Italian Translation Research Articles

Marina Tsvetaeva’s Poem «An Attempt at Jealousy»: a Comparative Analysis of Three Italian Translations

The aim of the paper is to analyse the translation strategies of three Italian translators (Pietro Antonio Zveteremich, Serena Vitale, Marilena Rea) who at different times addressed Marina Tsvetaeva’s poem «An Attempt at Jealousy». First of all, they considered the peculiarities of conveying the semantic potential of the text as expressed by lexical items. Translation is an arduous combination of meaning (implication of meanings) and structure (speech expression, Tsvetaeva’s original syntax, rhymes, alliteration, etc.). The aim of a translation strategy is to convey the meaning of the original text as appropriately as possible, although it is not easy to convey the rich metaphors and the «twists» and «distortions» of Tsvetaeva’s syntax in another language. The conclusion is that in all three translations the general meaning of Tsvetaeva’s poem has been preserved. Moreover, Vitale and Rea’s versions convey the significant sound component of Tsvetaeva’s texts. If Zveteremich’s translation strategy can be called a «formalist translation», Vitale and Rea’s translations convey not only the literal meaning of the original, but also the «subtext» (i.e. carry out an artistic and aesthetic function).

Self-Reported Foot and Ankle Score: Italian Translation, Validation and Cross-Cultural Adaptation

Self-Reported Foot and Ankle Score: Italian Translation, Validation and Cross-Cultural Adaptation

Italian translation, cultural adaptation and pilot testing of Psychosocial Assessment Tool (PAT 3.1) in pediatric cancer.

Experiences related to pediatric oncology diagnosis cause great imbalances within the family structure. Assessing the frailties and needs of families and children with cancer from a psychosocial perspective is an important step in providing appropriate pediatric psychology care. The aim of this study was to develop an Italian translation of the last version of the Psychosocial Assessment Tool questionnaire (PAT 3.1) and to pilot-test it among pediatric oncological families. The guidelines for cross-cultural adaptation of health-related quality of life measures were followed. Specifically, two independent forward translations were produced, followed by a reconciliation step by a multidisciplinary expert committee and back-translation. Revision of the original text and all translations were performed by the expert committee leading to a final version, which was pilot-tested by cognitive debriefing on five families. Subsequently, the final Italian PAT 3.1 version was approved. The Italian version of the PAT 3.1 generated in the present study is a useful instrument to examine the psychosocial risk of the families with a child with cancer. This instrument will be a valuable tool for future clinical trials and it will help clinicians to target specific pediatric psychology support intervention. The questionnaire will be further validated through a multicenter Italian study on psychosocial screening of pediatric oncology and pediatric general diseases.

Translation and validation in Italian of the methotrexate intolerance severity score for children and adults with arthritis.

Methotrexate (MTX) is the most used drug to treat children and adults with arthritis and its use is burdened by adverse effects. The MTX intolerance severity score (MISS) was developed in English to identify patients who are intolerant to MTX. The aim of this study was to translate and validate the MISS in Italian. The Italian version of the MISS was developed following the "guidelines for process of cross-cultural adaptation of self-reported measures". The Italian version of the MISS was validated in 125 patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) followed at the Rheumatology Unit of Bambino Gesù Children Hospital. We assessed the construct validity and calculated the internal consistency of the Italian MISS. We performed ROC analysis to assess the overall performance of the Italian MISS. We translated and adapted the MISS to the Italian language. The Italian MISS showed a very good internal consistency as shown by a Cronbach α of 0.87 (95% CI, 0.84-0.90) and a composite reliability of 0.89 (95% CI, 0.83-0.91).The Cohen's κ was 0.81 (95% CI, 0.71-0.91), suggesting a very good construct validity. The ROC analysis showed an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.97 (95% CI, 0.93-0.99). A threshold of 6 to define intolerant patients, showed a sensitivity of 98.3% and specificity of 81.2%. We developed the Italian version of the MISS and showed its validity and reliability to identify patients intolerant to MTX in clinical practice and in a research setting.

