REVIEWS Translating Voices, Translating Regions. Ed. by NIGEL ARMSTRONG and FEDERICO FEDERICI. Rome: Aracne. 2oo6. 421 pp. El9. ISBN 978-88-548-o6I9-I. This useful and varied collection of articles takes as its focus one of the classic 'prob lem areas' of translation: the transposition of non-standard varieties of language from one linguistic and cultural context to another. The titleof the volume ispartlymis leading: the essays gathered here are not limited to theexamination of regional voices (be these the expression of long-established dialects, emerging creoles, or contempo rary regional standards), but rather trace amuch wider map of language variety,with some authors devoting theirattention to sociolects, gendered variants,minority lan guages, or the emerging polylinguism of border cultures. Two key concepts present inmany of the contributions are those ofminor language (in theDeleuzian sense) and ofmarginal voices, and it isperhaps a pity that the very brief introduction does not attempt tooutline the intellectual history of these labels, nor their significance for contemporary translation theoryand practice. These and other leitmotifs (such as the tension between local and global phenomena affecting current translation practices, or the role and visibility of individual translators) forma secondary frameworkwhich does not contradict but rather complicates the surface structure of the collection: a total of twenty-three essays divided into twomain sections-devoted to audiovisual and literary translation, respectively each in turn arranged into three subsections. Both parts include articles of a broadly theoretical nature as well asmore circum scribed, but often illuminating, case studies. The overall trend is forany discussion of theory tobe closely related to translation practice and itspractical as well as ideo logical and ethical constraints. Jeremy Munday's opening essay, devoted to issues of style in translation, is a case inpoint: his examination of the rendering of 'formsof minority language' (p. 2 1) inwritten aswell as audiovisual adaptations of thenovella El lobo,el bosque y el hombrenuevo by theCuban writer Senel Paz (better known in its filmversion, Fresa y chocolate) serves to illustrate how processes of 'tradaptation' (a term Munday borrows fromYves Gambier) may blur 'anynotion of original source text' (p. 28), but also toexplore theway inwhich cinema may exploit the relationship between verbal and visual text inways which are specific to intersemiotic translation. A number of other essays in this firstsection (e.g. those by Anna Fochi and Bev erlyAdab) also raise the question of intersemiotic transposition, mostly in order to take sides with those scholars who treat this as a form of translation proper (rather than a separate practice and fieldof study). Other essays concentrate more closely on the difficulties inherent in the translation ofmarginal languages, from the regional and social richness ofKen Loach's 'Englishes' (Christopher Taylor), toRossellini's or Fellini's use of regional markers and their rendition, or lack thereof, inEnglish (Noeleen Hargan and Cosetta Gaudenzi), to the 'cultural ventriloquism' involved innegotiating the coupling of global markets with local audiences when translating/ dubbing for television series (Chiara Ferrari). In some instances the tone becomes openly polemic, as inJean-Louis Sarthou's description of the linguistic 'banalization' imposed upon translators by the dictates of mass distribution networks. Sarthou, however, also reminds us of thepowerful influence still exercised on translation pro cesses by individual national traditions and established cultural policies: the French history of linguistic centralization isblamed, in this case, for the enduring resistance to regional languages in French cinema, even in cases where local variants could be usefully exploited to render vernaculars present in a foreign film. This variety of linguistic and cultural perspectives is a welcome feature of both sections of the volume: anglophone and British- or US-centred contributions pre vail, but they are accompanied by a number of articles centring on Italian, French, MLR, 102.4, 2007 II23 or Latin American examples (and a mixture of combinations as far as source and target languages and cultures are concerned). Most contributors, on the other hand, share theoretical perspectives broadly aligned with descriptive and target-oriented Translation Studies, with theoccasional reference to functionalist approaches such as skopos theoryand to semiotics.Many revisitestablished strategies for the translation of vernacular language, including standardization, substitution of a source-language varietywith a target-language one, or the creation of an...