Italian Translation Research Articles

“An Ancient Psalm, a Modern Song”: Italian Translations of Hebrew Literature in the Early Modern Period. Alessandro Guetta. Studies in Jewish History and Culture 72. Leiden: Brill, 2022. x + 318 pp. $162.

“An Ancient Psalm, a Modern Song”: Italian Translations of Hebrew Literature in the Early Modern Period. Alessandro Guetta. Studies in Jewish History and Culture 72. Leiden: Brill, 2022. x + 318 pp. $162.

On Translating Some Culture-specific Elements of Oriental Origin in Italian Translations of the Novel Na Drini Ćuprija by Ivo Andrić

Na Drini ćuprija (The Bridge on the Drina) is one of the most recognized and most popular novels by Nobel laureate Ivo Andrić. It has been translated into Italian twice – by Bruno Meriggi (Il ponte sulla Drina) in 1960 and by Dunja Badnjević in 2001. This novel is deeply rooted in the cultural and social context of the early 16th to early 20th century Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since the novel describes historical events and figures who marked four centuries in Višegrad and its surroundings (from the bridge construction in 1516 until its partial destruction in 1914), first under the Ottoman, and then under the Austro-Hungarian rule, it is only natural that many words of Oriental origin are a frequent occurrence in the novel. These words permeated the language of the locals at the time, but also trade, economy, and state affairs, and therefore Andrić decided to incorporate them in his writing - to paint an authentic picture of life in Bosnia and Herzegovina during that time. The focus of this paper is to excerpt the cultural realia of Oriental origin that denote state, social, and religious titles and occupations in the novel. The next step is to analyze these instances contrastively and examine their frequency in the original as well as their frequency in both Italian translations. It has been concluded that, since there is a significant spatial and cultural distance present, the identified realia do not exist in the Italian language repertoire and therefore they pose a problem for translators. Additionally, they are often seen as archaisms, historicisms, and regionalisms even in the contemporary Bosnian language because they have been suppressed from the lexical inventory due to different cultural and social changes that occurred over time.

Business Websites as a Genre: Rendering Fair Language while Matching Corporate Values and Reader Expectations

This article aims at presenting web content as a genre with specific features, including very precise writers’ and readers’ expectations, diverse functions (skopos), text types and a strong bond with graphics and aesthetics. Business websites are investigated as a prime example of this genre focusing on the main challenges in rendering fair language in the English into Italian translation. In this genre, language is the mean through which writers—here, companies—can prove to be able to meet the readers’—here, potential customers—expectations in terms of company values. Framing the Italian linguistic and cultural context, the quest for inclusivity and gender-neutral language is evident and extremely relevant, making it a top priority for companies. Responding to the most common requests by corporations, some strategies are presented and their limits commented based on my experience as a practising translator. Linked to the idea of inclusivity, the concept of accessibility of web content is illustrated as a principle to follow to really embrace everybody. Web content is a brilliant case in which the choice of the language to be used reflects the most recent social transformation—sometimes even asking for avant-garde solutions—to meet readers’ expectations

Appunti sugli italianismi correnti nella lingua svedese. Indagini su un corpus giornalistico (gennaio-luglio 2019)

The article provides a list of 80 Italian loanwords that may be found in Swedish today, from aperitivo to villa: 30 of them are direct loans from Italian, 34 have been imported through French, 16 through German, English or some other Germanic language. We also add a short list of five words formed in Swedish on the basis of an Italian loanword. Our list is based on a corpus of articles published under the category “Italien” on the online version of the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter during the first six months of 2019. For every headword we provide grammatical information, one or more definitions, the date of the first attestation, the first three passages where the lexical unit occurs in a certain meaning, an Italian translation of the passages, additional word forms that are not present in the quoted passages and the total number of occurrences in the corpus. Some comments follow.

Jhumpa Lahiri and the Translation Memoir: To Write and Exist Beyond the Mother Tongue

ABSTRACT In 2016, following the publication of her memoir, In Other Words, Pulitzer Prize author Jhumpa Lahiri announced her intention to abandon English to solely write in Italian. Six years later, having become an acclaimed Italian writer and translator, Lahiri returns to English to consider her role as a ‘postmonolingual’ subject (Yildiz) in an era still dominated by a paradigmatic monolingualism. Released in 2022, Translating Myself and Others can be considered to all effects Lahiri’s translation memoir as it extends to the field of translation, the reflections initiated by In Other Words on the questions of language, identity, and cultural assignation. Through the analysis of both texts, this article discusses how the notion of ‘mother tongue’ is progressively deconstructed in Lahiri’s memoirs and how translation and self-translation become the vehicle through which overcoming what Yasemin Yildiz defines as the ‘monolingual paradigm’.