LYMPH-Q translation, cultural adaptation and validation in Italian language: A prospective PROMs-based study on breast cancer-related arm lymphedema for patients’ education

BackgroundUpper Extremity Lymphedema following oncological breast surgery affects not only the patient's physique, but also the patient's psychological sphere. One of the best known PROMs-based questionnaires for investigating the condition is the LYMPH-Q. The study aimed to perform the Italian translation and cultural adaptation of the LYMPH-Q and to assess if, independently from disease evolution, arm sleeve improves QoL in these patients. Materials and methodsTranslation included 4 steps: Forward translation, Back translation, Back translation review and Patient interviews. The questionnaire was administered to 50 female patients older than 18 years of age with UEL who received a prescription for daily use of a compression sheath. A second administration took place 30 days after. Forty-four patients completed the study (Group 1: 26 patients with indication to use compression sleeve who wore it; Group 2:18 patients who despite the prescription did not want to wear it. A descriptive statistical analysis was performed with Prism 9 software. ResultsT-tests showed statistical significance for changes in “Symptoms,” “Function,” “Appearance” and “Psychological” scales. There were no statistically significant changes for “Information scale” in Group 1 and for all scales in Group 2. ConclusionData from this observational study show that HR-QOL analyzed from the patients' perspective also tends to improve in terms of symptoms, function, appearance, and psychological sphere in patients with BCRL when using a compression sheath. The Lymph-Q has proven to be a valuable ally of the physician attempting to improve treatment approaches for BCRL based not only on scientific evidence but also on PROMs.

Suicide on Italian Instagram: Insights and implications for prevention and support

AbstractInstagram is the social network with the largest number of adolescent users in Italy; it is also the social network with the largest number of suicide‐related posts. Suicide is the third leading cause of death in Italy in the 15–19 age group. This study aims to describe Italian posts on Instagram related to suicide and to investigate whether there are differences in the number of likes, comments, and hashtags in relation to the characteristics of the posts. We searched for Italian‐language Instagram posts by typing ‘#suicidio’, an Italian translation of the English word ‘suicide’, and found 303 posts between January and May 2022. Most of the posts were written by ordinary people, while only a small percentage of posts were written by professionals; moreover, the content was predominantly biographical and pro‐suicide, and most posts had no reference to adolescence. Posts with a neutral approach received the most likes, while posts with a negative or positive approach to suicide or that contained references to psychiatric disorders had the most hashtags. These results provide insight regarding guidelines that can be implemented for suicide online prevention and encourage psychologists to enhance online prevention and support using the online community inherent to the Instagram social network.

Aspectual Features of Some Circumstantial Clauses in Italian Translation (Based on a Corpus of Works by Georgi Gоspоdinov

The article takes a cursory look at the translation from Bulgarian to Italian of some types of circumstantial sentences, where a difference in type is observed. The translation of perfective or imperfective constructions is a challenge for both the translator and the learners of the Italian language, since the ways of expressing the verb form in Italian are different from those in Bulgarian. In the Bulgarian language, the type is expressed through morphological indicators, while the Italian language shows the type through the verb tenses and the opposition between them. The analysis of the corpus of examples shows the type difference between original and translation, where some kind of modality is also present, and that these type differences do not significantly affect the overall meaning of the examples under consideration.

School Participation Questionnaire (SPQ): Italian Translation, Cultural Adaptation, and Pilot Testing in Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders.

