Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
TRANSLATING
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
A CURA DI / EDITED BY
DONNA R. MILLER & ENRICO MONTI
General Editor
Donna R. Miller
CeSLiC
Centro di Studi Linguistico-Culturali,
ricerca – prassi – formazione
http://www3.lingue.unibo.it/ceslic/
A cura di / Edited by
DONNA R. MILLER & ENRICO MONTI
PREFACE / PREFAZIONE v
INTRODUCTION / INTRODUZIONE xi
THEORY / TEORIA
Umberto Eco
Ekfrasi, ipotiposi e metafora 1
Gerard Steen
Translating metaphor: What’s the problem? 11
Zoltán Kövecses
Conceptual metaphor theory and the nature of difficulties in metaphor translation 25
Stefano Arduini
Metaphor, translation, cognition 41
Mark Shuttleworth
Translation studies and metaphor studies:
Possible paths of interaction between two well-established disciplines 53
iii
LITERARY TRANSLATION / TRADUZIONE LETTERARIA
Poetry / Poesia
Franco Nasi
Lingue in sala rianimazione:
sulle poesie di Roger McGough e la loro traduzione in italiano 281
Véronique Béghain
“only a finger-thought away”:
Translating figurative language in Troupe’s and Daa’ood’s poetry 299
Ève de Dampierre-Noiray
Tradurre la grammatica poetica di Ungaretti: Una lingua aperta al cosmo 313
Herman van der Heide
“The eye’s kiss”: Contextualising Cees Nooteboom’s Bashō 325
iv
Prefazione al terzo numero degli Atti di Convegno del CeSLiC
http://www3.lingue.unibo.it/ceslic/
General Editor – Donna R. Miller
Local Editorial Board – L’attuale comitato di redazione bolognese comprende:
Paola Filippi, Valeria Franzelli, Louann Haarman, Anna Mandich, Marina Manfredi,
Donna R. Miller, Catia Nannoni, Ana Pano, Monica Perotto, Rosa Pugliese, Maria
José Rodrigo Mora, Eva-Maria Thüne, Valeria Zotti.
Full Editorial Committee – L’attuale comitato scientifico completo comprende:
Hans Bickes (Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germania), Maria Vittoria Calvi
(Università degli Studi di Milano), Luciana Fellin (Duke University, USA), Paola
Filippi (Università di Bologna), Valeria Franzelli (Università di Bologna), Maria
Enrica Galazzi (Università Cattolica di Milano), Lucyna Gebert (Università la
Sapienza, Roma), Louann Haarman (Università di Bologna), Jean-Marie Klinkenberg
(Université de Liège, Belgio), Anna Mandich (Università di Bologna), Marina
Manfredi (Università di Bologna), Donna R. Miller (Università di Bologna), Elda
Morlicchio (Università Orientale di Napoli), Antonio Narbona (Universidad de
Sevilla, Spagna), Gabriele Pallotti (Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia), Ana
Pano (Università di Bologna), Monica Perotto (Università di Bologna), Rosa
Pugliese (Università di Bologna), Maria José Rodrigo Mora (Università di Bologna),
Viktor Michajlovich Shaklein (Rossijskij Universitet Druzhby Narodov, RUDN),
Mosca, Russia), Joanna Thornborrow (Cardiff University, UK), Eva-Maria Thüne
(Università di Bologna), Nicoletta Vasta (Università di Udine), Valeria Zotti
(Università di Bologna).
Oggi sono particolarmente lieta di presentare il terzo volume della serie di Atti di
Convegno collocati all’interno dei Quaderni del Centro di Studi Linguistico-
Culturali – ricerca – prassi – formazione (CeSLiC), un centro di ricerca del quale
sono direttore e responsabile scientifico dal 2003, e che opera nell’ambito del
Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature e Culture Moderne dell’Alma Mater Studiorum
– Università di Bologna.
Questo nuovo volume degli Atti dei Convegni patrocinati dal CeSLiC raccoglie una
rigorosa selezione dei papers presentati al Convegno del 12-14 dicembre 2012:
Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative Language
Ogni contributo è stato double-blind peer reviewed per la partecipazione al
Convegno prima, e in seguito di nuovo per la selezione in vista della pubblicazione.
Il volume si aggiunge ai primi due volumi già pubblicati nella collana:
1) a cura di D. Londei, D.R. Miller, P. Puccini, Gli atti completi delle giornate di
studio del CeSLiC del 17-18 giugno 2005: “Insegnare le lingue/culture oggi: Il
contributo dell’interdisciplinarità”, a http://amsacta.cib.unibo.it/archive/00002055
disponibile anche in versione cartacea: Londei D., Miller D.R., Puccini P. (eds)
(2006) Insegnare le lingue/culture oggi: Il contributo dell'interdisciplinarità, Atti di
Convegni CeSLiC 1, Bologna: Edizioni Asterisco.
v
2) a cura di Miller D.R. e Pano A., Selected Papers del convegno internazionale
CeSLiC del 4-5 dicembre 2008, dal titolo: “La geografia della mediazione
linguistico-culturale/ The Geography of Language and Cultural Mediation”, a
http://amsacta.cib.unibo.it/2626/
disponibile anche in versione cartacea: Miller D.R. e Pano A. (eds) (2010) La
geografia della mediazione linguistico-culturale, Selected Papers, Atti di Convegni
CeSLiC 2, Bologna: Dupress.
Le attività editoriali del CeSLiC sono però molteplici e comprendono – oltre agli
Atti – diversi altri e-book, tra cui:
1) la serie di manuali Functional Grammar Studies for Non-Native Speakers of
English, che vanta già cinque volumi pubblicati;
nonché i volumi compresi nelle collane:
2) Studi grammaticali
3) Altre pubblicazioni
Sono particolarmente soddisfatta poi delle pubblicazioni racchiuse negli Occasional
Papers del CeSLiC, una collana che vuole offrire uno spazio ai giovani membri del
centro, nel quale pubblicare i risultati delle loro ricerche, anche in progress.
Tutte le pubblicazioni sono protette da copyright e corredate da ISSN. Sono
disponibili all’indirizzo: http://www3.lingue.unibo.it/ceslic/?page_id=12
A questa prefazione generale, segue ora una breve introduzione al presente volume.
Non ci resta a questo punto che ringraziare sentitamente tutti coloro che hanno
facilitato la trasformazione di un progetto in una realtà di grande successo: in primo
luogo il Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature e Culture Moderne (LILEC) dell’Alma
Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna; poi l’ILLE, Institut de recherche en
langues et littératures européennes dell’Universit di Haute-Alsace (Francia), il
Dipartimento di Interpretazione e Traduzione (DIT) del campus di Forlì,
l’Associazione Culturale Italo-Britannica, l’editore bolognese Zanichelli, il Centro
traduttori della Fiera del Libro per Ragazzi di Bologna, l’Alliance Française di
Bologna, nonché la Regione Emilia-Romagna e la Provincia e il Comune di Bologna.
Ringraziamenti particolari vanno ai membri del Comitato Scientifico del Convegno,
che hanno collaborato alla rilettura degli abstract prima e delle proposte di contributo
al volume poi, nonché ai membri del Comitato Organizzativo e agli Assistenti, senza
i quali le giornate del Convegno non si sarebbero svolte nel clima impeccabile che le
ha contraddistinte.
Donna R. Miller
vi
Comitato scientifico / Scientific committee:
Stefano Arduini (Università di Urbino)
Andrea Ceccherelli (Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna)
Tania Collani (Université de Haute-Alsace, Mulhouse)
Nadia D’Amelio (Université de Mons)
Paola Maria Filippi (Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna)
Maria Freddi (Università di Pavia)
Barbara Ivančić (Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna)
Zoltán Kövecses (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest)
Marina Manfredi (Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna)
Lara Michelacci (Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna)
Donna Rose Miller (Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna)
Enrico Monti (Université de Haute-Alsace, Mulhouse)
Roberto Mulinacci (Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna)
Alessandro Niero (Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna)
Paola Puccini (Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna)
Maria-José Rodrigo Mora (Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna)
Peter Schnyder (Université de Haute-Alsace, Mulhouse)
Anna Soncini (Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna)
Gerard Steen (Vrij Universiteit, Amsterdam)
Romana Zacchi (Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna)
vii
Introduction
Introduzione
The volume we are pleased to present here offers 30 original contributions on the
interlingual translation of figurative language. The chapters were first presented at an
international conference held at the University of Bologna in December 2012 and
have been selected through a double peer-reviewed process.
Why figurative language in translation? Essentially because figurative language –
and the contributions in this book can be seen to prove it – may often foreground the
complexities of the translation process, as well as the strong link between language
and culture that this process has to renegotiate. Metaphors, similes, metonyms,
synecdoches, hyperboles, personifications and proverbs are figures of speech which,
far from being peculiar to literary discourse, have stylistic and cognitive functions in
different types of discourse. We need only think of the importance of metaphor in
scientific models, of hyperbole in advertising, metonymy in journalism, simile and
metaphor in political speeches and tourist texts. Besides making different types of
discourse livelier and more expressive, these figures of speech often forge a
privileged relationship between addresser and addressee, based on their shared
linguistic and cultural positioning.
Translating figurative language invariably implies translating the culture which is
inextricably tied to that language, if we allow that any language-culture lives by its
metaphors (Bildfeld in Harald Weinrich’s terms) and that those metaphors are far
from being universal. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) convincingly argued that our
linguistic metaphors are often the by-product of a deeper analogical mental structure,
which allows us to know and define the world around us in terms of what we know
better. Their work initiated a rich field of research within the framework of cognitive
linguistics, involving metaphor identification (e.g. Steen and Pragglejaz Group) and
the intercultural implications of conceptual metaphors (e.g. Kövecses).
It is precisely this density of linguistic and cultural factors in figurative language
which proves so challenging in the passage from one language to another: it is not by
chance that some scholars (Dagut 1976; van den Broeck 1981) locate figurative
language (namely metaphors) at the limits of translatability, if not beyond.
Translators have the task of adapting the world-view which has produced these
instances of figurative language into the cultural paradigm of the target-culture, and
to do so at the same time as preserving that combination of force and levity which is
a prerogative of figurative language.
This of course implies that the translator has first to establish priorities among the
different functions that figurative language plays in the source text, and the
associations that such images may activate in the mind of the reader. This must be
done before choosing which of these to privilege in the not-so-rare cases of
asymmetry between the two language-cultures involved. One may think for example
of the difficulty of translating the catachreses of one language – metaphors once
original and now more or less dormant as they have become an integral part of
everyday language – once they are re-activated in some specific poetic or ludic
context, as quite often happens in literature, as well as, for instance, in journalism
and advertising.
These are only some of the issues which are dealt with in great detail in the
following chapters. Written in either English or Italian, the different contributions of
this volume investigate the topic from a wide range of approaches. No boundaries
were set as to possible language pairs, nor on possible research frameworks
(linguistic, literary, cognitive, stylistic, corpus-based, interdisciplinary approaches,
Miller, Donna R.; Monti, Enrico, ‘Introduction’ in Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative Language, Bologna,
CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. xi-xiv.
etc.), as long as the interlingual translation of figurative language was addressed.
This is why the volume also offers a rich diversity of languages (as either source or
target languages of the different case-studies), including Chinese, Czech, English,
French, Dutch, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Romanian, Russian, Spanish,
Swedish.
The contributions are organized into three main sections, labelled as: Theory,
Specialized Translation, Literary Translation. The first section is devoted to
theoretical reflections on the issue of translating figurative language, and it is opened
by the inaugural speech Umberto Eco gave on the topic of showing and seeing
images in a text. The concepts of ekphrasis, hypotyposis and metaphor are tackled, as
well as the translatability of such verbal visions. Metaphors are the main object of
study of the four contributions in this section. Gerard Steen draws on the cognitive
linguistic framework he has built up in his Metaphor Lab and adapts it, himself for
the first time, to the aspect of interlingual translation. He wonders what the problem
(if any) is in translating metaphors, through several examples ranging from literary
translation to interpreting. Zoltán Kövecses also adapts his long-ongoing research
into conceptual metaphor to the topic of translation: bringing together various
reflections he has made on the intercultural aspect of conceptual metaphors, he
ponders the possible effects this may have on translation practices. Stefano Arduini
adopts a translation-studies stance to draw a historical trajectory of the treatment of
figurative language in translation. In the end, he advocates a more ‘courageous’
treatment of metaphors in translation, in an effort to enlarge our encyclopaedia.
Mark Shuttleworth closes this section, drawing a parallel between the two scientific
domains at stake here, namely metaphor studies and translation studies, arguing for a
collaborative interchange that can only be advantageous to both – which is indeed
what this volume and the conference itself had as their aim.
Sections 2 and 3 contain a series of applied studies on the translation of different
kinds of figurative language and they are organized in terms of the (sub)genre
involved. Section 2 is devoted to specialized translation, with two subsections: one
on Economics and Politics and the other on Science and Popularisation.
Christina Schäffner – whose seminal paper on the implications of a cognitive
approach to metaphor translation (1994) is much quoted throughout this volume –
deals with the translation of conceptual metaphors within European political-
economical discourse, in particular within the English-German language pair.
Economics is also the subject of Mirella Agorni’s paper, albeit from a more
pedagogical perspective, since she offers a case-study of a group of MA students
involved in the challenges of translating the ambiguities and ironies of figurative
language in specialized journalism, focussing especially on terminology. Sabina
Luciana Tcaciuc analyses the treatment of metaphors in a corpus of the European
Central Bank’s translated texts (English-Romanian), investigating two recurrent
conceptual metaphors through corpus analysis. Paolo Magagnin carries us beyond
Europe to explore the images employed by Chinese leader Hu-Jintao in his 2012
address to the National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. He examines its
official English translation, identifying a general tendency to neutralize or
undertranslate the figurative language of the source-text. The section closes on
another contribution to the translation of political discourse, offered by Nicoletta
Spinolo, who draws on an experiment she carried out with Masters’ students on the
treatment of metaphors in interpreting political speeches. The constraints also seen in
xii
other papers are enhanced, in this specific case, by the time-constraints and other
idiosyncrasies of interpreting.
The following section, Science and Popularisation, is opened by Ana Pano
Alamán’s paper on the early translations of Darwin’s Origin of Species into Italian
and Spanish. She focuses on the handling of personifications and analogies, arguably
two of the most salient features of Darwin’s rhetoric. Scientific translation, albeit of a
more popular type, is also investigated in Marina Manfredi’s paper, which analyses
the treatment of lexical and grammatical metaphors in the Italian version of the
periodical National Geographic. She adopts the framework of systemic-functional
grammar to analyse the translation of the paratexts of such articles. Hallidayan
‘grammatical metaphors’ are also the aim of Yvonne Lindqvist’s paper, which sees
them as regulators of social distance in the Swedish translation of popular
Anglophone kitchen books.
The third section of the book is devoted to chapters dealing with the translation of
figurative language in literary texts. Canadian literature is represented by Patricia
Godbout’s paper, investigating metonymy and metaphors in the translation of the
contemporary novelists Anne Hébert and the Nobel-prize laureate Alice Munro.
Fabio Regattin deals with the Italian translation of Boris Vian’s ‘langage-univers’, a
language rich in creative revitalisations of idiomatic expressions and, as such,
particularly challenging to translate. Two Italian translations of Vian’s novel
L’écume des jours are compared in this respect. Renata Kamenická deals with two
opposite tendencies (standardisation vs dynamisation) she could observe in a corpus
of contemporary translated literature (Czech-English) as to the treatment of
figurative language. The three following papers deal with Italian literature in English
translation. Myriam Swennen Ruthenberg deals with how the richly figurative
language of Erri De Luca’s Montedidio – and its biblical subtext – are rendered in
English translation. Her focus is on polysemy, personification and similes, and in line
with De Luca’s statements on translation, she calls for an “obedient” and
“admirative” stance on the part of the translator. Similes are the main object of study
of Jane Helen Johnson, who exploits corpus stylistics to investigate the treatment of
similes in the English translation of a selection of novels by the Nobel-prize laureate
Grazia Deledda. A different framework and a different figure are examined in
Elizabeth Swain’s paper, which deals with the different English translations of
Giovanni Verga’s short-stories. She focuses on metaphor translation and analyses it
through the lens of Jay Lemke’s semantically-based theory of intertextuality.
Alessandro Niero deals with repetition in his own Italian translation of Zamjatin’s
We (Mы), illustrating through numerous examples the salience of such feature in the
source-text and in its translation. Russian literature is also the topic of the joint effort
of Gabriella Elina Imposti and Irina Marchesini, who focus their analysis on
wordplay as a ‘manifestation of figurative poetry’. Palindromes and other instances
of wordplay are analysed in the prose (and poetry) of 20th century-Russian authors
such as Chlebnikov, Sokolov and Nabokov.
Such incursion into poetry and wordplay marks the transition to the next
subsection (Poetry), which opens on Franco Nasi’s chapter on the re-creation of
verbal playfulness. He analyses how Liverpool-poet Roger McGough brings dead
metaphors back to life in his children poems, and offers his own translation of such
outbursts of creativity. Véronique Béghain also deals with poetical creativity (and
her own translations of it), but in relation to the American poets Quincy Troupe and
xiii
Kamau Daa’ood. Several instances of figurative languages (from idioms to
neologisms) are taken into account in relation to their orality and literacy bonding.
Ève de Dampièrre deals with the idea of a ‘figurative grammar’ in Ungaretti’s
poetry, and its implications for the translations that other poets (French and English)
have made. Herman van der Heide closes the poetry section with an incursion into
the Dutch tradition: a stylistic analysis of the English and Italian translations of a
poem by Cees Noteboom is provided, focusing on the metaphor of the journey.
A final subsection is devoted to fairy-tales and folklore. Silvia Masi has chosen
one of the most-widely translated classics of children’s literature, Pinocchio, to show
how its rich use of similes, metaphors, metonymies etc. was variously reproduced in
a corpus of 10 English translations. Annalisa Sezzi also explores the world of
children’s literature, dealing more specifically with the subset of picture books.
Focussing on an English-Italian corpus of 15 of these, she analyses the implications
of multimodality in the translation of creative uses of figurative language. Metaphors
and proverbs are the focus of Angela Albanese as they appear (and quite widely so)
in Basile’s Cunto dei cunti, a 17th-century collection of fairy-tales in Neapolitan
dialect. A corpus of English and Italian translations of this collection is analysed,
highlighting the effects of the translation project in the treatment of figurative
language. Silvia Cosimini deals with an often neglected – and endangered – literary
tradition, that of Iceland, shedding light on the folklore backgrounds of formulaic
language. Idioms are a key element of the Icelandic tradition, and the paper dwells
on their treatment in the English and Italian translation of Nobel-Prize laureate
Halldór Laxness’ novels. Giovanni Tallarico closes this section and the volume
with the folklore of proverbs. From a lexicographical perspective, he offers a
comparative study of different French-Italian dictionaries concerning their capability
to provide useful tools for translators.
We are confident that these stimulating and wide-ranging chapters will contribute
to casting new light on the practice of translators around the world when dealing with
the manifold implications and challenges that figurative language cannot help but
pose.
xiv
Theory
Teoria
Ekfrasi, ipotiposi e metafora
UMBERTO ECO
Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna
Eco, Umberto, ‘Ekfrasi, ipotiposi e metafora’, in Donna R. Miller; Enrico Monti (eds) Tradurre Figure /
Translating Figurative Language, Bologna, CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-
932X, pp. 1-9.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
D’altra parte i sistemi visivi sono molto limitati nel riprodurre enunciati verbali.
Certo è possibile esprimere lo stesso contenuto di il sole sorge con il disegno
composto di una linea orizzontale, un semicerchio e una serie di linee diagonali che
irraggiano dal centro del semicerchio. Ma sarebbe ben più difficile asserire per
mezzo di artifici visuali l’equivalente di il sole sorge ancora. E nel saggio di Sol
Worth Pictures can’t say ain’t1, si mostrava che le immagini non riescono a dire io
non sono (e per dire che una pipa, raffigurata, non era una pipa, Magritte ha dovuto
far ricorso a una didascalia verbale), e se per immagini si volesse rendere l’inizio
della Recherche proustiana ci si troverebbe imbarazzati a rendere Proust (poniamo) a
fumetti: dopo averci mostrato quattro vignette in cui il giovane protagonista non
riesce a prendere sonno, si sarebbe perduto tutto il ritmo, il suono e la potenza
evocativa di quel longtemps je me suis couché de bonne heure.
Proust è riuscito a creare l’impressione di tradurre in parole quasi tutta la serie di
percezioni, sentimenti e valori ‘presentati’ dalla pittura di Elstir: ma accortamente ha
deciso di analizzare l’opera di un pittore immaginario, per impedirci di fare confronti
sull’originale presunto. Certamente Proust fa una operazione coraggiosa, perché di
Elstir vuole descriverci verbalmente anche la forma dell’espressione. Non se la cava
male, perché noi non abbiamo difficoltà a individuare lo stile di un pittore
impressionista. Ma di quale? Proust ci descrive la forma dell’espressione di un
genere, e non di un individuo.
È che sovente un’immagine, per precisa che sia, è sempre anzitutto generica (la
Fornarina ci rappresenta anzitutto una donna) mentre l’oggetto è specifico (questa
tale donna) e, mentre una specie rinvia necessariamente al suo genere (questo cane è
certamente un cane), un genere può rinviare a molte specie diverse.
Cosa accade di una espressione verbale che voglia permetterci di riconoscere una
immagine? Nasce qui il problema dell’ekfrasi, termine di derivazione greca
tradizionalmente usato per indicare la descrizione verbale di un’opera d’arte visiva,
un dipinto, una scultura o un’opera architettonica.
Di fatto l’ekfrasi ha rappresentato nell’antichità la forma maggiore di critica
d’arte, specie se si pensa che non vi era altra maniera, per analizzare un’opera visiva,
che di parlarne, visto che non esistevano sistemi di riproduzione se non la copia uno
a uno. Di qui l’esaltazione che era stata fatta delle buone ekfrasi. Ancora nel
rinascimento, quando per esempio la statua del Laocoonte era stata trovata a Roma
scavando in una vigna sul colle Oppio (e allo scavo aveva assistito di persona persino
Michelangelo), il figlio di Giuliano da Sangallo aveva testimoniato che gli astanti
erano riusciti a capire che si trattava del celebre Laocoonte grazie alla descrizione
che ne aveva data Plinio. Miracoli dall’ekfrasi! Ma andiamo a vedere cosa Plinio
avesse realmente detto in Historia naturalis 36.37. Egli aveva semplicemente detto
che il celebrato Laocoonte era costruito da un solo blocco marmoreo (il che non
corrispondeva alla statua ritrovata) e mostrava Laocoonte coi figli, avvolti da un
nodo inestricabile di serpenti. E basta. Che era quello che poteva sapere chiunque
conoscesse la storia di Laocoonte, e la descrizione di Plinio poteva applicarsi a
qualsiasi altra rappresentazione del mito. Essa descriveva il contenuto dell’immagine
(la storia, il soggetto, la fabula) ma non l’espressione. Descriveva un Laocoonte ma
non quel Laocoonte.
1
Sol Worth, ‘Pictures can’t say ain’t’, Versus 12, 1975.
2
UMBERTO ECO
3
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
in modo così vivo ed energico da metterle in un certo senso sotto gli occhi e fa di un
racconto di una descrizione una immagine, un quadro, quasi una scena vivente”. La
storia della letteratura è ricca di ipotiposi e tutte le regole antiche e medievali per la
descriptio loci, per esempio, ci parlano di bellissime ipotiposi.
Ma facciamo l’analisi di una delle più belle ipotiposi della storia della letteratura.
Tutti abbiamo letto tante volte l’incipit dei Promessi sposi e, magari per
disattenzione o mancanza d’immaginazione, non ci siamo mai veramente
rappresentati quel ramo del lago di Como. Ma una mattina io, levandomi a volo dalla
Malpensa, ho guardato per caso dal finestrino e ho avuto un sobbalzo perché sotto di
me appariva realmente quel ramo del lago di Como, con Lecco e il Resegone, e tutto
quello che Manzoni aveva descritto – salvo che non aveva raccontato solo quello che
si vede camminando a terra ma anche quello che si sarebbe potuto vedere scendendo
dall’alto.
Se provassimo a leggere questo brano tenendo sotto gli occhi una carta
geografica, vedremmo infatti che è come se la ripresa fosse fatta da un elicottero che
sta atterrando lentamente. E non ditemi che un autore del XIX secolo non conosceva
la tecnica cinematografica. Manzoni poteva benissimo immaginare come il mondo
sarebbe apparso a un angelo che planava verso la terra, e del resto la visione dall’alto
gli era suggerita, e da secoli, dalle carte geografiche e topografiche. E basterebbe
vedere le immagini della creazione del mondo nella Cronaca di Norimberga, che
quasi 400 anni prima ci aveva mostrato (attraverso una serie di immagini successive,
in una sorta di mistico fumetto) la creazione come discesa dall’alto verso il basso.
Pertanto il primo movimento del testo manzoniano procede dall’alto al basso
secondo una visione “geografica”:
Quel ramo del lago di Como, che volge a mezzogiorno, tra due catene non interrotte di monti,
tutto a seni e a golfi, a seconda dello sporgere e del rientrare di quelli, vien, quasi a un tratto, a
ristringersi, e a prender corso e figura di fiume, tra un promontorio a destra, e un’ampia
costiera dall’altra parte [...]
Ma poi la visione abbandona la dimensione geografica per entrare lentamente in
una dimensione topografica, là dove si può iniziare a individuare un ponte e
distinguere le rive:
[…] e il ponte, che ivi congiunge le due rive, par che renda ancor più sensibile all’occhio
questa trasformazione, e segni il punto in cui il lago cessa, e l’Adda rincomincia, per ripigliar
poi nome di lago dove le rive, allontanandosi di nuovo, lascian l’acqua distendersi e rallentarsi
in nuovi golfi e in nuovi seni.
Sia la visione geografica che quella topografica procedono da nord verso sud,
seguendo appunto il corso di generazione del fiume; e di conseguenza il movimento
descrittivo parte dall’ampio verso lo stretto, dal lago al fiume. E come ciò avviene, la
pagina compie un altro movimento, questa volta non di discesa dall’alto geografico
al basso topografico, ma dalla profondit alla lateralit : a questo punto l’ottica si
ribalta, i monti vengono visti di profilo, come se finalmente li guardasse un essere
umano:
La costiera, formata dal deposito di tre grossi torrenti, scende appoggiata a due monti contigui,
l’uno detto di san Martino, l’altro, con voce lombarda, il Resegone, dai molti suoi cocuzzoli in
fila, che in vero lo fanno somigliare a una sega: talché non è chi, al primo vederlo, purché sia
di fronte, come per esempio di su le mura di Milano che guardano a settentrione, non lo
discerna tosto, a un tal contrassegno, in quella lunga e vasta giogaia, dagli altri monti di nome
più oscuro e di forma più comune.
4
UMBERTO ECO
Ora, raggiunta una scala umana, il lettore può distinguere i torrenti, i pendii e i
valloncelli, sino all’arredamento minimo delle strade e dei viottoli, ghiaia e ciottoli,
descritti come se fossero “camminati,” con suggestioni non solo visive, ora, ma
anche tattili.
Per un buon pezzo, la costa sale con un pendio lento e continuo; poi si rompe in poggi e in
valloncelli, in erte e in ispianate, secondo l’ossatura de’ due monti, e il lavoro dell’acque. Il
lembo estremo, tagliato dalle foci de’ torrenti, è quasi tutto ghiaia e ciottoloni; il resto, campi e
vigne, sparse di terre, di ville, di casali; in qualche parte boschi, che si prolungano su per la
montagna.
Siamo a Lecco, e qui Manzoni compie un’altra scelta: dalla geografia passa alla
storia, inizia a narrare la storia del luogo or ora descritto geograficamente. Dopo la
storia verrà la cronaca, e finalmente incontriamo per uno di quei viottoli don
Abbondio che si avvia al fatale incontro coi bravi. Manzoni ha disegnato una carta,
ha messo in scena uno spazio.
Ma perché di solito si scorre sulla pagina manzoniana senza cogliere la pregnanza
di questa ipotiposi e a un tardo d’ingegno come me per riconoscerla è stato
necessario pagare il prezzo di un volo transcontinentale? Perché anche con la più
splendida delle ipotiposi possiamo al massimo riconoscere il soggetto descritto, non
le sue caratteristiche individuali. Manzoni non ci dice nulla sulla tonalità cromatica
dei prati, sul colore del cielo, sui riflessi del sole sui ciottoloni. Ci dice molto sulle
forme (per esempio descrive bene il profilo del Resegone) ma nulla sui colori – e se
avesse dovuto descriverci un quadro non sapremmo come ricostruirlo. L’ipotiposi ci
ha mirabilmente descritto il tipo ma non l’occorrenza.
Tuttavia c’è una differenza tra l’ipotiposi e quella sua sottospecie che è l’ekfrasi.
Nell’ekfrasi l’espressione verbale dovrebbe descrivere una esperienza visiva (e
abbiamo visto che non ci riesce) mentre nell’ipotiposi, che intende descrivere non
un’opera d’arte ma un aspetto della realtà, l’espressione verbale rinvia a un contenuto
percettivo. L’ekfrasi non ci dà la sicurezza di riconoscere un quadro o una statua,
mentre l’ipotiposi (vedi la mia esperienza dall’aereo) può circoscrivere in modo
soddisfacente, anche se non completo, il risultato di una nostra percezione di un
aspetto del mondo. Ovvero, nell’ekfrasi abbiamo un artificio semiotico che vuole
esprimere un altro oggetto semiotico (l’opera d’arte) mentre nell’ipotiposi un
artificio semiotico esprime una esperienza percettiva.
Che cosa hanno a che vedere queste considerazioni con la natura della metafora e
delle sue traduzioni?
La definizione più forte della metafora ci è stata data da Aristotele, sia nella
Poetica che nella Retorica, e il punto di forza di quella definizione consiste nel
sottolineare il valore cognitivo della metafora. Come si dice in Poetica (1459a 8) la
metafora è il migliore di tutti i tropi perché capire metafore vuole dire “sapere
scorgere il simile” o “il concetto affine”. Il verbo usato è theōreîn, che vale per
scorgere, investigare, paragonare, giudicare. Aristotele fornisce esempi di metafore
banali, come quella da genere a specie (qui sta la mia nave) o da genere a specie
(Odisseo ha fatto diecimila buone imprese), ma già elenca metafore poeticamente più
interessanti quando parla della metafora da specie a specie (attingendo la sua vita
con la lama). E individua certamente una bella e originale espressione poetica in
seminando la divina fiamma detto del sole, e vidi un uomo che ad un uomo con il
fuoco il bronzo incollava, detto della ventosa. Nella Retorica si dice che la metafora
5
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
6
UMBERTO ECO
Traducibile sarà forse l’esempio aristotelico di chi con l’arma di bronzo attinge a
qualcuno la vita, dove si raffigura la lama che quasi beve il sangue che sprizza dalla
ferita mortale mentre il ferito si accascia esanime. Ma già quando si parla di una
bibbia fiorita di miniature gotiche, la metafora non solo ci dice che il manoscritto è
illustrato ma evoca i viticci e le decorazioni floreali dei marginalia e delle iniziali, e
il loro moltiplicarsi sulla pagina – e potremmo addirittura supporre che la metafora
non funzioni per chi non ha mai visto una bibbia gotica.
Infine ci troviamo di fronte a quelle che chiameremo metafore poetiche che, per
veicolare un contenuto eminentemente visivo, richiedono che sia rispettata la forma
dell’espressione, e mi rifaccio a una mia vecchia idea per cui in prosa rem tene et
verba sequentur, come a dire che quel che conta è il contenuto, a cui le parole
possono essere in qualche modo adattate, così che se il problema è l’astuzia posso
anche permettermi di sostituire la volpe con l’armadillo, mentre nel linguaggio
poetico verba tene et res sequentur, e pertanto il problema dell’espressione emerge in
primo piano ed è essenziale perché il contenuto possa sfavillare.
Ed ecco che veniamo, almeno in fine, al tema di questo convegno. La prova della
traduzione è quella che ci permette di dire quanto la forma dell’espressione
contribuisca a produrre il contenuto visivo di una metafora che mette qualcosa sotto
gli occhi. La teoria della traduzione non ha mai tremato di fronte ad espressioni
letterali che, malgrado la differenza linguistica, esprimono fenomeni universali che
paiono anteriori ad ogni segmentazione semiotica del continuum dell’esperienza;
così come espressioni come it rains, il pleut, es regnet, piove sono benissimo
traducibili a vicenda senza che ciò che viene comunicato cambi. Ma in altri casi pare
di trovarsi nella situazione della storiella di quel danese che aveva imparato tecnica
della fotografia alla New York University apprendendo a dire say cheese e che,
rientrato in patria, aveva tentato il suo primo ritratto dicendo sig ost. Esperienza che
ha provato ogni traduttore che abbia tentato di rendere il volto e lo sguardo di Silvia
parlando in altra lingua degli occhi tuoi ridenti e fuggitivi, senza avere a disposizione
tutti gli i che gli avrebbero permesso con splendida allitterazione di mettere sotto gli
occhi la mobilità ilare e fuggiasca di quello sguardo.
Basti pensare a tre metafore dantesche: l’aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci, dolce colore
d’oriental zaffiro, conobbi il tremolar della marina. Il contenuto che ci viene rivelato
dalla prima non è che l’uomo sia lupo all’uomo, ché non avevamo bisogno di Dante
per accorgercene, ma la visione quasi galattica della piccolezza del luogo in cui e su
cui viviamo, e per cui, senza percepirne le miserabili dimensioni, siamo disposti a
ucciderci a vicenda. Il passaggio dal letterale pianeta al metaforico aiuola ci fa per
così dire zummare all’indietro e percepire l’inanità della nostra ferocia – vedendo la
terra come da un satellite. Quanto al colore di zaffiro, qui accade qualcosa di più:
dire che il mare era verde come lo zaffiro non era difficile e la similitudine era stata
già usata, almeno quanto quella omerica del mare color del vino. E nemmeno quel
che ci cade sotto gli occhi è che il colore sia dolce, che è semplice sinestesia. Il
baluginio che afferra il nostro sguardo è dovuto alla forma dell’espressione, tal che
non saprei quanto una traduzione possa rendere questo fascino. Infine il tremolar
della marina suggerisce vuoi un effetto visivo (il sole che fa scintillare le increspature
del mare) sia un richiamo quasi tattile, il movimento vero e proprio di piccolissime
onde, ed è difficile scegliere l’immagine più appropriata.
Si veda per il dolce colore d’oriental zaffiro la povera traduzione inglese di
Dorothy Sayers, Color unclouded, orient-sapphirine, che ai miei occhi fa saltellare
7
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
8
UMBERTO ECO
2
Dante-Paraíso (seis cantos), tr. H. de Campos, São Paulo: Istituto Culturale Italiano, 1978.
9
Translating metaphor: What’s the problem?
GERARD STEEN
VU University, Amsterdam
1. Introduction
At the end of chapter seven of Sandro Veronesi’s successful novel, Caos Calmo,
we find the following sentences:
Da quella sera abbiamo cominciato a discutere davanti a Boesson, e anche pubblicamente: mai
a farci la guerra, ma a contraddirci sì, a dissentire, a discutere. A dar l’impressione a quel
pezzo di merda che fossimo divisi, che les temps des outsiders c’étaient finis. Ma era per
finta, capisci Pietro? Era tutto simulato. In realtà lavoravamo tutti e due per fottere Boesson.