Esperienze di un traduttore del Lancelot-Graal

The publication of the first Italian translation of the Old French Lancelot-Grail cycle offers the opportunity to discuss the obstacles of such an undertaking and to reconsider the textual and stylistic features of this Medieval masterpiece. After presenting an overview of the problems related to the manuscripts and editions of the cycle, this essay examines the general and specific challenges faced by translators. Finally, the author comments on a passage of the Italian translation vis-à-vis the French text.

Psychometric Properties of the Italian Version of the Total Disability Index in Patients with Spine Pain and Disability: An Italian Cross-Cultural Adaptation, Validation and Translation

Psychometric Properties of the Italian Version of the Total Disability Index in Patients with Spine Pain and Disability: An Italian Cross-Cultural Adaptation, Validation and Translation

Reflexivity in Translation: A Multi-layered, Dialogic, and Self-reflexive Process

Abstract Translation theory and practice cannot be separated since the selection process implemented while translating implies a certain level of reflexivity that reflects the translator’s approach to practice. This article aims at investigating the different types of reflexivities categorised by Lynch and their application to translation practice. In particular, the English into Italian translation of the report on theatre From Live to Digital performed by the writer will be analysed, and examples of the translation process will be presented in light of the many layers of reflexivities involved. Specifically, hermeneutic and standpoint reflexivities will be explored considering the issue of ethnocentric violence and the quest for foreignization. Furthermore, conceiving reflexivity as an inward turn and a dialogic process, translators come to know their “Self” and the “Other,” which results in the creation of something creative. Translation being a form of creative writing resulting from a dialog is referred to as responsive translation, implying the translator’s unique sensitivity and interpretation. In conclusion, a reflexive approach in translation practice generates an ethical response to the source text because of a thorough self-investigation of the translator’s stance, differently from translations performed by software that don’t undergo a reflexive process at the time being.

Carry on Caesar

Abstract The variations on broadly fixed formulas used to represent such characters as the one portraying the Roman emperor, Julius Caesar, are all the more conspicuous for their, sometimes, almost imperceptible nuances. This article will illustrate some meaningful examples of filmic Caesars, focusing on the linguistic representation of this character, often handled as a stock character. The larger definition of stock characters, which includes but is not limited to stereotypes, encompasses a set of both visual and linguistic formulaic features which depend on identity constructions or social positions, to put it in Quantz’s terms (2015). The character Julius Caesar is often made to follow what film historians have called a general ‘linguistic paradigm’, by which British actors with posh accents, in post-war Hollywood epics of the 1950s, are frequently cast as wicked Roman tyrants or simply as members of the establishment opposed by the ‘hero’ of the tale. Departures from a schema can be however just as revealing in order to pinpoint recurrent themes, and they will be explored by focusing on the comic rendition of Caesar as interpreted by Kenneth Williams in the 1964 British comedy Carry on Cleo, and on the analysis of its outrageously racist and sexist Italian translation.

Schizogonies: Deconstruction of Derrida’s Deconstruction of Reproduction

While working on the Italian translation of Life Death, I became aware of some inaccuracies on Derrida’s part that might weaken the effectiveness of his deconstruction of the notion of ‘reproduction’. Not only, such inaccuracies seem to lead Derrida’s interpretation of reproduction toward a conception of ‘life’ that might even hint at an undeconstructed metaphysical background. I have already dealt with such inaccuracies in detail in two articles published in French, here I will recall their outcomes in order to try to test the most problematic hypothesis they have led me to formulate: the Derridean conception of ‘life’ implies a metaphysical background.