According to leading occupational therapy models, the environment appears to be a key element in fostering occupational performance and participation. There is an emerging need to identify an instrument that can assess these aspects in the school environment. Currently, there are no rating scales in Italy for the school participation of children with neurodevelopmental disorders. For this reason, this study aims to culturally adapt and translate the School Participation Questionnaire (SPQ) to Italian and to pilot test the translated Italian version on children with neurodevelopmental disorders. The original scale was translated from English to Italian using the guidelines "Translation and Cultural Adaptation of Patient Reported Outcomes Measures-Principles of Good Practice". The psychometric properties analyzed were the following: content validity, construct validity, cross-cultural validity, and internal consistency. Construct validity was assessed using the Italian version of the Sensory Processing Measure (SPM). The Italian version of the SPQ was administered to 22 children. The mean ± SD of the score was 9.32 ± 1.36; Cronbach's α was 0.935 (p < 0.01). The Pearson's correlation coefficient with the SPM scores was -0.622 (p < 0.01). This pilot testing study for the validation of the Italian version of the SPQ showed good validity and reliability results. Thanks to this study, it would be possible to further analyze the tool for the evaluation of the environment and school participation of children with neurodevelopmental disorders, in particular autism spectrum disorder. It is a quick and easy instrument that focuses on the environment as an active variable in the child's occupational performance.

Italian normative data for the Unhelpful Thoughts and Beliefs about Stuttering (UTBAS) Scales for adults who stutter

PurposeThis study aimed to assess the reliability and validity of the Italian translation of the Unhelpful Thoughts and Beliefs about Stuttering (UTBAS) scales for adults who stutter, as there are no assessment tools currently available in Italy. The UTBAS scales provide a comprehensive stuttering-specific measure of the unhelpful thoughts and beliefs that can be used to screen for indicators of social anxiety in adults who stutter. Additionally, the UTBAS scales also allow the identification of negative thoughts and beliefs that negatively impact speech treatment outcomes. MethodThe translation of the UTBAS scales into Italian (UTBAS-ITA) was completed using the forward-backward translation process and it was administered to 98 adults who stutter (AWS) and 98 adults who do not stutter (AWNS). Both groups were matched for gender and age. We also administered the UTBAS-ITA to 76 AWS a second time within a two-week interval to assess test-retest reliability. Additionally, we administered the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale to 20 AWS to assess concurrent validity. ResultsThe UTBAS-ITA showed good power of discrimination between AWS and AWNS, high internal validity, high internal consistency, good construct validity, and good test-retest reliability. ConclusionSince there is a scarcity of clinical assessment tools for adults who stutter in Italy, the UTBAS-ITA could serve as an assessment tool and outcome measure for clinical and research environments.

“Ink and paper”

Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra boasts a peculiar typographical and editorial history. Despite the fact that the version contained in the so-called First Folio is “the only authoritative” (Ridley 1954: VII), several variations differentiate the text published in 1623 from the copies that were printed in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Nevertheless, such copies ineluctably affected the English contemporary editions as well the Italian translations of the selected Roman play that were published from the nineteenth century onwards. The present paper aims to reconstruct the history of both the English and the Italian editions of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, in order to understand how the evolution of both the translation theories and the editorial tendencies have shaped the structure as well the stylistic features of the tragedy, consequently affecting its reception.

Italian Grief and Meaning Reconstruction Inventory (GMRI): Exploratory, Confirmatory and Network Analyses

The current study was conducted to develop and validate an Italian translation of the Grief and Meaning Reconstruction Inventory (GMRI) and evaluate its psychometric properties in a sample of 297 bereaved adults. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses established that the 16-item Italian GMRI yielded five clearly interpretable factors (Continuing Bonds, Personal Growth, Sense of Peace, Valuing Life and Emptiness & Meaninglessness). The instrument demonstrated good reliability and robust convergent validity, through the scale’s significant inverse correlation with the Inventory of Complicated Grief and general distress, depression, stress, and anxiety. Network analysis of the items indicated that Continuing Bonds and Valuing Life could potentially assume central positions in the process of constructing meaning in the face of bereavement. In summary, the study suggests that the Italian version of the GMRI is valid and reliable instrument for assessing reconstruction of meaning after the loss of a loved one among the bereaved Italian population.