Sapevamo, Pietro, che una fusione di quelle proporzioni genera un dio molto debole, cioè
Boesson, e un esercito di frustrati, umiliati, rimossi, trasferiti, licenziati […].
All words in bold can be qualified as displaying metaphorical uses: there is no
question of a real war that is being made (farci la guerra); the impression is not
being manually transferred (dar) from one owner to somebody else; there is no
concrete piece of shit (pezzo di merda), and the interlocutors are not physically
divided (divisi) into two parts. Also, no genuine labor (lavoravamo) or fucking
(fottere) is going on; the fusion (fusione) is not a chemical but a business one, and
there are no real births (genera), gods (dio) or armies (esercito) on the scene. All of
these expressions are instead used to project metaphorically related referents into the
text world.
The Dutch translation, by Rob Gerritsen, displays almost the same structure:
Vanaf die avond zijn we begonnen te discussiëren in het bijzijn van Boesson, en ook in het
openbaar. We voerden geen strijd, we spraken elkaar wel tegen, we verschilden van mening,
we discussieerden. Om dat stuk stront de indruk te geven dat we verdeeld waren, dat les
temps des outsiders c’étaient finis. Maar het was nep, begrijp je, Pietro? Het was allemaal
geveinsd. In werkelijkheid waren we allebei bezig om Boesson te verneuken.
We wisten dat een fusie van een dergelijke omvang een zeer zwakke god voortbrengt, t.w.
Boesson, en een leger van gefrustreerden en vernederden die uit hun functie waren ontheven.
Steen, Gerard, ‘Translating metaphors: What’s the problem?’, in Donna R. Miller; Enrico Monti (eds) Tradurre
Figure / Translating Figurative Language, Bologna, CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN
1979-932X, pp. 11-24.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
The first paragraph has the same metaphorically used words as the Italian, except
for waren bezig, ‘were […] busy’, which offers a non-metaphorical rendering of
lavoravamo. The second paragraph, by contrast, adds one metaphorical use in
comparison with the original text, omvang, ‘girth, circumference, size’, for
proporzioni. In spite of these minor differences, however, the overall use of
metaphor is highly comparable between the Italian source text (henceforth ST) and
the Dutch target text (henceforth TT).
This comparability is as expected. Since the launch of the cognitive-linguistic
approach to metaphor by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), linguists have acknowledged
the ubiquitous presence of metaphor in the lexico-grammatical structure of language
as well as of discourse (e.g., Kövecses 2010). For languages that are genetically,
historically and culturally as close to each other as Italian and Dutch, the distribution
of metaphor across various semantic domains has been shown to be fairly
comparable (e.g., Kövecses 2005). As a result, there is an overall comparability
between source language (SL) and target language (TL) that accounts for a great deal
of the parallel use of metaphor in the above ST and TT, and, more generally, in most
texts and their translations.
However, the correspondences are not complete. Some ST metaphors have not
been translated as TT metaphors, and the question arises as to why. Is there no
equivalent metaphorical rendering for lavoravamo? And is there no equivalent non-
metaphorical rendering for proporzioni? The Dutch language does have properties,
so that cannot be the problem. As for lavoravamo, however, the verb werken is
available in Dutch too, but it can be argued that werken does not comprise the
suitable conventionalised metaphorical sense that is needed for capturing the Italian
text’s use. The Italian metaphorical sense does not appear to be fully
conventionalised either, so that the Dutch rendering may be due to the fact that the
metaphorical use of lavorare in this context is somewhat novel, while at the same
time the Dutch equivalent verb does not have a suitable figurative sense nor feels
right as a novel metaphorical use.
This is therefore part of the answer to the question why we have some differences
between ST and TT: they are caused by differences between SL and TL regarding
the availability of conventionalised metaphorical senses across the lexicon. Another
part of the answer may have to do with particular properties of the overall discourse
of the ST and TT, apparently leading the translator to prefer a non-metaphorical
rendering for a metaphorical original or the other way around. Whether these
considerations are due to the fact that we are specifically dealing with translating
metaphor or not, however, is a moot point.
These reflections lead us to the question as to whether all of these are metaphors
in the first place, or not. Not every translator, translation scholar or linguist will
accept that all of the above items in bold are to be classified as metaphorical. Their
metaphorical status depends on the cognitive-linguistic conceptualisation of
metaphor as a matter of thought, ‘understanding one thing in terms of something
else’, which has given rise to the postulation of conventionalised so-called
conceptual metaphors in our conceptual systems. Conceptual metaphors may be
reflected in various ways in the structures of a language, and somewhat differently in
the structures of different languages (Lakoff, Johnson 1980; Kövecses 2005). They
may also give rise to slightly diverging applications of these conceptual and
linguistic systematic patterns in concrete cases of situated metaphorical meaning.
12
GERARD STEEN
And when this cognitive-linguistic starting point is adopted, the way in which these
proposals can be operationalised for reliable metaphor identification also requires
close attention (Pragglejaz Group 2007; Steen 2007; Steen et al. 2010), just like the
novel extensions of these proposals into a three-dimensional model for the
subsequent analysis of metaphor in language, thought, and communication (Steen
2008, 2011).
Translating metaphor is hence a complex area of research that can be approached
from a multitude of perspectives. Exploiting the encompassing contemporary
approach to metaphor that was independently developed in language and discourse
research (Steen 2011) may help to throw these issues into relief. It is the aim of this
paper to address the role of metaphor in translation from this perspective and ask
whether there indeed is a specific problem that is due to metaphor.
Given the ubiquity of metaphor in language, and its relatively comparable spread
across related languages, it might be surprising that there even is a problem. As
illustrated above, a random sample of a translated text shows that a great deal of
metaphor in translation appears to behave fairly civilly. Perhaps the alleged problem
of metaphor for translation has to do with a very specific, limited class of metaphors.
Perhaps this class is erroneously seen as representative of all metaphor. These are the
questions that will be addressed in this paper.
13
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
is crucial for translation: both Latin and English use ‘seeing’ words to talk about
understanding: perspicite, introspicite and reperietis as well as look and find.
Concomitant preposition in, adverb penitus and morpheme intro- also all have exact
equivalents in English: in, deeply, and into. Roughly the same parallelism holds for
the other metaphors in the text as well.
The cognitive-linguistic approach holds that metaphor in language is a reflection
of metaphor in thought: we need metaphor in thought to project conceptual structures
from relatively more concrete, simple and better known domains, like seeing,
bodies/people, and fluids in containers, to conceptualise more abstract, complex and
less known domains, like understanding, states, and emotions. There are important
theoretical questions about the precise application of this proposal to ‘thought’ (Steen
2007, 2011; Gibbs 2011), some theories suggesting that metaphor requires
mandatory online mapping in people’s individual minds, others seeing metaphor
mainly as a matter of micro-social or even macro-social and cultural processes of
‘thought’ in discourse. For our present purposes, I posit that this macro-social
process of metaphorical mapping is clearly observable across many discourse events,
happens across all cultures and is hence found in all languages, which, as a result,
display massive amounts of metaphorically motivated polysemy in their lexico-
grammar in fairly comparable ways. Moreover, the history of language contact can
add to this inter-language parallelism, an observation which forcefully applies to the
relation between Latin and English.
Extensive linguistic analysis (for a comprehensive overview, see Kövecses 2010)
has suggested that there may be conceptual metaphors that are conventionalised
systematic mappings between source and target domains in our knowledge systems,
facilitating the conceptualisation of important categories and domains by means of
metaphorical projection. The excerpt from Cicero above displays no fewer than four
of the conceptual metaphors that have become familiar to many linguists:
UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING, MORE IS UP, THE STATE IS A PERSON/BODY, and (BAD)
EMOTIONS ARE HOT FLUIDS IN A CONTAINER. What is important is that their
translations into English look just as natural, illustrating the idea that these
conceptual metaphors may be fairly stable and valid across time and cultures, at least
among closely related cultures. This is a proposal that has had an effect on translation
theory as well (e.g., Lakoff 1987; Mandelblit 1995; Al Hasnawi 2007): translation of
metaphor varies according to whether two languages display similar mapping
conditions or different mapping conditions for that particular metaphorical
projection.
The study of these conceptual metaphors, conceptual systems and mapping
conditions is fraught with theoretical and methodological difficulties (Steen 2007), a
discussion of which would take us too far afield in the context of the present
argument. What is more important is that it always requires the identification of
metaphors in STs for translation, and STs and TTs for translation studies. Two
questions hence arise: (a) which criteria need to be applied to collect all metaphors
from a text, and (b) which criteria can be applied to test whether each of these
metaphors can be connected to some presumably underlying conceptual metaphor?
The past decade has seen the development of the first reliable variant of a
metaphor identification procedure, called MIP (Pragglejaz Group 2007). The method
is not dependent on the assumption of conceptual metaphors and does not necessarily
aim at identifying them. It offers an operational definition of linguistic metaphor that
14
GERARD STEEN
15
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
therefore not involving any online cross-domain mapping. Let me give a concrete
illustration.
When a word like esercito in the above example is accessed by the reader, both its
metaphorical (‘host’) and non-metaphorical (‘military army’) sense are automatically
activated in the first moments of lexical access. Then, during lexical integration, the
metaphorical sense may simply be retained and used in the context of the rest of the
sentence (cf. Giora 2008). It follows that there would be no need for a mapping
across two conceptual domains from the allegedly privileged non-metaphorical sense
to the metaphorical one to establish the metaphorical meaning of esercito: it is
already available in the mental lexicon of the language user. This is presumably even
more so for those words where the metaphorical sense is more salient than the
nonmetaphorical one (Giora 2008). A case from our examples might be the English
word malady from the translated Cicero excerpt, where the non-metaphorical
‘illness’ sense represents an old use of malady while the metaphorical contextual
sense of ‘a serious problem in society’ would be the most salient, familiar and
frequent sense. As a result, some psychologists argue, words like esercito and
malady do not function metaphorically.
This conclusion elicits an essential question for translation: if many metaphors do
not function metaphorically, why would it be important to translate them as
metaphors? If metaphors are not always recognised as metaphors by readers, that is,
if metaphors do not always cause readers to set up cross-domain mappings in their
minds, then not every metaphor in a ST requires a metaphor in a TT. In other words,
some metaphors may be more metaphorical than others. Which metaphors might
these be? The next section will attempt to give an answer to this question.
16
GERARD STEEN
hypotheses that require further research. The paradox of metaphor has revealed an
awkward issue that needs addressing: we have just discovered the ubiquity of
metaphor in all language and thought, but we now seem forced to allow that most of
this metaphor ‘in thought’ does not really count as metaphor ‘in thought’, if that is
taken in its psychological sense of language processing.
Acknowledging this problem has led to the formulation of a new, alternative
position (Steen 2008, 2011). It has led to a revaluation of the fact that there is a
substantial group of metaphors that clearly are used as metaphors ‘in thought’ and
that do need to be processed via cross-domain comparison after all. These are, at the
least, all metaphors that are linguistically expressed as cross-domain mappings, that
is, all similes and analogies and their more extended versions. My favourite
examples are Shakespeare’s Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? and Neil
Young’s You are like a hurricane. Expressions like these do require cross-domain
mappings to be understood as they are intended. Moreover, all novel metaphors, that
is, those metaphors that do not have a conventionally available metaphorical sense in
the dictionary, presumably also require online cross-domain mapping: otherwise the
novel metaphorical use of the lexeme in question cannot get integrated into the
encompassing mental representation of the utterance. Both of these suggestions can
be supported by psycholinguistic evidence, which has shown that similes as well as
novel metaphors are processed by comparison, as opposed to a large amount of
conventional metaphor when it is not expressed as a simile (Gentner, Bowdle 2008).
The linguistic characteristics of these clearly metaphorical metaphors have been
addressed in the extended version of the metaphor identification procedure, MIPVU
(Steen et al. 2010).
I have suggested that the metaphors that are used as metaphors in this way, and
that presumably require processing by cross-domain mapping, may be called
“deliberate metaphors” (Steen 2008, 2011). These are metaphors that have been
deliberately used as metaphors by their producers and need to be taken up as
deliberately used metaphors by their addressees, in the sense that their linguistic
construction signals a demand for cross-domain comparison, as with the Shakespeare
and Neil Young examples. These are the metaphors that do not only count as
metaphors in language and thought, but also in communication, between producers
and receivers. These are the metaphors that are recognised as the typical metaphors
by a lay audience, too – they are the metaphors that have been studied since classical
antiquity as displaying a specific rhetorical purpose, which involves the genuine
adoption of another standpoint (in the source domain) to re-view the relevant referent
or topic in the target domain (Steen 2008: 222).
All of these metaphors in communication, therefore, are presumably processed
metaphorically. Metaphor in communication is the dimension at which there does not
arise a paradox of metaphor: all ‘metaphors in communication’ do indeed count as
metaphors. Its interaction with the dimensions of metaphor in language and thought
is complex and requires an encompassing theory of metaphor in discourse.
Most metaphors in language and thought, including most of the metaphors
discussed above, do not function as metaphors in communication. They are not
deliberate metaphors. They do not ask people to see time as space, or argument as
war. They just use language that is technically (probably historically) metaphorical to
talk about time or argumentation in the conventionally available terms. In
communication, they function as non-deliberate metaphors and their metaphorical
17
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
status seems to be irrelevant and a superfluous technicality. I would think that these
are the metaphors that do not necessarily require a metaphorical translation if the
target language does not have a corresponding conventionalised metaphorical sense
available.
However, for deliberate metaphors, the situation is different, I would say.
Deliberate metaphors have a linguistic and rhetorical structure of comparison that is
functional in the source text. It is these metaphors that most likely require a
translation by metaphor in the TT as well. So let us examine how professional
translators have dealt with a variety of these deliberate metaphors and contrast that
with their treatment of non-deliberate metaphors.
Let us begin with an extreme, spectacular example from Italian fiction, the second
and third page from Italo Calvino’s novel Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore,
translated into English as If on a winter’s night a traveler by William Weaver.
Già nella vetrina della libreria hai individuato la copertina col titolo che cercavi. Seguendo
questa traccia visiva ti sei fatto largo nel negozio attraverso il fitto sbarramento dei Libri
Che Non Hai Letto che ti guardavano accigliati dai banchi e dagli scaffali cercando
d’intimidirti. Ma tu sai che non devi lasciarti mettere in soggezione, che tra loro s’estendono
per ettari ed ettari i Libri Che […] E così superi la prima cinta dei baluardi e ti piomba
addosso la fanteria dei Libri Che […] Con rapida mossa li scavalchi e ti porti in mezzo alle
falangi dei Libri Che […]. Sventando questi assalti, ti porti sotto le torri del fortilisio, dove
fanno resistenza i Libri Che […].
Ecco che ti è stato possibile ridurre il numero illimitato di forze in campo a un insieme
certo molto grande ma comunque calcolabile in un numero finito, anche se questo
relativo sollievo ti viene insidiato dalle imboscate dei Libri Letti Tanto Tempo Fa Che […].
Ti liberi con rapidi zig zag e penetri d’un balzo nella cittadella delle Novit […]. Anche
all’interno di questa roccaforte puoi praticare delle brecce tra le schiere dei difensori
dividendole in Novità D’Autori O Argomenti […] e definire l’attrattiva che esse esercitano su
di te in base ai tuoi desideri e bisogni di nuovo e di non nuovo (del nuovo che cerchi nel non
nuovo e del non nuovo che cerchi nel nuovo).
Tutto questo per dire che, percorsi rapidamente con lo sguardo i titoli dei volumi esposti nella
libreria, hai diretto i tuoi passi verso una pila di Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore freschi
di stampa, ne hai afferrato una copia e l’hai portata alla cassa perché venisse stabilito il tuo
diritto di proprietà su di essa.
Hai gettato ancora un’occhiata smarrita ai libri intorno (o meglio: erano i libri che ti
guardavano con l’aria smarrita dei cani che dalle gabbie del canile municipale vedono un
loro ex compagno allontanarsi al guinzaglio del padrone venuto a riscattarlo), e sei uscito.
Contemporary research on metaphor might say that this text is organised by one
underlying cross-domain mapping: BUYING A BOOK IS FIGHTING A BATTLE. Metaphor
in thought and communication does not only emerge as metaphorically used words in
minimal linguistic environments like clauses, as we’ve seen above. It can also
organise a longer stretch of text and set up a content frame that helps to organise the
narrative type and structure of the text. In the case of Calvino, there is a metaphorical
‘battle’ scenario (cf. Musolff 2006) that generates a series of utterances that are all
metaphorical in the same way, that is, by consistently projecting aspects from the
source domain of fighting a battle to the target domain of buying a book. The large
discrepancy between the two domains is clearly intended to have a humorous effect
on the reader (cf. Dynel 2009). The extended BATTLE metaphor may be based on a
metonymy (authors are intimidating, see the first paragraph), which may be based on
another metonymy (Culture with a capital C is intimidating), which may have been
the motive for coming up with a humorously intended WAR metaphor (there’s a lot of
18
GERARD STEEN
Culture I don’t need, have to resist, fight…). This may also have been extended
across two pages to emphasise the hyperbole and the humour.
All of these emboldened expressions therefore count as examples of deliberate
metaphor use. They are used as metaphors in order to change the reader’s
perspective by making the reader adopt the standpoint of the source domain and re-
view the target domain from that angle. One would expect that this metaphorical use
of the source domain in the ST would have to be transferred as metaphorical into the
language of the TT.
In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for.
Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick
barricade of Books You Haven’t Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and
shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that
among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn’t Read […]. And thus
you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the
Books That […] With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of
the Books […] Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress,
where other troops are holding out […].
Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be
sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then
undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago […].
With a zigzag dash you shake them off and leap straight into the citadel of the New Books
Whose Author or Subject Appeals To You. Even inside this stronghold you can make some
breaches in the ranks of the defenders, dividing them into New Books […] for you or in
general and New Books […], and defining the attraction they have for you on the basis of your
desires and needs for the new and the not new (for the new you seek in the not new and for the
not new you seek in the new).
All this simply means that, having glanced over the titles of the volumes displayed in the
bookshop, you have turned toward a stack of If on a winter’s night a traveler fresh off the
press, you have grasped a copy, and you have carried it to the cashier so that your right to own
it can be established.
You cast another bewildered look at the books around you (or, rather: it was the books that
looked at you, with the bewildered gaze of dogs who, from their cages in the city pound,
see a former companion go off on the leash of his master, come to rescue him), and out you
went.
It turns out that the global picture is indeed as one might expect. Yet here, too,
details are different. In the first paragraph, for instance, cercando d’intimidirti has
been translated as trying to cow you, whereas the English verb intimidate would have
been an option too. Similarly, ti piomba addosso la fanteria gets rendered as you are
attacked by the infantry, whereas the Italian literally means something like ‘the
infantry falls heavily on (rushes at) you’. The following sentence has ti porti in
mezzo alle falangi, where the English translation omits any reference to the middle or
centre of the phalanxes. Yet there really does not seem to be any reason in the
language or thought about the source domain of battle and the target domain of
books that would prevent any translator from staying closer to the text.
All in all then, somewhat surprisingly, the situation does not seem to be very
different for the Calvino excerpt with the extended deliberate metaphor than for the
previous excerpts that were based on more local metaphors, more of which were not
deliberate. Nor is it the case that other properties of the text would force the
translator to avoid these options and go for the preferred alternatives. Therefore it
simply looks as if translators occasionally take liberties with translations of
metaphors that are not necessarily caused by any difficulties with the metaphors
themselves, whether these are deliberate or non-deliberate. This may make their
19
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
motivation for unexpected choices at other moments a little lighter as well. Whether
there is any difference in appreciation on the part of readers between ‘missed’ non-
deliberate metaphors versus deliberate metaphors would be an interesting question
for future work.
Of course, Calvino is just one example of such translation, albeit by a respected
translator, but it cannot serve as an adequate basis for drawing very far-reaching
conclusions. Let us check another case, where there may be more forceful contextual
factors at work – ones that may influence how a translator handles metaphor. Here is
the translation of the first quartet of Shakespeare’s famous Sonnet 18 into Dutch, by
one of our best appreciated literary translators, Peter Verstegen.
20
GERARD STEEN
But the translator here has apparently opted for a solution in which he could try
something new. This is of course part of his job, to offer a fresh translation that is
presumably closer to the spirit and language use of our own days. As a result, he has
also added the interactive and lively ‘No’ in line 2, denying the newly introduced
same level of beauty between the beloved and the summer’s day from line 1. But all
of these alterations have clearly removed us from a close translation to a more overt
display of re-textualisation of the same metaphorical comparison. Whether the novel
metaphorical Dutch lines are more effective and beautiful than their possible
alternatives that are closer to the original is a moot point, which might in fact be
subjected to empirical study.
When we adopt a communicative perspective on metaphor and examine whether
there is a difference between the translation of deliberate versus non-deliberate
metaphors, we do not immediately see a clear pattern. In Calvino’s novel, small
details of deliberate metaphors were omitted or changed for no obvious reasons, and
in Shakespeare’s sonnet, more important aspects of deliberate metaphors were
changed for reasons that may have to do with the cultural role of a translator in
making classic texts available to a modern audience. As noted before, these are just
two cases but they do suggest that translating metaphor may involve more
considerations than just the complexity of translating a cross-domain mapping from
one source language and one source text into another language and text. These
considerations may in the final analysis require a full-blown genre-analytical
perspective on what it is for a translator to translate a specific text into a specific
target language and culture.
To widen the scope of our discussion, let us finally take a look at the translation of
metaphor in an important political speech televised as an important media event.
Here is a section from US President Obama’s victory speech in 2008, starting at
minute 7:30 (downloaded from www.dotsub.com, with no producer of the subtitles
acknowledged).
I know you didn’t do this just to win an election and I know you didn’t do it for me. You did it
because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate
tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime – two
wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we
know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of
Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after
their children fall asleep and wonder how they’ll make the mortgage, or pay their doctor’s
bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created;
new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.
The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or
even one term, but America – I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will
get there. I promise you – we as a people will get there.
Io so che non avete fatto ciò solo per vincere una elezione, e so che non l’avete fatto per me.
Voi l’avete fatto perché conoscete l’enormità del compito che ci attende. Anche stanotte
mentre festeggiamo, noi conosciamo le sfide che domani giungeranno sono le più grandi del
nostro tempo. Due guerre, un pianeta in pericolo, la più grande crisi finanziaria del secolo. E
mentre noi siamo qui stanotte, sappiamo che ci sono americani coraggiosi che si svegliano nel
deserto in Iraq e nelle montagne dell’Afghanistan per rischiare le loro vite per noi. Ci sono
madri e padri che rimangono svegli mentre i loro figli dormono e pensano a come pagare il
mutuo, o come pagare la parcella del medico o come risparmiare per pagare gli studi dei figli al
college. Ci sono le nuove fonti energetiche da sfruttare e nuovi posti di lavoro da creare,
nuove scuole da costruire e minacce da affrontare e alleanze da ricostruire.
21
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Il cammino da compiere sarà lungo. La nostra salita sarà ripida. Possiamo non arrivarci
in un anno o anche in un mandato, ma America, non sono stato più fiducioso di quanto lo sono
ora che noi ci arriveremo. Ve lo prometto: noi come popolo arriveremo lì.
There is a whole list of minimal changes to metaphorically used words: lies ahead
≠ ci attende, will bring ≠ giungeranno; make ≠ pagare; energy ≠ fonti energetiche;
harness ≠ sfruttare; meet ≠ affrontare; repair ≠ ricostruire; ahead ≠ da compiere.
However, here is the beginning of a pattern that might be found more often if
researched more extensively. Almost all of the words in the list of deviations belong
to the first paragraph, which contains hardly any deliberate metaphors, while the
second paragraph has a rather long and extended deliberate metaphor that is almost
completely rendered verbatim. Thus, it may be more idiomatic in Italian to speak of
tasks that lie waiting than of tasks that lie ahead, and since the metaphorical source
domain will probably not be realised as an independent domain for comparison, this
difference does not make a difference. Similarly, the fact that tomorrow will bring
hopes in American English is different than the fact that hopes will arrive tomorrow
in Italian, but these metaphorical expressions are not deliberately metaphorical, their
sources do not play a semantic role of their own, and their diverging preference
between the two languages may make the text semantically adequate for the target
domain and pragmatically adequate for the appropriate use of register.
This pattern should be contrasted with what happens in the second paragraph. The
English is all in the language of the source domain of journeying or travelling:
The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there […], but […]
– I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you – we
[…] will get there.
And almost all of these expressions are rendered in exactly the equivalent source
domain language in Italian. The only exception is il cammino da compiere for the
road ahead, which is like the situation with the tasks that lie waiting above. My
suggestion is that this nearly verbatim translation can be explained by the fact that
we are dealing here with deliberate metaphor, expressly representing and exploiting
the source domain of the metaphor as a different, ‘alien’ perspective on the local
topic of the text, the political agenda for the coming years.
The Obama text then displays the pattern that I think might be more widespread:
deliberate metaphor might be translated more often as verbatim metaphor than non-
deliberate metaphor. This is also possible because deliberate metaphor often involves
talking about the source domain in its own right, as an independent domain from
which the target domain is then to be reconceptualised by the addressee. However,
there also appear to be other factors, such as other demands imposed by poetry, or
the tradition of innovating translations of classic texts, which may play a role too.
Moreover, apparently it is not really a problem when some small aspects of STs are
omitted or altered in TTs, for whatever reasons. Even if such translations might be
criticised as imperfect, the differences appear to be so small that they do not seem to
justify seeing metaphor as the major culprit or as a major problem.
4. Conclusion
Is there a problem about translating metaphor? And if there is one, is it one
problem or are there several problems? The extended contemporary theory of
metaphor has been invoked in addressing these questions. There are several aspects
that have been made explicit.
22
GERARD STEEN
First of all, with the ubiquitous and relatively comparable presence of metaphor
across languages, which is due to the ubiquitous and relatively general need for
metaphor in thought, there is much prior parallelism of metaphorical vocabulary
between source and target languages. On the one hand, one can therefore note small
discrepancies that might be highlighted as theoretically and empirically interesting.
On the other hand, however, our modest examination of translation practice suggests
that when it is possible to produce verbatim translations of metaphorical uses,
translators sometimes opt to leave these aside. Apparently, translating metaphor is
not always a big deal.
Secondly, some metaphors are more important than others to the reader. Those
metaphors that are used as metaphors may typically require more faithful translation
as a metaphor in the TT. Since these are often novel or unconventional metaphors,
they merely need verbatim rendition of the language of the source domain in the
Source Text into language of the source domain in the TT. This may become
problematic only if the source domain terms have different associations or values in
the original culture and language than in the target culture and language, but I have
no space to elaborate on this suggestion. Instead, some deliberate metaphors do not
get translated as closely as in theory might be possible, for more encompassing
considerations that have to do with, for instance, the status of the text or the tradition
of a series of translation, as with our Shakespeare example. However, even details of
deliberate metaphors may be treated with equal lack of close interest as non-
deliberate metaphors. It will be interesting to see how more encompassing and
quantified research can develop these proposals in the future.
References
Al Hasnawi, A.R. (2007) ‘A cognitive approach to translating metaphors’, Translation
Journal 11 (3).
Dynel, M. (2009) ‘Creative metaphor is a birthday cake: Metaphor as the source of humour’,
metaphorik.de 17, 27-48.
Gentner, D.; Bowdle, B.F. (2008) ‘Metaphor as structure-mapping’, in R.W. Gibbs (ed.) The
Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 109-128.
Gibbs, R.W., jr. (2011) ‘Evaluating conceptual metaphor theory’, Discourse Processes
48 (8), 529-562.
Gildenhard, I. (2011), Creative Eloquence: The Construction of Reality in Cicero’s
Speeches, London/New York: Oxford University Press.
Giora, R. (2008) ‘Is metaphor unique?’ in R.W. Gibbs (ed.) The Cambridge Handbook of
Metaphor and Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 143-160.
Kövecses, Z. (2005) Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Kövecses, Z. (2010) Metaphor: A Practical Introduction [2002], London/New York: Oxford
University Press.
Lakoff, G. (1987) Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the
Mind, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G.; Johnson, M. (2003) Metaphors We Live By [1980], Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press.
Mandelblit, N. (1995) ‘The cognitive view of metaphor and its implications for
translation theory’, in B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk; M. Thelen (eds) Translation and
Meaning. Part 3, Maastricht: Universitaire Press Maastricht, 483-495.
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Musolff, A. (2006) ‘Metaphor scenarios in public discourse’, Metaphor and Symbol 21 (1),
23-38.
Pragglejaz Group (2007) ‘MIP: A method for identifying metaphorically used words in
discourse’, Metaphor and Symbol 22 (1), 1-39.
Steen, G.J. (2007) Finding Metaphor in Grammar and Usage: A Methodological Analysis of
Theory and Research, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Steen, G.J. (2008) ‘The paradox of metaphor: Why we need a three-dimensional model of
metaphor’, Metaphor and Symbol 23 (4), 213-241.
Steen, G.J. (2011) ‘The contemporary theory of metaphor—Now new and improved!’
Review of Cognitive Linguistics 9 (1), 26-64.
Steen, G.J.; Dorst, A.G.; Herrmann, J.B.; Kaal, A.A.; Krennmayr, T.; Pasma, T. (2010) A
Method for Linguistic Metaphor Identification: From MIP to MIPVU, Amsterdam/
Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
24
Conceptual metaphor theory and the nature of difficulties
in metaphor translation
ZOLTÁN KÖVECSES
Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest / Heidelberg University
Abstract: It has become more or less a commonplace that whenever we translate from
one language into another, there are two different conceptual systems involved. Many
difficulties in translation arise from such differences between conceptual systems. And
since conceptual systems emerge and are used in context, contextual differences may
also lead to problems in translation. In my paper, I focus on metaphorical concepts
and characterize the metaphorical conceptual system in general. I also discuss how
context plays a role in shaping the metaphorical mind. I point out that a number of
problems in translation arise from differences in metaphorical conceptual systems and
the contexts in which they emerge.
Keywords: cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor theory, conceptual system,
context, difficulty in translation.
1. Introduction
In recent years more and more scholars have turned to the topic of metaphor
translation from a cognitive semantic perspective. (See, e.g., work by Ahrens and
Say 1999, Maalej 2008, Mandelblit 1995, Monti 2006 and this volume, Samaniego
Fernández et al. 2005, Schäffner 2004, 2012 and this volume, Steen this volume, and
others.) The burgeoning literature indicates that all of these scholars find that
cognitive semantics, and conceptual metaphor theory within it, has something to
contribute to the study of translation. I will continue in the same direction but my
focus will be on the issue of the difficulties we experience when we translate texts
from one language to another. My major goal here is to point out some of the
problems, and the possible reasons for the difficulties, that the process of translation
involves from a cognitive semantic perspective.
In order to do this, I first provide a global picture of the main components of the
meaning making enterprise. This necessarily involves bringing together three large
systems: the general conceptual system, the set of cognitive, or construal, operations,
and a number of various contextual factors, because, in my view, one of the
difficulties in the translation of metaphors is the heavy influence of contextual
factors on metaphorical conceptualization. Second, I look at some systematic
patterns of metaphor translation to show that such patterns provide a considerable
degree of flexibility and variation – a further source of complications. Third, I will
argue, taking what may seem a somewhat radical view, that abstract meanings can
only be translated into abstract meanings in another language. Finding such abstract
meanings in the target language is a further significant challenge in metaphor
translation. Finally, I propose some additional ‘matching conditions’ for ‘optimal’
metaphor translation. Complying with these conditions may present translators with
considerable difficulties, the nature of which I try to capture in a cognitive semantic
framework.
Kövecses, Zoltán, ‘Conceptual metaphor theory and the nature of difficulties in metaphor translation’, in Donna
R. Miller & Enrico Monti (eds) Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative Language, Bologna, CeSLiC,
‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 25-39.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
In the paper, I will rely heavily on my previous work. At the same time, I try to
press relevant findings from the earlier work into the service of responding to, and
hopefully elucidating, the main issue here: What makes the translation of metaphors
such a challenging task? and do so from a cognitive semantic perspective.
26
ZOLTÁN KÖVECSES
conceptualizers (speakers). However, it is also clear that the ‘entity system’ is closely
connected with the ‘relation system.’ After all, users of conceptual systems want to
conceptualize such situations as the motion (relation system) of vehicles (entity
system). This means that the system must allow for an organization of concepts other
than the thematic groups in the form of hierarchical taxonomies.
1
On force dynamics in general, see Talmy 1988.
27
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
All of these cognitive operations serve human beings to make sense of their
experience, including language.
Cognitive, or construal, operations play an essentially dual role in our mental life.
On the one hand, it is through such operations that we build or acquire a
conventional conceptual system in terms of which we conceptualize experience. The
second role of cognitive, or construal, operations is that, given that conceptual
system, the operations help us further interpret or conceptualize (new) experience, an
ever-changing world, as a result of which the conceptual system also changes.
The conceptual system can be regarded as the way in which the brain organizes
knowledge about the world, most of which is unconscious. The conceptual system is
not something transcendental. It is based on the brain, and the brain supports all the
cognitive, or construal, operations we utilize in the process of conceptualizing the
world. It is the brain’s neurons and the functioning of neurons that create such
systems.
Below is a list of construal operations that cognitive linguists typically work with
(based on Langacker 2008):
Schematization/abstraction
Image-schemas
Attention/focusing
Figure-ground
Scope of attention
Scalar adjustment (granularity; fine-grained – course-grained conceptualization)
Dynamic and static attention (sequential and summary scanning (fictive motion)
Prominence/salience
Profile – base
Trajector – landmark alignment
Perspective
Viewpoint
Subjectivity - objectivity
Metonymy
Metaphor
Mental spaces
Conceptual integration
I will say very little about these construal operations, except for the ones that
contribute directly to the establishment of abstract concepts. My concern is with
abstract concepts that make up a part of the conceptual system and the general ways
in which the concepts are related to each other in such a system, since it is abstract
concepts that are conceptualized by means of the cognitive process of metaphor.
28
ZOLTÁN KÖVECSES
in a very special way: through what is known as the CONDUIT metaphor. In a similar
vein, the conceptualization of – for instance – theories as buildings (Lakoff, Johnson
1980; Grady 1997a, b), emotions as forces (Kövecses 2000), or time as motion or a
resource such as money (Lakoff, Johnson 1999) creates fundamental and powerful
conceptions for these target domains – so fundamental that it would be difficult to
imagine what, for example, the concept of TIME would be like without
conceptualizing it in terms of MOTION.
29
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
The third question is the crucial one for my purposes here. It asks what the
factors, or ‘forces,’ are that are responsible for variation in conceptual metaphors. I
propose two distinct though interlocking groups of factors: “differential experience”
and “differential cognitive styles.”
I find it convenient to distinguish various subcases of differential experience:
awareness of context, differential memory, and differential concerns and interests.
Awareness of context includes awareness of the physical, social and cultural context,
but also of the immediate communicative situation. Differential memory is the
memory of events and objects shared by a community or of a single individual; we
can think of it as the history of a group or that of an individual. Differential concerns
and interests can also characterize either groups or individuals. It is the general
attitude with which groups or individuals act or are predisposed to act in the world.