Translator’s “Visibility”: E. Teza and His Translation of Pushkin’s “The Undertaker”

The article deals with the issue of translator’s “visibility” using the translation of Pushkin’s short story “The Undertaker” published by Emilio Teza in the literary journal “Ateneo Veneto” in 1884 as an example. This translation was chosen for two main reasons: firstly, its historical meaning for intercultural relations between Russia and Italy as the first Italian translation of Pushkin’s short story; secondly, its translator – a well-known academician from the late 1800s, whose research concerned different areas of philology, linguistics, and comparative studies, as well as translation. As a result, despite then-predominant domesticating strategies, different elements in the target text reflect Teza’s personality and thus prove his “visibility”. The research started from the scrutiny of the translator’s biography, allowing the contextualization of this translation at a precise moment in Teza’s life. Through the contrastive analysis of the source and the texts several translatologically relevant units were identified. Afterwards, the translation strategies and shifts applied in their rendering into Italian were analysed. The scientific novelty lies in the application of such analysis to a previously unstudied text. The research led to the following conclusions: in the rendering of Russian realia, the target text is characterized by an overall domesticating strategy, typical of late-1800s translations and often correlated to the concept of translator’s “invisibility”. However, the presence of detailed footnotes reflects Teza’s personality as an ethnographer, thus making him “visible”. The presence of Tuscan dialectal forms in the target text hints at the translator’s biography, who in 1884 was living in Pisa. In addition, an example of linguistic interference from Serbian can be seen as a reference to Teza’s multilingualism. Therefore, it was proven that the translator’s personality can become “visible” by thoroughly analyzing linguistic features and translation shifts.

Italian translation and cultural adaptation of health literate organisation self-assessment tool

Abstract Background The International Working Group Health Promoting Hospitals and Health Literate Healthcare Organizations has developed an English-language self-assessment tool for Organizational Health Literacy of Hospitals, designed to quality managers of healthcare organizations. It aims to diagnose strengths and weaknesses of the organization's health literacy, and our goal is to translate and culturally adapt it for Italy. Methods We have been following the Translation, Review, Adjudication, Pretesting, and Documentation team model for cross-cultural translation of questionnaires. Initially, two separate teams of translators worked independently to translate the tool from English to Italian. Next, the national coordinator organised six meetings to discuss, integrate, and unify the two versions, and any translation difficulties and suggested solutions were reported in the supporting tool that will be sent along with final agreed version of the tool to the International Coordination Centre. Finally, two experts will review the translation for the cultural adaptation. Results Difficulties related to comprehension in translation can arise from ambiguity in word choice, the need for contextual precision, and a lack of cultural appropriateness. The translation of English words that have become part of Italian language (e.g. ‘feedback', ‘stakeholder', ‘management', ‘standard') was also hugely discussed between the teams. Finally, to categorize the information entered into the supporting tool, 50% pertains to adaptation to context, 30% to simplification or clarification, and 20% to non-applicable items. Conclusions Cultural adaptation will improve the translation by reducing ambiguities, providing contextual clarifications, and rephrasing items to make them more appropriate for Italy. The Italian version of the tool will be piloted in local hospitals to support healthcare operators, patients, and the community in better managing the complexities of healthcare organizations. Key messages • Translation of health literacy self-assessment tool for Italian hospitals, aiming to reduce ambiguity and increase appropriateness for local context. • Culturally adapted tool to diagnose organizational health literacy in Italian hospitals will help healthcare organizations deal with complexity of healthcare and improve patient outcomes.

Between policing and literary criticism: Habsburg censorship of literature in Lombardy-Venetia

The article looks at censors’ statements from the Venice State Archive and asks whether the parallels between censors speaking on literary texts and the mode of literary criticism can be productively analyzed with the help of these archival materials. The Venetian censorship bureau, established in 1814/15 in the context of the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia and forming part of Habsburg Empire, is a welcome source given the comparative paucity of censors’ statements in other parts of the Empire in the early nineteenth century and during the pre-revolutionary Vormärz period. In particular, the paper examines a set of censors’ statements from 1818, containing on the whole arguments in favor of the publication of manuscripts (or circulation of foreign books). Among them figure a number of justification strategies employed by the censors, which point beyond the usual censorship categories of offences against religion, the authorities and morals. The paper looks at various statements on “modern classical” texts (e.g. Schiller’s “Song of the Bell”, Ossian, James Thomson), as well as the ways censors developed in order to engage with contemporary literature. The main case study in this respect is dedicated to the Italian translation of a historical novel by Jane Porter, The Scottish Chiefs (1810), published as I capi scozzesi in 1822–23. The way censors reflected critical discourses on the one hand, and reacted to materials from the books on the other, immediately situates them in the context of literary criticism and the statements themselves are found to constitute a valuable source for book history, the history of reading, as well as for the development of censorship in the nineteenth century.

