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

Cover Page

Cite item

Full Text

Abstract

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.

References

  1. Прогожин Н.П. Переводчик Пушкина Чезаре Боччелла // Временник Пушкинской коммиссии, 1978. Л.: Наука. Ленингр. Отд-ние, 1981.
  2. Baselica G. Alla scoperta del «genio russo» // Rivista tradurre. 2011. No. 0. URL: http://rivistatradurre.it/2011/04/tradurre-dal-russo-2/
  3. Jampol’skaja A. Concorrenti o colleghi? Osservazioni sulle traduzioni italiane della letteratura russa // Quaderno del Dipartimento di Letterature Comparate – Università di Roma Tre. 2006. No. 2.
  4. Teza E. Una novella di A. Pus’kin: L’appaltatore di bare; notizia letteraria / Ateneo Veneto. 1884. Serie VIII, vol. I.
  5. Newmark P. Approaches to Translation. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1981.
  6. Venuti L. The Translator’s Invisibility. A History of Translation. New York: Routledge, 1995.
  7. Crescini V. Emilio Teza; segue la bibliografia del Teza a c. di C. Frati. Venezia: C. Ferrari, 1914.
  8. Pascucci E. Note ad alcune traduzioni del Grobovščik di A.S. Puškin // Studi in onore di Ettore Lo Gatto; a c. di A. D’Amelia. Roma: Bulzoni, 1980.
  9. Venuti L. The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference. London – New York: Routledge, 1998.
  10. Pym A. Venuti’s Visibility // Target. 1996. Vol. 8, No. 1.
  11. Arrojo R. The “death” of the author and the limits of the translator’s visibility // Translation as Intercultural Communication: Selected papers form the EST Congress, Prague 1995; ed. by M. Snell-Hornby, Z. Jettmarová and K. Kaindl. Amsterdam – Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1997.
  12. Sheriff K.M. Reviewing Translations: Translator’s Invisibility Revisited // Translation Today. 2008. Vol. 5, No. 1-2.
  13. Emmerich K.R. Visibility (and invisibility) // Handbook of Translation Studies, vol. 4; ed. by Y. Gambier, L. Van Doorslaer. Amsterdam – Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2013.
  14. Zhang Q. Translator’s Voice in Translated Texts // Journal of Literature and Art Studies. 2016. Vol. 6, No. 2.
  15. Laaksonen J., Koskinen K. Venuti and the Ethics of Difference // The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Ethics; ed. by K. Koskinen and N.K. Pokorn. New York: Routledge, 2021.
  16. Клюшин П.В. Несколько слов об этике переводчика // Вестник русской христианской гуманитарной академии. Филологические науки. 2021. Т. 2, № 1.
  17. Corbett J. Now you see ’em: the visibility of Scots translators // Cadernos de Traduçao. 1999. No. 1(4).
  18. Войнич И.В. Стратегия перевода и “видимость”/“невидимость” переводчика (на материале русскоязычных переводов трагедии В. Шекспира “Юлий Цезарь”) // Вестник ЧелГУ. 2009. №30.
  19. Богрова Ю.Т. «Непрозрачность» текста и «фоновый шум» переводчика (на материале произведения Д. Брауна «Ангелы и демоны») // Известия Южного федерального университета. Филологические науки. 2011. № 3.
  20. Kellman S.G. Alien autographs: how translators make their marks // Neohelicon. 2010. No. 37.
  21. Toledano Buendía C. Listening to the voice of the translator: A description of translator’s notes as paratextual elements // Translation & Interpreting. 2013. Vol. 5, No. 2.
  22. Podlevskikh Carlström M. The (in)visibility of translation and translators in the Swedish publication of post-Soviet Russian literature: An analysis of peritext // Stridon. Journal of Studies in Translation and Interpreting. 2022. Vol. 2, No. 2.
  23. Dobrovol’skaja J. Il russo: l’abc della traduzione. 2a ed. Venezia: Cafoscarina, 2002.

Supplementary files

Supplementary Files
Action
1. JATS XML
Download

Согласие на обработку персональных данных

 

Используя сайт https://journals.rcsi.science, я (далее – «Пользователь» или «Субъект персональных данных») даю согласие на обработку персональных данных на этом сайте (текст Согласия) и на обработку персональных данных с помощью сервиса «Яндекс.Метрика» (текст Согласия).