Differential experience thus characterizes both groups and individuals, and, like
context, it ranges from global to local. The global context is the general knowledge
that the whole group shares and that, as a result, affects all group members in using
metaphors. The local context is the specific knowledge that pertains to a specific
situation involving particular individuals. More generally, it can be suggested that the
global context is essentially a shared system of concepts in long-term memory
(reflected in conventional linguistic usage), whereas the local context is the situation
in which particular individuals conceptualize a specific situation.
By contrast, differential cognitive styles can be defined as the characteristic ways
in which members of a group employ the cognitive processes available to them. Such
cognitive processes as elaboration, specificity, conventionalization, transparency,
(experiential) focus, viewpoint preference, prototype categorization, framing,
metaphor vs. metonymy preference, and others, though universally available to all
humans, are not employed in the same way by groups or individuals. Since the
cognitive processes used can vary, there can be variation in the use of metaphors as
well.
In sum, the two large groups of causes, differential experience and differential
cognitive styles, account for much of the variation we find in the use of conceptual
metaphors.
The principle of the “pressure of coherence” makes the user of language adjust his
or her metaphors to the surrounding context. The principle can explain a large
amount of metaphor variation in naturally occurring discourse on the basis of the
interplay between universal embodiment, differential experience, and the changing
context of communication. In this view, even universal embodiment can be seen as a
special case of the pressure of coherence. That is to say, if there are no overriding
factors, people can use certain universal metaphors for particular targets. However,
in most cases of metaphor use there seem to be overriding factors that lead groups of
people and individuals to employ non-universal metaphors.
Thus, given conceptual metaphor theory, it appears that we can have two research
interests, one primarily concerned with universality and another primarily concerned
with variation. Taking into account the causes of universality (embodiment) and
variation (context), we get two general lines of research:
Embodiment – Universality
Context – Variation
30
ZOLTÁN KÖVECSES
The dominant line was the former one: the study of universal embodiment
resulting in universal metaphors. My own work has been an attempt to balance this
with the study of how variable context accounts for variation and flexibility in
metaphorical conceptualization.
To see how context can trigger, or prime, the selection of metaphors, let us bring
in a further factor that plays a role in producing differential experience, and hence
novel metaphors, one which involves what I call differential concerns, or interests
(Kövecses 2005: 244-245). This contextual factor can influence the choice of
metaphor in discourse, as can be seen in the example below. The example (a letter to
the editor of a Hungarian daily) has to do with Hungary’s new relationship with
Europe in the late 1990s and was written by a Hungarian electrical engineer
concerning the issue:
Otthon vagyunk, otthon lehetünk Európában. Szent István óta bekapcsolódtunk ebbe a szellemi
áramkörbe, és változó intenzitással, de azóta benne vagyunk – akkor is, ha különféle erők
időnként, hosszabb-rövidebb ideig, megpróbáltak kirángatni belőle. (italics in the original;
Magyar Nemzet, [Hungarian Nation] June 12, 1999)
We are, we can be at home in Europe. Since Saint Stephen we have been integrated/ connected
to this intellectual/ spiritual electric circuit, and with varying degrees of intensity, but we have
been in it – even though various powers, for more or less time, have tried to yank us out of it
(my translation, ZK)
Various professionals often choose their source domains for a particular target
from the field of their expertise. In the passage above, the source domain for
Hungary’s new relationship with Europe as target seems to be electricity and its
functioning in electric circuitry. This is clear from the use of words and phrases such
as “integrated/ connected”, “electric circuit”, “with varying degrees of intensity”. In
all probability, the electrical engineer, the author of the passage, chooses his area of
expertise to conceptualize the country’s relationship to Europe because of his interest
in and concern with his profession; in a way, he is ‘preoccupied’ with it. It is this
preoccupation that motivates the selection and use of electricity as a source domain,
which is not evident at all for the target. In other words, the electrical engineer seems
to be primed for using a source with which he is preoccupied.
In sum, what we find in this instance is that when people use metaphors they tend
to adjust them to various aspects of the communicative situation; they try to be
coherent with the contextual factors that characterize the situation. In other words,
people’s choice of metaphor seems to be influenced and thus primed by what I have
called the principle of “the pressure of coherence”.
31
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
metaphor exists in the two languages (English and Hungarian). The conceptual
metaphor that was studied is LOVE IS A JOURNEY (Lakoff, Johnson 1980).
For example, and speaking in general, the way Hungarians can be seen to put the
metaphorical linguistic expressions of this conceptual metaphor seem to be related to
a more fatalistic attitude to life than in the case of speakers of (American) English. It
seems that in this variety of English internal considerations of external conditions
cause people in a love relationship to act in certain ways, whereas, in Hungarian,
external conditions directly force the lovers to act in certain other ways. One
example is the following:
We can’t turn back now.
*Nem fordulhatunk vissza.
[Not turn-can-1st PERS PL back]
(Innen) már nincs visszaút.
[(from-here) already none back-way]
The person using the (American) English sentence, also on behalf the addressee,
considers a situation and comes to the conclusion that there is no way back for them,
whereas in the Hungarian sentence the speaker seems to present this as a direct
consequence of the external situation involving them. Thus, in the English LOVE IS A
JOURNEY metaphor we have agents who make decisions internally (mentally,
conceptually), unlike the Hungarian metaphor that has agents who see themselves as
being externally forced to make decisions about their relationship. Additional
differences in cultural traits between (American) English and Hungarian, such as
different degrees of being success-oriented in the two cultures, were revealed by the
actual phrasing of the roughly corresponding metaphorical expressions.
All of this seems to indicate that two languages may share the same conceptual
metaphor but the linguistic expression of the conceptual metaphor may be influenced
by differences in cultural-ideological traits. This is a potential source of difficulty in
rendering the ‘same’ meaning in two languages and cultures.
32
ZOLTÁN KÖVECSES
Though space restrictions don’t allow me to illustrate them all, the main
significance of these translation possibilities for present purposes is that the same
figurative meaning can be expressed in several different ways in different languages.
If this suggestion is valid, it accounts for a large degree of flexibility or uncertainty
and, hence, potential difficulty, in the translation of metaphors.
33
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
2
By “optimal” I mean a solution that takes into consideration compromises of various kinds, as
opposed to “ideal,” which does not require such compromises.
34
ZOLTÁN KÖVECSES
specific meaning, and (c) connotative meaning. As we will see, the matching
conditions function, essentially, as ‘mappings’ at various levels of generality.
35
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Idiom Inferences
smoke coming out of one’s ears The anger is intense but essentially under
control, however, it is potentially
dangerous
In sum, the obvious challenge for translators is to find translation equivalents that
meet all three matching conditions above: general meaning, specific meaning, and
connotative meaning; that is, to find the translation equivalents that are characterized
by the same mappings (general, specific and connotative). Clearly, this is a major
source of difficulty in metaphor translation.
36
ZOLTÁN KÖVECSES
5. Conclusions
My main goal in this paper was to identify the nature of some of the systematic
difficulties in the translation of metaphors. I identified several areas of difficulties
from the perspective of conceptual metaphor theory.
I noted that a narrow conception of conceptual metaphor theory would lead us to
believe that universal embodiment produces the same universal metaphors. These
would in turn be easy to translate. However, this would be a mistaken view of
conceptual metaphors and it would lead to the wrong assumption regarding metaphor
translation. For better or worse, we live in a cognitively more complicated universe.
First, context plays a major role in both the production and comprehension of
metaphors. A variety of contextual factors are responsible for variation in the use of
metaphors. As a result, since the contexts in which different languages are used vary,
the translation of metaphors inevitably poses a challenge: How do we render a
metaphor in one language in another if the metaphors in the two languages emerge in
different contexts?
Second, even if two languages share a conceptual metaphor, there are at least
three (maybe even four) different possibilities for translating a metaphor from one
language to another. The translator has to choose the most adequate possibility. This
is not always an easy choice, and so represents a further source of difficulties.
Third, I argued that expressions denoting abstract concepts in one language can in
many cases be translated into another by metaphor or metonymy3. It is an open
question whether this is the case all of the time. If so, this would go against the
commonly held view that the translation of such metaphoric expressions can be
accomplished by means of a literal expression. This accounts for an additional
difficulty in metaphor translation: If there is no obvious metaphorical or metonymic
choice, what should be the apparently literal expression that corresponds to the
metaphor that needs to be translated?
Fourth, and finally, I identified three “matching conditions” that correspond to
three types of metaphor mappings: the scope of a source domain (the set of targets to
which it applies); the set of specific mappings (or conceptual correspondences) that
obtain between a source and a target, and the knowledge that pertains to the elements
of a source that (can) get carried over to the target domain. In the ideal case, all of
them should be met for the best translation. In many cases, it is not possible to
comply with all three conditions. This is a major obstacle to metaphor translation.
These sources of the difficulty in the translation of metaphors are systematic ones
that derive from major tenets of one version of conceptual metaphor theory. The
tenets and what follows from them for a theory of metaphor translation are of course
open to debate. In addition, I assume that there are many other issues that pose
problems for metaphor translation. However, my goal was to outline the systematic
difficulties that emerge from the foundational ideas of conceptual metaphor theory,
as I see them at present.
3
It is an open question whether this is the case all of the time. There are theoretical reasons to think
that it is the case (see Kövecses, 2006).
37
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
References
Ahrens, K.; Say, A.L.T. (1999) ‘Mapping image-schemas and translating metaphors’, In J.-
F. Wang; C.-H. Wu (eds) Proceedings of 13th Pacific Asia Conference on Language,
Information and Computation, Taiwan: National Cheng Kung University, 95-102.
Barsalou, L. (1999) ‘Perceptual symbol systems’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22, 577-
609.
Charteris-Black, J. (2002) ‘Second language figurative proficiency: A comparative study of
Malay and English’, Applied Linguistics 23 (1), 104-133.
Deignan, A.; Gabrys, D.; Solska, A. (1997) ‘Teaching English metaphors using cross-
linguistic awareness raising activities’ ELT Journal 51 (4), 353-360.
Fillmore, C.J. (1982) ‘Frame semantics’, in The Linguistic Society of Korea (ed.),
Linguistics in the Morning Calm: Selected Papers from SICOL 1981, Soeul: Hanshin,
111-137.
Gibbs, R.W. (1994) The Poetics of Mind, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gibbs, R.W. (2000) ‘Making good psychology out of blending theory’, Cognitive Linguistics
11, 347-358.
Grady, J. (1997a) ‘THEORIES ARE BUILDING revisited’, Cognitive Linguistics 8, 267-290.
Grady, J. (1997b) Foundations of Meaning: Primary Metaphors and Primary Scenes, Ph.D.
Thesis, Department of Linguistics, University of California at Berkeley.
Kövecses, Z. (2000a) Metaphor and Emotion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kövecses, Z. (2000b) ‘The scope of metaphor’, In A. Barcelona (ed.) Metaphor and
Metonymy at the Crossroads, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 79-92.
Kövecses, Z. (2001) ‘A cognitive linguistic view of idioms in an FLT context’, In M. Pütz; S.
Niemeier; R. Dirven (eds) Applied Cognitive Linguistics II: Language Pedagogy, Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter, 87-115.
Kövecses, Z. (2002/2010) Metaphor. A Practical Introduction, London/New York: Oxford
University Press.
Kövecses, Z. (2003) ‘Language, figurative thought, and cross-cultural comparison’,
Metaphor and Symbol 18 (4), 311-320.
Kövecses, Z. (2005) Metaphor in Culture. Universality and Variation, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Kövecses, Z. (2006) Language, Mind, and Culture. A Practical Introduction, London/New
York: Oxford University Press.
Kövecses, Z.; P. Szabó (1996) ‘Idioms: A view from cognitive semantics’, Applied Linguistics
17 (3), 326-355.
Lakoff, G. (1987) Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press.
Lakoff, G. (1993) ‘The contemporary theory of metaphor’, In A. Ortony (ed.), Metaphor and
Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lakoff, G.; Johnson, M. (1980) Metaphors We Live By, Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press.
Lakoff, G.; Johnson, M. (1999) Philosophy in the Flesh, New York: Basic Books.
Lakoff, G.; Kövecses, Z. (1987) ‘The cognitive model of anger inherent in American
English’, In D. Holland; N. Quinn (eds), Cultural Models in Language and Thought, New
York: Cambridge University Press, 195-221.
Langacker, R. (1987) Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, vol. 1, Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Langacker, R. (2008) Cognitive Grammar. An Introduction, New York: Oxford University
Press.
Maalej, Z. (2008). ‘Translating metaphor between unrelated cultures: A cognitive-pragmatic
perspective’, Sayyab Translation Journal (STJ) 1, 60-82.
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Mandelblit, N. (1995) ‘The cognitive view of metaphor and its implications for translation
theory’, In B. Lewandowska-Tomaszcyk; M. Thelen (eds) Translation and Meaning –
Part 3, Maastricht: Universitaire Pers, 483-495.
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Ponterotto, D. (1994) ‘Metaphors we can learn by’, Forum 32 (3), http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/
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Samaniego Fernández, E.; Velasco Sacristán, M.; Fuertes Olivera, P.A. (2005) ‘Translations
we live by: The impact of metaphor translation on target systems’, in P.A. Fuertes
Olivera (coord.), Lengua y Sociedad: Investigaciones recientes en Lingüística Aplicada,
Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 61-81.
Schäffner, Ch. (2004) ‘Metaphor and translation: Some implications of a cognitive
approach’, Journal of Pragmatics 36 (7), 1253-1269.
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39
Metaphor, translation, cognition
STEFANO ARDUINI
Università di Urbino
Abstract: Towards the mid-seventies, two new research paradigms appeared on the
international cultural scene, focusing on languages and texts in different ways. In
Europe the works of James Holmes, André Lefevere, Susan Bassnett and others
generated a new approach to translation. It was then that the concept of Translation
Studies was first introduced. Around the same time in the United States post-
generative linguists deemed it necessary to introduce a different cognitive approach to
language. Cognitive Linguistics challenged the idea that linguistic structures are an
independent module of our mind and proposed new research paradigms that consider
language dependent on meaning and do not separate it from other aspects of
cognition. This article combines the two perspectives recognizing that traditional
approaches to the translation of the metaphor did not recognize many central aspects
of translation. They depend on a specific translation ideology which has long
prevailed in the Western world and today is called into question. Translation is
essential to creating cultures and identity; it is essential for the life itself of cultures
and for the creation of values. In this sense, translation is involved in the existence
and transformation of cultures. When we translate a metaphor we have to consider
these aspects because a metaphor creates a conceptual universe and permits us to act
on it. It is not simply the fact of transferring a metaphor into a conceptual universe
that implies a different encyclopedia. To translate a metaphor means to stand face to
face with the kind of reality that the metaphor has construed.
Keywords: cognitive linguistics, metaphor, conceptual, culture, research paradigms.
1. Introduction
Towards the mid-seventies, two new research paradigms, Translation Studies and
Cognitive Linguistics, appeared on the international cultural scene; these focused on
languages and texts in different ways.
In Europe, in 1972, James Holmes published ‘The Name and Nature of
Translation Studies’; this was followed shortly after, in 1975, by André Lefevere’s
Translating Poetry: Seven Strategies and a Blueprint and, in 1980, by Susan
Bassnett’s Translation Studies and Gideon Toury’s In Search of a Theory of
Translation. These works generated a new approach to translation, which became
more and more predominant in the scientific research arena. It was then that the
concept of Translation Studies was first introduced.
Translation Studies developed in time. Initially, the purpose of TS was to describe
translation processes; then the approach took a cultural turn, followed by an
ideological, power and sociological turn, which took us to present times in which we
now speak of post-translation studies (Arduini-Nergaard 2011).
The main aspects which TS studies have focused on in the last forty years are:
Arduini, Stefano,‘Metaphor, translation, cognition’, in Donna R. Miller; Enrico Monti (eds) Tradurre Figure /
Translating Figurative Language, Bologna, CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-
932X, pp. 41-52.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Around the same time that Translation Studies disciplinary approach focusing on
translation was coming to the fore in Europe, in the United States post-generative
linguists deemed it necessary to go beyond the limits imposed by Generative
Grammar in order to introduce a different kind of discourse.
Ronald Langacker wrote his doctoral thesis in 1972; at the same time authors such
as Charles Fillmore (1975) and William Labov (1973, translated into Italian in 1977
by Luigi Heilmann) began moving outside the generativist paradigm. Around the
midseventies, George Lakoff considered the experiment of generative semantics to
be completely outdated.
As Fauconnier (2000) notes, Cognitive Linguistics challenged the idea that
linguistic structures are an independent module of our mind and proposed new
research paradigms that would rehabilitate an older tradition, namely the one that
considered language dependent on meaning and did not separate it from other aspects
of cognition.
The focal points of this second research paradigm could be summarised as in the
following statements:
Is there anything in common between these two approaches? This could well be
the case, even though these two traditions have never come together. I would like to
remind us that one of the places where Translation Studies were born was the
University of Leuven – the same place where some of the European founders of
Cognitive Linguistics worked. But there was apparently little or no mutual respect or
even exchanges between the two groups. Be that as it may, bringing together
Translation Studies and Cognitive Linguistics in the study of figurative language and
its translation could, I suggest, produce new research directions.
2. Translation strategies
It is curious therefore that the two fields have never interacted, except in very
recent times. Or, better, it is only curious if we forget that Translation Studies, at
least the beginning of its history, did everything it could to avoid contact with
linguistic approaches to translation. From the Translation Studies perspective the
linguistic approaches tried to reduce translation to a series of norms that one accepted
or rejected, and did so without any concern for the ideas and concepts that were
behind those norms. It is therefore reasonable to think that inside Translation Studies
there existed a systemic distrust towards linguistics.
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STEFANO ARDUINI
For example, scholars who come from a formal linguistic background have
traditionally tackled the issue of translating metaphors from a perspective which
restricted the study of metaphor to linguistic problems, forgetting that all metaphors
have aspects outside of linguistic analysis. Eva Samaniego Fernández (1996) has
perfectly summarised this framework.
A poignant example is that of Eugene Nida and Charles Russell Taber (Nida and
Taber 1969) who dedicated a whole chapter of their book The Theory and Practice of
Translation to “the Problem of Figurative Meaning”. The two authors identify a
primary or central meaning, a literal meaning and a figurative meaning. From this
perspective, the idea that metaphors have a cognitive value is lost. The figurative
meaning is something which is added to the central meaning on the basis of some
similarities. Consequently the solutions proposed by Nida and Taber are excessively
simple: remove the metaphor (paraphrasing it) or change it.
Peter Newark’s viewpoint (1982) is very similar to Nida’s and ignores most of the
literature concerning metaphor. He defines metaphor as follows:
Metaphor is in fact based on a scientific observable procedure: the perception of a resemblance
between two phenomena, i.e. objects or processes. Sometimes the image may be physical (e.g.
‘battery’ of cameras), but often it is chosen for its connotations rather than its physical
characteristics (e.g. in ‘she is a cat’) (Newmark 1982: 84-85)
On this basis Newark, from a source-oriented approach, proposes some
convenient formulas to translate metaphors. What these solutions have in common,
however, is the failure to grasp that metaphor is not simply the capacity to perceive
similarity between two aspects, but is rather a fact of cognition as well as one of the
means that a culture has to represent and build reality.
What each point of view assumes is the idea that meaning can shift from one
culture to another without suffering too much damage. It is as if meaning were an
invariable element whose central nucleus remains intact. This is an approach to
meaning that is disembodied and implies a semantics that has the structure of a
dictionary.
In their different ways, all the approaches that have not problematised the issue of
metaphor, and generally the approaches that have not problematised the issue of the
meaning, adopt similar attitudes, although sometime they are more sophisticated – as
happens for example in Menachem Dagut (1976; 1987) and Raymond Van den
Broeck (1981).
It does not seem to me that the attitude changes very much when we pass to
Translation Studies. I refer to Schäffner (2004), and again to Samaniego Fernández
(1996), for a complete exposition of all the perspectives in this framework.
Snell-Hornby (1988), for instance, touches upon the topic of metaphors in a
chapter of her work, Translation Studies. The author stresses an obvious fact:
metaphors are texts. This means that any approach which attempts a word-by-word
comparison will inevitably lead to partial results. But even if we cast aside the fact
that in 1988 Snell-Hornby’s attention had not been drawn to the extensive literature
which had already been developed in Cognitive Linguistics, Neorhetoric, Semiotics
and Philosophy of Language, there is the bald fact that one of the founders of
textlinguistics, János Petöfi, had already made the connection between textuality,
cognition and translation at Bielefeld in 1972 (Petöfi 1991). As a matter of fact, even
Eugene Nida said the same thing, albeit using different words. In translation, a
similar approach means that the way a metaphor can be translated, and even if can be
43
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
translated, does not depend on an abstract set of rules, but rather on the structure and
on the function of a certain metaphor in a certain text. Even if we consider here the
textual component, the cognitive aspect is completely lost, an aspect extensively
developed by Petöfi’s textual model (cf. also Van den Broeck 1981).
Nor is Gideon Toury’s contribution (1995) of great help. Toury belongs to the
first generation of Translation Studies scholars, and he comes from a perspective
which is predominantly descriptive; therefore the only thing he can do from his
perspective is present a list of ways in which metaphors can be translated. Although
he presents an interesting viewpoint, his list is not that different to the one suggested
by Newark from a prescriptive perspective.
Christina Schäffner was the first to productively bring together the Translation
Studies and Cognitive Linguistics approaches in an article entitled “Metaphor and
translation: Some implications of a cognitive approach” (Schäffner 2004), in which
she suggested that cognitivist studies on metaphors can provide fresh insight into
how metaphors are analyzed from a translation point of view. Schäffner is
particularly important because she underlines, for example, that all past solutions for
translating metaphors should be reassessed if we believe that metaphors deal not only
with language but also with concepts.
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STEFANO ARDUINI
4. Cognitive Linguistics
Cognitive Linguistics is the final point of a long reflection on the cognitive value
of metaphor. The cognitive viewpoint of metaphor represents an idea that belongs to
a tradition within Western thought. We can mention, for example, Emanuele
Tesauro, Giambattista Vico and Friederich Nietzsche. More recently, Umberto Eco
has reminded us that the cognitive value of metaphor has been central in the
development of Linguistics and the Philosophy of language in the past century (Eco
1980: 212-213). Moreover, Emile Benveniste (1966) and Roman Jakobson (1956)
both asserted the fact that rhetoric figures constitute a sort of cognitive structure
common to different areas like literature or the interpretation of dreams. Eco (1980)
stressed the cognitive value of metaphor from a semiotic perspective. He noted that
that it is produced on the basis of a universe of content which is organised into a net
of interpretants that determine the similarity of characteristics. Paul Ricœur has noted
that metaphor has a truth value, in the sense that it is a sort of experience of reality.
This is an experience, writes Ricœur (1975: 49), that doesn’t oppose to invent and to
discover and that describes reality through the deviation represented by the heuristic
function.
However, the studies inaugurated by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (Lakoff,
Johnson 1980; 1999) contributed to an alternative to a formalistic conception of mind
and meaning, by interpreting metaphor as, foremost, a fact of thought and not of
language. Metaphor in this sense is considered as a way to structure concepts that
permit us to understand abstractions such as ‘life’, ‘love’ or ‘friendship’.
As claimed by William Croft and David Alan Cruse (2004: 194), Cognitive
Linguistics refuses the idea that a metaphor substitutes a given literal expression
which has the same meaning. Furthermore, they also state that, for this specific
45
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
46
STEFANO ARDUINI
“See with evidence” actually means “see clearly”. In Latin the word is mirari or
admirari (Indo-european *smirari which forms the Sanskrit smay-e, that is, smile)
meaning to wonder. “Wonder” in classic Greek is thaumazein, that is “amazement”.
We can also refer to Theaetetus where Thaumazein is the principle of philosophy,
connected to Iris. The genealogy of Iris is interesting. She is the daughter of Taumas
who (being Gaea’s son) is directly associated to the first cause of existence. The
name Iris means rainbow and therefore Iris is the personification of the rainbow
which connects the earth and sky, what is up above and what is below, and,
therefore, men and the Gods.
I am reminded here of the Italian rhetorician of the sixteen century, Emanuele
Tesauro. According to Tesauro (Il canocchiale aristotelico, 1670), metaphor is the
rhetorical figure par excellence as it manages to grasp reality by connecting distant
phenomena through analogy. Metaphor is seen as a witty and ingenious subject
which leads to amazement. Metaphor ruptures the conventions which regulate the
connections between signifiers and signified. Through metaphor we pave the way for
renewal and enrichment of the significant potential of individual terms. Tesauro uses
the word argutezza: that is, an expression which is “lusinghiera e sollecitante”
(gratifying and stimulating), one that is achieved when the mind penetrates into
things, discovering what is not usually visible. Tesauro says that its characteristics
are rarity and originality and that its effect is wonder. What Tesauro calls
“argutezza” will be called in Spain in the 17th century “argudeza” by Baltasar
Gracián (Argudeza y arte del ingenio).
We find this connection even in modern times: to see, to marvel, to understand.
47
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
1
On the concept of ethnocentrism cfr. Derrida 1967; Spivak 1988.
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STEFANO ARDUINI
These observations all have a bearing on the translation of metaphors because the
history of such translation has been constantly marked by the idea that wherever
possible translators should domesticate the difference brought about by metaphorical
thought.
49
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
References
Arduini, S. (2011) ‘El mundo inventado: las metáforas del discurso político’, in
J.A. Caballero, J.M. Delgado Idarreta, C. Sáenz de Pipaón Ibañez (eds) Olózaga y
Sagasta: Retórica, prensa y poder, Logroño, Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 19-32.
Arduini, S.; Nergaard S. (2011) ‘Translation. A New Paradigm’, in Translation, inaugural
issue, 2011, 8-15.
Bassnett, S. (1991) Translation Studies, revised edition, London/New York: Routledge.
Benveniste, E. (1966) Problèmes de linguistique générale, 1, Paris: Gallimard.
Berman, A. (1984) L’épreuve de l’étranger, Paris: Gallimard.
Berman, A. (1999) La traduction et la lettre ou l’Alberge du lointain, Paris: Seuils.
Croft, W.; Cruse D. A. (2004) Cognitive Linguistics, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Dagut, M. (1976) ‘Can ‘metaphor’ be translated?’, Babel 22 (1), 21-33.
Dagut, M. (1987) ‘More about the transability of metaphor’, Babel 33 (2), 77-83.
Derrida, J. (1967) De la grammatologie, Paris: Éditions de Minuit.
Eco, U. (1980) ‘Metafora’, Enciclopedia 9 (Mente-Operazioni), Torino: Einaudi.
Eco, U. (2003) Dire quasi la stessa cosa, Milano: Bompiani.
Fauconnier, G.; Turner M. (1996) ‘Blending as a central process in grammar’, in
A.E. Goldberg (ed.), Conceptual Structure, Discourse and Language, Stanford, CA:
CSLI Publications 1996, 113-31.
Fauconnier, G. (1997) Mappings in Thought and Language, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
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52
Translation studies and metaphor studies: Possible paths of
interaction between two well-established disciplines
MARK SHUTTLEWORTH
University College London
Abstract: The objects of study of these two disciplines are etymological cognates, the
meaning that lies at the heart of both translation and metaphor being that of transfer.
The study of metaphor in translation therefore involves tackling the complexities of a
double act of transfer through the use of methodologies that are correspondingly
subtle. The article aims to investigate what the disciplines of translation studies and
metaphor studies have in common and what the potential for interdisciplinary
research might be. As argued by Israel (2011), having absorbed numerous research
models and approaches from other disciplines over the last few decades, translation
studies is in a strong position to share its insights and perspectives with these same
disciplines. In the case of research into metaphor in translation, although the centres
of gravity of translation studies and metaphor studies are rather different there is
great potential for a two-way interaction between these two disciplines. On the one
hand, it is now virtually inconceivable that a study of metaphor in translation should
not take full account of work by scholars specialising in metaphor studies. On the
other hand, translation studies can provide metaphor scholars with mono-, bi- and
even multilingual data from its case studies to supplement their own descriptive work.
There do of course exist a number of caveats regarding the compatibility of material
from the two disciplines. However, in many cases the result of such research has been
work worthy of the attention of scholars working within both disciplines. The article
focuses specifically on text-based research but is of relevance to other approaches as
well.
Keywords: translation, metaphor, interdisciplinary translation studies, metaphor
studies.
Shuttleworth, Mark, ‘Translation studies and metaphor studies: Possible paths of interaction between two well-
established disciplines’, in Donna R. Miller; Enrico Monti (eds) Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative
Language, Bologna, CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 53-65.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
discipline they denote the original and receptor texts, languages or cultures between
which the act of translation takes place.
It should of course be emphasised that in other languages the etymologies of these
two words may be totally different, and indeed not related to each other (see for
example Tymoczko 2007: 68-77, for a discussion of words for translation). However,
in the case of many of the languages in the Indo-European language group at least,
the notions of metaphor, transfer and translation are closely related etymologically as
well as conceptually. Along similar lines, the concept of literalness can easily take on
a double meaning: privileging source-text wording over sense in relation to
translation, and non-figurative over figurative meanings in relation to metaphorical
language. It is against this background that we will be discussing possible interaction
between translation studies and metaphor studies.
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4. Metaphor in translation
The more traditional way of referring to this area of study, “the translation of
metaphor”, now sounds prescriptive and somewhat old-fashioned. The formulation
“metaphor in translation” places the emphasis on metaphor and locates the discussion
of it precisely where it should be – firmly in the broader context of general metaphor
research. The alternative term “metaphor and translation” would be another
possibility, and one that is more neutral in terms of the disciplines to which it is
appealing. Interestingly, in the Subject Index to Descriptive Translation Studies and
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Beyond Toury refers to this research topic as “metaphor in/and translation” (1995:
304).
Since the discussion of metaphor in translation was initiated more than forty years
ago by Kloepfer (1967) much has been written on the topic and a number of
important debates have been pursued. One of the earliest of these concerned the
extent to which metaphor constituted a problem for translators (whether there was
“no problem” or “no solution”: see Dagut 1976: 25) and the fallout from Kloepfer’s
controversial remark that “the bolder and more creative the metaphor, the easier it is
to repeat it in other languages” (1967: 116; translation taken from Snell-Hornby
1995: 57). As discussed below, many writers have even proposed lists of procedures
for translating metaphor. In addition, there has been a gradually awakening
awareness that metaphors can play a vitally important structural role in texts rather
than appearing simply as isolated expressions (see for example Crofts 1982).
In the last thirty years or so the situation has been rather different, with questions
of metaphor in translation attracting growing interest within the discipline. The
articles by Dagut and Newmark were fairly quickly joined by others – most notably
those of van den Broeck (1981) and Mason (1982) – while since that time an
increasing number of papers have been appearing in various translation studies
journals, more and more of which have taken the interesting work carried out on
metaphor in other disciplines (such as cognitive linguistics) as their starting-point.
This steadily increasing flow has served to keep the subject on the agenda, and in
line with this development at least another three important and widely-discussed
works – Gutt (1991), Toury (1995) and Snell-Hornby (1995) – include passages
discussing the area in some detail.
In view of the considerable upsurge in interest in the area seen in recent years it is
understandable that these days writers on metaphor in translation no longer complain
that their subject has always been somewhat neglected. As of February 2013 there
are sixty articles listed in the St. Jerome Publishing Translation Studies Abstracts
Online (Harding, Saldanha, Zanettin 2013) that were published between 1981 and
2012 and that contain the word metaphor in their title. (There are of course many
more – 151, in fact – that have this term as a keyword.) Interestingly, only a minority
of the sixty refer to metaphor theory in their abstracts: fifteen mention the word
conceptual, fifteen the rather less polysemic cognitive, six pragmatic, five Lakoff and
two relevance (as in relevance theory), for example. This indicates that, while much
has been achieved, much remains to be done to establish a firm link between
translation scholars and the ideas of academics working on metaphor.
While there are a relatively large number of translation scholars with an interest in
metaphor, there seems to have been less interest shown by metaphor scholars in
translation. In terms of major works, Kövecses (2005: 133ff.) offers one of the few
detailed discussions of metaphor in translation by a metaphor scholar, while another
extended treatment is provided by Knowles and Moon (2006: 61-72). The special
issue of the Journal of Pragmatics (issue 36 (7)) on “Metaphor across Languages” is
for the most part only tangentially about translation. Newmark (1985) offers one of
the first discussions of metaphor in translation to have appeared in a major work
devoted to metaphor rather than to translation, although his article has more recently
started to be joined by others (for example, Schäffner 2004; Samaniego Fernández
2011). To date, almost nothing of relevance to translation has appeared in Metaphor
and Symbol.
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Over the years, much effort has been devoted to constructing classifications to
account exhaustively for the procedures that translators employ when translating
metaphorical expressions. Newmark’s classification of the procedures that translators
use to translate what he terms stock metaphors, for example, is very representative of
the type of scheme that has been proposed. In all he identifies eight procedures,
which he lists in order of preference:
Reproducing the same image in TL, “provided the image has comparable frequency and
currency in the appropriate register” 1
Replacing the image in SL “with a standard TL image which does not clash with the TL
culture”
Translating the metaphor by a simile, “retaining the image”
“Translation of metaphor (or simile) by simile plus sense (Mozart method).” (I.e. the
addition of explanatory material: for Mozart, a piano concerto had to please “both the
connoisseur and the less learned”.)
Conversion of the metaphor to sense
Modification of the metaphor
Deletion
Using the same metaphor combined with the sense
(Newmark 1985: 304-311)
What such lists try to achieve, while it clearly is of great value, does not coincide
with the aims of descriptive translation studies as such taxonomies are essentially
prescriptive. Furthermore, as a result of the considerable work already devoted to
producing classifications of this type, this area is probably quite well charted; few if
any further significant strategies have been proposed, any minor modifications or
additions being little more than footnotes to Newmark’s scheme.
By way of a contrast to Newmark’s proposals Al-Harrasi’s list of procedures uses
conceptual metaphor theory, hinging to a large extent on the interplay between image
schemas and rich images. In this way it sites itself totally within the bounds of
descriptive translation studies:
Instantiating the Same Conceptual Metaphor
Same Image Schematic Representation
Concretising an Image Schematic Metaphor
Instantiating in the TT only a Functional Aspect of the Image Schema
Same Image Schema and Rich Image Domains
Same Rich Image Metaphor but Alerting the Reader to the Mapping
Using a Different Rich Image that Realises the Same Image Schema Realised by the Rich
Image in the Source Text
From the Rich Image Metaphor to Image Schematic Representation
Same Mapping but a Different Perspective
Adding a New Instantiation in the Target Text
Using a Different Conceptual Metaphor
Deletion of the Expression of the Metaphor
(Al-Harrasi 2001: 277-88)
As far as I am aware, this is one of the most detailed attempts to date to produce
an alternative taxonomy based on metaphor theory, and one that opens up a whole
new possible direction for research.
1
The abbreviations SL and TL stand for ‘source language’ and ‘target language’ respectively.
Similarly, ST and TT denote ‘source text’ and ‘target text’.
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differently interpreted form it becomes far more germane to translation studies, and
seems in fact to be the most frequently adopted theoretical framework for research
into metaphor in translation, the relevance theory of Sperber and Wilson (1986)
coming a very distant second.
