The present paper aims at establishing the role that some reporting verbs play in fiction. In particular, it is investigated whether and to what extent verbs of communication are used in Pinocchio (1881/1883) and some of its English translations to introduce direct speech and to characterise better the participants themselves. When analysing verbs of communication across the lexical repertoires of English and Italian, varying discrepancies can be observed, i.e. more synthetic primary lexicalisation patterns are available vs. more analytic secondary ones, cf., e.g., fume and dire in modo/tono adirato, respectively. This potentially brings about a problematic mapping when translating, say, from English into Italian, as there is not always direct correspondence between the two language systems. In fact, some of the English translations of Pinocchio contain many periphrastic expressions instead of using the available primary lexicalisation patterns, thereby closely following the structuring of the reporting frame in the Italian source text, cf., e.g., Pinocchio […] dimandò con voce di piagnisteo (ch. 17) vs. Pinocchio asked in a plaintive voice (Murray, 1892), he complained (Piper ed. 1940), Pinocchio […] asked in a whining voice (Perella 1991, Della Chiesa 1996), Pinocchio […] whined (Rosenthal 2000), he said at last (Rose 2003). Why is this so? The phenomenon seems to depend on one of the Translation Universals (Mauranen and Kujamäki 2004), namely the Unique Item Hypothesis (Tirkkonen-Condit 2004), which claims that every language has linguistic elements (e.g. lexical, phrasal, syntactic or textual) that are unique in the sense that they lack straightforward counterparts in other languages without being necessarily untranslatable. However, the ‘authority’ of the world-famous original text may also be responsible for such translational choices. More fundamentally, how can contrastive research shed light on linguistic mismatches and improve translation practice? These are the main questions addressed by our contribution.
When Pinocchio migrates to the Anglo-Saxon countries: Translating verbs of communication introducing dialogue
MASI, SILVIA
2009-01-01
Abstract
The present paper aims at establishing the role that some reporting verbs play in fiction. In particular, it is investigated whether and to what extent verbs of communication are used in Pinocchio (1881/1883) and some of its English translations to introduce direct speech and to characterise better the participants themselves. When analysing verbs of communication across the lexical repertoires of English and Italian, varying discrepancies can be observed, i.e. more synthetic primary lexicalisation patterns are available vs. more analytic secondary ones, cf., e.g., fume and dire in modo/tono adirato, respectively. This potentially brings about a problematic mapping when translating, say, from English into Italian, as there is not always direct correspondence between the two language systems. In fact, some of the English translations of Pinocchio contain many periphrastic expressions instead of using the available primary lexicalisation patterns, thereby closely following the structuring of the reporting frame in the Italian source text, cf., e.g., Pinocchio […] dimandò con voce di piagnisteo (ch. 17) vs. Pinocchio asked in a plaintive voice (Murray, 1892), he complained (Piper ed. 1940), Pinocchio […] asked in a whining voice (Perella 1991, Della Chiesa 1996), Pinocchio […] whined (Rosenthal 2000), he said at last (Rose 2003). Why is this so? The phenomenon seems to depend on one of the Translation Universals (Mauranen and Kujamäki 2004), namely the Unique Item Hypothesis (Tirkkonen-Condit 2004), which claims that every language has linguistic elements (e.g. lexical, phrasal, syntactic or textual) that are unique in the sense that they lack straightforward counterparts in other languages without being necessarily untranslatable. However, the ‘authority’ of the world-famous original text may also be responsible for such translational choices. More fundamentally, how can contrastive research shed light on linguistic mismatches and improve translation practice? These are the main questions addressed by our contribution.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