Handheld echocardiography for the screening and diagnosis of rheumatic heart disease: a systematic review to inform WHO guidelines

Early detection and diagnosis of acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease are key to preventing progression, and echocardiography has an important diagnostic role. Standard echocardiography might not be feasible in high-prevalence regions due to its high cost, complexity, and time requirement. Handheld echocardiography might be an easy-to-use, low-cost alternative, but its performance in screening for and diagnosing acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease needs further investigation. In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched Embase, MEDLINE, LILACS, and Conference Proceedings Citation Index-Science up to Feb 9, 2024, for studies on the screening and diagnosis of acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease using handheld echocardiography (index test) or standard echocardiography or auscultation (reference tests) in high-prevalence areas. We included all studies with useable data in which the diagnostic performance of the index test was assessed against a reference test. Data on test accuracy in diagnosing rheumatic heart disease, acute rheumatic fever, or carditis with acute rheumatic fever (primary outcomes) were extracted from published articles or calculated, with authors contacted as necessary. Quality of evidence was appraised using GRADE and QUADAS-2 criteria. We summarised diagnostic accuracy statistics (including sensitivity and specificity) and estimated 95% CIs using a bivariate random-effects model (or univariate random-effects models for analyses including three or fewer studies). Area under the curve (AUC) was calculated from summary receiver operating characteristic curves. Heterogeneity was assessed by visual inspection of plots. This study was registered with PROSPERO (CRD42022344081). Out of 4868 records we identified 11 studies, and two additional reports, comprising 15 578 unique participants. Pooled data showed that handheld echocardiography had high sensitivity (0·87 [95% CI 0·76-0·93]), specificity (0·98 [0·71-1·00]), and overall high accuracy (AUC 0·94 [0·84-1·00]) for diagnosing rheumatic heart disease when compared with standard echocardiography (two studies; moderate certainty of evidence), with better performance for diagnosing definite compared with borderline rheumatic heart disease. High sensitivity (0·79 [0·73-0·84]), specificity (0·85 [0·80-0·89]), and overall accuracy (AUC 0·90 [0·85-0·94]) for screening rheumatic heart disease was observed when pooling data of handheld echocardiography versus standard echocardiography (seven studies; high certainty of evidence). Most studies had a low risk of bias overall. Some heterogeneity was observed for sensitivity and specificity across studies, possibly driven by differences in the prevalence and severity of rheumatic heart disease, and level of training or expertise of non-expert operators. Handheld echocardiography has a high accuracy and diagnostic performance when compared with standard echocardiography for diagnosing and screening of rheumatic heart disease in high-prevalence areas. World Health Organization. For the Chinese, French, Italian, Persian, Portuguese, Spanish and Urdu translations of the abstract see Supplementary Materials section.

Willa Cather, Italy, and the visibility of the female translator

ABSTRACT This article reassesses Willa Cather’s Italian publication history and critical reception in light of new archival findings. Besides drawing on reviews, letters, and essays by Italian intellectuals, translators, and “Americanisti” (Igino Giordani, Cesare Pavese, Elio Vittorini, Emilio Cecchi), I will use archival documents held at the Fondazione Arnoldo e Alberto Mondadori in Milan, at the Scalero collection (Fondo Sorelle Scalero) of the city library of Mazzé, Turin, and at the Archivio Giulio Einaudi Editore in Turin. Focusing on Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) and My Ántonia (1918), I show that Cather's Italian trajectory is more complex than known to date, and it is intimately connected to the work of two female Italian translators: Alessandra Scalero and Jole J. Pinna Pintor. I also argue that Scalero's translation La morte viene per l’arcivescovo (1936) can be read as featuring some of the characteristics later advocated by Feminist Translation Studies theories around the emergence of a “feminist translator” as actively contributing to the production of meaning in the text.