Translation scholars are generally not only bilingual but also bicultural, and they
can provide an excellent source of data regarding interlingual and intercultural
variation to counterbalance these universalist tendencies of the conceptual metaphor
theory, which still survive in some parts of the discipline. However, it needs to be
borne in mind that the kind of data that their work offers is fundamentally different
from that supplied, for example, by a langue-based discipline. This is because
translation studies data cannot be relied on to reflect target language norms in an
unbiased manner, influenced as it is by the source language, by the translator’s
preference for a particular set of solutions, and so on, all of which factors not only
place this data firmly in the domain of parole, as argued above, but also mark it out
as having a twofold provenance and therefore running the risk of offering mixed or
confusing insights. In other words, as instances of mediated discourse examples of
translated metaphorical expressions cannot always be used as evidence of native
target language patterns for mainstream metaphor studies research.
That said, translation-related data can potentially serve as a test-bed for measuring
the validity of metaphor studies categories and concepts: one may reasonably argue
that, if certain factors influence speakers of a particular language (or of language in
general), then they must do the same for translators as they make decisions regarding
wording and so forth – whether such factors are universal in nature or bound to a
particular language. This fact may of course make data from process-based
translation studies research of great interest to metaphor scholars with a particular
interest in the psychological aspects of metaphor.
It is, however, vital that the study of metaphor in translation take into
consideration theoretical work on metaphor. In practice, this means, for example,
using already-existing definitions and taxonomies of metaphor types rather than
reinventing them for the purposes of translation studies. If this approach is adopted
then new translation studies case studies – at least in their monolingual aspect – will
potentially throw further light on these concepts. In addition, translation scholars
would be well advised to use existing methodologies for identifying metaphorical
expressions in texts and for conducting corpus-based research (see for example the
Pragglejaz Group 2007).
The longstanding understanding of translation studies as an interdiscipline
referred to above does indeed need to be made to work in both directions: not only
should translation scholars absorb concepts and approaches from neighbouring
disciplines, but they should in their turn make their theoretical insights and practical
findings available to their colleagues from these other disciplines. This point is
forcefully argued by Israel, who proposes a practical plan of action for demonstrating
the credentials of translation studies as a discipline capable of making a contribution
in the context of other fields of research. Her first recommendation, which is broadly
in line with what is proposed in this article, is to situate research in the “overlaps”
between translation studies and other disciplines and thus approach these other
subject areas with new questions (2011: 18). Israel also suggests engaging with other
disciplines through book reviews, interdisciplinary conference panels and publishing
in non-translation studies journals (2011: 19). Finally, she recommends that
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MARK SHUTTLEWORTH
translation scholars who are not based in a translation department should capitalise
on this position by organising joint research initiatives that will take advantage of
areas of common interest (2011: 19).
The possible benefits of these practical measures should be evident. In addition to
them, however, it is possible to envisage particular proposals more specific to the
particular pair of disciplines involved. In the case of translation studies and metaphor
studies, these might fall into one of three categories: firstly, contributions to the
development of existing frameworks for analysing metaphorical expressions and/or
the proposal of possible new research methodologies; secondly, the reporting of
individual insights gained from descriptive case studies; and thirdly, a possible
extension to the applied wing of metaphor studies.
What is meant by the first of these is that it is possible to develop or construct
detailed methodologies for analysing metaphor in translation that are designed to
make use of metaphor studies concepts while operating within the normal paradigms
of descriptive translation studies. One obvious way of achieving this is to use
dimensions for categorising metaphorical expressions as the parameters (or
variables) according to which modifications in the translation process are measured
(for possible lists of these see for example Cameron 1999: 123-130; Dickins 2005:
265; Shuttleworth 2013: 40-62). In such descriptive case studies the questions to be
asked would include: can a particular parameter be used to produce an innovative or
insightful list of translation procedures? to what extent might such parameters exert
an influence on translators’ decision-making? do the answers to the previous two
questions serve to confirm, qualify or perhaps invalidate the theoretical or
psychological significance of a particular metaphor studies concept or parameter?
The second specific proposal for interdisciplinary collaboration is that many
insights of interest to metaphor scholars can be obtained by drilling down into the
monolingual source-language data (but not, perhaps, the translated data for the
reasons discussed above) obtained from the case studies arising from the application
of the research strategy proposed in the previous paragraph.
Many examples could be given but for reasons of space I will limit myself to a
few points arising from my own work (Shuttleworth 2013) by way of illustration.
One of the most interesting, to my mind, concerns image-schematic metaphorical
expressions, as it transpires that this type of metaphorical expression, which is
considered to be of great importance in conceptual metaphor theory, is in fact very
rare, in the popular science texts that I studied at any rate. Only very few
metaphorical expressions (around 3.5% of the total) are in fact based on image
schemas to any significant degree (2013: 130). On the other hand, while not accorded
significant theoretical attention, the category of metaphorical expression known as
rich images occurs in an approximate ratio of 40:60 as against non-rich images,
which means that in this respect too this work of translation research offers a brief
case study on an under-researched topic that is also underplayed in terms of theory
(2013: 185). The situation with image metaphors is similar: once again, while these
represent a category of metaphor that is downplayed in the literature, they are in fact
relatively more frequent at around 7% (2013: 218). Indeed, although the treatment is
not as detailed as that of the monolingual studies conducted by Caballero (see for
example 2002), I would argue that the findings nonetheless represent an important
contribution to the very sparse metaphor studies literature on this topic.
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The third and final specific proposal regarding possible paths of collaboration
consists of the observation that works on metaphor in translation should be
recognised as belonging to the applied branch of metaphor studies that was discussed
briefly in Section Three. In the event that the different areas of metaphor studies
were to be formally mapped out along the lines of Holmes’ proposals for translation
studies (1971/2004), metaphor in translation certainly deserves to be included here
alongside other topics that have hitherto received greater recognition among
metaphor scholars.
6. Conclusion
The aim of this article has been to examine the commonalities that exist between
the disciplines of translation studies and metaphor studies and to consider how these
can be built on for the purposes of developing collaboration in the area of research.
Starting with observations about the conceptual and etymological relatedness of their
central concepts, what has been discovered is that there is considerable scope for
mutual influence and collaboration between the two disciplines, although also some
significant differences in emphasis and approach. In the past, cross-disciplinary
influence tended to be from metaphor studies to translation studies, although this
article has argued that the latter discipline also has much to offer to the former. In the
light of this, the article proposes pathways of collaboration that could lead to the
enrichment of both disciplines concerned.
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Dickins, J. (2005) ‘Two models for metaphor translation’, Target 17 (2), 227–273.
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Engstrøm, A. (2000) ‘Review of Philosophy in the Flesh: The embodied mind and its
challenge to Western thought, by G. Lakoff and M. Johnson’, Metaphor and Symbol 15
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Evans, R. (1998) ‘Metaphor of Translation’, in M. Baker (ed.) Routledge Encyclopedia of
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Forceville, C.; Urios-Aparisi, E. (eds) (2009). Multimodal Metaphor, Berlin/New York:
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Gibbs, R. (1994) The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language, and Understanding,
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Gibbs, R. (2005) Embodiment and Cognitive Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University
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Grady, J.; Oakley, T.; Coulson, S. (1999) ‘Blending and Metaphor’, in R. Gibbs; G. Steen
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65
Specialised Translation
Traduzione specializzata
Abstract: Since summer 2011, European politicians and journalists alike have
commented on the economic crisis and the related financial crisis in the euro zone,
and rescue packages and bail-out funds have been agreed upon. The language used in
such debates is largely metaphorical in nature, which makes these political debates of
interest to linguists, metaphor researchers, and Translation Studies scholars. This
paper explores metaphorical expressions used in such discourse with reference to
English and German texts. It analyses culture-specific differences in the use of such
expressions and the way they have been dealt with in translation. In German political
and journalistic texts, the metaphorical expression ‘Rettungsschirm’ (literally: ‘rescue
umbrella’) is frequently used. In UK mass media, the metaphorical expression
‘firewall’ has been used frequently and has found its way into German journalistic
discourse as well. In this paper, these metaphorical expressions are investigated from
the perspectives of conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff, Johnson 1980) and
Translation Studies, tracing the role of translation in cross-cultural communication.
Keywords: conceptual metaphor, translation strategies, journalistic discourse,
political discourse.
Schäffner, Christina, ‘Umbrellas and firewalls: Metaphors in debating the financial crisis from the perspective of
translation studies’, in Donna R. Miller; Enrico Monti (eds) Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative Language,
Bologna, CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 69-84.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
horizontal sense, conceptual metaphors are often combined, for example movement
and health (e.g. ‘on the path to recovery’), which in this case needs to be understood
as moving towards health as an abstract goal.
There is a significant amount of research into metaphors which has been
conducted within Critical Discourse Analysis and Pragmatics which is interested in
analysing the intentional and/or argumentative use of metaphor in context (cf.
Chilton’s reference to the interpersonal function of metaphor in addition to the
cognitive function, Chilton 1996, also Charteris-Black 2004). Among the genres that
have most often been subject to empirical studies into metaphors in political
discourse are news reports, editorials, speeches, interviews with politicians. These
discourse types are usually interrelated and form ‘orders of discourse’ (Fairclough
1995), with relationships of complementarity, inclusion or exclusion leading to forms
of intertextuality (i.e. links between texts belonging to the same genre),
interdiscursivity (i.e. links between texts belonging to different genres),
recontextualisation (i.e. any re-use of texts/extracts in another context).
Very often, however, discursive events are mediated and involve translation
and/or interpreting. For example, discursive events such as meetings of EU
politicians are conducted bi- and multilaterally, leading to discourse types such as
treaties or policy documents which exist in several languages (as a matter of routine
due to the language policy of multilingualism of the European Union). Politicians
can be interviewed by journalists from abroad and the interview can be conducted
with the help of an interpreter. International press conferences often make use of
interpreting too, either simultaneous or consecutive interpreting. Interviews and press
conferences thus become triadic exchanges (Mason 2001). Whenever journalists
report about political meetings, speeches, or press conferences in the mass media and
quote from translated or interpreted discourse, we have cases of intertextuality,
interdiscursivity, and recontextualisation across linguistic and cultural (and often also
ideological) boundaries (Schäffner 2012a).
This paper addresses metaphors in political and journalistic texts above all from
the perspective of Translation Studies. The examples are chosen from texts that deal
with the financial crisis in the euro zone, a topic that has frequently dominated
political and media discourse about European Union politics since summer 2011.
The questions I wish to address in this paper are the following:
This paper will focus on two metaphorical expressions, which are used very
frequently in British and German mass media: ‘Rettungsschirm’ and ‘firewall’.
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CHRISTINA SCHÄFFNER
1
“The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) is another element of the euro rescue umbrella
which is limited till mid 2013”. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations into English are mine and
attempt at reproducing the ST closely. All online sources last accessed on 4 January 2014.
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2
“Till now the governments have tried to safeguard the common currency by opening ever larger
rescue umbrellas over the euro-zone”.
3
“The government is happy about the Constitutional Court’s decree on the rescue umbrella ESM”.
4
“The rescue umbrella can be opened […]”.
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CHRISTINA SCHÄFFNER
Idee, dass das ganze Land unter den Rettungsschirm kriechen muss […] (Die Welt 6/8/2012,
5
p. 10)
5
“Last weekend Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy had to flee under an umbrella. His first day of
holidays was literally rained off. Sullenly, he trudged through the forest near his home province
Pontevedra, with one of his trusted aides zealously opening an umbrella for him. This photo is full of
symbolism […] The idea that the whole country will have to sneak under the rescue umbrella […]”.
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official OECD website in advance of its delivery is, however, less elaborate, as seen
in extract (9) below, and marked by the addition of the comment ‘As prepared for
delivery’.
(9) The absolute priority must be to stabilise the most fragile euro area sovereigns. We call on
the informal ECOFIN later this week to expand the available stability funds further to provide
a credible level of support. The ‘mother of all firewalls’ should be in place – strong enough
and broad enough to ensure that it does not need to be used.
Remarks by Angel Gurría, OECD Secretary-General, delivered at the launch of the OECD
Economic Surveys of the Euro Area and the European Union, Brussels, 27 March 2012 (As
prepared for delivery)
(http://www.oecd.org/fr/economie/theunfinishedbusinessofmakingeuropework.htm)
It is very possible that Gurria was more elaborate when he actually delivered his
remarks. What this quote also shows is that the metaphorical expression of the
‘firewall’ is not just a convenient label for journalistic purposes, but that it is in fact
part of the official political discourse. This can be seen as well in extract (10) below
from the Statement of the euro group, which also introduces another metaphorical
expression, i.e. ‘ceiling’, thus adding another perspective to the vertical dimension
(MORE IS UP).
(10) […] we have reassessed the adequacy of the overall EFSF/ESM lending ceiling of EUR
500 billion […] The current overall ceiling for ESM/EFSF lending, as defined in the ESM
Treaty, will be raised to EUR 700 billion such that the ESM and the EFSF will be able to
operate, if needed, as described above. […] All together the euro area is mobilising an overall
firewall of approximately EUR 800 billion, more than USD 1 trillion. […] Finally, robust
firewalls have been established. […]
(http://eurozone.europa.eu/media/368036/psi_statement_30_march_12.pdf)
6
“With the draft treaties for creating a fiscal union and a permanent stability mechanism we put
another important building stone in place […] a central measure for fighting the danger of contagion
[…] This is the function of the rescue umbrella or of the firewall – fighting the danger of contagion in
the whole euro-system. […] If we achieve a structure for the stability union which we didn’t achieve
in the 1990s, then the firewall does not need to be that high […] preventing contagion in the euro-
system […]”.
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CHRISTINA SCHÄFFNER
could prevent contagion spreading from one country to another! Moreover, the
discourse which links firewalls to preventing contagion gets mixed up with building
metaphors (‘Baustein’ is a brick, a building stone, which can be seen as part of a
wall). What we also see is that Schäuble used the English term ‘firewall’ in his
speech. In example (12) from Der Spiegel below, the extract of the euro-group
statement has been rendered into German, using the German equivalent labels
‘Brandschutzmauer’ and ‘Brandmauer’. However, what is also interesting is that in
the argumentation which follows, reference is made again to the umbrella image.
(12) “Die Euro-Länder mobilisieren eine Brandschutzmauer von 800 Millionen Euro, mehr
als eine Billion US-Dollar”, trommelte die Euro-Gruppe, die Versammlung der Finanzminister
aus der Währungsunion, in die Finanzwelt. […] Monatelang hatten sich die Deutschen gegen
derart hohe Brandmauern gesträubt […] Einsatzfähigkeit der Rettungsschirme […] verliere
der Rettungsschirm seine Wirkung […] Funktionsfähigkeit des Schirms […] Sie hatte sich
von den aufgestockten Rettungsschirmen Entlastung versprochen. (Spiegel 2/4/2012, p.
29ff)7
Such a combination of the two metaphorical expressions is also evident in extracts
(13) and (14), resulting in a conflation of the two conceptual domains. Extract (13) is
from a joint press conference between Chancellor Merkel and the French President
Sarkozy in Cannes on 11 November 2011, in which the English and the German word
are used side by side together with a term morphologically built on the umbrella image.
(13) Merkel: […] Das betrifft insbesondere die Möglichkeit der Abschirmung, der Firewall,
der Brandmauer. […]
(http://www.bundesregierung.de/ContentArchiv/DE/Archiv17/Mitschrift/Pressekonferenzen/20
11/11/2011-11-03-merkel-sark-cannes.html
Extract (14) is from an interview which the weekly Handelsblatt conducted in
June 2012 with Minister Schäuble, in which the synonymous use of the two terms is
again very explicit.
(14) Handelsblatt: Brauchen Sie denn für die Rettungsschirme möglicherweise irgendwann
noch mehr Geld vom Steuerzahler für die Zukunft?
Schäuble: […] Der Rettungsschirm ist ja vor allem eine Brandmauer, um Zeit zu gewinnen.8
(http://www.bundesregierung.de/ContentArchiv/DE/Archiv17/Interview/2012/06/2012-06-05-
schaeuble-handelsblatt.html)
In the political and journalistic discourse, both ‘Rettungsschirm’ and ‘firewall’ are
presented as tools, the main function of which is providing protection from
dangerous situations: here, specifically, a country becoming financially vulnerable. It
is interesting to see that neither the element of fire nor the element of rain are used
frequently and explicitly in the argumentation (or mainly for rhetorical purposes, as
in extract 5 above, and also extract 17 below). The comparative analysis of authentic
German and English texts thus shows that different conceptual metaphors are used,
but not exclusively. As seen in extracts (11) and (12), the metaphorical expression
‘firewall’ is also used in German discourse. This discursive awareness is due to
7
“‘The euro countries mobilise a firewall of 800 billion euros, more than 1 trillion US Dollars’,
announced the euro group, the assembly of finance ministers of the currency union, to the world of
finance. […] For months the Germans had opposed such a high firewall. […] availability of the rescue
umbrellas […] the rescue umbrella may lose its effect […] function of the umbrella […] It had hoped
for relief from the increased rescue umbrellas”.
8
“Will you need more money from the tax payers for the rescue umbrellas?
Schäuble: […] The rescue umbrella is above all a firewall in order to gain time”.
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Starting from the perspective of the target text, Toury (1995: 81ff.) suggested two
additional procedures:
76
CHRISTINA SCHÄFFNER
In the majority of cases, however, all these translation procedures were devised
with reference to a more traditional understanding of metaphor. Conceptual metaphor
theory has gradually been applied in Translation Studies as well (with Stienstra 1993
probably one of the first studies in this respect). Based on a descriptive analysis of
authentic source texts and their translations, scholars have also identified translation
procedures in a different way. The following very extensive list of translation
procedures was suggested by Al-Harrasi (2001: 277-288), based on the analysis of
authentic English translations of Arabic political speeches.
77
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
disappeared and been rendered by the more neutral terms ‘bailout package’ and
‘backstop fund’ (which would be an example of Al-Harrasi’s strategy 1.3). The same
procedure can be seen in the interview with Jean-Claude Juncker (17), although in
his answer he himself switches between the two metaphorical expressions.
(16a) Werner Faymann, über größere Rettungsschirme, […]
Spiegel: [...] der Euro-Rettungsschirm ESM müsse mit mehr Geld ausgestattet werden, [...]
Faymann: […] Meine Regierung stellt sich darauf ein, dass der bisherige Rettungsfonds EFSF
und der ESM so miteinander verschachtelt werden, dass wir eine höhere Brandmauer
errichten. […]
Spiegel: Wollen Sie, dass die Milliarden, die noch im Rettungsfonds liegen, dem permanenten
ESM-Schirm zugeschlagen werden?
Faymann: […] Die Finanzmärkte beobachten uns ganz genau und machen an der Höhe der
Brandmauer fest, wie stark wir sind. Ist sie zu niedrig, liefern wir den Märkten einen Grund,
gegen uns zu spekulieren. (Spiegel 30/1/2012, p. 23)
(16b) […] Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann, […] discusses the potential need for a larger
Greek bailout package
Spiegel: [...] that the permanent euro backstop fund, the European Stability Mechanism
(ESM), be enlarged. […]
Faymann: I […] My government is prepared for the present EFSF bailout fund and the ESM
to overlap in a way that we erect a higher firewall. […]
Spiegel: Do you want the billions that remain in the European Financial Stability Facility to be
combined with the ESM?
Faymann: […] The financial markets are observing us very closely, and judge our strength by
the height of the firewall. If it’s too low, then we give the markets a reason to speculate
against us. (http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-austrian-chancellor-
faymann-don-t-overestimate-the-fiscal-pact-a-812299.html)
(17a) Spiegel: Auch Italien und Spanien sind längst nicht aus der Gefahrenzone. Muss der
Rettungsschirm aufgestockt werden?
Juncker: Ich will nicht über Zahlen sprechen, sondern über das Prinzip: Die Brandmauer
muss so hoch sein, damit das Feuer, das in Griechenland brennt, nicht auf andere
europäische Häuser übergreift. Wir haben ja den bisherigen Rettungsschirm EFSF […]
(Spiegel 6/2/2012, p. 27)
(17b) Spiegel: Italy and Spain are also by no means out of the danger zone. Does the EU’s
backstop fund need to be boosted?
Juncker: I don’t want to talk about figures, but about the principle instead. The firewall needs
to be high enough to stop the fire that is burning in Greece from setting other European
houses ablaze. We have of course the current EFSF (European Financial Stability Facility)
bailout fund, […] (Translated from the German by Josh Ward.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/euro-group-president-jean-claude-juncker-if-
greece-doesn-t-reform-it-can-t-expect-solidarity-a-813524.html)
It can only be speculated whether Juncker used ‘Rettungsschirm’ in order to
establish an explicit link to the journalists’ question, but he may simply be more used
to a discourse of the firewall metaphor due to his role as the president of the euro
group (see extract 15 above). As a citizen of Luxembourg, Juncker is competent in
German, and it may thus well be that the interview was held in German. The
interview with the Italian prime minister Mario Monti, however, is more complex.
Monti does not speak German himself, which means that the interview may have
been conducted in Italian, or in German and Italian with the help of an interpreter.
We see the same strategy in rendering ‘Rettungsschirm’ into English (18b), whereas
the use of ‘Rettungsschirm’ by Monti himself may well be the choice of the
journalists (or the interpreter) to establish coherence (the umbrella image is not used
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CHRISTINA SCHÄFFNER
in authentic Italian texts on the crisis in the euro zone). There is no explicit indication
of translation and the translator in (18), compared to some of the other extracts.
(18a) Spiegel: […] gemeinsam mit den europäischen Rettungsschirmen Staatsanleihen von
Schuldnerländern zu kaufen […]
Monti: Nein. Wenn Sie die Auflagen der europäischen Rettungsschirme lesen würden […]
(Spiegel 6/8/2012, p. 44)
(18b) Spiegel: […] possibly together with European bailout funds, to buy sovereign bonds
from indebted member states
Monti: No. If you read the requirements of the European bailout funds […]
(http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-on-the-euro-crisis-with-italian-prime-
minister-mario-monti-a-848511.html)
The examples below from news reports and commentaries show the same
procedure of rendering the metaphorical expression ‘Rettungsschirm’ as a more
general term (even varying between ‘rescue fund’ and ‘bailout fund’ in extract 19).
The collocations with the verbs (‘schlüpfen’, ‘aufspannen’) have equally been turned
into more general and factual formulations.
(19a) Spanien, [...] wann es unter den Rettungsschirm schlüpfen muss. (Spiegel 25/6/2012,
p. 18)
(19b) Spain, [...] is forced to ask for a bailout, [...]
(Tr. Ch. Sultan, http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/debt-crisis-threatens-the-european-
way-of-life-a-840643.html)
(20a) Künftig kann die Zentralbank Anleihen der Krisenländer aufkaufen, sofern diese vorher
unter den europäischen Rettungsschirm flüchten. […] der dauerhafte Rettungsschirm
ESM [...]. (Spiegel 10/9/2012, p. 24)
(20b) In the future, the ECB will be able to purchase sovereign bonds from crisis-ridden
countries, provided these member states have already requested aid from the euro-zone
rescue fund […] the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the permanent successor to
the current rescue fund [...].
(Tr. P. Cohen, http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/spiegel-commentary-on-ecb-bond-
purchase-program-a-854851.html)
(21a) Der Rettungsschirm kann aufgespannt werden […] Bei einem Telefonat am
vergangenen Montag fragte Seehofer Merkel, ob die neue EZB-Politik bedeute, dass ein Land
unter dem Rettungsschirm unbegrenzt Hilfe bekommen könne. […] Bislang sollen 22
Milliarden Euro beim Rettungsschirm eingezahlt werden, […] (Spiegel 17/9/2012, p. 32)
(21b) The ESM can now be ratified, […] During a telephone call last Monday, Seehofer
asked Merkel if the ECB’s new policy meant that a country that applied for assistance with
the permanent rescue fund could secure unlimited aid. […] Germany must pay €22 billion in
cash into the permanent bailout fund.
(http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/unlimited-liability-legal-hurdles-ahead-in-effort-
to-save-euro-a-856226.html)
It seems that the metaphorical expression of the ‘Rettungsschirm’ is used more
frequently in German journalistic texts than in official policy documents, political
speeches, and interviews. A search on the website of the German federal government
in the section providing speeches showed interesting differences in the frequency of
terms. Searching for ‘Rettungsschirm’ brought up 14 speeches, 18 speeches for
‘Firewall’, 4 for ‘Brandmauer’, compared to 370 links to speeches for ‘ESM’ and
317 for ‘EFSF’. These texts are translated into English by the translation department
of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which also caters for the translation
needs of the Federal Chancellor and the Federal President. The illustrative examples
below also show consistency in the rendering. Extract (22) comes from a speech by
79
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
(22b) [...] through the new permanent rescue package, the European Stability
Mechanism.
(http://archiv.bundesregierung.de/ContentArchiv/EN/Archiv17/Reden/2012/2012-11-07-
merkel-eu.html)
(23a) [...] inwiefern die Länder bereit sind, füreinander Haftung zu übernehmen und
sich mit einer „firewall“, wie man so schön sagt, zu umgeben. […].
Wir haben einen temporären Rettungsschirm, die EFSF […] Wir haben diesen
Schirm flexibilisiert.
(http://archiv.bundesregierung.de/ContentArchiv/DE/Archiv17/Reden/2012/01/2012-01-25-
bkin-davos.html)
(23b) […] the extent to which countries are prepared to assume each other’s liabilities and to
surround themselves with a firewall. […]
We have a temporary rescue package, the EFSF, […] We’ve made this package flexible.
(http://archiv.bundesregierung.de/ContentArchiv/EN/Archiv17/Reden/2012/2012-01-25-bkin-
rede-davos.html)
What is also of interest in extract (23) is Merkel’s metacommunicative comment
‘wie man so schön sagt’ (roughly: ‘as may be said’). The use of scare quotes for
‘firewall’ is an additional signal that the label is not commonly used in German
discourse. The kind of distancing is also reflected in Merkel’s continuation of her
speech where she uses the more familiar umbrella image again. In the English
translation, these metacommunicative signals have not been reproduced.
For Merkel’s media interview, the French version has been included in my
analysis as well.
(24a) Süddeutsche Zeitung: Bei allen Milliardenhilfen und Rettungsschirmen müssen auch
wir Deutsche aufpassen, dass uns am Schluss nicht auch die Kraft ausgeht, […]
(24b) The Guardian: Amid all the billions in financial assistance and rescue packages, we
Germans also need to watch that we don’t run out of steam. […]
(24c) Le Monde: Vu les milliards d’aides et les fonds de secours, nous, Allemands, devons
nous aussi faire attention si nous ne voulons pas, un jour, être bout de forces […]
‘Fonds de secours européen’ is the official term used in French, which is also
formally equivalent to the English ‘rescue fund’. In terms of translation strategy, this
rendering too leads to the disappearance of the umbrella image. The comparison of
multilingual texts reveals even more interesting findings if we go beyond the specific
focus on the metaphorical expression ‘Rettungsschirm’. In the German extract,
Merkel uses an idiomatic expression (‘die Kraft ausgeht’, roughly: lose one’s
strength). The French text is very similar to the German one, whereas in the English
translation, a metaphorical expression is used (‘run out of steam’). This would be an
example of Toury’s strategy of non-metaphor into metaphor.
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CHRISTINA SCHÄFFNER
81
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
82
CHRISTINA SCHÄFFNER
fellow interpreters. Extract (26) is from the joint press conference between
Chancellor Merkel and the French President Sarkozy, held in Berlin on 9 January
2012. It was interpreted consecutively.
(26a) Frage: Herr Präsident, Frau Bundeskanzlerin, sind die Brandschutzmauern, die Sie jetzt
in Europa hochgezogen haben, stark genug bzw. hoch genug, um eine Insolvenz
Griechenlands auszuhalten, ohne dass es dann zu Verwerfungen auf dem Finanzmarkt kommt
9
oder weitere Länder aus dem Euroraum ausscheiden müssten?
(http://archiv.bundesregierung.de/ContentArchiv/DE/Archiv17/Mitschrift/Pressekonferenzen/2
012/01/2012-01-09-merkel-sarkozy.html)
The website of the French government provides the transcript of this press
conference in French, and we can see how this question had been rendered from
German into French by the interpreter.
(26b) QUESTION: Monsieur le président, Madame la chancelière, les pare-feu que vous avez
construits suffisent-ils pour protéger d’une faillite de la Grèce et éviter toute contagion à
d’autres pays de la zone euro?10
(http://www.rpfrance.eu/IMG/pdf/09_01_Conference_de_presse_conjointe_A-Merkel.pdf)
The generalisation to protection and the further elaboration around contagion can
be interpreted as evidence of the interpreter’s familiarity with the discourse used by
the politicians and his/her own active involvement in the previous discussion. This
final example also makes us aware of the wider context in which translation and
interpreting are embedded. We are just at the start of exciting and much-needed
transdisciplinary research into the interplay between institutional practices, the
policies by which they are determined, the situational context in which a particular
instance of translation or interpreting occurs, and the linguistic and discursive
features evident in the product (for news translation and political institutions see
Schäffner and Bassnett 2010, Schäffner 2012c). As we have seen, such
investigations, conducted from the perspective of modern Translation Studies, can
make a vital contribution to metaphor research as well.
References
Al-Harrasi, A. (2001) Metaphor in (Arabic-into-English) translation, with specific reference
to metaphorical concepts and expressions in political discourse. Unpublished PhD thesis,
Aston University.
Charteris-Black, J. (2004) Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis, Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Chilton, P. (1996) Security Metaphors: Cold War Discourse from Containment to Common
House, New York: Lang.
Dagut, M. (1976) ‘Can ‘metaphor’ be translated?’, Babel 22 (1), 21-33.
Fairclough, N. (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis, London: Longman.
Holmes, J. (1972/2004) ‘The Name and Nature of Translation Studies’, in L. Venuti (ed.)
The Translation Studies Reader, 2nd ed., London/New York: Routledge, 180-192.
Kimmel, M. (2010) ‘Why we mix metaphors (and mix them well): Discourse coherence,
conceptual metaphor, and beyond’, Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2), 97-115.
9
“Mister President, Madam Chancellor, are the firewalls which you have erected in Europe strong or
high enough to stop an insolvency of Greece and without risking disruptions on the financial market
and other countries being forced to leave the euro zone?”.
10
“Mister President, Madam Chancellor, are the firewalls which you have erected sufficient to protect
an insolvency of Greece and to avoid contagion to other countries in the euro zone?”.
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Kövecses, Z. (1995) ‘The “container” metaphor of anger in English, Chinese, Japanese and
Hungarian’, in R. Zdravko (ed.) From a Metaphorical Point of View: A Multidisciplinary
Approach to the Cognitive Content of Metaphor, Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter,
117-147.
Kövecses, Z. (2005) Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Kövecses, Z. (2006) Language, Mind and Culture. A Practical Introduction, London/New
York: Oxford University Press.
Lakoff, G.; Johnson, M. (1980) Metaphors We Live By, Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press.
Mason, I. (ed.). (2001) Triadic Exchanges. Studies in Dialogue Interpreting, Manchester:
St. Jerome.
Mauranen, A. (2002) ‘Will ‘translationese’ ruin a contrastive study?’, Languages in Contrast
2 (2), 161-185.
Musolff, A. (2000) Mirror Images of Europe. The imagery used in the public debate about
European Politics in Britain and Germany, München: iudicium.
Musolff, A. (2004), Metaphor and Political Discourse, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Newmark, P. (1981) Approaches to Translation, Oxford: Pergamon.
Schäffner, Ch. (2004) ‘Metaphor and translation: Some implications of a cognitive
approach’, Journal of Pragmatics 36 (7), 1253-1269.
Schäffner, Ch. (2005) ‘Bringing a German voice to English-speaking readers: Spiegel
International’, Language and Intercultural Communication 5 (2), 154-167.
Schäffner, Ch. (2012a) ‘Press conferences and recontextualisation’, in I. Alonso Araguás; J.
Baigorri Jalón; H. Campbell (eds) Ensayos sobre traducción jurídica e institucional.
Essays on legal and institutional translation [Interlingua 106], Granada: Editorial
Comares, 69-83.
Schäffner, Ch. (2012b) ‘Finding space under the umbrella: the Euro crisis, metaphors, and
translation’, The Journal of Specialised Translation 17, 250-270,
http://www.jostrans.org/issue17/issue17_toc.php (last accessed on 16/5/2013).
Schäffner, Ch. (2012c) ‘Unknown Agents in Translated Political Discourse’, Target 24 (1),
103-125.
Schäffner, Ch.; Bassnett, S. (eds) (2010) Political Discourse, Media and Translation,
Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Schäffner, Ch.; Shuttleworth, M. (2013) ‘Metaphor in translation: possibilities for process
research’, Target 25 (1), 93-106.
Stienstra, N. (1993) YHWH is the Husband of His People. Analysis of a biblical metaphor
with special reference to translation, Kampen: Kok Pharos.
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Van den Broeck, R. (1981) ‘The limits of translatability exemplified by metaphor
translation’, Poetics Today 2 (4), 73-87.
84
Translating figures in the domain of business and
economics: A rhetorical role for terminology?
MIRELLA AGORNI
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano, Sede di Brescia
Abstract: In recent years scholars have shown renewed attention to the notion of
translators’ agency. Translators adjust texts to a new communicative situation and the
choices they make at linguistic and textual level are the evidence of their mediation. In
this article I will analyse a translation assignment completed by a class of advanced
students of English for Specific Purposes enrolled in a postgraduate Degree Course in
Foreign Languages and Literatures in Italy. The students were asked to translate an
unsigned article from The Economist, which is a complex discussion of management
practices in post-apartheid South Africa, displaying the use of figurative language in a
subtly ironic way. Rhetorical devices play an important role in the popularised
literature of Economics (Herrera-Soler; M. White 2012; Charteris-Black 2000, 2001,
2004; Henderson 2000, etc.). In the case of the text considered here, translators could
choose to clarify or iron out some of the ambiguities of the ST, thus creating a more
coherent specialised TT than the original. On the other hand, they may decide to
highlight and reinforce rhetorical devices, making it hard for the reader to identify
with some of the positions offered by the ST. This article focuses on the translation of
terminology, which is given a peculiar figurative value in the ST. Technical terms are
translated with comparable terminology, rather than substituted by paraphrases or
more accessible terms. The reason behind this choice is strictly connected with the
persuasive and evaluative role terminology is called to play in this text.
Keywords: metaphor studies; translation studies; LSP; economics and business
discourse.
1. Theoretical premise
The constant movement and contacts of people from different countries and
cultures is producing changes in the way communication is structured and discourse
is regulated. Changes affect the role translators are asked to perform: they produce
‘mediated’ types of discourse, in the sense that their knowledge and loyalties are split
between different linguistic and cultural systems. Not only are translators called to
adjust to the large variety of settings which correspond to varied contemporary forms
of professionalism, but they must also provide diverse solutions for the specific
conditions they have to work under. Such a diversification of translators’ tasks and
roles has brought about discussions about the kinds and degrees of mediation implied
in given translation acts. The notion of translational ‘mediation’ has been defined as
“the extent to which translators intervene in the transfer process, feeding their own
knowledge and beliefs into their processing of a text” (Hatim, Mason 1997: 147).
