 218 Tridimonti, Aleardo  136, 221 Trudgill, Peter  55, 205, 209 Twain, Mark  176 Tom Sawyer, Detective  176 Tymoczko, Maria  221 Usher, Jonathan  144, 146, 150, 221 Üstel, Aziz  27, 29, 208 Vaca, Pepe  41, 221 Valli, Massimiliano  41, 221 Van der Broeck, Raymond  214 van Leuven-Zwart  119, 221 Velguth, Madeleine  151, 221 Venuti, Lawrence  13, 14, 23, 34, 137, 154, 210, 214, 221

Verga, Giovanni  113 Vermeer, Hans  67, 221 Vidal, M. Carmen-¡frica  205 Vidal, Pau  114, 115, 116, 120, 125, 205, 209 Viezzi, Maurizio  134, 221 Villalta, Gian Mario  37, 40, 221 Vinay, Jean-Paul  141, 222 Wajnryb, Ruth  58, 59, 222 Wales, Katie  8, 222 Waters Hood, Edward  165, 222 Wells, H. G.  176 Love and Mr Lewisham  176 White, Caramine  50, 51, 52, 222 Williams, Raymond Leslie  159, 222 Wober, J. Mallory  25, 222 Woolf, Stuart  80, 81, 84, 215, 216 Woolf, Virginia  171, 174, 177, 214, 222 Mrs Dalloway  171, 172, 174, 175, 176, 178, 179, 181, 182, 184, 222 Yassine, Ali  199 Yus, Francisco  57, 217 Yuste Frías, José  222 Zambetti, Sandro  158, 159, 216 Zauberga, Ieva  57, 222 Zinelli, Fabio  40, 222 Zoli, Carlo  33, 42, 45, 209, 222

New Trends in Translation Studies In today’s globalised society, translation and interpreting are gaining visibility and relevance as a means to foster communication and dialogue in increasingly multicultural and multilingual environments. Practised since time immemorial, both activities have become more complex and multifaceted in recent decades, intersecting with many other disciplines. New Trends in Translation Studies is an international series with the main objectives of promoting the scholarly study of translation and interpreting and of functioning as a forum for the translation and interpreting research community. This series publishes research on subjects related to multimedia translation and interpreting, in their various social roles. It is primarily intended to engage with contemporary issues surrounding the new multidimensional environments in which translation is flourishing, such as audiovisual media, the internet and emerging new media and technologies. It sets out to reflect new trends in research and in the profession, to encourage flexible methodologies and to promote interdisciplinary research ranging from the theoretical to the practical and from the applied to the pedagogical. New Trends in Translation Studies publishes translation- and interpretingoriented books that present high-quality scholarship in an accessible, reader-friendly manner. The series embraces a wide range of publi­ cations – monographs, edited volumes, conference proceedings and translations of works in translation studies which do not exist in English. The editor, Dr Jorge Díaz Cintas, welcomes proposals from all those interested in being involved with the series. The working language of the series is English, although in exceptional circumstances works in other languages can be considered for publication. Proposals dealing with specialised translation, translation tools and technology, audiovisual translation and the field of accessibility to the media are particularly welcomed.

Vol. 1 Meng Ji : Phraseology in Corpus-Based Translation Studies 251 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-03911-550-1 Vol. 2-4 Forthcoming Vol. 5 Kieran O’Driscoll: Retranslation through the Centuries: Jules Verne in English 302 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0236-4 Vol. 6 Federico M. Federici (ed.): Translating Dialects and Languages of Minorities: Challenges and Solutions 245 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0178-7 Vol. 7-8 Forthcoming Vol. 9

Laura Incalcaterra McLoughlin, Marie Biscio and Máire Áine Ní Mhainnín (eds): Audiovisual Translation. Subtitles and Subtitling: Theory and Practice 301 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0299-9