Evaluating soundscape in the Italian language: Validation of the translation of the English standardized perceptual attributes of the ISO/TS 12913-2:2018 and comparison with other Romance languages

The Soundscape Attributes Translation Project (SATP) has successfully translated English standardized perceptual attributes of the ISO/TS 12913–2:2018 into various languages. This paper validates the Italian translation of the widespread use of the soundscape circumplex model attributes for using standardized listening experiments protocol. The Italian translation of the ISO soundscape circumplex model was compared with the original English version. Furthermore, a comparison with other Romance languages (i.e., Portuguese, Spanish, French) that have already concluded the validation was carried out. The study was conducted following three phases: (i) a consensus on the final eight attributes of the Italian language was achieved, (ii) the recruitment of 30 naïve normal-hearing Italian listeners and the preparation of the set-up for the listening tests was fostered, (iii) listening tests based on the 27 binaural recordings provided by the SATP project to examine the differences in subjective evaluations of the same sound environment were administrated in the Audio Space Lab of Politecnico di Torino. The main findings of the listening tests consisted in the validation of the Italian translations against English, in the comparison of the perceived loudness in the Italian and English listening tests that showed no significant differences, and in the satisfactory match of Italian translations in comparison with other Romance languages. Although slight differences probably due to cultural aspects were found, these outcomes are helpful to properly develop the Italian version of the ISO 12913-2 and to pursue accurate and replicable soundscape studies.

Voices and/of Places

After Indonesia’s independence was officially recognised by the Netherlands in 1949, several former members of the colonial élite repatriated. Many among the Indies-born repatriatees’ generation used writing to come to terms with their own controversial, multifaceted identity. While they belonged to the colonial élite, they can be studied as writers geographically and temporally displaced as their colonial land of birth no longer exists. Their desire for belonging is arguably exemplified in the way their novels’ protagonists’ linguistic identity is depicted. While these authors write in Dutch, their characters are embedded in local cultures, languages, traditions, questioning fixed labels and dichotomies. Taking as example Helga Ruebsamen’s 1997 novel Het lied en de waarheid [The song and the truth], this article explores how linguistic identity is represented in Dutch literature of repatriation and how this is tackled in translation into English. This novel is chosen not only because it allows to explore plurality in literature and translation in the selected context, but also because it takes the issues of linguistic plurality in literature and translation a step further: the five-year-old Dutch protagonist leaves the tropical (colonial) environment with its enchanting nature behind and arrives with her family in the Netherlands in 1939 as the daughter of a Jewish doctor, unveiling a third identity layer beyond the Dutch-East Indian dichotomy. After positioning this novel within Dutch literature of repatriation by means of a close reading analysis, this article discusses why and how it can be studied as a heterolingual, diasporic (in this specific case, neither colonial, nor postcolonial) text. The translation strategies used to tackle representations of cultural and linguistic hybridity into English are then analysed by means of a comparative textual analysis. Looking for recurring trends, the results are finally briefly related to the findings of a doctoral project about the English and Italian translations of Dutch-East Indian novels by Hella S. Haasse, which suggest that shared tendencies to generalisation may risk distorting images of linguistic hybridity.

“Quality of Life in Epidermolysis Bullosa” and “Epidermolysis Bullosa Burden of Disease”: Italian translation, cultural adaptation, and pilot testing of two disease-specific questionnaires