David Katan (2004) has stressed the cultural component of the act of mediation:
discourse must be adjusted to new communicative situations by working on the
discursive and pragmatic dimension of cross-cultural transfer. Questions of agency
and accountability have become an integral part of the translator’s task, and,
conversely, decision-making processes have been debated both in methodological
and theoretical terms. Discussions about mediation and degrees of translatorial
Agorni, Mirella, ‘Translating figures in the domain of business and economics: A rhetorical role for
terminology?’, in Donna R. Miller; Enrico Monti (eds) Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative Language,
Bologna, CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 85-98.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
intervention have also posed the question of whether or not to limit, or at least define,
the translator’s space of manoeuvre, and often associated this problem with the
limited nature of the very act of translation.
Dynamic conceptualisations of equivalence, dating back to Nida (1964), have
demonstrated the impossibility for translation projects to reproduce all the
components and nuances of their so-called originals. Functionalists have brought
forward the argument that only certain aspects of the Source Text (henceforth ST)
can be reproduced in accordance with specific translation goals, or skopos (Reiss
2000; Nord 1997; House 1997). Also André Lefevere’s (1992: 7-8) early notion of
translations as “slanted images” (standing for their source-texts), subject to
discursive and cultural pressures, reminds us of the partial or metonymical nature of
translation.
In my view these developments share a distrust in metaphorical models of
representation, which are equated with the logic of substitution or replacement, that
is, with the vertical, or paradigmatic dimension of language, in Jakobson’s terms.
Such a negative view seems to be based on a deep-rooted rejection of a traditional
notion of equivalence, conceived as a symmetric process of signification, and
reminiscent of structural models of language. Furthermore, metaphorical modes of
translation appear to be incorrectly associated with prescriptive approaches, which
limit the translator’s autonomy and decision-making capacity; as a consequence, the
applied dimension of translation may risk not taking into adequate consideration the
crucial role of metaphorical processes.
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MIRELLA AGORNI
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
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MIRELLA AGORNI
2002), concentrating on the effects produced on the target pole. They argued that
literal equivalents of metaphorical expressions are deliberately singled out by
translators as a strategy to reproduce at one and the same time the two main functions
of metaphors, that is the technical and the stylistic functions. The new metaphorical
expressions generated by this procedure are similarity-creating metaphors (Indurkhya
1992), which in fact create a new similarity between the target and the source
domains, and, at the same time, reproduce the novelty and vividness of the original
metaphor.
Indurkhya’s distinction between similarity-based metaphors and similarity-
creating metaphors plays a crucial role in these works. Similarity-based metaphors
“[…] invite the reader to make a comparison between the source and the target, as
the transference of meaning is based on some existing similarity between the two”
(Indurkhya 1992: 2), whereas similarity-creating metaphors include cases in which
“[…] there are no similarities between the source and the target when the metaphor is
first encountered. Yet, after the metaphor is assimilated […], there are similarities
between the two” (Indurkhya 1992: 2). The first type of metaphors are used in order
to highlight features which are already present in a certain source area, but which can
be associated in different ways. Similarity-creating metaphors, on the other hand,
create new links between domains displaying no previous similarities.
In other words, this use of metaphors focuses on a generative mechanism capable
of producing new insights. Thanks to the high competence of translators in the
specialised discourse of economics, new conceptual mappings are introduced into the
target language – mappings which could not be originally produced by the target
system itself, but could be introduced by means of a creative strategy of translation,
capable of reproducing both the aesthetic and the referential function of specialised
terms. In the long run, the result of this procedure may be the formation of new
terms, or metaphorical neologisms, which integrate specific terminological areas.
These new terms appear to be particularly effective: literal and metaphorical
meanings are simultaneously activated, readers perceive their figurative value, and
yet recognise their terminological function. Readers’ expectations are flouted, as
these words produce a defamiliarisation effect. Against this background I shall argue
that terminology may be called to play a significant rhetorical role in specific
specialised discourses such as popular business discourse, which makes frequent use
of an ideology-charged language, and persuasive and evaluative discourse markers.
This opens up a series of problematic issues in translation, requiring a high degree of
translatorial intervention, or mediation.
At this point I would address the applied dimension of translation, analysing a
semi-specialised text published in 1995 in the Business and Economics section of the
periodical The Economist, and submitted for translation to a class of advanced
students of English for Specific Purposes in a Postgraduate Degree Course in Foreign
Languages in Italy. In a previous article, which was more pedagogy-oriented, I
analysed translators’ choices, and concluded by pointing to the necessity of a more
detailed investigation of the function of terminology in the ST and its rendering in
translation (Agorni 2008: 200-201). A quick examination suggested that the technical
terms employed in the ST were used not only in a referential sense, but also
figuratively, in order to contribute to the text’s ideological value. Significantly, terms
were translated with comparable terminology, rather than being substituted by means
of paraphrases or by employing more accessible terms for a semi-specialised
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
readership. Now I would like to argue that the reason behind this strategy has to do
less with the semantics of these terms than with their covert persuasive and
evaluative role, which contributes to the overall text’s ideological value.
1
Skorczynska and Deignan (2006: 95-101) argued that the intended readership of a text and its
primary purpose are fundamental factors in metaphor choice, probably as relevant as subject matter.
Corpus analysis enabled them to identify the most important functions of metaphors in popular
economic and business texts, so as to classify them as “generic metaphors” (those which are not
genre-specific, but are general in the language, functioning as a “central organising device”) and those
filling terminological gaps. A third type of metaphors, playing a modelling role (those used to explore
or extend economic thought) are not so numerous in this kind of text, whereas they are central devices
in scientific Business and Economics discourse.
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MIRELLA AGORNI
1 South Africa’s quest to dignify black culture has reached white business. “Ubuntu” is the
latest buzzword dreamt up by management theorists to describe what they say is a uniquely
South African fusion of tribal tradition and modern management techniques. “If the social and
oral vitality of black South Africans can be married to northern rationalism, in a high-
performance ubuntu, a powerful new way to do business could emerge”, argues Nick Binedell,
director of the Wits university business school in Johannesburg, in a recent issue of
Transformation, a magazine published by Gemini Consulting.
2 Ubuntu, explains Mr Binedell rather opaquely, means: “I can only be me through your
eyes.” A literal translation from the Xhosa and Zulu is a little more enlightening: the word
means humanity, or dignity. The term ubuntu actually comes from the phrase “Umuntu
ngumuntu ngabantu”, which means “A human is human because of other people”. In short, the
word implies the startling observation that if you treat people well they will perform better.
3 Which, given South Africa’s history of racial oppression, seems an odd concept to spring
from the place. Still, South African managers, white as well as black, are keen to put the past
behind them. Long rigidly hierarchical and paternalistic, South African companies have started
to experiment with new management methods such as performance-related pay and
decentralisation. Political pressure to increase the proportion of black managers from the
current 2% or so has coincided with a realisation in management circles that blacks might
know a thing or two about motivating their fellow blacks.
4 Reg Lascaris, who runs a big advertising agency, and Mike Lipkin, a marketing
consultant, who have written a book on business lessons from Africa, point to a few examples.
Pick’n Pay, a supermarket chain, has decentralised into 20 regional business units, with blacks
in about half the management positions. Premier Group, a food company, has introduced
“awareness programmes” to help employees bridge the divide created by apartheid; its former
chairman, Peter Wrighton, introduced the idea of meetings to explain equity ratios and trading
margins to his factory workers. Nampack, the country’s biggest packaging firm, now
“mentors” black workers to help them into management jobs.
5 The trouble is that ubuntu seems to mean almost anything one chooses. According to Mr
Binedell, it implies both a “customer-focused” organisation and the view of a company as an
“integrated system”: South Africans, he thinks, “have an intuitive understanding of the
essentially circular shape of holism.” Other advocates suggest it means “the importance of
perception as opposed to reality” in managing change; or affirmative actions; or simply
working together in teams. A cynic might say that it just means treating blacks less badly.
The Economist, March 18th 1995
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1 Il sogno sudafricano di rivalutare la cultura nera è penetrato fin nel mondo degli affari dei
bianchi. ‘Ubuntu’ è l’ultima trovata che si sono inventati gli aziendalisti per descrivere ciò che,
a loro dire, sarebbe una miscela tipicamente africana fra tradizione tribale e moderni principi di
gestione aziendale. “Se la vitalit tipica della societ e della cultura orale dei neri sudafricani
potesse coniugarsi ad un razionalismo di tipo nordico, e dar vita ad un ubuntu ad alto
rendimento, si potrebbe ottenere un nuovo e rivoluzionario modo di fare affari,” sostiene Nick
Binedell, direttore della scuola di direzione aziendale della Wits University a Johannesburg, in
un numero recente della rivista Transformation, pubblicata da Gemini Consulting.
2 Ubuntu, spiega in modo alquanto enigmatico Mr Binedell, significa “posso essere me
stesso solo attraverso i tuoi occhi”. Una traduzione letterale dalla lingua Xhosa e Zulu è forse
più comprensibile: la parola significa umanità o dignità. Il termine ubuntu deriva
originariamente dalla frase “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” che significa “Un essere umano è
umano grazie agli altri”. Per farla breve, l’espressione suggerisce la brillante scoperta del fatto
che se le persone vengono trattate bene, rendono di più.
3 Data la storia di oppressione razziale in Sudafrica, sembra strano che un’idea del genere
sia nata proprio qui. D’altra parte, i manager sudafricani, sia bianchi che neri, hanno una gran
voglia di lasciarsi il passato alle spalle. Dopo esser state a lungo gerarchiche e paternaliste, le
compagnie sudafricane hanno iniziato a sperimentare nuove strategie aziendali, come i premi
di rendimento ed il decentramento. La pressione politica ad aumentare la percentuale di
manager neri rispetto all’attuale 2% circa, è coincisa con l’intuizione geniale da parte dei
gruppi dirigenti che i neri possono saperne qualcosa di come motivare la propria gente.
4 Reg Lascaris, che dirige una grande agenzia pubblicitaria, e Mike Lipkin, esperto di
marketing, hanno pubblicato una raccolta di lezioni di economia dall’Africa, e indicano alcuni
esempi. Pick’n Pay, una catena di supermercati, ha operato un decentramento in 20 unit
regionali, in cui i neri occupano circa la metà delle posizioni manageriali. Premier Group, una
compagnia di prodotti alimentari, ha iniziato dei “programmi di sensibilizzazione” per aiutare i
dipendenti a superare le barriere create dall’apartheid; l’ex-presidente del gruppo, Peter
Wrighton, aveva già introdotto dei seminari per illustrare i concetti di indice di redditività e
margine operativo agli operai. Nampak, la principale societ d’imballaggi del paese,
oggigiorno offre un vero e proprio “servizio di assistenza” per aiutare i dipendenti neri a
raggiungere posizioni dirigenziali.
5 Il guaio è che sembra che ubuntu possa voler dire qualsiasi cosa. Secondo Mr Binedell, la
parola implica sia un’organizzazione “a misura di cliente”, che il concetto dell’azienda come
“sistema integrato”: a suo parere, infatti, i sudafricani “hanno una concezione intuitiva della
forma essenzialmente circolare dei sistemi olistici”. Altri fautori dell’ubuntu suggeriscono
significati diversi: “l’importanza dell’intuizione di contro alla realt ” nella gestione dei
cambiamenti, le cosiddette azioni positive, o anche soltanto il lavoro di squadra. Cinicamente,
si potrebbe dire che questo significa semplicemente trattare un po’ meno male i neri.
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MIRELLA AGORNI
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
A series of terms dealing again with the concept area of management are found in
P. 3: “South-African managers” (line 5); “new management methods” (line 4);
“companies” (line 4); “black managers” (line 7), and “management circle” (line 8).
Translators opt consistently for comparable Italian terminology. However, in the
middle of the paragraph, terms which do not strictly belong to the same semantic
chain are introduced, e.g., “performance-related pay” (line 6) and “decentralization”
(line 6). Although they are not so complex as to represent a serious obstacle for a
semi-specialised readership, they require a certain degree of effort, simply because
they are not contextualised. Translators opt for corresponding Italian terms, “i premi
di rendimento” and “il decentramento”, and do not introduce further contextual clues.
These expressions are also accessible to an uninitiated Italian reader, who is given
the impression of following an increasingly specialised argument, just as in the ST.
P. 4 displays another two cases of non-contextualised terminology: “equity ratios”
(line 8) and “trading margins” (line 9). These terms, unlike the previous ones, are
more difficult to understand for a non-specialised readership, further discouraged by
the lack of an adequately disambiguating co-text, which could have signalled a
particular use of terminology, but doesn’t; this strategy appears to sanction an overt
figurative exploitation of terminology.
Thus, in spite of the fact that specialised terminology is increasingly used in a
figurative way in the second part of this text, drawing a clear-cut line between literal
and figurative meaning appears to be extremely difficult. Specialised terms provide
an ambiguous “technical flavour”, which eventually produces a defamiliarisation
effect that contributes to the overall ironic tone of the article. The denotative
meaning of these terms is not discarded, but seems to acquire a sort of metaphorical
connotation, and the two meanings, literal and figurative, appear to be
simultaneously active. Once again, translators choose comparable terminology
belonging to the area of Business and Economics: “indice di redditivit ” and
“margine operativo”. Uninitiated readers will not be able to entirely grasp the
concepts behind these terms, but will appreciate their technical “flavour” and
connotative substance. The case of the expression “awareness programmes” (P. 4,
line 6) is very similar, in spite of the fact that the phrase belongs to the domain of
human rights and equal opportunities, which seems to be rather removed from the
Business world. Translators maintain the same level of ambiguity, emphasised by the
use of brackets: “‘programmi di sensibilizzazione’”.
At the end of the paragraph, the word “mentor” (P. 4, line 10) is given special
emphasis, and its metaphorical weight is signalled by the use of inverted commas.
The Business world has revived this term, giving it the meaning of career advice
rather than moral and personal support. In other words, “mentor” has been taken out
of its original domain (Education), and applied to the context of new management
theories through a metaphorical process, according to the term formation practice
illustrated above. The result is a similarity-creating metaphor, particularly effective
because it creates a new perspective by associating two fields, Economics and
Education, which do not share much common ground. The unexpected view which
opens up before the reader is in line with the defamiliarisation process already at
work in the manipulation of the function of specialised terms. The TT solution, “un
vero e proprio servizio di assistenza”, is interesting because it is the only case in
which the translators decide to focus only on the referential meaning of this
metaphor, the result being a long phrase which provides a fully contextualised
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MIRELLA AGORNI
5. Conclusion
A more extensive analysis of translatorial choices at textual/linguistic level has
demonstrated elsewhere the extent of mediation necessary in the case of this
complex, ideology-charged ST (Agorni 2008). The translators had to go through a
delicate decision-making process, as they were called to take up a position even in
those cases in which they chose to reproduce the ST author’s ideological stance, i.e. a
systematic refusal of racism, expressed in a variety of ways.
Two main options were available for the translation of this text: either to stress the
ironic and distancing components of figurative language, so as to make it difficult for
the reader to identify with some of the (racist) positions offered by the ST, or
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98
The conceptual metaphors MONEY IS A LIQUID and
ECONOMY IS A LIVING ORGANISM in Romanian translations
of European Central Bank documents
LUCIANA SABINA TCACIUC
Aston University, Birmingham, UK
Abstract: Metaphor is often associated with literature and less with specialised texts.
Yet, according to Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) conceptual metaphor theory, our
conceptual system is fundamentally metaphorical in nature and we can find metaphors
in all types of texts. The texts translated in the European Union institutions, despite
their specialised nature, contain a lot of metaphors, as metaphors structure our whole
understanding of the world and are pervasive elements of thought and speech. The
aim of this paper is to investigate the strategies for translating metaphorical
expressions belonging to the conceptual metaphors MONEY IS A LIQUID and ECONOMY
IS A LIVING ORGANISM in a corpus of texts translated at the European Central Bank.
The corpus used comprises economic documents translated at the European Central
Bank from English into Romanian (specialised documents such as monthly bulletins,
annual reports, but also brochures and information material, totalling about
1,000,000 words for each language version). Using corpus analysis (the WordSmith
software), the most frequent metaphorical expressions are identified in the source
language and the target language. The most prevalent translation strategies that have
been discovered during the course of the present study are retaining the metaphor,
image shift and demetaphorisation. These findings are in line with the research on
translating metaphor: Deignan et al. (1997), Pecican (2007a, 2007b). In Romanian,
the conceptual framework of the examined metaphors is quite similar to the one in
English. It has been noticed that in Romanian there is sometimes a tendency to
demetaphorise the English economic metaphors, to add explanations or to replace
them with other metaphors due to their novelty and cultural implications and the lack
of a well-established economic vocabulary in Romanian, as is also noted by Dobrotă
& Maftei (2002), Pârlog (2011), Pecican (2007a, 2007b).
Keywords: conceptual metaphor theory, European Central Bank, Romanian,
economic texts.
1. Introduction
It has long been acknowledged that metaphors do not belong exclusively to the
domain of literature: they are an integral part of both our everyday speech and
professional discourse. Using corpus analysis, this paper explores strategies for
translating metaphor in documents produced and translated at the European Central
Bank (ECB). Using Lakoff & Johnson’s (1980) conceptual metaphor theory, it
focuses on two economic conceptual metaphors prevalent in the corpus of ECB texts
– MONEY IS A LIQUID and ECONOMY IS A LIVING ORGANISM. The source and target
languages chosen for the analysis are English and Romanian respectively. Romanian
was chosen because it is a fairly new language in the European Union discourse; it is
also a language with relatively little experience in developing its own economic
vocabulary, having entered the global market in the 1990s. Therefore, the purpose
was to explore what translation strategies ECB translators would adopt when dealing
Tcaciuc, Luciana Sabina, ‘The conceptual metaphors MONEY IS A LIQUID and ECONOMY IS A LIVING ORGANISM in
Romanian translations of European Central Bank documents’, in Donna R. Miller; Enrico Monti (eds) Tradurre
Figure / Translating Figurative Language, Bologna, CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN
1979-932X, pp. 99-112.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
with the figurative language of economics. The study is descriptive: it focuses purely
on the translation product, without referring to the institutional requirements of the
ECB regarding translation.
2. Theoretical framework
2.1. Conceptual metaphor theory
In this study, Lakoff & Johnson’s (1980) conceptual metaphor theory will be
employed. Unlike the traditional point of view, which states that metaphor is a
linguistic phenomenon occurring at word level, whose function is predominantly
rhetorical and aesthetic (e.g. Deignan 2005), Lakoff & Johnson’s theory suggests that
metaphor is a cognitive phenomenon and our entire thinking is organised
metaphorically. Within the conceptual metaphor theory, Lakoff & Johnson (1980: 5)
define metaphor as understanding and experiencing one concept in terms of another:
an abstract, unfamiliar notion (“target domain”) is referred to in words used to
describe a familiar, concrete one (“source domain”). Those “domains of experience”
are not isolated notions, but rather broad, holistic concepts that can be conveyed
using a wide range of metaphorical expressions:
INFLATION IS AN ENTITY (AND AN ADVERSARY): “deal with inflation”, “combat inflation”
(Lakoff, Johnson 1980: 3).
ECONOMIC GROWTH IS HEALTH; CRISIS IS SICKNESS: “thriving industry”, “economic paralysis”,
“crippling strike”, “healthy economic climate”, “economic revival” (Boers 1999).
GEOGRAPHICAL REGIONS ARE CONTAINERS FOR INDIVIDUALS. For example, “in the Euro area”,
“outside the Euro area”, “non-euro area”, “across the Euro area” (Muntigl 2002).
Therefore, this theory allows us to explore metaphors at textual level instead of
word level, which suits the purpose of this study.
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LUCIANA SABINA TCACIUC
consequently, use more powerful language, creating more terrifying, depressing images than
their Romanian peers.
(Pârlog 2011: 70)
Therefore, according to the quote above, metaphors are subjective and culture-
bound. Pârlog (2011) also found instances when some metaphorical patterns in one
language do not have a correspondent in the other language. This poses a challenge
when translating into languages which do not share the same conceptual framework.
Dobrotă & Maftei (2002), in the perspective of translation studies, analysed the
translation of economic metaphors from English into Romanian, in order to examine
the structure and different types of economic metaphors and to establish strategies
for their accurate translation into Romanian. Their conclusions are that:
[i]t is obvious that in the Romanian translation the metaphorical terms were slightly ‘cooled
down’, preserving more of their function of enlivening the usually plain specialized language
rather than their form, which appears as too informal to be suitable in the context.
(Dobrotă, Maftei 2002: 313)
The scholars claim that the specialised language of economics is unequally
developed in the two languages: whereas English has a “soundly established
vocabulary in the field, Romanian has just engaged on the path to integrating its
economy, and therefore its specialized vocabulary, into the European and global
economic system” (Dobrotă, Maftei 2002: 313). The most frequently used translation
strategy encountered is the paraphrase or the conversion of metaphor to sense, “as
such a safe approach ensures the appropriate perception of the ST message”
(Dobrotă, Maftei 2002: 320).
The authors also observe that MONEY IS A LIQUID is one of the most widely used
conceptual frames. This is relevant in the context of the present study, as in the
selected corpus of texts from the European Central Bank this is a very frequently
occurring metaphor. According to the findings of their study, the metaphorical
expressions that they analysed were translated in two ways:
1. Same conceptual metaphor and equivalent linguistic expression:
liquid assets – bunuri lichide (“liquid goods”); cash flow – circulaţia lichidităţilor
(“circulation of liquidities”), flux de numerar (“flow of cash”); price freeze – îngheţarea
preţurilor (“the freezing of the prices”);
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The fact that Romanian needs to invent terms and search for equivalents is likely to
influence translation strategies and the translators’ choices.
The last strategy is added by Ennis (1998), cited in Pecican (2007a: 76):
These strategies have been identified and analysed in the corpus of texts from the
European Central Bank.
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domains, retaining the conceptual metaphor and the metaphorical expressions will
not always be possible.
Therefore, the main research question of this study would be the following: if
political and economic texts contain a large number of metaphors, and if metaphors
can be ideological and culture-bound, what strategies do translators use to produce
accurate and clear translations in the multilingual and multicultural environment of
the EU in which those documents will be read?
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
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LUCIANA SABINA TCACIUC
The word liquidity is one of the most prominent examples of the conceptual metaphor
MONEY IS A LIQUID, together with the metaphorical expressions that derive from it (e.g.
flow, absorb, drain, etc.). This first example is particularly interesting because, even if it
is a short extract, it contains five instances of metaphorical expressions, demonstrating
the dominance of metaphors in economic texts. In the example above, the metaphorical
expressions belonging to the conceptual metaphor MONEY IS A LIQUID have been retained
in the TT (liquidity – lichiditate; sterilised – sterilizat; reabsorb – absorbţie and inject –
injectare). In general, retention is the most prevalent strategy for this metaphor, as also
demonstrated by Dobrotă & Maftei (2002).
Example 2
To a large extent, these developments reflect Aceste evoluţii reflectă în mare măsură
increased market concerns about the health of temerile sporite ale operatorilor în ceea ce
the banking sector and the stability of the priveşte sănătatea sectorului bancar şi
financial system. stabilitatea sistemului financiar.
(Monthly Bulletin December 2008)
Back translation: These evolutions greatly
reflect the increased fears of operators
regarding the health of the banking sector
and the stability of the financial system.
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Example 3
This section recalls the importance of sound Această secţiune prezintă o nouă analiză a
public finances. importanţei politicilor fiscale sănătoase...
(Monthly Bulletin June 2008)
Back translation: This section presents a new
analysis of the importance of healthy fiscal
policies…
The phrases healthy policy competition and sound clearing and payment systems
reflect the conceptual metaphor ECONOMY IS A LIVING ORGANISM. In the Romanian
target texts, the metaphorical expression used is soliditate (“solidity”), which could
be understood in two ways. On the one hand, solidity can be viewed as an aspect of
health: in English firmness is an aspect of health and infirm also means “unhealthy”.
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Therefore, the conceptual metaphor is the same but the “image” or the expression to
illustrate it is different. On the other hand, the metaphorical expression solid can be
seen as an example of the conceptual metaphor ECONOMY IS A STRUCTURE, implying
the “solidity” of a building.
Example 6
Sound balance sheets, sound risk Poziţii bilanţiere solide, un sistem
management, and transparent as well as funcţional de management al riscurilor şi
robust business models are key to modele de afaceri transparente şi viabile sunt
strengthening the financial soundness of esenţiale pentru consolidarea sănătăţii
banks and their resilience to shocks financiare a sistemului bancar şi a
rezistenţei acestuia la şocuri
(Monthly Bulletin October 2009)
Back translation: Solid balance items, a
functional system of risk management and
transparent and viable business models are
essential for the consolidation of the
financial health of the banking system and
of its resistance to shocks.
With a few exceptions of metaphor retention (see above) the conceptual metaphor
of SOLIDITY is consistent throughout almost all the target texts in both general and
specialised corpora. However, inconsistencies can occur, sometimes even in the same
document. In Example 6 it can be noticed that sound is translated in three different
ways: solid (“solid”), funcţional (“functional”) and soundness is translated as
sănătate (“health”), which points out the lack of consistency. This shows that there is
no set and widely applicable way to translate either economic terminology or
economic metaphors.
Example 7
On 7 December the ECB launched a La data de 7 decembrie BCE a lansat o
liquidity-absorbing fine-tuning operation operaţiune de reglaj fin (ORF) cu scopul
for an amount of up to €8 billion with a de a absorbi excedentul de lichiditate
maturity of five days. [...] On the last day of pentru o valoare de 8 miliarde EUR cu
the maintenance period, the ECB restored scadenţă de cinci zile. […] În ultima zi a
balanced liquidity conditions by conducting perioadei de constituire, BCE a restabilit
a liquidity-draining fine-tuning operation condiţii relativ echilibrate de lichiditate
for an amount of €21 billion with a rate of prin efectuarea unei operaţiuni de reglaj fin
4.00%. cu scopul de a absorbi excedentul de
lichiditate pentru o valoare de 21 miliarde
EUR şi la o rată a dobânzii de 4,00%.
(Monthly Bulletin March 2008)
Back translation: On 7 December the ECB
launched a fine-tuning operation (ORF)
with the aim of absorbing the surplus of
liquidity for a value of 8 billion EUR with a
maturity of five days. […] On the last day of
the maintenance period, the ECB restored
relatively balanced liquidity conditions by
conducting a fine-tuning operation with the
aim of absorbing the surplus of liquidity
for a value of 21 billion EUR and for an
interest rate of 4.00 %.
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LUCIANA SABINA TCACIUC
This excerpt reflects the conceptual metaphor POLICY (which is a part of the
broader economy) IS AN ORGANISM or HEALTHY IS GOOD. In the example above, the
Romanian translation does not have inverted commas around the expression, because
the metaphor is demetaphorised. The English health metaphor is simply replaced by
the word evaluarea (“evaluation”). In the Romanian target text a non-metaphorical
solution was adopted because in this case, if the metaphor were retained, it would not
be perceived as belonging to the economic field in Romanian and the figurative
language is not deemed appropriate in this context.
4.4. Addition
This strategy implies retaining the metaphor and adding elements to it, in order to
provide a further explanation.
Example 12
The positive flow of loans in the second half Fluxul pozitiv al împrumuturilor din semestrul
of the year may have enabled firms to rebuild II 2010 a permis probabil firmelor să îşi
their liquidity buffers towards the end of the reînnoiască rezervele de lichiditate cu rol de
year. tampon spre sfârşitul anului
(Annual Report 2010)
Back translation: The positive flow of loans
in semester II 2010 probably allowed firms to
renew their liquidity reserves with a buffer
role towards the end of the year.
In this excerpt two conceptual metaphors are present: MONEY IS A LIQUID and
INSTITUTIONS ARE BUILDINGS. The former is kept in Romanian (lichiditate), but there
is an addition: liquidity buffers – rezerve de lichiditate cu rol de tampon (“liquidity
reserves with a buffer role”). The additions are rezerve (“reserves”) and cu rol de
(“with the role of”). An explanation for the use of this strategy is that in the target
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
culture the word tampon has connotations which would make it sound inappropriate
without additional information (especially if used in the plural – tampoane, which is
an item of female hygiene), so it has to be accompanied by another term in order to
sound adequate for the specific context (this is why rezerve and cu rol de have been
added).
The metaphorical expression helicopter money is new in English as well (it is also
explained in English and placed between inverted commas). A different image (bani-
cadou – “gift money”, “money offered as a gift”) was used. The translator opted for a
particular expression which led to a change in the conceptual metaphor – not
necessarily because the two languages/cultures conceptualise things differently, but
because a literal translation would not trigger the same associations as the metaphor
triggers in the source text for the source readers. Thus, in the target text another
image was used, that better renders the meaning and connotations of the
metaphorical expression in the source text. Another metaphor that can be noticed in
this extract is MONEY IS AN OBJECT (drops a certain amount of money), which in the
target text is replaced by another conceptual metaphor, MONEY IS A LIQUID
(injectează pe piaţă o anumită sumă de bani – literally, “injects on the market a
certain amount of money”). A reason for adopting this strategy is that, according to
Dagut (1976), a metaphor that is effective in a language can become unusual, even
unintelligible in another language if it is translated literally and not adapted to the
target culture. Moreover, it can be observed that MONEY IS A LIQUID is a prevalent
metaphor in the corpus of texts and operates at text level.
Example 14
minus future predetermined net drains on minus tragerile nete viitoare din deţinerile
foreign currency holdings owing to în valută datorate operaţiunilor reversibile şi
repurchase and forward transactions. forward
(Annual Report 2009)
Back translation: minus net future drawings
from holdings in foreign currency owing to
reversible and forward operations.
Example 15
The recovery was supported mainly by Revirimentul a fost susţinut în principal de
exports, on the back of robust external exporturi, datorită cererii externe robuste, şi
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LUCIANA SABINA TCACIUC
5. Conclusion
This paper has examined strategies that translators at the European Central Bank
use for translating economic metaphors from English into Romanian. Using Lakoff
& Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory and corpus analysis, it focused on two
dominant conceptual metaphors – MONEY IS A LIQUID and ECONOMY IS A LIVING
ORGANISM. It has been found that five strategies were the most frequent: retaining the
metaphor and the metaphorical expression, retaining the metaphor but changing the
expression (image shift), demetaphorisation, addition and changing the conceptual
metaphor and the metaphorical expression. The most prevalent ones among these
five are retaining the metaphor and image shift. This might suggest that generally,
the conceptual frameworks of both languages for the analysed metaphors are similar,
but English economic terminology is more developed and sometimes different
metaphorical expressions are used in the source text and target text. Inconsistencies
in translating metaphorical expressions were found even at sentence level, which
points out that the economic vocabulary in the Romanian language is still evolving.
Moreover, some metaphors were weakened, changed or demetaphorised because of
their novelty and the cultural implications.
References
Baker, M. (1993) ‘Corpus Linguistics and Translation Studies: Implications and
Applications’, in M. Baker; G. Francis; E. Tognini-Bonelli (eds) Text and Technology: In
Honour of John Sinclair, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 233-250.
Baker, M. (1996) ‘Corpus-based Translation Studies: The Challenges that Lie Ahead’, in
H. Somers (ed.) Terminology, LSP and Translation: Studies in Language Engineering in
Honour of Juan C. Sager, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 175-186.
Barcelona, A. (2000) ‘Introduction. The cognitive theory of metaphor and metonymy’, in A.
Barcelona (ed.) Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads. A Cognitive Perspective,
Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1-28.
Bielenia-Grajewska, M. (2009) ‘The role of metaphors in the language of investment
banking’, Ibérica 17, 139-156.
Boers, F. (1999) ‘When a bodily source domain becomes prominent. The joy of counting
metaphors in the socio-economic domain’, in R. W. Gibbs; G. J. Steen (eds) Metaphor in
Cognitive Linguistics, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 47-56.
Dagut, M. B. (1976) ‘Can metaphor be translated?’, Babel 1 (XXII), 21-33.
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112
“Tenere alta la bandiera del socialismo con caratteristiche
cinesi”: Discorso politico cinese e linguaggio figurato in
un’ottica traduttiva
PAOLO MAGAGNIN
Università Ca’ Foscari, Venezia
Magagnin, Paolo, ‘“Tenere alta la bandiera del socialismo con caratteristiche cinesi”: Discorso politico cinese e
linguaggio figurato in un’ottica traduttiva’, in Donna R. Miller; Enrico Monti (eds) Tradurre Figure / Translating
Figurative Language, Bologna, CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 113-122.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
(di seguito DPCC) in una prospettiva semiotica, e quello di Ji Fengyuan (2004), che
enuclea le caratteristiche dell’“ingegneria linguistica” del periodo maoista (1949-
1976). Salem e Wu (2007) hanno operato un’interessante applicazione degli
strumenti di analisi testometrica allo studio delle prolusioni dei congressi del PCC.
Meritano una menzione gli articoli di Qian Gang (2012) sulla natura e
sull’evoluzione delle “parole d’ordine” tipiche del DPCC, pubblicati a ridosso del
XVIII Congresso nell’ambito del China Media Project. Nel settore sinologico
italiano si segnalano gli studi di Lavagnino (2001), Stafutti & Ajani (2008) e Bulfoni
(2010). Il linguaggio figurato nel dibattito politico cinese, così come lo studio dei
problemi che emergono nella sua traduzione, rimane per il momento un ambito
pressoché interamente trascurato: un’eccezione è costituita dagli studi di Zhang Li
张犁 (2008, 2009), il cui merito risiede proprio nell’attenzione per le questioni
relative alla traduzione (in questo caso verso l’inglese) del linguaggio politico cinese,
con particolare riferimento alla resa di alcune figure retoriche.
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PAOLO MAGAGNIN
1
In questo contributo, seguendo la terminologia proposta da Popovič (2006), saranno utilizzati i
termini “prototesto” e “metatesto” in luogo di “testo di partenza” e “testo di arrivo”.
2
Benché nei testi cinesi che riprendono il concetto di dominio concettuale i domini “viaggio” e
“navigazione” siano generalmente tenuti distinti, si è deciso per comodit di farli confluire in un’unica
categoria.
3
Data la lunghezza relativamente contenuta del testo in esame (29.067 caratteri cinesi) è stato
possibile procedere alle rilevazioni utilizzando semplicemente gli strumenti offerti dal programma di
trattamento testi Pages, invece di ricorrere a software per le concordanze impiegati nell’analisi
testometrica di testi cinesi (ICTCLAS, ecc.).
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
4
La traduzione inglese dei passi qui riportati è tratta dalla versione inglese ufficiale della relazione di
Hu Jintao. Il testo cinese e la sua traduzione inglese sono stati pubblicati entrambi sul sito web
dell’Agenzia di Stampa Xinhua (Xinhua tongxunshe 新华通讯社), principale agenzia di informazione
governativa della PRC. L’autore della traduzione inglese è anonimo, mentre rimane poco chiaro il
ruolo dell’“editor” Yang Lina, che figura nella pagina web della versione inglese.
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PAOLO MAGAGNIN
Nel testo cinese i livelli di base (jiceng zuzhi 基层组织) del PCC sono definiti
zhandou baolei 战斗堡垒 (fortezza di lotta), immagine sottolineata dal verbo dailing
带领 (guidare in battaglia). Anche qui – come nel caso dell’esempio precedente – è
evidente come la metafora bellica non sia limitata all’operato del Partito ma
coinvolga direttamente il popolo, qui assimilato alle truppe condotte in battaglia: in
questo modo, alla metafora concettuale IL PARTITO È UN ESERCITO già individuata si
affianca IL POPOLO CINESE È UN ESERCITO. Il riferimento alla “fortezza”, inoltre,
costituisce un’interessante variante della metafora bellica: nella traduzione ufficiale
inglese, tuttavia, la metafora è neutralizzata e sostituita con l’espressione “(to) play a
key role”.