Antifascist geopoetics, anticolonial dissidence and feminism: engaging with Joyce Lussu’s transnational stories

ABSTRACT This paper addresses matters of anticolonialist, anti-fascist and feminist geopoetics, analysing a case that is virtually unknown to Anglophone geographical readerships, namely the transnational trajectories and literary works of Italian activist, writer and translator Joyce Lussu (1912–1998). Drawing upon recent literature on geopoetics and literary geographies that commit to produce and analyse ‘hybrid texts’, I extend and put in communication for the first time scholarship on antifascist transnational geographies and literature on decolonial and feminist geopoetics, by discussing Lussu’s exceptional biographical and literary experience, one that first shows the importance of coherence between life and texts. Lussu practiced plural, multilingual and transnational ways to construct (feminist and radical) non-elitist knowledge by taking part in anti-fascist exile and resistance in the 1930s and 1940s. Later, she supported ‘Third World’ anticolonial and revolutionary movements by translating and internationally circulating poems from politically committed authors, especially from Western Asia and Lusophone Africa. Finally, I contend that Lussu’s nonconformist feminism, that she understood as an inclusive antiauthoritarian notion for the construction of a renewed society by deconstructing masculine institutions such as the State, the Church and the Army, can speak powerfully to current debates on scholarly and political dissidences.

Taking Arms against a Sea of Troubles’: Intertextual Reverberations of Shakespeare in Translations of Ulysses

The article explores challenges posed by intertextuality in translating James Joyce’s Ulysses. It focuses on references to Shakespeare to highlight the complexity of woes faced not only by the translators of Shakespeare but also by translators of Joyce who face Shakespearean intertextuality in Ulysses. The author selects three examples of Joyce’s Shakespearean borrowings from Hamlet, Othello, and Henry IV in French, Italian, and Polish translations of Ulysses, with a passing comment on an example from the Spanish Ulises, to show a wide range of solutions in target languages. The article concludes by suggesting that translators of Joyce must address intertextuality in Ulysses in order to fully capture the nuances of Joyce’s writing.

The pragmatic dimensions of swearing in films: Searching for coherence in dubbing strategies

Swearing is exploited to release strong emotions, attack the interlocutor's face and build interpersonal solidarity, both in spontaneous interactions and in film. In audiovisual translation, it tends to be toned down or omitted, with research mostly explaining neutralisation as censorship-driven and treating the translation of taboo language as an internally-undifferentiated, arbitrary procedure. In the present corpus-based study we move away from the external, socio-cultural motivations for loss to assess whether specific pragmatic, structural-functional and textual dimensions of swearing account for preferred translational strategies and impact the translational outcomes. All occurrences of F-words in a parallel corpus of Anglophone films and their Italian translations are examined in their bilingual concordances at the utterance level and in the wider multimodal context. The quantitative and qualitative analyses outline the interaction between structural-functional patterns and pragmatic functions with reference to the translation strategies of full translation, mitigation, de-swearing and omission. The findings unveil coherence in Italian translators' preferences for pragmatically-motivated cross-linguistically viable language patterns which foreground the heightened emotional charge and the abusive dimensions of taboo words, thus pointing to a principled approach to translational solutions which boost the conflictuality intrinsic to film.

Switching from Galenic to Advanced Dressings or Vacuum Assisted Closure Therapy Can Improve Quality of Life of Patients with Chronic Non-Responsive Pressure Skin Ulcers: Preliminary Data with Italian Translation of WOUND-Q.