BackgroundInherited epidermolysis bullosa (EB) is a clinically and genetically heterogeneous group of skin fragility disorders characterized by blister formation following minor trauma. Four major types are distinguished based on the level of cleavage within the skin. Most EB forms present severely disabling cutaneous and systemic signs and symptoms. Management relies on daily time-consuming and distressing topical medications, and symptomatic treatment of systemic findings. Disease manifestations, symptoms, and daily care strongly affect patient and caregiver quality of life (QoL). To date, there are two validated EB-specific questionnaires, the “Quality of Life in Epidermolysis Bullosa” (QOLEB) and the “Epidermolysis Bullosa Burden of Disease” (EB-BoD) for the evaluation of patient and family disease burden, respectively. The aim of our study was to develop an Italian translation of the two questionnaires and to pilot-test them.MethodsThe guidelines for translation and cross-cultural adaptation of health-related QoL measures were followed. Initially, two separate translations were generated for each questionnaire, and subsequently reconciled by an expert committee. This was followed by a back-translation process. The original texts and all translations underwent revision by the expert committee, resulting in definitive versions. The final versions were then tested in a pilot study involving cognitive debriefing in a group of 17 families, representative of all EB major types.ResultsThe translation and reconciliation process led to minor changes to obtain semantic/idiomatic/cultural equivalence of the Italian versions with the original ones and to reconcile the questions with the answer options. The cognitive debriefing process showed a good understanding and did not require text modifications.ConclusionsThe Italian versions of the QOLEB and EB-BoD provide valuable tools in everyday clinical practice of reference centers, and they allow the participation in multicenter international real-life observational studies as well as in controlled clinical trials. They enable the identification of disease-specific psychological and socioeconomic challenges for EB patients and their families, guiding targeted interventions to ensure appropriate and timely care.

Due testimoni parziali delle Historiae adversus paganos di Paolo Orosio secondo il volgarizzamento di Bono Giamboni

Abstract The article aims to investigate two fragmentary manuscript witnesses to Bono Giamboni’s vernacular Italian translation of Paulus Orosius’ Historiae. Neither of these witnesses has been studied until now. The article provides an edition of the shorter fragment, preserved in MS Vatican Library Barb. Lat. 4119, and a full description of the second codex, MS British Library Add. 16554, a multi-text codex that contains a large anthology of Orosius’ Historiae. Among the works preserved in this latter manuscript, particularly noteworthy is the presence of an unknown vernacular Italian version of Sallust’s De coniuratione Catilinae. The article also provides some new insights into the early printed editions of the Italian vernacular translation of Orosius and the authorship of the printed text.

Italian translation and cultural adaptation of the Agitated Behavior Scale (ABS-I) in patients with acquired brain injuries.

The objective of this study was to produce a cross-cultural adaptation in Italian of the Agitated Behavior Scale (ABS), originally developed in English, as the first of two stages that also include cross-cultural validation and allow a clinical scale to be used in the proper setting such as rehabilitation units. In order to adapt the ABS scale to a different cultural environment, five consecutive steps were performed: (1) forward translations (n = 8), (2) synthesis of the 8 forward translations to obtain a first shared italian version (ABS_I_trial), (3) back translations (n = 3), (4) creation of an expert committee to evaluate forward and back translations and finally (5) the cognitive debriefing. After the five steps, including forward translations and back translations, the process of committee verification and judgement and the evaluative step of cognitive debriefing, high comprehensibility of all items was found, resulting in an Italian translation version of ABS suitable for application in a clinical setting. ABS translation was produced by means of a standardized procedure aimed at minimizing cross-cultural gaps. The expert committee evaluated the version produced as highly understandable in Italian. Further steps, such as the subsequent validation of its psychometric properties, are needed to employ this translation in a clinical setting.

Marx Activity Rating Scale: Italian translation, validation and cross-cultural adaptation

Marx Activity Rating Scale: Italian translation, validation and cross-cultural adaptation

Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov in Italian: Analyzing the Influence of Michel Delines’ French Version

This article presents a brief history of Italian rhythmical translations of Modest Mussorgsky's libretto for his opera Boris Godunov, each apparently drawing on Michel Delines’ French version from 1908. The author explores the possibility of studying the opera's reception in Italy in connection with the reception of its translations and conducts a brief comparative analysis of four Italian versions of the opera (two from 1908, one from 1909, and one from 1978) alongside both the original and the French version, using one fragment as an example. The paper also aims to draw attention to the lack of serious studies on opera translations and the translators themselves, emphasizing their role as mediators between different cultures.