Se nei passi succitati il linguaggio figurato ha essenzialmente la funzione di
chiamare all’azione e alla soluzione di problemi (particolarmente evidente nelle
metafore militari), altri domini concettuali emergono allorché è necessario coltivare
intimità e fare leva sull’esperienza emotiva, come nel seguente passaggio:
要发挥人民主人翁精神 [...]。
We should ensure that the people are the masters of the country [...].
In questo caso il popolo (renmin 人民) viene identificato con un padrone di casa o
un capofamiglia (zhurenweng 主人翁) in virtù della metafora concettuale LA
NAZIONE È UNA FAMIGLIA. L’enfasi sulla posizione di rilievo conferita al popolo
cinese attraverso tale metafora non è una novità nel linguaggio politico cinese: la si
ritrova, infatti, anche nell’espressione wei renmin fuwu 为人民服务 (servire il
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
popolo), già pilastro della propaganda maoista e presente anche in questo discorso
del 2012. In una prospettiva concettuale molto simile, nell’esempio seguente, al
dominio della casa/famiglia si affiancano quelli della pianta e del corpo umano:
坚持以人为本、执政为民,始终保持党同人民群众的血肉联系。
Put people first, exercise governance for the people and always maintain close ties
with them.
L’espressione yi ren wei ben 以人为本 (lett. fare delle persone la radice), una
delle “bandiere” di Hu Jintao, sfrutta la metafora concettuale LA NAZIONE È UNA
PIANTA (ma anche IL PARTITO È UNA PIANTA). Nella retorica pubblica della Cina
moderna e contemporanea il concetto confuciano di “popolo come radice” (min ben
民本), così come altre espressioni legate al “popolo” – nel corso della loro
evoluzione non sempre connotate positivamente – acquisisce un valore univocamente
positivo e viene sfruttato in virtù del suo enorme potere sul piano emotivo. Come fa
notare Sabattini a proposito del concetto di min ben, infatti:
[s]uch is the emotive content packed into this expression that it is still used for effect today and
although it does not apply to true people-oriented politics, it does offer a convenient formula
that can be adapted to serve the needs of intellectuals and policies of any period (Sabattini
2012: 188).
Nell’estratto citato poco sopra, l’intima relazione che il popolo intrattiene con il
Partito è ulteriormente messa in rilievo attraverso l’espressione xuerou lianxi
血肉联系 (lett. legami di sangue e carne), fondata sulla metafora IL POPOLO E IL
PARTITO SONO UN ESSERE VIVENTE. In entrambi i casi, tuttavia, le immagini risultano
neutralizzate nella versione inglese.
È possibile osservare, inoltre, che le funzioni essenziali fin qui identificate
(richiamo all’azione ed enfasi sul piano emotivo) vengono spesso accostate e fatte
confluire in un’unica prospettiva concettuale:
全党必须牢记,只有植根人民、造福人民,党才能始终立于不败之地 [...]。
The whole Party must bear in mind that only by taking root among the people and delivering
benefits to them can the Party remain invincible [...].
Anche in questo caso la metafora concettuale IL PARTITO È UNA PIANTA si specifica
nell’espressione zhi gen 植根 (mettere radici), mentre IL PARTITO È UN ESERCITO
trova espressione nel sintagma classicheggiante li yu bu bai zhi di 立于不败之地
(lett. stare in una posizione in cui non si può essere sconfitti).
In ultima analisi, per interpretare le funzioni discorsive di queste istanze di
linguaggio figurato è utile riprendere la dicotomia tra “ideologia P” (P-ideology) e
“ideologia S” (S-ideology) proposta da Hodge e Louie (1999: 51). La prima forma,
fondata su un rapporto di potere, funziona secondo il principio di opposizione
binaria, e pertanto si rivela particolarmente efficace quando la funzione discorsiva
punta alla soluzione di problemi, alla rimozione di ostacoli, all’eliminazione o al
superamento di situazioni presentate come negative. Le metafore belliche già
discusse ne costituiscono un esempio lampante: ciononostante, questa forma di
ideologia può permeare anche metafore legate ad altri domini concettuali 5. La
5
Si pensi, per esempio, al dominio concettuale del viaggio e in particolare alla metafora concettuale
LA REALIZZAZIONE DEL SOCIALISMO È UNA STRADA, cui si collegano espressioni metaforiche come
zhang’ai 障碍 (ostacolo), riferite a fenomeni negativi la cui rimozione è presentata come obiettivo
118
PAOLO MAGAGNIN
dell’azione del Partito e della collettività tutta; o ancora al dominio concettuale del corpo umano, con
la frequente contrapposizione dicotomica tra forza (liliang 力量) e debolezza (ruanruo 软弱), ecc.
6
Ad esempio, il dominio concettuale della costruzione – soprattutto nella metafora concettuale LA
SOCIETÀ È UN EDIFICIO, che struttura la prolusione di Hu già a partire dal titolo – compare spesso in
passaggi contenenti esortazioni a un “noi” che comprende e pone sullo stesso piano emittente e
destinatario del messaggio (cf. il passo conclusivo della prolusione sopracitato): nella prospettiva
concettuale così definita, un obiettivo è presentato come raggiungibile soltanto attraverso gli sforzi
congiunti del Partito e del popolo cinese.
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
7
Nell’esigenza di ampliare il pubblico dei destinatari del messaggio e abbattere le barriere nella
comunicazione rientra anche il processo di semplificazione del linguaggio politico cinese avviato
negli ultimi anni. Li (2010: 54), infatti, considera lo “stile colloquiale nel linguaggio politico”
(zhengzhi baihua feng 政治白话风) un tratto peculiare proprio della guida di Hu Jintao (Segretario
Generale dal 2002), nonché un riflesso della democratizzazione della politica cinese.
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PAOLO MAGAGNIN
potrebbe aver deciso di procedere in questo senso al fine di mitigare tale effetto.
Inoltre, dal momento che anche la traduzione ufficiale è stata commissionata a livello
istituzionale e si rivolge a un pubblico internazionale, è ragionevole supporre che dal
metatesto dovessero essere espunte tutte le espressioni suscettibili di evocare
minacciose manifestazioni di aggressività da parte del governo cinese e dei suoi
rappresentanti.
In una prospettiva opposta, attraverso la conservazione del linguaggio metaforico
il traduttore può fornire al lettore del metatesto – soprattutto se provvisto di un certo
bagaglio di conoscenze in ambito sinologico – gli strumenti per cogliere la natura e
gli stilemi retorici del DPCC. Il lettore della traduzione potrebbe quindi riconoscere i
domini e le metafore concettuali prevalenti nel linguaggio politico cinese e
identificare tali elementi come caratteristici della sfera ufficiale, distinti dal registro
della comunicazione ordinaria, e in cui è possibile osservare strutture, articolazioni e
meccanismi di funzionamento specifici. In questo modo, pur perdendo la sua
funzione conativa e l’impatto emotivo originari, la metafora viene ricontestualizzata
acquisendo quasi valore referenziale, trasformandosi in un elemento testuale che i
membri della cultura ricevente possono osservare “dall’esterno” e di cui, nei limiti
degli interventi traduttivi descritti più sopra, possono apprezzare l’utilizzo e –
necessariamente entro una certa misura – l’impatto sulla cultura di origine.
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122
La resa del linguaggio figurato in interpretazione
simultanea: Una sperimentazione didattica
NICOLETTA SPINOLO
Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna
Abstract: La traduzione del linguaggio figurato è, da sempre, uno dei grandi scogli
del processo traduttivo. Le naturali difficoltà insite nel processo di traduzione delle
espressioni figurate (fra le tante, interpretazione del significato, conoscenza
interlinguistica, implicazioni culturali) diventano ancora più difficili da sormontare se
applicate al processo dell’interpreta ione simultanea, in cui l’interprete ha solo
frazioni di secondo per decidere che strategia utilizzare nella resa di una data
espressione figurata (Turrini 2004, Spinolo e Garwood 2010). Il presente studio
consiste in una proposta didattica sperimentale valutata con uno studio caso-controllo
condotto su studenti del secondo anno della Laurea Magistrale in Interpretazione di
Conferenza della Scuola di Lingue, Letterature, Traduzione e Interpretazione
dell’Università di Bologna (sede di Forlì) e della Scuola Superiore di Lingue Moderne
per Interpreti e Traduttori dell’Università di Trieste. Al gruppo-caso è stata
somministrata la sperimentazione didattica, mentre del gruppo-controllo si è
monitorata l’evolu ione. La base teorico-pratica per l’elabora ione dell’unità
didattica è costituita dai contenuti e l’analisi del corpus IMITES (Interpretación de la
Metáfora entre ITaliano y ESpañol), costruito nell’ambito di un più ampio progetto di
dottorato di cui fa parte il presente studio e contenente conferenze (e relative
interpretazioni) ospitate in seno alla Commissione Europea, allo scopo di analizzare
prestazioni e strategie di interpreti professionisti alle prese con linguaggio figurato
nelle combinazioni linguistiche italiano-spagnolo e spagnolo-italiano. Obiettivo
ultimo dello studio è indagare l’insegnabilità dei processi interpretativi applicabili al
linguaggio figurato in interpreta ione simultanea e l’efficacia dell’unità didattica
proposta, valutando l’eventuale progresso degli studenti rispetto al gruppo-controllo,
e verificando così l’applicabilità didattica dell’analisi eseguita su IMITES.
Parole chiave: linguaggio figurato, interpretazione simultanea, didattica
dell’interpreta ione, IMITES.
Spinolo, Nicoletta, ‘La resa del linguaggio figurato in interpretazione simultanea: Una sperimentazione didattica’,
in Donna R. Miller; Enrico Monti (eds) Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative Language, Bologna, CeSLiC,
‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 123-135.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
2. Il progetto IMITES
Il progetto di dottorato IMITES (Interpretación de la Metáfora entre ITaliano y
ESpañol) riguarda l’interpretazione simultanea del linguaggio figurato nelle
combinazioni italiano-spagnolo e spagnolo-italiano (Spinolo, in preparazione).
Prevede l’analisi di un set di dati creato a partire da conferenze tenutesi presso la
Commissione europea, dalle quali sono stati selezionati i discorsi pronunciati in
italiano o spagnolo e le relative interpretazioni (in spagnolo o italiano). Le
espressioni figurate contenute nei discorsi originali sono state estratte e allineate con
le rese degli interpreti, con il duplice scopo di capire quali espressioni causino
maggiori problemi agli interpreti e di analizzare le strategie interpretative applicate
da interpreti professionisti quali quelli della Direzione Generale Interpretazione (DG
SCIC) della Commissione Europea, alla resa del linguaggio figurato. Nell’ambito
dello stesso progetto si è inoltre somministrato un questionario agli interpreti delle
cabine spagnola e italiana della DG SCIC, al fine di sondare la loro percezione della
difficoltà di interpretazione del linguaggio figurato, la (eventuale) formazione
ricevuta a riguardo e le strategie che ritengono di applicare nella pratica
professionale.
Il progetto include poi, da ultimo, una sperimentazione didattica eseguita sugli
studenti del secondo anno della Laurea Magistrale in Interpretazione di Conferenza
della Scuola di Lingue, Letterature, Traduzione e Interpretazione dell’Universit di
Bologna (sede di Forlì) e della Scuola Superiore di Lingue Moderne per Interpreti e
Traduttori dell’Universit di Trieste, il cui obiettivo è quello di indagare
l’insegnabilit di tecniche interpretative applicabili all’interpretazione simultanea del
linguaggio figurato. Quest’ultima sperimentazione didattica è l’oggetto del presente
studio.
3. La sperimentazione didattica
3.1. Metodologia
La sperimentazione è stata costruita sul modello caso/controllo. Un gruppo era
costituito da 5 studenti del secondo anno della Laurea Magistrale in Interpretazione
di Conferenza della Scuola di Lingue, Letterature, Traduzione e Interpretazione
dell’Universit di Bologna-sede di Forlì, e un altro era costituito da 5 studenti della
Scuola Superiore di Lingue Moderne per Interpreti e Traduttori dell’Universit di
Trieste1.
A entrambi i gruppi è stata somministrata la stessa prova iniziale (un discorso in
spagnolo da interpretare in simultanea in italiano), al fine di valutare il livello di
partenza degli studenti e la loro effettiva comparabilità. La prova iniziale è stata
presentata ai due gruppi nel corso della stessa settimana, affinché gli studenti si
1
Un sentito ringraziamento va alla Prof.ssa Mariachiara Russo della facoltà di Forlì e al Prof. Marco
Rucci della facoltà di Trieste per aver reso possibile la sperimentazione con i propri studenti, e un
altro ugualmente sentito va ovviamente agli studenti per avere partecipato.
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NICOLETTA SPINOLO
trovassero allo stesso punto dell’anno accademico, e quindi allo stesso punto della
loro formazione come interpreti.
Si è poi proceduto a somministrare al gruppo-caso un mini-corso (articolato su
cinque incontri di circa 90 minuti ciascuno) con lezioni teoriche e pratiche sulle
strategie interpretative da applicare al linguaggio figurato2.
Alla fine del mini-corso, 8 settimane dopo la prova iniziale, ad entrambi i gruppi
si è presentata una prova finale, costituita da un altro discorso in spagnolo da
interpretare simultaneamente in italiano, al fine di analizzare le performance del
gruppo-caso (Ca) e del gruppo-controllo (Co), individuare eventuali differenze e
testare così l’efficacia dell’unit didattica proposta con il mini-corso sperimentale. La
prova finale non costituiva, per gli studenti, un esame, e non hanno ricevuto alcun
voto sulla loro prestazione; i due gruppi, inoltre, non erano a conoscenza del
coinvolgimento nella sperimentazione di un altro gruppo proveniente da un’altra
facoltà.
3.2. Materiali
Il discorso utilizzato per la prova iniziale era stato originariamente pronunciato da
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Primo Ministro spagnolo all’epoca del discorso, in
occasione della cerimonia per la firma del Patto dei Sindaci 20103, tenutasi presso la
Commissione europea a Bruxelles. La trascrizione del discorso è stata estratta dal
corpus IMITES; il testo del discorso è stato poi modificato sostituendo, con la
supervisione di un consulente nativo, alcune espressioni non figurate del testo con
altre espressioni figurate oltre a quelle gi presenti nell’originale4. Sebbene questa
procedura possa apparire ingiustificata dal punto di vista metodologico, davanti alla
necessità di valutare le prestazioni degli studenti su varie tipologie di espressioni
figurate (cioè, con diversi gradi di creatività o lessicalizzazione), si è deciso di
apportare tali modifiche affinché la prova contenesse un numero significativo
(almeno 50) delle varie tipologie di metafora, cercando di mantenere le proporzioni
fra metafore lessicalizzate e metafore creative esistenti nell’originale (cfr. par. 4.4). Il
discorso modificato è stato poi registrato in laboratorio da un parlante nativo. La
durata della registrazione era di circa 13 minuti, con una velocità di eloquio di 130
parole al minuto. Le espressioni figurate prese in considerazione per lo studio sono in
totale 55.
Il discorso utilizzato per la prova finale era un discorso pronunciato in originale
da Ramón Luis Valcárcel Siso (presidente della Comunità Autonoma di Murcia e del
Comitato delle Regioni), anche questo pronunciato in occasione della cerimonia
2010 del Patto dei Sindaci. Anche in questo caso il testo originale, tratto da IMITES,
è stato modificato con l’inserimento di ulteriori espressioni figurate oltre a quelle
contenute nell’originale, e il discorso modificato è stato registrato in laboratorio dallo
stesso parlante nativo. La durata della registrazione era di circa 14 minuti, con una
velocità di eloquio di 100 parole al minuto e un totale di 58 espressioni figurate.
La scelta di eseguire l’esperimento su due gruppi geograficamente così lontani è
motivata dalla volont di ridurre al minimo il rischio di “contaminazione”, di
2
I contenuti del corso sono descritti in maggiore dettaglio al paragrafo 3.2.
3
Il Patto dei Sindaci è un patto firmato dai primi cittadini delle città europee che vogliono aderire
all’impegno di ridurre del 20% le emissioni di CO2 entro il 2020. Per maggiori informazioni:
http://www.pattodeisindaci.eu.
4
Cfr. opere di consultazione in bibliografia.
125
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
contatto e scambio di materiali fra i due gruppi stessi. Per quanto riguarda, invece, la
tipologia testuale scelta per le due prove, ci si è volutamente orientati su discorsi di
tema politico-ambientale, genere conosciuto ai più nei contenuti e ampiamente
trattato dai media nazionali e internazionali (effetto serra, strategia 20-20-20,
inquinamento, ecc.). Prima della somministrazione delle prove, entrambi i gruppi
hanno ricevuto un rapido briefing, per illustrare loro il contesto e la situazione in cui
i discorsi originali sono stati pronunciati, e fornire loro i nomi degli oratori e degli
altri personaggi politici citati nei discorsi.
Il minicorso, somministrato solamente al gruppo-caso, si è articolato su cinque
incontri. In occasione del primo incontro, dopo la somministrazione della prova
iniziale, si è proceduto ad esporre in una breve panoramica le principali teorie della
metafora e ad analizzare con gli studenti il discorso interpretato per la prova iniziale,
soffermandosi sulle espressioni figurate in esso contenute e sulle possibili soluzioni
traduttive.
Il secondo incontro è iniziato anch’esso con una parte teorica, durante la quale si è
presentata agli studenti un’analisi pilota svolta su IMITES, illustrando loro quali
espressioni figurate risultano più problematiche per gli interpreti secondo i dati
preliminari estratti dal corpus e con quali strategie queste vengono affrontate dagli
interpreti professionisti della DG SCIC. Si è poi passati alla pratica, con
un’esercitazione simultanea dallo spagnolo all’italiano, utilizzando un discorso tratto
da IMITES. Infine, si è analizzato nel dettaglio il discorso appena interpretato,
soffermandosi sulle espressioni figurate in esso contenute, su come gli studenti le
avessero rese nella loro interpretazione, e su possibili rese alternative.
Il terzo incontro è stato di carattere esclusivamente pratico, con un’esercitazione
in simultanea dallo spagnolo all’italiano, un’analisi a posteriori del testo interpretato,
come per l’incontro precedente, e con esercizio di traduzione a vista dallo spagnolo
all’italiano. La traduzione a vista è stata definita da Herbert (1952:7) come:
[…] cas particulier où l’interprète prend un texte qui lui était jusqu’alors inconnu et, soit
directement, soit par téléphone, le «lit» dans une langue autre que celle dans laquelle ce texte
5
est écrit, à la cadence d’une lecture normale sans traduction .
Si è pensato alla traduzione a vista come esercizio utile per due motivi principali:
innanzitutto, per la sua efficacia come attivit propedeutica all’interpretazione
simultanea (Kalina 1994: 222). In secondo luogo, si è pensato di scegliere per
l’esercizio di traduzione a vista testi giornalistici d’opinione ed economici, con una
densità di linguaggio figurato maggiore rispetto a quella di un testo orale, proprio per
stimolare il più possibile negli studenti la rapidità di analisi e ricerca di soluzioni.
Il quarto incontro è stato speculare al terzo, ma con la combinazione linguistica
inversa: gli esercizi di interpretazione simultanea e traduzione a vista sono stati fatti a
partire da testi italiani da volgere allo spagnolo. Si è deciso di lavorare su questa
combinazione, nonostante sia la prova iniziale che quella finale fossero sulla
combinazione spagnolo - italiano, per la convinzione che l’esercizio verso la propria
lingua straniera fosse utile ad allenare e fissare nella memoria le espressioni figurate
incontrate negli esercizi svolti durante gli incontri precedenti.
5
“Caso particolare in cui l’interprete prende un testo che fino a quel momento non ha mai visto e,
direttamente o al telefono, lo ‘legge’ in una lingua diversa da quella in cui il testo è stato scritto, con la
cadenza di una lettura normale, senza traduzione”.
126
NICOLETTA SPINOLO
4.1. Gruppo-controllo
Le prestazioni del gruppo-controllo per la prova iniziale sono riassunte nella
Tabella 1:
6
Traduzione letterale: “per noi è chiaro che il livello locale importa, ed è chiaro che lavorando
assieme e dall’arena potremo ottenere di più”. Desde la arena, “dall’arena” è un’espressione
idiomatica proveniente dal mondo della corrida, che significa “lavorando sul campo, in pratica e non
in teoria”.
7
Traduzione letterale: “A tutti quei cittadini che hanno riposto tante speranze e hanno risposto
tanta fiducia in questo progetto che chiamiamo Unione Europea ”
8
Per “rese improprie” si intende, in questo caso, ciò che Russo e Rucci (1997) definiscono come “resa
imprecisa di parole” (traduzioni errate, scelte di registro lessicale inadeguato e calchi lessicali).
9
Traduzione Letterale: “C’è un dato che metto in evidenza in ogni occasione in cui affrontiamo il
dibattito sul cambiamento climatico”.
10
Traduzione letterale: “In molti paesi europei, i costi energetici sono un carico più forte dei costi del
lavoro, e tarpano le ali allo sviluppo economico”.
127
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Rese 4 5 3 8 3 23 8%
parziali /
incomplete
Rese 13 12 7 13 7 52 19%
improprie
Le prestazioni dello stesso gruppo per la prova finale sono invece riassunte nella
Tabella 2:
Rese 7 5 6 3 4 25 8%
parziali /
incomplete
Rese 10 18 15 14 15 72 24%
improprie
4.2. Gruppo-caso
Le prestazioni del gruppo-caso per la prova iniziale possono riassumersi nella
Tabella 3:
Ca1 Ca2 Ca3 Ca4 Ca5 TOT %
Esitazioni 21 20 15 31 26 113 41%
Le prestazioni dello stesso gruppo per la prova finale sono invece riassunte nella
Tabella 4:
Ca1 Ca2 Ca3 Ca4 Ca5 TOT %
Esitazioni 15 16 12 17 15 75 26%
Rese 3 2 5 3 1 14 5%
parziali /
incomplete
Rese 4 7 3 5 4 23 8%
improprie
128
NICOLETTA SPINOLO
4.3.1. Esitazioni
60 iniziale; 55
50
iniziale; 41
40
finale; 34
30 finale; 26 iniziale
finale
20
10
0
gruppo-caso gruppo-controllo
Grafico 1: Esitazioni
6 finale; 5 iniziale
finale
4
0
gruppo-caso gruppo-controllo
129
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Per quanto riguarda le rese parziali, mentre per il gruppo controllo non si
registrano né miglioramenti, né peggioramenti, e la percentuale rimane stabile
all’8%, il miglioramento è notevole per il gruppo-caso, che passa dal 10% al 5%.
finale; 24
25
iniziale; 19
20
15 iniziale
finale
iniziale; 8,5
10 finale; 8
0
gruppo-caso gruppo-controllo
Per quanto riguarda, invece, le rese improprie, le performance dei due gruppi sono
decisamente discrepanti: mentre per il gruppo-controllo si registra un peggioramento
(dal 19% al 24%), per il gruppo-caso si registra un, seppur lieve, miglioramento, a
partire comunque da una performance già molto buona per la prova iniziale:
dall’8,5% all’8%. Sia il peggioramento del gruppo-controllo che il lievissimo
miglioramento del gruppo-caso potrebbero essere, forse, spiegati da una diversa
percezione livello di difficoltà dei discorsi scelti per la prova iniziale e finale.
130
NICOLETTA SPINOLO
11
Traduzione letterale: “[questo dato] significa che la situazione ha bisogno di un giro di dado”; il
corrispondente italiano è però la variante “giro di vite”.
12
Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual della Real Academia Española.
131
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
13
Traduzione letterale: “è per me un onore e una grande soddisfazione essere di nuovo presso questa
istituzione che rappresenta tutti i cittadini europei. Qui c’è l’anima, la linfa europea”.
14
Traduzione letterale: “Sentiamo il calore del problema sulla nostra porta, e raccogliamo il
guanto (di sfida)”.
132
NICOLETTA SPINOLO
Sentiamo ehm in maniera molto vicina questo problema e raccogliamo il guanto di sfida
(prova finale, studente Ca4).
Infatti… viviamo sulla nostra pelle questo problema e cerchiamo di rispondere a questa sfida
(prova finale, studente Co1).
Ehm sent- percepiamo il problema e dobbiamo agire e lo faremo (prova finale, studente
Co3).
Un’ultima, interessante, metafora rivelatasi problematica per tutti gli studenti è
un’espressione idiomatica proveniente dal mondo della corrida:
Las fuentes no renovables están, cada vez más, de capa caída (testo originale, prova
15
iniziale) .
Anche questa espressione figurata è fortemente lessicalizzata in spagnolo, sebbene
meno frequente delle precedenti (60 occorrenze nel CREA). È anche registrata nel
Diccionario de la Real Academia Española, alla voce capa, in cui si indica che
andar de capa caída è una locuzione verbale colloquiale che significa “padecer gran
decadencia en bienes, fortuna o salud”16. La figura si riferisce alla capa, il mantello
del torero; un torero con il mantello figurativamente caduto è un torero, appunto, in
decadenza.
Non tutti gli studenti, apparentemente, conoscono questa espressione idiomatica,
anche se in alcuni casi sembrano intuirne il significato dal contesto:
Le fonti non rinnovabili sono ehm sempre più ehm antiquate (prova finale, studente Ca4).
Le fonti non rinnovabili … sono sempre più ehm vengono abbandonate sempre di più
(prova finale, studente Ca4).
Le fonti non rinnovabili infatti … risultano sempre più ridotte (prova finale, studente Co1).
Altri, invece, la rendono in maniera più adeguata, ma non senza riformulare ed
esitare:
Le fonti non rinnovabili ehm stanno ehm decadendo sempre di più (prova finale, studente
Ca2).
Le fonti non rinnovabili sono stanno ehm sono sempre più in declino (prova finale,
studente Co5).
5. Conclusioni
Prima di trarre le conclusioni, è necessario premettere che il piccolo campione di
studenti utilizzato per l’analisi non permette di generalizzare, ma solo di avanzare
ipotesi che si potrebbero confermare solo con studi svolti su più ampia scala.
Ad ogni modo, a giudicare dalle difficoltà registrate dagli studenti nelle prove a
loro sottoposte, sembra in primo luogo che possa essere utile dedicare una parte della
loro formazione al fenomeno del linguaggio figurato e a come affrontarlo in
interpretazione. Tale conclusione è corroborata anche dai risultati del questionario
sottoposto agli interpreti professionisti della DG SCIC (cfr. paragrafo 2 e Spinolo, in
preparazione).
Come si è potuto evincere dal paragrafo 4, il piccolo studio caso-controllo svolto
sembra indicare che l’unit didattica somministrata al gruppo-caso abbia avuto un
effetto positivo sugli studenti coinvolti, soprattutto nel ridurre il numero di rese
improprie; si ritiene però, che un migliore risultato si potrebbe ottenere anche sulle
rese parziali e le esitazioni svolgendo con gli studenti un lavoro più approfondito e
15
Traduzione letterale: “le fonti [di energia] non rinnovabili hanno, sempre più, il mantello caduto”.
16
Traduzione letterale: “soffrire una grande decadenza nei beni, nella fortuna o nella salute”.
133
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
dilazionato nel corso dei due anni della Laurea Magistrale. Per avere una conferma
dell’efficacia dell’unit didattica proposta, sarebbe inoltre necessario sia, da una
parte, ripetere l’esperimento su un altro campione di studenti, possibilmente più
ampio, sia, dall’altra, replicare l’esperimento modificando il materiale utilizzato per
uniformare il più possibile il livello di difficoltà delle due prove.
Inoltre, i dati ottenuti con il presente studio, uniti a quelli risultanti dall’analisi di
IMITES, possono costituire un’indicazione per i docenti di interpretazione riguardo a
quali espressioni figurate sembrano essere più problematiche per gli interpreti. Come
già supposto da Prandi (2010) per la traduzione, i risultati della sperimentazione
didattica infatti, sebbene il campione sia ridotto, sembrano indicare che gli studenti
incontrino maggiori difficolt nell’interpretare espressioni idiomatiche altamente
lessicalizzate, oltre alle metafore vive più complesse e articolate.
Un futuro ulteriore sviluppo, infine, potrebbe essere quello di correlare le scelte
strategiche degli studenti al tipo di metafora presente nell’originale, e comparare i
risultati con i dati ottenuti da IMITES.
Bibliografia
Álvarez, A. (1993) ‘On translating metaphor’, Meta 38(3), 479-490.
Azar, M. (1989) ‘La métaphore traduisible’, Meta 34(4), 794-796.
Dagut, M. (1976) ‘Can metaphor be translated?’, Babel 22 (1), 21-33.
Dagut, M. (1987) ‘More about the translatability of metaphor’, Babel 33 (2), 78-83.
Dickins, J. (2005) ‘Two models for metaphor translation’, Target 17 (2), 227-273.
Dobrzyńska, T. (1995) ‘Translating metaphor: problems of meaning’, Journal of Pragmatics
24, 595-604.
Herbert, J. (1952) Manuel de l’interprète. omment on devient interprète de conférence,
Genève: Libraire de l’Université Georg & Cie S.A.
Kalina, S. (1994) ‘Some views on the theory of interpreter training and some practical
suggestions’, in M. Snell-Hornby, F. Pöchhacker, K. Kaindl (eds) Translation Studies -
An Interdiscipline. Selected Papers from the Translation Studies Congress, Vienna, 9-12
Sept. 1992, 219-225.
Menacere, M. (1992) ‘Arabic Metaphor and Idiom in Translation’, Meta 37 (3), 567-572.
Newmark P. (1988) A Textbook of Translation, New York: Prentice Hall.
Ogden C.K.; Richards, I.A. (1960) The Meaning of Meaning. A Study of the Influence of
Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism [1923], London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
Pliego Sánchez, I. (1993) ‘La traducción de la metáfora’, Essays on Translation 1, 97-103.
Prandi, M. (2010) ‘Typology of metaphors: implications for translation’, Mutatis Mutandis
3 (2), 304-332.
Rabadán Álvarez, R. (1991) Equivalencia y Traducción. Problemática de la Equivalencia
Translémica inglés-español, León: Universidad de León.
Real Academia Española: Banco de datos (CREA) [online], Corpus de referencia del
español actual, http://www.rae.es (consultato in data 30/1/2013).
Real Academia Española, Diccionario (DRAE) [online], http://www.rae.es (consultato in
data 30/1/2013).
Russo M.; Rucci M. (1997) ‘Verso una classificazione degli errori nella simultanea
spagnolo-italiano’, in L. Gran; A. Riccardi (a cura di) Nuovi orientamenti di studi,
Trieste: Se.R.T.
Sabatini, F.; Coletti, V. (2011) Dizionario della Lingua Italiana, Milano: RCS Libri.
Samaniego Fernández, E. (2011) ‘Translation studies and the cognitive theory of metaphor’,
Review of Cognitive Linguistics 9(1), 262-279.
134
NICOLETTA SPINOLO
135
Science and Popularisation
Scienza e divulgazione
Analogia e personificazione nelle prime traduzioni italiana e
spagnola dell’Origin of Species di Darwin
ANA PANO ALAMÁN
Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna
Abstract: Gli studi pubblicati sulla ricezione del libro The Origin of Species (1859) di
Charles Darwin hanno dimostrato che le strategie retoriche adottate dall’autore per
elaborare la teoria della selezione naturale sono elementi di forza della teoria stessa.
Tuttavia, il ruolo preponderante delle figure, in particolare dell’analogia e della
personificazione, spiegherebbe in parte alcune delle critiche mosse al modello,
fondato per molti scienziati dell’epoca più sulla persuasione che su prove scientifiche.
Sebbene esista un numero crescente di analisi sulle metafore presenti nel testo e sulle
controversie legate alla sua ricezione in Europa, mancano studi sistematici sulla
traduzione delle figure contenute in quest’opera complessa. Sulla base dei principali
studi sulle figure nella scienza e sulla traduzione della metafora, in questo articolo
esploriamo i meccanismi di analogia e di personificazione dei concetti di selezione
naturale e di natura nelle prime traduzioni italiana e spagnola dell’Origin.
Parole chiave: analogia, personificazione, selezione naturale, Darwin, origine delle
specie.
Pano Alamán, Ana, ‘Analogia e personificazione nelle prime traduzioni italiana e spagnola dell’Origin of Species
di Darwin’, in Donna R. Miller; Enrico Monti (eds) Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative Language,
Bologna, CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 139-150.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Darwin […] addresses himself directly to his readers in many ways: asking them to pass
judgement, flattering them, talking to them, asking rhetorical questions. He argues in favour of
his proposition, but rhetorically rather than logically. He slips in amusing anecdotes, uses
poetic images and wonderful comparisons. In order to explain his meaning, he personifies
realities like nature and the struggle for existence in wondrous ways (Bulhof 1992: 3-4).
Young (1985) e Beer (2000), principalmente, sottolineano in diversi gradi
l’importanza delle strategie retoriche adottate dall’autore nell’esposizione della sua
teoria. In particolare, indicano la forza dell’analogia stabilita da Darwin tra selezione
artificiale e selezione naturale e l’uso frequente della personificazione come
meccanismo argomentativo. Ma, per questi autori il metodo analogico adottato
potrebbe spiegare in parte le critiche mosse a un modello teorico che per alcuni
scienziati dell’epoca poggiava più sulla persuasione che su prove scientifiche
evidenti. Così, il geologo Adam Sedgwick obiettò all’uso metaforico del termine
natural selection contrapponendovi development, termine che secondo lui era già in
uso dai biologi e dalle “persone di buon senso” (cit. in Bulhof 1992: 64). Allo stesso
modo, nel suo libro Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, Alfred R.
Wallace dedica un intero capitolo alle metafore utilizzate da Darwin per concludere
che “Mr. Darwin has laid himself open to much misconception, and has given to his
opponents a powerful weapon against himself, by his continual use of metaphor in
describing the wonderful co-adaptations of organic beings” (1871: 270).
Attento alle critiche ricevute in questo senso, Darwin riconosce che il linguaggio
figurato possa generare equivoci per cui, nella terza edizione dell’Origin (1861) e in
relazione al concetto di selezione naturale, spiega:
In the literal sense of the word, no doubt, natural selection is a misnomer; but who ever
objected to chemists speaking of the elective affinities of the various elements? […] It has been
said that I speak of natural selection as an active power or Deity; but who objects to an author
speaking of the attraction of gravity as ruling the movements of the planets? Every one knows
what is meant and is implied by such metaphorical expressions; and they are almost necessary
for brevity. So again it is difficult to avoid personifying the word Nature (1861, 3a ed.: 63).
In questo frammento, che verrà mantenuto con poche differenze nelle edizioni
successive, Darwin giustifica nel nome della brevità e dell’efficacia comunicativa
l’uso dell’analogia e della personificazione. Due figure che, come vediamo in
seguito, hanno un ruolo di primo ordine non solo nell’esposizione della teoria ma
anche nella sua stessa elaborazione.