Objective: A few studies have focused on the quality of life (QoL) of patients with chronic non-responsive pressure skin ulcers. The aim of this study was to assess how correct treatment (advanced wound care [AWC] dressings alone or vacuum assisted closure [VAC] therapy alone) changes the QoL of these patients. Approach: One hundred six patients with chronic non-responsive pressure skin ulcers, who had previously used galenic dressings, applied without proper therapeutic indication, were included in this study. We administered the WOUND-Q, at time 0 and after 1 month of appropriate therapy, to assess patient-reported outcome measures. Group 1 consisted of 30 patients treated with advanced dressings, Group 2: 22 patients treated with VAC therapy, and Group 3: 30 patients continuing conventional galenic dressings (Control group). Statistical analysis allowed us to analyze QoL changes over time and to compare WOUND-Q Group 1 and 2 deltas with those of Group 3. The study followed the STROBE statement. Results and Innovation: In all the scales evaluated (Assessment, Drainage, Smell, Life impact, Psychological, Social, Sleep and Dressing), there were significant improvements in mean values for Groups 1 and 2. Kruskal-Wallis tests with Dunn's multiple-comparisons tests and Brown-Forsythe and Welch Analysis of Variance tests demonstrated significant differences between deltas of Group 1 and Group 2 compared with those of Group 3 for most scales analyzed. Conclusions: Administration of the WOUND-Q demonstrated that the application of advanced dressings alone or VAC therapy alone positively affects the QoL of patients with chronic nonresponsive pressure wounds, in comparison with galenic dressings alone. The WOUND-Q has been shown to be a valid tool in studying changes in QoL of these patients.

Not Onlyravī. The Other Letters of the Rhyme in theMuʿǧam fī maʿāyīr ašʿār al-ʿaǧamby Šams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Qays al-Rāzī

In his treatise on Persian literary theory,al-Muʿǧam fī maʿāyīr ašʿār al-ʿaǧam, Šams-i Qays(13th century) claims that a poem without the main rhyming letter (ravī) is not a poem. However, this letter is not the only recurring letter at the end of the lines of a Persian poem. Šams-i Qays discusses eight other letters (ridf,qayd,taʾsīs,daxīl,vaṣl,xurūǧ,mazīd, andnāyira) as he determines the length and the possible patterns of a Persian rhyme (qāfiya). In this paper, I aim to improve our understanding of the linguistic rationale behind the taxonomy of Persian rhyming letters by providing an annotated Italian translation of relevant passages from theMuʿǧam.

The upper extremity functional index (UEFI): Italian validation in patients with Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy

Purpose The aim of this study was to adapt the Upper Extremity Functional Index (UEFI) to an Italian population affected by Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD) by translating and validating this instrument in an Italian cohort. Materials and methods Five Italian FSHD patients were interviewed regarding the form and content of the translated instrument. Subsequently, fifty-two patients were recruited for the validation purpose by serially completing the UEFI-IT and a battery of clinical assessments and questionnaires. Finally, a subset of thirty-nine patients underwent test-retest reliability. Results The Italian translation of the UEFI was highly relevant to patients, had a level of test-retest reliability from “good” to “excellent” (ICC = 0.90 with 95% confidence interval between 0.82 and 0.95), and a satisfactory internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.96). Participants confirmed the usefulness and clearness of the tool in cultural validity. In known group validity, the UEFI-IT was significantly lower in patients unable to walk (24.10 ± 11.33 vs 55.71 ± 13.98, p < .0001; AUC = 0.9631) and in patients with longer disease duration (43.43 ± 17.16 vs 58.14 ± 13.71, p = 0.0034; AUC = 0.7359). Finally, the concurrent validity showed strong associations between the UEFI-IT and motor assessments, pain perception, and quality-of-life evaluations. Conclusions Overall, the UEFI-IT is an appropriate, valid, and reliable outcome measure for Italian-speaking FSHD patients.

Converting Zi-ka-wei: Angelo A. Zottoli, S.J. (Chao Deli 晁德蒞, 1826–1902) and His Mission in Shanghai

Abstract When the Jesuits returned to China in the nineteenth century, the mission and surrounding community at Xujiahui (Zikawei), near Shanghai, was an important intellectual and administrative center. Among the foreign Jesuits present at Xujiahui, a fixture for many years, was the Italian Angelo Zottoli, an educator, administrator, and translator for the mission. From his arrival in Shanghai in 1848 until he died in 1902, Zottoli was an essential figure in the cross-cultural dialogue between Chinese Catholics and foreign missionaries. Though far from a firebrand, Zottoli greatly admired Chinese culture and generally took an “accommodationist” approach, which clashed with the attitudes of other Jesuits in Shanghai. At the same time, he supported papal pronouncements on Chinese Rites, which provided strict limits to accommodation. Overall, then, he represents the difficulties Jesuits faced in reconciling the history of the church in China and their own attitudes (such as Eurocentricity) with Chinese culture. This article is part of the special issue of the Journal of Jesuit Studies, “Jesuits in Modern Far East,” guest edited by Steven Pieragastini.