140
ANA PANO ALAMÁN
141
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
142
ANA PANO ALAMÁN
143
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
lavoro. Sappiamo inoltre che questa traduzione apparve dopo una prima versione
incompleta realizzata da un traduttore anonimo a partire dalla traduzione francese di
Royer. In questa versione del 1872, il traduttore avverte il lettore: “Para ella [Royer]
la naturaleza lo constituye todo. Conviene que esto se tenga presente para [...] leer
con prevención sus temerosas afirmaciones” (1872, x).2 Anche se non è possibile
provarlo con i dati a disposizione, è probabile che Godínez conoscesse questa
versione pubblicata presso la Biblioteca social, histórica y filosófica dallo stampatore
Luengo, così come la dichiarazione del traduttore contenuta nel testo, simile per certi
versi all’avvertenza di Canestrini e Salimbeni.
In ogni caso, possiamo pensare che l’obiettivo dei primi traduttori italiani e
spagnolo fosse quello di allontanare i rispettivi lettori da una traduzione, quella
francese, che portava le tematiche del libro troppo oltre gli intenti dell’autore e
applicava concetti come “lotta per l’esistenza” al di fuori dell’ambito strettamente
scientifico. Possiamo supporre che il loro intento fosse quello di ridare voce
all’autore, e che dunque le strategie di traduzione adottate siano prevalentemente
source-oriented.
(1b) whether nature does not reveal to us her method of work (p. 220).
si la naturaleza no nos revela su método de trabajo (p. 286).
(2a) natural selection destroying any which depart from the proper type (p. 110)
l’elezione naturale che distrugge tutti gl’individui che si allontanano dal loro tipo (p. 76).
(2b) natural selection which will destroy any which depart from the proper type (p. 81).
la seleccion natural, que destruirá á todos los individuos que se separen del tipo conveniente
(p. 115).
(3a) natural selection will always act with extreme slowness (p. 115).
l’elezione naturale agisce sempre con estrema lentezza (p. 79).
2
“Per lei [Royer] la natura è tutto. Conviene che ciò si tenga presente per [...] leggere
preventivamente le sue affermazioni temerarie”.
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ANA PANO ALAMÁN
(3b) natural selection generally acts with extreme slowness (p. 84).
la selección natural obra en general con lentitud extrema (p. 118).
(4a) natural selection will pick out with unerring skill each improvement (p. 209).
l’elezione naturale coglierà qualunque perfezionamento con infallibile abilità (p. 149).
(4b) natural selection will pick out with unerring skill each improvement (p. 146).
la seleccion natural entresacará con habilidad indefectible cada mejora (p. 196).
(5a) natural selection always ready to adapt the slowly varying descendants (p. 506).
l’elezione naturale è sempre pronta ad adattare i discendenti lentamente variabili (p. 372).
(5b) natural selection always ready to adapt the slowly varying descendants (p. 414).
la seleccion natural está pronta siempre para adaptar á sus descendientes (p. 527).
Tuttavia, notiamo alcune variazioni quasi impercettibili, seppur significative, tra
la prima e la sesta edizione e tra le versioni italiana e spagnola. Ad esempio, in (2a) il
gerundio “destroying” dell’edizione precedente diventa “which will destroy”, il che
dà alla selezione naturale un carattere più attivo (2b). In (3b) la formula iniziale
“which will act” passa invece al più neutro e meno predittivo “generally acts”, il che
sembra riflettere la volontà di Darwin di bilanciare da un’edizione all’altra le
implicazioni semantiche derivate dalla personificazione.
Nelle traduzioni si osserva un’aderenza quasi totale al testo anche se, ad esempio,
in (2a) e (3a) i traduttori italiani, i quali parlano di “elezione naturale” evitando il
calco e dunque il neologismo “selezione” (Pancaldi 1983), usano in tutti i due casi il
presente “distrugge” e “agisce”, quasi anticipando la forma generalizzata del presente
della sesta edizione inglese. Vediamo un altro frammento:
(6a) a clear insight into the means of modification and coadaptation (p. 4)
un concetto chiaro dei mezzi di modificazione e di adattamento impiegati dalla natura
(p. xiii)
(6b) a clear insight into the means of modification and coadaptation (p. 3)
una clara percepción de los medios de modificación y coadaptación (p. 16)
In generale, Godínez tende a tradurre più letteralmente rispetto a Canestrini e
Salimbeni. Così, mentre il primo rispecchia l’originale (6b), gli italiani aggiungono
“impiegati dalla natura” (6a), volendo forse esplicitare il concetto di mezzi naturali
ed evitare la confusione con i mezzi artificiali che verranno esposti subito dopo nel
Capitolo I. Per descrivere l’attività dell’uomo nella selezione artificiale, in (7a e b)
Darwin utilizza il verbo “select” che rimane implicito nella frase seguente, ma con il
soggetto Nature.
(7a) Man selects only for his own good; Nature only for that of the being which she tends
(p. 88)
L’uomo sceglie colla sola vista del proprio interesse; la natura opera esclusivamente pel
bene dell’essere di cui si occupa (p. 60).
(7b) Man selects only for his own good; Nature only for that of the being which she tends
(p. 66).
El hombre escoge sin más miras que su propio bien, mientras que la naturaleza busca
solamente el bien del ser á quien atiende (p. 95).
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
(8b) It may metaphorically be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising
[…]; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all that are good; silently and
insensibly working (pp. 66-67).
Puede decirse metafóricamente que la selección natural está haciendo diariamente, y hasta
por horas […] el escrutinio de las variaciones más pequeñas; desechando las que son malas,
conservando y acumulando las que son buenas, trabajando insensible y silenciosamente (pp.
95-96).
In (8a), dopo una pausa, si formula una nuova frase dove si dice che “essa lavora”,
rompendo il ritmo dell’originale forse per sottolineare il procedere insensibile e
silenzioso della selezione naturale. Godínez si scosta appena con la formula “va
haciendo el escrutinio”, ma mantiene gli stessi verbi e il gerundio per riprodurre lo
stesso ritmo del testo di partenza e il carattere imperturbato dell’azione della natura.
Nel frammento che segue, Darwin chiede il permesso al lettore per poter
personalizzare il concetto di natura, soggetto del verbo “cares”, verbo che esprime
una coscienza e un sentimento tipicamente umani.
(9a) Nature (if I may be allowed thus to personify the natural preservation of varying and
favoured individuals during the struggle for existence) cares nothing for appearances (p. 87)
la natura (ove mi si permetta di personificare così la preservazione naturale degl’individui
variabili e favoriti durante la lotta per l’esistenza) non s’inquieta delle apparenze (p. 60)
(9b) Nature, if I may be allowed to personify the natural preservation or survival of the fittest,
cares nothing for appearances (p. 65)
la naturaleza, si se me permite personificar la natural conservacion y supervivencia de los
más aptos, para nada se cuida de las apariencias (p. 97).
Se la traduzione spagnola mantiene lo stesso verbo inglese con “cuida”, “curarsi
di”, senza modificare il senso primario del verbo, in italiano si sceglie il verbo
“inquietarsi” che sembra aggiungere un senso di preoccupazione. In questo modo,
l’espressione negativa veicola l’idea che la natura non solo non si cura delle
apparenze ma che esse non la preoccupano affatto.
Altri frammenti mostrano i leggeri scostamenti sintattici e semantici del testo in
italiano:
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ANA PANO ALAMÁN
(10a) In the literal sense of the word, no doubt, natural selection is a misnomer; […]; Every
one knows what is meant and is implied by such metaphorical expressions; and they are
almost necessary for brevity. So again it is difficult to avoid personifying the word Nature
(pp. 85-86).
[…] nel senso letterale della parola l’Elezione naturale è un controsenso: […]; Tutti sanno
quale significato racchiudano queste espressioni metafisiche, le quali sono pressoché
indispensabili per la brevità del dire. È anche estremamente difficile lo evitare la
personificazione della parola “Natura” (pp. 58-59).
(10b) In the literal sense of the word, no doubt, natural selection is a false term; […]; Every
one knows what is meant and is implied by such metaphorical expressions; and they are
almost necessary for brevity. So again it is difficult to avoid personifying the word Nature
(p. 64).
En el sentido literal de la palabra sin duda es un falso término el de la selección natural; […]
Todo el mundo sabe lo que significa y se quiere decir por semejantes expresiones
metafóricas, y son casi necesarias por su brevedad. Por lo mismo es difícil evitar la
personificación de la palabra naturaleza (pp. 94-95).
In questo frammento, mentre Darwin dice nella terza edizione che il termine
selezione naturale in senso letterale è “misnomer” ovvero “improprio”, Canestrini e
Salimbeni usano il più energico, seppur non adatto, “controsenso”. Godínez traduce
invece “falso término” usando lo stesso termine apparso nella sesta edizione e
calcando la struttura inglese. Dove il testo parla di “metaphorical expressions”,
oppure “expresiones metafóricas” nella traduzione letterale spagnola, troviamo in
italiano il curioso “espressioni metafisiche”, un sintagma che di fatto apre la porta a
molti dei presupposti filosofici impliciti nel libro. Infine, quando Darwin afferma “it
is difficult to avoid personifying”, Godínez traduce senza modifiche “es difícil”
mentre gli italiani, consapevoli in quanto scienziati dei rischi di abbondare nella
personificazione derivata dall’analogia, aggiungono l’avverbio estremamente ed
evidenziano la parola Natura, in maiuscola e tra virgolette, per sottolineare, cosa che
non fa il traduttore spagnolo, che si fa qui allusione al termine e non alla natura che
agisce nella variazione delle specie.
Se nei primi esempi i traduttori italiani sembrano rafforzare ciò che la figura
evoca, ovvero una natura i cui meccanismi di selezione operano senza sosta con
intenzione di fare il bene degli esseri “di cui si occupa”, nei frammenti che seguono
essi cercano di attenuarne la forza espressiva attraverso una restrizione d’uso del
significato dei termini al campo della scienza.
(11a) Why, if man can by patience select variations most useful to himself, should nature fail
in selecting variations useful […]. What limit can be put to this power, acting during long
ages and rigidly scrutinising the whole constitution, structure, and habits of each creature,—
favouring the good and rejecting the bad? (p. 503).
Perché la natura non potrà giungere a scegliere le variazioni vantaggiose […] quando
l’uomo è in facoltà di prescegliere colla pazienza le variazioni che gli recano qualche utilità?
Qual limite possiamo noi assegnare a questo potere che opera per lunghe epoche e scruta
rigorosamente l’intera costituzione, la struttura e le abitudini di ogni creatura, - favorendo il
buono e rigettando il dannoso? (p. 371).
(11b) […] should not variations useful to nature’s living products often arise, and be
preserved or selected? What limit can be put to this power, acting during long ages and rigidly
scrutinising the whole constitution, structure, and habits of each creature,—favouring the
good and rejecting the bad? (p. 412).
[...] ¿por qué […] no han de nacer variaciones para los productos vivos de la naturaleza, que
sean conservadas por medio de la seleccion? ¿Qué límite puede ponerse á este poder, que obra
147
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
datante largas edades y que hace un rígido escrutinio de toda la constitucion, estructura y
hábitos de cada criatura, favoreciendo lo bueno y desechando lo malo? (p. 539).
Così, in (11a), mentre la natura nel testo di partenza “[is] rigidly scrutinising” e
nella traduzione spagnola “hace un rígido escrutinio” (11b), nella versione italiana
“scruta rigorosamente”, un avverbio che oltre a significare che si fa qualcosa in
modo inflessibile, è spesso legato all’agire meticoloso e con metodo o coerenza
logica nei dizionari dell’epoca (Vocabolario della lingua italiana, 1833 e
Vocabolario dell’Accademia della Crusca, 1729 e 1863). Dal canto suo, Godínez
opera una sorta di modulazione in cui si elimina un aggettivo importante. La
domanda “should nature fail in selecting variations useful”, che in italiano diventa
“la natura non potr giungere a scegliere le variazioni che gli recano qualche utilit ”,
viene tradotta in spagnolo con “porqué no han de nacer variaciones para los
productos vivos de la naturaleza”, spostando il soggetto da natura a variazioni e
rimuovendo senza motivi apparenti l’aggettivo useful relativo ad esse. E ancora, nel
seguente frammento:
(12a) As natural selection acts solely by accumulating slight, successive, favourable
variations […]; it can act only by very short and slow steps. Hence the canon of “Natura non
facit saltum,” which every fresh addition to our knowledge tends to make truer, is on this
theory simply intelligible… (pp. 505-506).
Siccome l’elezione naturale agisce soltanto accumulando delle variazioni […]; essa non può
operare che per gradi molto brevi e molto lenti. Perciò il canone “Natura non facit saltum” che
viene confermato da ogni nuova conquista della nostra scienza […] (p. 372).
(13b) And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being (p. 428).
Y como la seleccion natural obra solamente por y para el bien de cada sér (p. 545).
In (13a), infine, la selezione naturale “works by and for the good of each being”,
ovvero in spagnolo “obra por y para el bien de cada sér” (13b), e in italiano “agisce
per il vantaggio di ogni essere”. Qui la struttura preposizionale composta “by and
for” si semplifica con “per” e si propone un termine ritenuto più idoneo forse perché
più in uso tra gli scienziati e perché evita le possibili connotazioni morali del
concetto di bene.
5. Conclusioni
Da questa prima analisi, che richiederà senz’altro nuove ricerche – per indagare
ad esempio se la versione italiana ricorra più spesso e in modo sistematico
all’esplicitazione – possiamo affermare già che entrambe le traduzioni mantengono
148
ANA PANO ALAMÁN
Bibliografia
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150
Translating lexical and grammatical metaphor in popular
science magazines: The case of National Geographic (Italia)
MARINA MANFREDI
Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna
Abstract: This paper aims at exploring the translation of metaphor, both ‘lexical’ and
‘grammatical’ (Halliday 1985/1994), in popular science texts, dealing with the
language pair English-Italian. In particular, it will focus on the paratext, or rather
peritext, made up of headlines and their most typical subdivisions, i.e., subheads, the
so-called ‘upper-decks’, ‘straplines’ and ‘nut-graphs’, where metaphor plays a major
role. The analysis is based upon a corpus of articles from the popular science
magazine, National Geographic, in its American print version and in its corresponding
Italian one. The theoretical background of the study is mainly rooted in linguistics and
translation studies, but it also draws on journalism. The paper will start with a
cursory illustration of the domain of popular science discourse, followed by a
presentation of the goals of this study. It will then move on to briefly explain the
notion of ‘grammatical metaphor’ as introduced by systemic functional linguistics
(Halliday 1985/1994) and to show a taxonomy of functions of titles and headings as
presented by Nord (1995, 2012) within the framework of translation studies. The
second part of the paper will be more practical and will focus on the discussion of a
selection of illustrative examples from the corpus under scrutiny. It will conclude with
a brief overview of results and some future prospects for further investigation. The
final aim of the paper, despite the narrow perspective of the case study, is to establish
whether the translation of headlines, and of the interconnected peritextual elements,
generally results in a process of ‘re-metaphorisation’ or if a tendency towards ‘de-
metaphorisation’ prevails.
Keywords: lexical metaphor, grammatical metaphor, de-metaphorisation, re-
metaphorisation, popular science.
1. Introduction
As linguists, philosophers, psychologists have repeatedly observed, metaphor is
pervasive in our everyday life, in language and thought. As a cognitive tool, it makes
connections between unfamiliar domains and more familiar ones, making abstract
concepts easier to understand. It is thus not surprising that metaphor plays an
important role in the domain of popular scientific discourse, where issues related to
science and technology are conveyed to a lay audience. If we consider headlines in
popular scientific press in particular, metaphor is also aimed at persuasion and is thus
closer to advertising.
As Gotti (2012: 145) notes, the concept of popularisation has been widely
discussed and different definitions have been put forth. It has often been referred to
the spread of specialised knowledge for the purpose of education or information,
without providing further insight. However, text-types such as the review article and
the abstract also share the same features, i.e., do not offer ‘conceptual innovation’,
thus such a definition is not totally adequate (Gotti 2012: 145). Another
distinguishing feature has been said to be the kind of audience, made up of non-
specialised readers. Nevertheless, this would not offer a clear differentiation between
Manfredi, Marina, ‘Translating lexical and grammatical metaphor in popular science magazines: The case of
National Geographic (Italia)’ in Donna R. Miller & Enrico Monti (eds) Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative
Language, Bologna, CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 151-165.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
‘instructive’ texts and popularised ones. A sharp distinction between popular science
and other types of non-specialised discourse is rather based on two aspects, i.e. both
the kind of audience and the function(s) of the text. This third definition proposed by
Gotti will be at the basis of our study.
In the case of popular scientific texts, an addresser, specialist in the field, shares
scientific discoveries or specialised issues with a non-specialist addressee, i.e., a
wide audience of educated, and interested, laypeople. As regards functions, the first
function of popularised discourse is that of informing readers. But while ‘instructive’
texts aim at ‘training’ a non-specialist reader in terms of topic, concepts, specific
terminology – as is typical of instruction manuals or textbooks – popularised texts
aim at offering specialised information to non-specialised readers by using general
language: it is the case of popularised books, films and documentaries, and
popularised magazines. The second function of popularised texts, as of mass media
in general, is that of entertaining their readers.
To fulfil both functions, popularised texts make use of figurative language, in
particular of metaphors. On the one hand, as Gotti (2012: 148) reminds us,
metaphors are often employed to establish a more concrete relationship between a
specialised term and everyday language. On the other hand, it is claimed that the
function of entertainment also entails an ample use of metaphors. In headlines in
particular, metaphors help engender the reader’s curiosity (Papuzzi 2010: 196).
Given this special function, in the world of journalism, headlines are usually written
by editors, who act like advertising copy-writers: if a reader is attracted by effective
headlines, s/he will most probably engage with the reading.
If headlines play such a crucial role, what happens when metaphors cross
linguistic and cultural borders and need to achieve similar functions in translation?
In this paper we aim at investigating what happens when metaphorical headlines
in popular science press are translated from one source language (henceforth SL) into
a target language (henceforth TL), in particular from English into Italian. It is
possible that also translated headlines are not dealt with by translators, but rather by
editors, although this is not an issue of the present study. Our purpose is rather to see
whether the function(s) of the metaphor in the source text (henceforth ST) is/are lost,
conveyed or even reinforced in the target text (henceforth TT). As van den Broeck
states in his pivotal study on metaphor translation, it is the function of metaphor,
“[...] i.e., the communicative purpose it serves”, that determines its need for
translation (1981: 76). Ultimately, as Halliday makes clear, the use of metaphor
“does represent a choice” (Halliday 1994: 349), hence requires careful consideration
on the part of the translator.
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MARINA MANFREDI
(Blum-Kulka 1986: 19); the latter arguing for “[...] an overall tendency to spell
things out rather than leave them implicit in translation” (Baker 1996: 180). This
hypothesis was tested in particular with reference to the domain of literary
translation, where a tendency to neutralise metaphorical expressions has been often
accounted for (cf. Laviosa 2009).
More recently, applying a systemic functional linguistics (henceforth SFL)
approach to translation, Steiner (2002) has explored the ‘explicitation hypothesis’ to
establish properties of translated texts, with special reference to the language pair
English-German and to the rendering of grammatical metaphor. It should be pointed
out that unpacking a grammatical metaphor – which means de-metaphorising it – can
prove useful for a translator faced by the difficulty to recast it in a TT (see Steiner
20021; Manfredi 2011).
In our case study, we wished to explore whether a general trend to ‘de-
metaphorisation’ was at issue, or, given the multiple function of headlines in popular
scientific press, if they were in some way reproduced, or rather ‘re-metaphorised’, in
the Italian TTs.
To investigate this aspect, we did not only consider traditional ‘lexical’
metaphors, but also ‘grammatical metaphors’ as proposed by Halliday (Halliday
1985/1994; Halliday and Matthiessen 1999), in the conviction that they contribute to
the whole metaphorical character of a given text.
Before turning to the specificity of the case study, we will briefly describe the
theoretical framework on which this paper is based.
3. Theoretical framework
We hold that a multidisciplinary approach can help analyse a multi-faceted
phenomenon like translation of headlines in popular scientific press nowadays.
Our study essentially draws on SFL and TS, with some insights from journalism.
SFL offers us the analytical tool to examine metaphors, both ‘lexical’ and
‘grammatical’. TS give us the theoretical framework to explore the much-discussed
concept of ‘explicitation’ and, through Nord’s work in particular (1995; 2012), a tool
to categorise the functions of headlines from a ‘functional’2 perspective. However,
since we are dealing with a text-type firmly grounded on the professional domain of
journalism, also some notions from that area are, we believe, vital for a more
thorough understanding.
1
For more insights into grammatical metaphor and translation, see also Steiner (2004).
2
‘Functional’ (or ‘functionalist’) refers here to ‘skopos theory’ of translation (Skopostheorie), where it
concerns the ‘purpose’ of the TT.
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
metaphor are not two different phenomena; they are both aspects of the same general
metaphorical strategy by which we expand our semantic resources for construing experience.
(Halliday, Matthiessen 1999: 232-233)
From an SFL perspective, human experience is modelled through a series of
processes involving people and things, i.e. participants, and it is embodied in the
grammar of the clause (Halliday 1994: 106). Each utterance has a more ‘congruent’
realisation (i.e., non- or rather less, metaphorical), and more ‘incongruent’ ones.
More typically, i.e. congruently, processes are encoded as verbal groups, qualities as
adjectival groups, etc. If and when they are realised through different grammatical
resources, they will be instances of less congruent realisations. A typical instance of
grammatical metaphor is nominalisation, occurring when a process is encoded as a
nominal group.
In line with Halliday’s view, we will not base our analysis on a simple dichotomy
between ‘congruent’ and ‘incongruent’, in other words ‘non-metaphorical’ vs.
‘metaphorical’. Rather, we will consider metaphoricity along “a continuum whose
poles are ‘least metaphorical’ and ‘most metaphorical’” (Halliday and Matthiessen
1999: 235). In particular, we will focus on ideational grammatical metaphor, without
dealing with the interpersonal one3, in order to explore the domain of experience
construed in popular science headlines.
3
The Hallidayan model identifies three main functions that speakers/writers use language for and calls
them ‘ideational’, ‘interpersonal’ and ‘textual’ ‘metafunctions’. The ‘ideational’ concerns the
representation of experiences, while the ‘interpersonal’ deals with the relationship between
interactants.
4
Papuzzi talks about ‘titoli enunciativi’ and ‘titoli paradigmatici’ (2010: 194).
154
MARINA MANFREDI
offered, the ‘informative’ (or ‘referential’) function is at work, while when the
author’s attitude or emotion is conveyed, in Nord’s taxonomy, we are dealing with
the ‘expressive’ function. Finally, “to evoke the attention and interest” of readers, the
‘appellative’ function is achieved (Nord 1995: 264). As Nord clearly points out from
her functionalist perspective, the function(s) of the target text may be different from
the one(s) of the target text, according to the specific cultural context (Nord 1995:
263).
Nord also distinguishes, within a given text-type, between ‘essential’ and
‘optional’ functions. In her corpus (composed of titles and headings from fictional,
nonfictional and children’s books, short stories, poems, and articles from scholarly
journals), the essential functions are distinctive, metatextual and phatic. We will look
at whether, and how, these functions are marked in the headlines comprised in our
case study.
155
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
(Fig. 1), 68 % of articles only contains a main headline, while 8 % also features a
subhead and 13 % an ‘upper-deck’, along with the main headline. Moreover, 11 % of
articles also has a ‘strapline’.
11%
Headline
13% Subhead
Upper-deck
8%
Strapline
68%
156
MARINA MANFREDI
Given that rendering metaphors is linked to their function, let us start with an
illustration of the main function(s) of ST headlines in our corpus.
While Nord’s case study had shown that the ‘essential’ functions were distinctive,
metatextual and phatic (see § 3.2), the analysis of our corpus material revealed that
the phatic function is featured by most headlines, to establish a first contact with the
potential reader, while the other two essential functions are the appellative and the
referential/informative, which were optional in Nord’s classification. Such a
discrepancy can easily be related to the different text-types under discussion: while
Nord’s corpus comprised titles from fictional, nonfictional and children’s books,
short stories, poems, where distinctive and metatextual functions are basic, ours
pertains a popular science magazine, whose headlines seem to have the primary aim
of persuading “[...] the title recipient (a) to read (or, at least, buy) the co-text and/or
(b) to read and interpret it in a specific way”, in her words a kind of ‘advertising’
function and an ‘instructive’ one” (Nord 1995: 278).
Observation of data in the 33 cases examined (only main headlines) leads us to the
following graph:
The results in Fig. 2 show that a combination of the appellative and referential
function is dominant, being featured in 18 out of 33 articles. It is interesting to notice
that 11 headlines perform an appellative function, without any reference to the
subject matter. In 1 of these cases, the referential function appears in the subhead.
Only 4 instances display a mere referential function, without any appealing character.
Not surprisingly, the appellative function is most often achieved through metaphors,
either lexical or grammatical. Let us now move on to illustrate some practical
examples.
157
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
In our study, we have taken into account all instances of metaphor, both lexical
and grammatical, and, following Lakoff and Johnson (1980), both ‘conventional’ and
‘new’. The former “[...] structure the ordinary conceptual system of our culture,
which is reflected in our everyday language” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 139). Since
we deal with translation, cultures at issue are obviously different, however we
identified conventional metaphors in both languages and cultures. ‘New’ metaphors,
on the other hand, are defined by Lakoff and Johnson as “imaginative and creative”
and “capable of giving us a new understanding of our experience” (Lakoff and
Johnson 1980: 139).
As an example of a ‘conventional’ metaphor, we may offer the following:
ST (1) TT (1)
In the Footsteps of the Apostles (NG 3) Viaggio sulle orme degli apostoli (NGI 3)
ST (2) TT (2)
In China’s Shadow (NG 6) All’ombra della ina (NGI 6)
In an article about Hong-Kong residents and their worries about losing their
identity and freedom after the handover to China, the conventional lexical metaphor
of ‘shadow’ is used to refer to “[s]omething of opposite character that necessarily
accompanies or follows something else, as shadow does light” and is rendered in the
TT through the equivalent metaphorical expression all’ombra di.
The corpus also includes instances of ‘new’ metaphors, like:
ST (3) TT (3)
Unseen Titanic (NG 4) Luce sul Titanic (NGI 4)
In ST (3), the focus is on Titanic, sunk and thus concretely “not seen,
unperceived, invisible” and metaphorically ‘unknown’. Through what Vinay and
Darbelnet (1958/2004) would consider an instance of ‘modulation’, entailing a
change in the point of view, TT (3) has become [l]uce sul Titanic, to introduce the
main topic of the article, i.e., the fact that new technologies ‘revealed’ images of
Titanic, which ‘came to light’ and experts knew what really happened. We can
consider the TT [++metaphorical] not only thanks to the lexical, but also to the
grammatical metaphor, realised through a nominalisation (‘enlighten’ > ‘light’, luce).
ST (4) presents an interesting case of lexical metaphor, reinforced by alliteration
(‘m’):
5
All definitions of items are borrowed from OED (online edition: www.oed.com).
158
MARINA MANFREDI
ST (4) TT (4)
Mix Match Morph (NG 2) E l’uomo creò il cane (NGI 2)
In particular ‘morph’, with the meaning of “to change (a person or thing) into
something different”, is used to refer to the manipulation of dog breeds. The Italian
TT is much more explicit, featuring a clause where the process and the participants in
the action are explicitly instantiated. Examples of ‘explicitation’, and consequently
of ‘de-metaphorisation’, are rather frequent in the corpus of investigation.
5.2. De-metaphorisation
In line with research within TS concerning the ‘standardisation’ hypothesis, our
analysis has revealed several cases of de-metaphorisation, both lexical and
grammatical.
Let us focus on a typical example:
ST (5) TT (5)
The Healing Fields Un futuro senza mine
Land mines once crippled a war-ravaged Devastata dalle guerre, la Cambogia è
Cambodia. Today the nation is a model for tuttora disseminata di mine. Ma oggi è anche
how to recover from this scourge. (NG 1) un modello per tutti i paesi che vogliono
debellare questo flagello. (NGI 1)
In the headline of an article on Cambodia and the danger caused by land mines,
the metaphoric ‘[t]he healing fields’ has been explicated and has become in TT (5)
[u]n futuro senza mine. In ST (5) also the nut-graph reinforces the metaphorical
lexical domain of ‘health’, represented by ‘healing’, ‘crippled’ and ‘recover’. The
verbal group ‘crippled’, indeed, has the figurative meaning of ‘damage’, but also
alludes to the people mutilated by mines. Such a metaphorical character is
completely lost in the TT, which has been ‘de-metaphorised’.
The same general tendency is illustrated in:
ST (6, 7, 8) TT (6, 7, 8)
A time to run (NG 2) Perché corri? (NGI 2)
Egypt in the moment (NG 5) Egitto il futuro è adesso (NGI 5)
The Golden Chiefs of Panama (NG 1) L’oro degli antichi sovrani di Panama (NGI 1)
Examples 6, 7 and 8 demonstrate that the TTs are definitely more explicit. The
nominal groups of ST (6) and (7) become finite clauses in TT (6) and (7), typical
instances of ‘paraphrase’ (van den Broeck 1981: 77). As regards ST (8), where
‘golden’ metaphorically refers to the ‘chiefs’ rather than to ‘gold artifacts’, in the TT
it is clearly explicated and de-metaphorised.
5.3. Re-metaphorisation
However, we have not only found instances of explicitation and in general of de-
metaphorisation. On the contrary, in our corpus we have also identified lexical
metaphors in the ST that have been reproduced in the TT, like the following:
ST (9) TT (9)
Tomorrowland (NG 2) Futurlandia (NGI 2)
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
ST (10) TT (10)
The calm before the wave (NG 2) La quiete prima dell’onda (NGI 2)
ST (11) TT (11)
Where Slaves Ruled Il regno degli schiavi
Escaped slaves in Brazil created thousands of In Brasile gli schiavi fuggiaschi fondarono
hidden societies, or quilombos, in the heart of migliaia di comunità segrete, i quilombos.
the country. Today these communities are Solo oggi il paese comincia a riconoscere i
winning rights to their land – and helping loro diritti. E il loro contributo alla
protect it. (NG 4) salvaguardia del territorio. (NGI 4)
ST (11) includes the lexical metaphor of ‘rule’, meaning “to exercise sovereignty
or authority over a person, a place” and referring to African escaped slaves that, in
Brazil, secretly organised communities at the time of colonialism. In the TT, a verbal
nominalisation (regnare > regno) increases the metaphoricity. If we also look at the
‘nut-graph’, we can see that the TT is even [+metaphorical], thanks to a double
nominalisation: in SFL terms, the verbal group complex ‘helping protect it’ –
functioning as causative Process – has been replaced by a nominal group –
functioning as Phenomenon – that is post-modified through an embedded
prepositional phrase: il loro contributo alla salvaguardia.
The illustration of these select examples demonstrates that through the process of
translation metaphors can be maintained and even reinforced.
5.4. Metaphorisation
Analysis also revealed interesting cases where the TT is [++metaphorical], and
consequently [++appellative]. Let us consider the following example as illustrative:
ST (12) TT (12)
Rhino Wars (NG 3) La guerra del corno (NGI 3)
The main headline of the ST, ‘Rhino wars’, to describe killing of rhinoceroses by
poachers to get their horns, features a ‘conventional’ metaphor, of ‘war’. The
corresponding TT conveys the same kind of lexical metaphoricity, but also
160
MARINA MANFREDI
ST (13) TT (13)
Marseille’s Melting Pot Mélange Marsiglia
As more European countries become nations In molti paesi europei, il numero di immigrati
of immigrants, is the multicultural city of è in continuo aumento. È Marsiglia la città
Marseille a vision of the future? (NG 3) multiculturale che anticipa il futuro? (NGI 3)
ST (14) TT (14)
Sun Struck (NG 6) Colpi di sole (NGI 6)
6. Summary of Findings
Our findings partly confirmed the general hypothesis of explicitation in
translation. However, before drawing any conclusions about properties of translated
texts, any possible reason for it has to be taken into account.
Firstly, we need to consider whether cultural factors could have influenced the
translators/editors’ choices. To this respect, an examination of the corpus showed
that most articles focus on topics and places ‘foreign’ to both the source and target
readers. The only obvious case of ‘cultural filter’ (House 1997) seems the following:
ST (15) TT (15)
Lady with a Secret (NG 2) La nuova Monna Lisa è lei? (NGI 2)
161
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
The mysterious ‘lady’ of the ST is explicated in the TT, becoming Monna Lisa,
part of the Italian reader’s heritage. Actually in both cases the metonymy is
maintained, since they both refer to the famous Leonardo’s painting, although the TT
is definitely more explicit, with the nominal group that has turned into an
interrogative full clause.
Secondly, we need to see whether some form of explicitation can account for
registerial features in Italian ‘parallel texts’, i.e., directly written in Italian by Italian
writers. Let us consider, in the small corpus we analysed, the headlines of the five
articles that are new Italian texts and not the result of a translation process:
TT (16): La civiltà del libro (NGI 1)
TT (17): Cronaca di un capolavoro annunciato (NGI 2)
TT (18): Le stanze della memoria (NGI 3)
TT (19): Quando Neandertal aveva le penne (NGI 4)
TT (20): Antartide, Italia (NGI 6)
None of these headlines is openly explicit and some of them also make use of
figurative language. For example, the first Italian title can be seen as a case of
synecdoche, since la civiltà del libro refers to a library, the Biblioteca malatestiana in
Cesena. Also memoria in TT (18) is an instance of metaphor, referring to the secret
archive in Vatican that contains historical documents.
With respect to this small corpus, therefore, the tendency to explicate as typical of
translated texts seems to be confirmed, as argued in translation literature (cf. § 2).
Nevertheless, the study also revealed evidence of metaphoricity through the process
of translation. In particular, if we follow Halliday and Matthiessen (1999) and
consider lexical and grammatical metaphor two sides of the same process, also our
TTs show a high degree of metaphoricity and in some cases they are even
[+metaphorical] than the STs they are derived from.
To sum up, we can state that main headlines, despite a tendency to explicitation,
remain metaphoric in the process of translation and the TTs even display a wider use
of grammatical metaphor. Also subheads show a general tendency to re-
metaphorisation. On the other hand, we noticed that metaphor use, even in STs, is
rather marginal in other subdivisions of headlines, such as the ‘upper-deck’ or the
‘strapline’. Limiting ourselves to the main headlines, we can see (Fig. 3) how
metaphors occur in about 90 % of the STs examined and also, contemporarily – as
we said, at various degrees – in more than 80 % of STs and TTs. The data even show
a small percentage of metaphoricity newly introduced in the TTs.
162
MARINA MANFREDI
15
Metaphor: ST - TT
10
5 Metaphor: TT
0
The study thus shows that metaphor, both lexical and grammatical, also plays an
important role in translated texts.
7. Concluding Remarks
In this paper, focussing on the process of translation in popular scientific press in
contemporary world, we have examined headlines as a distinct text-type and have
attempted to show the role of metaphor in STs and in their corresponding TTs. An
interdisciplinary approach – drawing essentially on TS and SFL, but also in part on
media studies – has been found to be useful for the purpose of our investigation.
Results of our case study show that metaphoricity in headlines plays a major role
in both STs and TTs. In terms of effect towards the target audience, we can affirm
that, despite more referentiality, they have globally maintained their ‘paradigmatic’
traits and most often function like ‘slogans’ that catch the reader’s attention (Papuzzi
2010).
It is evident that the small size of the case study does not permit definitive
conclusions and further research is required. For a wider understanding of (re-)
metaphorisation in headlines of NG magazine translated into Italian, for example,
these early results could be followed by an investigation of a larger corpus.
Furthermore, the analysis could be extended to include subheadings within the body
of the article, and also the ‘lead’. It would also be interesting to compare our findings
from the print editions with those from the electronic versions, to study any possible
differences. Finally, larger-scale research might include other popular science
magazines, in order to see whether there is a correspondence and establish whether
our findings can be said to be typical of the text-type and of its translation.
We are perfectly aware that our results may be partly dependent on the type of
participants involved in this communicative act: for 33 articles, four translators and
the same editorial staff were involved6. Further exploration is hence desirable, with
new texts, new human subjects and, for the scope of objectivity, also different
researchers.
6
Translators of articles in the 6 issues are: B. Cerminara; P. Gimigliano; I. Inserra (Scriptum); C.V.
Letizia (Scriptum). The editorial staff includes: M. Conti (managing editor); M. Gravino;
S. Martorelli; M. Pinna.
163
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
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Primary sources7
Bartholet, J. ‘Egypt in the moment’ (5), 70-97. (‘Egitto il futuro è adesso’ (5), 2-29)
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Jenkins, M. ‘The Healing Fields’ (1), 96-115. (‘Un futuro senza mine’ (1), 30-49)
Lancaster, J. ‘Tomorrowland’ (2), 80-101. (‘Futurlandia’ (2), 60-81)
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Martorelli, S. ‘Quando Neandertal aveva le penne’ (4), 54-65.
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Mutsuki Mockett, M. ‘A time to run’ (2), 78-79. (‘Perché corri?’ (2), 42-43)
O’Neill, T. ‘Lady with a Secret’ (2), 102-109. (‘La nuova Monna Lisa è lei?’ (2), 98-105)
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Paterniti, M. ‘In China’s Shadow’ (6), 98-121. (‘All’ombra della Cina’ (6), 52-73)
Ratliff, E. ‘Mix Match Morph’ (2), 34-53. (‘E l’uomo creò il cane’ (2), 2-19)
Sides, H. ‘Unseen Titanic’ (4), 78-99. (‘Luce sul Titanic’ (4), 2-31)
Todhunter, A. ‘In the Footsteps of the Apostles’ (3), 38-65. (‘Viaggio sulle orme degli
apostoli’ (3), 16-43)
Williams, A.R. ‘The Golden Chiefs of Panama’ (1), 66-81. (‘L’oro degli antichi sovrani di
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7
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165
Grammatical metaphors in translation: Cookery books as a
case in point
YVONNE LINDQVIST
University of Stockholm
Abstract: This paper deals with the translation of grammatical metaphors (GMs) from
English into Swedish in non-fiction literature. The GMs are considered as a semiotic
resource regulating social distance in cookery books. The study examines the
paratexts of The Naked Chef (1999/2001), Nigella Bites (2001/2002) and Kylie
Kwong’s Heart and Soul (2003/2004) and their translations into Swedish. It is shown
that congruent translations of the GMs dominate the strategies of the Swedish
translators, thus confirming their expected global adequate translation strategy.
Concerning local strategies the Swedish translators reword grammatical metaphors
into clauses in approximately 20 per cent of the studied cases, thereby shortening the
social distance in the target text and influencing the reader’s perception of the
Persona constructed in the cookery books. It is hypothesised that in Swedish,
regardless of genres, GMs more manifestly signal social distance than in English.
Keywords: translation, grammatical metaphors, systemic functional linguistics,
cookery books, descriptive translation studies.
1. Introduction
This paper deals with the translation of grammatical metaphors in cookery books
translated from English into Swedish. Grammatical metaphors within Systemic
Functional Linguistics (SFL), which is part of the theoretical framework of this
study, seem at first glance to have little in common with the definition of metaphors
within traditional stylistics or cognitive approaches to metaphors (cf. Lakoff,
Johnson 1980; Steen 1994; Kövecses 2005). In fact, stylistic researchers and
cognitive linguists would probably not consider grammatical metaphors (GMs
henceforth) within SFL as metaphors at all. Nevertheless, several features of SFL
grammatical metaphors are shared with metaphors with more traditional definitions,
for instance change of category in some way, which alters the style of the text and
the impact on the reader.
However, studies related to GMs have grown rapidly in number since the
introduction of the concept in Halliday’s first edition of Introduction to Functional
Grammar (1985) and Halliday’s and Martin’s analysis of the use of GMs in scientific
and technical texts (1993). This growing interest in GMs is probably connected with
the equally rapidly growing attention directed towards non-literary texts. Thus the
previously dominant study of metaphor as a stylistic trope common in literary texts
has in recent years largely been replaced by investigations of other kinds of
metaphoric language (Stålhammar 2006: 99).
In this paper, grammatical metaphors1 are studied as one semiotic resource among
many regulating social distance in cookery books, thus influencing the reader’s
perception of the so called Persona in these books. The Cookery Book Persona is
1
The grammatical metaphors of the study are ideational metaphors (cf. Halliday, Matthiessen 2004:
636-639).
Lindqvist, Yvonne, ‘Grammatical metaphors in translation: Cookery books as a case in point’, in Donna R.
Miller; Enrico Monti (eds) Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative Language, Bologna, CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del
CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 167-180.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
2
The research project Swedish Non-Fiction Literature 1750 – 2000 includes 3 works on culinary
literature by Karin Mårdsjö (cf. 2001a; 2001b; 2001c). However none of the works considers the
translation perspective opted for in the present paper.
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YVONNE LINDQVIST
3. The Swedish literary system and the reasons for studying culinary literature
translated from English into Swedish
Within the Swedish literary system – an open system in polysystemic terms
(Even-Zohar 1990: 45-51) when it comes to translations – culinary literature is
quantitatively the most important subgenre of non-fiction literature (Granqvist 2005:
4). The openness of the Swedish literary system is shown by the high percentage of
translated literature within each literary category during the period of the study in
Table 1. The translation rate for fiction amounts to approximately 40%, for
children’s literature to approximately 23% and for non-fiction to approximately 36
%. The openness of the Swedish literary system indicates that translational norms
within the system favour the adequate translation strategy3. Acceptability to foreign
influences in translated texts is consequently at a high level. And within the culinary
literary field, translation rates amount to approximately 20% of all publications
during the period 2003–2006 (National Bibliography 2007).
Fiction 1029 (39%) 1036 (40%) 1055 (42%) 1093 (43%) 1145 (38%)
Children’s 653 (25%%) 613 (24%) 540 (22%) 548 (22%) 724 (24%)
literature
Non-fiction 965 (36%) 945 (36%) 877 (35%) 901 (35%) 1106 (37%)
Total 2647 (100%) 2594 (100%) 2472 (100%) 2542 (100%) 2975 (100%)
Table 1. Published translated works in Sweden 2000–2004 (Swedish Arts Council 2005)
Table 2 shows the relatively open system when it comes to translation rates within
the culinary literary field in Sweden. The percentage of translated culinary literature
varies from the lowest level – 16% to the highest – 24% during the five-year period
accounted for. Hence approximately one fifth (20%) of all publications within the
culinary literary field consist of translations. Within the overall open Swedish literary
culture (cf. table 1), this relatively open culinary system probably favours influences
from abroad to develop its repertoire (cf. Even Zohar 1990: 45-51). New themes and
techniques in the genre are likely to find their way into the Swedish culture by means
of translation.
There are several reasons for studying cookery books translated from English in
Sweden. First, it is important to study non-fictional texts within Translation Studies
in Sweden, since most of the research carried out during the last 20 years has dealt
with literary translation (Englund Dimitrova 2007: 21). Second, approximately 40%-
50% of published translations worldwide use English as their source language
(Heilbron 1999: 434; Sapiro 2008: 68-72), and in Sweden as much as 71% of all
3
In GB and the USA, less than 5 per cent of all published literature consists of translations. France
and Germany have a translation rate of 10 to 12 per cent of all published books, Italy and Spain 12–20
per cent and Sweden and the Netherlands more than 25 per cent (Heilbron 1999: 439). Thus the
British and American systems favour the acceptable translation strategy, with low tolerance for
foreign influences in translated texts, and with ‘fluency’ and ‘transparency’ as hallmarks of a good
translation (cf. Venuti 1995: 2).
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Table 2. Published Swedish culinary literature and translated culinary literature in Sweden
2003–2007 (The Swedish Gastronomic Academy 2003–2007).
Third, therefore it is very plausible that the total dominance of English as a source
language influences Swedish translation norms (cf. Toury 1995: 49)4. And last but
not least, cooking using recipes from the latest cookery book by the most popular TV
chef of the moment is an important cultural practice today. This practice helps
knowledge-seeking home-made chefs to construct their taste, prestige and identity.
Thus, the cookery book does not simply reflect the new tastes and trends in cooking
and home styling in society, but it also legitimises the search for the perfect lifestyle
by the new middle class – a lifestyle largely imported by means of translation.
4. The texts of the study and the aim of the overall project
The study presented in this paper focuses on the translation of grammatical
metaphors and includes the following cookery books:
1.
Nigella Lawson, 2001, Nigella Bites, Random House
5
Nigella Lawson, 2002, Nigella – Kort och gott [Nigella – Short and Good/Tasty ] ,
Bokförlaget Forum, Translation by Kerstin Törngren
2.
Jamie Oliver, 1999, The Naked Chef, Penguin Books Ltd.
Jamie Oliver, 2001, Den nakna kocken [The Naked Chef], Bonniers Förlag AB,
Translation by Kerstin Törngren
3.
Kylie Kwong, 2003, Heart and Soul, Penguin Books Ltd Australia
Kylie Kwong, 2004, Kylies kök [Kylie’s kitchen], Natur och Kultur/Fakta
Translation by Tove och Johan Janson
The study of grammatical metaphors in translation forms part of a larger project
entitled The Social Practices of Translation, Translated Non-Fiction Literature within
the Swedish Culture, Culinary Literature, specifically Cookbooks as a Case in Point.
The source and target texts of the project are chosen from the “A la Carte – Best
Chef Book” category of the yearbook of the Swedish Gastronomic Academy – a
publication presenting the annual output of culinary literature in Sweden divided into
4
But Toury dealt with relations in and between the Israeli and Russian cultures.
5
The texts within brackets […] are back translations of the Swedish translation solution.
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YVONNE LINDQVIST
6
So far, three papers outlining this model based on SFL and Kress; van Leuven (2006) have been
published (cf. Lindqvist 2011a, 2011b, 2012). A monograph dealing with translated culinary literature
in Sweden is planned.
171
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
172
YVONNE LINDQVIST
6. Translation of GMs
Grammatical metaphor may be used in both the English and Swedish language,
but linguistic research has shown that GM seems to be considerably less frequent in
Swedish (Stålhammar 2006). In a study of translated popular science for example, as
much as 20 percent of the source GMs were turned into clauses in Swedish
(Nordrum 2007: 200). However, Nordrum (2007: 4) stresses that when a lexical
nominalisation is translated by another structure, a variety of factors can explain the
change. Some changes may be related to the grammatical function of the lexical
nominalisation or its syntactic structure, whereas others are of a more pragmatic
nature related for instance to different genre conventions in the two languages.
In this way, previous research seems to suggest that Swedish prefers clauses
where English uses lexical nominalisations. Such might be the case in the genres
studied so far: scientific texts, popular science texts (Nordrum 2007), legal texts
(Stålhammar 2006) and technical manuals (Lassen 2003).
One question asked in this paper is whether grammatical metaphor translation
functions differently in more congruent genres, where the unpacking of dense lexical
content is not as necessary for comprehension as in scientific texts. Another question
is whether GMs have different functions in the source and target texts within the
same genre. Forewords or prefaces to cookery books form good examples of more
congruent text genres. Do they follow the same pattern when it comes to the function
and translation of grammatical metaphors as previous research has claimed? The
following sections in the paper will try and answer these research questions.
7
Note that the term congruent in ‘congruent translations’ is used in a different way in the analysis of
the translations (cf. Nordrum 2007: 13) from the way it is used in the analysis of grammatical forms in
the Halliday tradition.
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
174
YVONNE LINDQVIST
[Some of the recipes may seem difficult […] They demand that you become one with what you
do, that you let yourself be absorbed by the pleasures of cooking ]
Examples 1–3 all showed the realisation of congruent translations, when a
grammatical metaphor in the source text is translated by a grammatical metaphor in
the target text. This translation strategy is source-oriented, opting for an adherence to
source-textual norms rather than target-textual norms. This adequate translation
strategy is the unmarked choice of translators operating within an open literary
system (Even-Zohar 1990) such as the Swedish one (Lindqvist 2002: 30-38).
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Table 3. Tokens, words, sentences, grammatical metaphors (GMs) and the percentage of
GMs/words in the source texts.
Table 3 reveals a very low percentage of grammatical metaphors in the prefaces to
the books of the study. Jamie’s preface has the lowest percentage (2%), Nigella’s the
highest (4%) and Kylie’s falls in between the other two (3%). These results are
expected, since forewords in this genre do not favour social distance and abstraction
– features common in scientific and technical texts, where the percentage of GMs is
normally substantially higher. Prefaces and introductions in ‘Persona cookery books’
often, on the other hand, serve the purpose of gaining the reader’s confidence by
intimising, addressing and including him or her in their narration.
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YVONNE LINDQVIST
Jamie 26 20 6
Nigella 31 27 4
Kylie 33 24 9
Total 90 71 19
9. Closing discussion
The introductory text in cookery books cannot, as we have seen, be qualified as
highly specialised texts in the sense of Halliday, Matthiessen (2004: 657).
Grammatical metaphors do not prevail in this genre. Concerning the grammatical
metaphors, the translations can be qualified as being generally adequate, i.e. source-
oriented translations, since the vast majority of the GMs are translated congruently.
Grammatical metaphors are, however, less frequent in the Swedish target texts than
in the English source texts, even though these solutions are not conditioned by the
language system or the genre in question. A conclusion then comes to mind that the
function of the grammatical metaphor in English and Swedish perhaps differs. In
Swedish, grammatical metaphors probably more manifestly signal social distance.
One plausible explanation could be that the Swedish government for the last 50
years has quite successfully devoted special resources to language planning with the
intention of simplifying bureaucratic language in order to strengthen democracy.
Lawyers, administrators, writers and translators are thus working towards more
transparent, generally reader-friendly forms of language (Stålhammar 2006: 111). In
fact, this work has a long history, which began in the 16th century, when King Gustav
Vasa ordered civil servants to use plain Swedish and not German, Danish or Latin in
official writing. The tradition can be followed up to the recently passed Swedish
Language Act (2009, Section 11) stating that official documents should be written in
a straightforward and comprehensible language. The Black List – a language policy
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References
Bourdieu, P. (1984) The Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste,
London/New York: Routledge.
Brownlie, D.; Hewer, P.; Horn, S. (2005) ‘Culinary Tourism: An Exploratory Reading of
Contemporary Representations of Cooking’, Consumption, Markets and Culture 8 (1), 7-
26.
Burstedt, A.; Fredriksson, C.; Jönsson, H. (2005) Mat: genealogi och gestaltning, Lund:
Studentlitteratur.
Cointreau, E. (2005) ‘10 Years of Cookbooks: the Global Market. Press release’, January 3,
http://www.cookbookfair.com/html/10yearsofcookbooks.html (last accessed on
01/03/2005).
Even-Zohar, I. (1990) ‘Polysystem Studies’, Poetics Today 11 (1), Tel Aviv: The Porter
Institute of Poetics And Semiotics.
Englund Dimitrova, B. (2007) ‘Tjugo år av svensk översättningsvetenskap’, in Y. Lindqvist
(ed.) Gränslösa texter. Perspektiv på översättning, Uppsala: Hallgren & Fallgren, 13-32.
Granqvist, C.J. (2005) ‘Förord’, Årets svenska måltidslitteratur 2005, Grythyttan:
Måltidsakademiens förlag.
8
http://sofi.prod3.imcms.net/testet/test/loadTest.do?id=1&ts=-642130528 (last accessed on
11/05/2013).
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180
Literary translation
Traduzione letteraria
Fiction
Romanzi e racconti
Translated figures of speech in Anne Hébert and Alice
Munro
PATRICIA GODBOUT
Université de Sherbrooke
Abstract: This text examines the way metonymy and metaphor are used in the work of
two important Canadian writers, Anne Hébert (1916-2000) and Alice Munro (born in
1931). Two of their works are examined in English or French translation: a short
story called “ hance” published in 2004 in Munro’s case, and the novel Les fous de
Bassan by Anne Hébert (1982). The specific use of metaphor and metonymy by these
two writers, both at the macro- and micro-textual levels, calls for special attention on
the part of the translators. The discussion of those translations is also put in the
Canadian literary context.
Keywords: metaphor, metonymy, Anne Hébert, Alice Munro.
1. Introduction
Discussing metaphor and metonymy, Roman Jakobson stressed that “in normal
verbal behaviour both processes are continually operative, but careful observation
will reveal that under the influence of a cultural pattern, personality, and verbal style,
preference is given to one of the two processes over the other” (Jakobson 2002: 90).
My aim in this text is to see how this applies to the Canadian literary and
translational contexts by looking more specifically at two works by Anne Hébert and
Alice Munro in the original as well as in English or French translation. The first book
I’ll be examining is Anne Hébert’s novel Les fous de Bassan, published in French in
1982; the second is Runaway, published in 2004 by Alice Munro.
In a chapter of his book called Configuration, Canadian critic, poet and translator
E.D. Blodgett examines how the two central tropes of metaphor – which consists in
seeing an image through a real object, and substituting one for the other – and
metonymy – which is more akin to a wilful confusion between appearance and
reality – function in the work of Hébert and Munro. Reminding us, as Gérard Genette
does in Figures II, that the rhetorical figure is “le symbole même de la spatialité du
langage littéraire dans son rapport au sens” (Genette 1969: 47), Blodgett looks at the
representation of the house in the work of both writers. He notes that characters in
several of Anne Hébert’s novels are not metaphorically linked to the house they live
in. They rather tend to be sketching its contours: the reader will find them, for
instance, lying on a bed or sitting by the window (a recurrent image), as is the case
for Élizabeth in the novel called Kamouraska (1970). Hébert rarely allows the house
to be seen from more than one angle: only one element will generally be made
visible (the façade, or a wall, a mirror, a window) in an iconographic and bi-
Godbout, Patricia, ‘Translated figures of speech in Anne Hébert and Alice Munro’, in Donna R. Miller; Enrico
Monti (eds) Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative Language, Bologna, CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti
di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 183-191.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
184
PATRICIA GODBOUT
1
This dialogue is included in the critical edition of Anne Hébert’s poetry recently published by
Presses de l’Université de Montréal (2013).
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
having taken particular pleasure in translating the very first sentence of the book,
which goes like this:
La barre étale de la mer, blanche, à perte de vue, sur le ciel gris, la masse noire des arbres, en
ligne parallèle derrière nous. (Hébert 1982: 13)
In this incomplete sentence (having no finite verb) which reads like a haiku, the
horizontal plane is very much emphasised. Here is Fischman’s translation:
A strand of sea poised between tides, white, as far as the eye can see, and against the gray sky,
in a parallel line behind us, the black bulk of trees. (Hébert 1983: 9)
In English, we also have an incomplete sentence, but the choice of “as far as the
eye can see” to render “à perte de vue” brings in a finite verb, albeit in a
prepositional phrase. Pauline Sarkar, translator of Les fous de Bassan into Dutch, has
written about the problem posed to her by that same sentence. She was confused by
the fact that for her, a “barre” goes from left to right, so in the present case, is parallel
to the beach, whereas “ perte de vue” refers to the distant horizon. She ended up
using the Dutch word for surface (Sarkar 2001: 8).
The second paragraph of Hébert’s novel reads like this:
Au loin une rumeur de fête, du côté du nouveau village. En étirant le cou on pourrait voir leurs
bicoques peinturlurées en rouge, vert, jaune, bleu, comme si c’était un plaisir de barbouiller des
maisons et d’afficher des couleurs voyantes. Ces gens-là sont des parvenus. Inutile de tourner
la tête dans leur direction. Je sais qu’ils sont là. (Hébert 1982: 13)
Here we have a juxtaposition of the village and its festivities and the severity of
Reverend Jones’ rectory. Thus, difference is stressed from a contiguous angle. In the
English translation, we find more personal pronouns (two “you’s for one “on”, and a
“they” – they took pleasure – where the French has “c’était un plaisir”), which tends
to diminish the aloofness effect of the original:
In the distance, from the new village, the hum of festivities. If you craned your neck you could
see their shacks, daubed with red, green, yellow, blue, as if they took pleasure in smearing
houses with garish colors. They’re upstarts, those people. Unnecessary to look in their
direction. I know they’re there. (Hébert 1983: 9)
But the two worlds of the village and the rectory cannot coexist unbeknownst to
one another: the wind and the music make perfect insularity impossible, as is made
plain in the third paragraph:
Leur fanfare se mêle au vent. M’atteint par rafales. Me perce le tympan. M’emplit les yeux de
lueurs fauves stridentes. Ils ont racheté nos terres à mesure qu’elles tombaient en déshérence.
Des papistes. Voici qu’aujourd’hui, à grand renfort de cuivre et de majorettes, ils osent célébrer
le bicentenaire du pays, comme si c’étaient eux les fondateurs, les bâtisseurs, les premiers dans
la forêt, les premiers sur la mer, les premiers ouvrant la terre vierge sous le soc. (Hébert 1982:
13)
Here Anne Hébert eliminates the grammatical subject in certain sentences:
“M’atteint par rafales. Me perce le tympan. M’emplit les yeux de lueurs fauves
stridentes”. This creates an effect of rapidity (thoughts swiftly going by in the
minister’s head), emphasised by the pace imposed by the succession of short
sentences. In the translation, we note the presence of the pronoun I. The rhythmic
pattern is transferred onto the assonances and alliterations, the grammatical
parallelism of the English version being also noteworthy:
Their brass band is drowned by the wind. I hear spurts of music. Earsplitting. Glittering, savage
and strident. They have bought up our lands as they reverted to the Crown. Papists. Today,
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PATRICIA GODBOUT
with quantities of instruments and majorettes, they dare to celebrate the country’s bicentennial
as if they were the ones who had founded it, built it, they who first came to the forest, the sea,
they who had broken the virgin soil with their plows. (Hébert 1983: 9)
The question of who “first came” to that part of the New World cannot but be read
as being an ironic inversion: apart from the fact that neither the French Catholics nor
the English Protestants were there first (the Natives – or First Nations – were), the
minister resenting the presence of the papists in his neck of the woods is a reversal of
the historical situation of Quebec where francophone settlers of New France saw
some of their “ancestral” territories taken over by British colonists following 1763’s
Treaty of Paris.
Hébert functions in a metonymical mode most of the time, with little touches of
metaphors here and there, for instance when the blue wall paper in the Reverend’s
house is described as “revealing, in places, the brown skin of wood” (Hébert 1983:
15) [le papier bleu du parloir en loques qui “laisse voir, de place en place, la peau
brune du bois” (Hébert 1982: 23). For the translator, many simple choices on the
syntactic level add up to create the same effect, but can at times ostensibly move the
text away from its general movement. On the whole Sheila Fischman manages to
keep this metonymic prose laced with metaphor accessible to her readers in
translation, except perhaps for the title of the novel (In the Shadow of the Wind, in
English, and Les fous de Bassan in French).
The fou de Bassan is a bird found on the seaside in very few places in Québec, in
particular on an island called Bonaventure, off the Gaspé peninsula. The “fou”
(“mad”) in “fou de Bassan” is due to the violent way in which it plunges into the sea
to catch its prey. The name of the bird is often mentioned in the novel, which comes
to stand, as a synecdoche, for the craziness of Griffin Creek.
The Dutch translator Pauline Sarkar explains that in one Dutch dialect, there’s a
sea bird called a “zeezot”, which literally means “sea idiot” (or “fou marin” in
French), and even though the Dutch don’t normally accept regionalisms in the
official or literary language, she suggested using that in the title and the publisher
agreed (Sarkar 2001: 11).
I think this Dutch translation of Anne Hébert’s title works better than the English
version, the main reason being that In the shadow of the wind introduces a metaphor
which transfers the emphasis away from metonymy.
3. “Chance”
From the production of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature, Alice Munro, I’ll be
looking briefly at one short story from her collection Runaway – for which she had
won the Giller Prize. Runaway was published in 2004 by McClelland & Stewart.
Some of the stories in that collection were originally printed in The New Yorker. The
French translation of Alice Munro’s book, by Jacqueline Huet and Jean-Pierre
Carasso, came out in 2008. It was co-published in France by Les Éditions de
l’Olivier, and in Québec by Boréal.
Three short stories in Munro’s book are connected with one another. This triptych
– which amounts in fact to a novella – is centred on the character of Juliet, who, in
the first short story entitled “Chance”, is a 21-year-old teacher of Latin in Vancouver.
The year is 1965 and Juliet is crossing Canada from East to West by train – a very
meaningful trip in symbolic terms in Canada, whose railway, built ad mari usque ad
mare in the late nineteenth century, had indeed been constructed as the backbone of
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
the country’s identity. On that train, Juliet meets Eric, the man who’ll later become
her husband. This chance encounter that the title refers to, among other things, is in
itself of limited interest. What is really the centre of the story is the way Juliet relates
to herself and to the outside world. The way she keeps assessing and reassessing
what happens to her and around her. A lot of things are fraught with uncertainty, and
a lot of guesswork goes on.
This imprecision partakes of an aesthetic proposition at the basis of the story – a
particular way of connecting form and content – which Munro hints at in “Chance”
when the narrator states that while Juliet is looking out the train window, she is
“drawn in” by “the very indifference, the repetition, the carelessness and contempt
for harmony, to be found on the scrambled surface of the Precambrian shield”
(Munro 2004: 54). By means of Munro’s pen, indifference, repetition, carelessness
and contempt for harmony form the pattern of her prose, rhetorical ways she uses in
order to transfer – almost in a seismographic fashion – the fundamental features of
the territory that Juliet is crossing by train, as well as the mapping of her mind, the
two being closely linked to form part of Munro’s aesthetics of the Canadian North.
One could say that this is her own way of revisiting or even challenging a traditional
English-Canadian discursive approach which E.D. Blodgett assimilates to an Adamic
desire to claim the landscape through language (Blodgett 2012: 119)2. This is usually
done in a metonymical mode since metonymy is specifically concerned with the
relation between language and the reality it refers to3. But Munro doesn’t convey a
desire to claim or possess the land (man versus nature) so much as she situates the
human presence in nature, as a part of a whole.
Translating Munro into French would therefore entail looking closely at a certain
number of stylistic traits that tend to partake of her aesthetics, in other words, to pay
attention to certain elements which play a part in the creation of her work as a whole.
One of those rhetorical devices is repetition. The English language doesn’t handle
repetition the way French does4. In French, there is a stronger reticence to repeat
words. Iteration as a figure of speech is not always present in Munro’s prose, but at
times it does play an important role, such as in “Chance”. So when one comes across
repeated words in that story, like the word “house” in another passage, one feels that
there is an added meaning to them:
The towns where the bus stops are not organized towns at all. In some places a few repetitive
houses — company houses — are built close together, but most of the houses are like those in
the woods, each one in its own wide cluttered yard […]. (Munro 2004: 50)
Here, the French translation typically decided against repetition:
Les villes où le car s’arrête ne sont pas organisées du tout. Par endroits, quelques maisons
répétitives – appartenant à une compagnie – sont bâties les unes près des autres, mais la plupart
2
Here’s what he writes: “Les grands poètes anglophones actuels […] considèrent la poésie comme
l’acte de faire une carte du pays à travers la langue, projet adamique, pour ainsi dire” (Blodgett 2012:
119). Although Blodgett’s remarks, written on the occasion of the centenary of Québécois poet Hector
the Saint-Denys Garneau’s birth, deal more specifically with poetry, they can be said to also apply to
English-Canadian prose.
3
As Michel Le Guern explains, “Le mécanisme de la métaphore s’oppose […] nettement à celui de la
métonymie par le fait qu’il opère sur la substance même du langage au lieu de porter seulement sur la
relation entre le langage et la réalité exprimée” (Le Guern 1972: 16-17).
4
Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet, authors of the Stylistique comparée du français et de l’anglais,
write: “on sait que l’anglais ne craint pas les répétitions, au contraire” (1977: 252).
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PATRICIA GODBOUT
des habitations ressemblent à celles qu’on voit dans les bois, dressées chacune au milieu d’une
vaste cour encombrée […]. » (2008: L’Olivier 55; Boréal 57)
Another occurrence of repetition concerns the consecutive use of the conjunction
“and” in English. Here’s an example taken from “Chance”:
The bus takes Juliet from downtown Vancouver to Horseshoe Bay and then onto a ferry. Then
across a mainland peninsula and onto another ferry and onto the mainland again and so to the
town where the man who wrote the letter lives. (Munro 2004: 50; emphasis added)
The French version reads like this:
Le car amène Juliet du centre de Vancouver jusqu’à Horseshoe Bay où il embarque sur un bac.
Puis à travers une péninsule et sur un autre bac et de nouveau sur le continent jusqu’à la ville
où habite l’homme qui a écrit la lettre. (Munro 2008: L’Olivier 54; Boréal 56)
Here, the translators managed to stay pretty close to Munro’s style, even to the
point of choosing to put two “et” in a row, which is normally frowned upon in
French. The repetitive use of “and” creates the effect of putting all the elements on
the same level, not emphasising one in particular. It is, as we know, one of the
distinctive features of Ernest Hemingway’s style, which is not always transposed in a
satisfactory manner in French translation5.
Among the signs of punctuation, the exclamation mark signals an emphasis on
what Jakobson calls the “emotive function” (1963: 214). One notices that such a
punctuation sign is conspicuously absent from Munro’s prose, even where one would
expect it, as in the following passage:
Whale Bay. And how quickly – even before Horseshoe Bay – you pass from city to wilderness.
(Munro 2004: 50)
In French, the use of an exclamation mark adds a tinge of emotion that the
original doesn’t convey:
Whale Bay. Et que l’on passe vite – avant même Horseshoe Bay – de la ville à la nature
sauvage! (Munro 2008: L’Olivier 54; Boréal 57)
Even though in French, as in English, the sentence structure typically calls for an
exclamation mark, the translation could easily have done without it, just like the
original text did. The impact of having decided to include it is not to be
underestimated in view of the fact that this slightly greater stress in the target
language on an affective rapport with the landscape is not in line with a sort of
ontological ‘indifference’ Munro is emphasising in relation to Juliet’s journey and
fate.
Word choices also come to play in part in the way emotion is or is not expressed.
For instance, in French, the word “maisonnette” is a bit old-fashioned; it conveys an
element of quaintness that is not contextually appropriate:
Occasionally a trail of smoke from some damp and battered-looking little house, with a yard
full of firewood, lumber and tires, cars and parts of cars, broken and usable bikes, toys, all the
things that have to sit outside when people are lacking garages and basements. (Munro 2004:
50)
De temps à autre, une mince fumée montait d’une maisonnette d’aspect humide et délabré, la
cour pleine de bois de chauffage, de poutres et de pneus, d’autos et de pièces détachées, de
5
Jean-Marc Gouanvic has aptly shown, in his Pratique sociale de la traduction, that by doing away
with this repeated conjunction and reorganising the whole punctuation system of the original, the
French translator of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms “détruit l’agencement stylistique de la phrase”
(Gouanvic 2007: 74).
189
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
bicyclettes cassées ou encore entières, de jouets, de toutes les choses qui doivent rester dehors
quand les gens n’ont ni garage ni sous-sol. (Munro 2008: L’Olivier 55; Boréal 57; emphasis
added)
Here a verb is added in the translation (“montait”), the word “car” is not repeated,
and “maisonnette” seems to be juxtaposed in an oxymoronic manner with the
adjectival syntagm “d’aspect humide et délabré”. I’m drawing attention here to
stylistic features that matter to Munro’s aesthetics, even though in any particular
instance the impact on the target text reader is not that important. The idea is to
examine what effects the translation produces at the micro-textual level, and to try
and determine whether or not this corresponds to the general thrust of Munro’s text.
190
PATRICIA GODBOUT
‘side by side’ cohabitation of texts, and to listen to what the coming and going of
metaphors and metonymies in translation is telling us about Canadian literature in
particular, and literature more generally.
References
Blodgett, E.D. (1982) Configuration. Essays on the Canadian Literatures, Downsview, Ont.:
ECW Press.
Blodgett, E.D. (2012) ‘De la difficulté de traduire Saint-Denys Garneau en anglais’, Études
françaises 48 (2), 111-119.
Edwards, M. (2004) Racine et Shakespeare, Paris: PUF.
Fischman, S. (2001) ‘Hommage d’une traductrice à Anne Hébert’, tr. P. Godbout, Cahiers
Anne Hébert 3, 15-19.
Genette, G. (1969) Figures II, Paris: Seuil.
Gouanvic, J.-M. (2007) Pratique sociale de la traduction. Le roman réaliste américain dans
le champ littéraire français (1920-1960), Arras: Artois Presses Université.
Hébert, A. (1970) Kamouraska, Paris: Seuil.
Hébert, A. (1983) In the Shadow of the Wind [1982. Les fous de Bassan, tr. S. Fischman],
Toronto: Stoddart.
Hébert, A. (2013) Œuvres complètes. Tome 1, ed. N. Watteyne; P. Godbout, Montréal:
Presses de l’Université de Montréal.
Jakobson, R. (1963) Essais de linguistique générale, tr. et préf. N. Ruwet], Paris: Éditions de
Minuit.
Jakobson, R. (2002) ‘Two aspects of language and two types of aphasic disturbances’
[1956], in R. Jakobson; M. Halle, Fundamentals of Language, Hawthorne, N.Y.: Walter
de Gruyter, 69-96.
Jones, D.G. (1984) ʻThe mythology of identity: a Canadian caseʼ, in B. Belyea; E. Dansereau
(eds) Driving Home: A Dialogue Between Writers and Readers, Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid
Laurier University Press, 39-56.
Lacan, J. (1966) Écrits, Paris: Seuil.
Le Guern, M. (1972) Sémantique de la métaphore et de la métonymie, Paris: Librairie
Larousse.
Munro, A. (1968) Dance of the Happy Shades, and other stories, Toronto: McGraw-Hill
Ryerson.
Munro, A. (2008) Fugitives [2004. Runaway, tr. J. Huet; J.-P. Carasso], Paris/Montréal:
Éditions de l’Olivier/Boréal.
Renken, A. (2012) Babel heureuse. Pour lire la traduction, Paris: Van Dieren Éditeur.
Sarkar, P. (2001) ‘Traduire Anne Hébert’, Cahiers Anne Hébert 3, 5-13.
Vinay, J.-P.; J. Darbelnet (1977), Stylistique comparée du français et de l’anglais [1958],
nouvelle éd. revue et corrigée, Montréal: Beauchemin.
191
Il “langage-univers” di Boris Vian in due traduzioni
italiane: Schiuma di giorni, La schiuma dei giorni
FABIO REGATTIN
Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna
Abstract: Tra quelle che sono state evidenziate come caratteristiche tipiche dello stile
di Boris Vian (1920-1959), spicca ciò che Jacques Bens (1963) ha definito “langage-
univers”. Con questo termine, Bens indica la capacità vianesca di creare mondi e
situazioni con e attraverso il linguaggio, in particolare attraverso la presa alla lettera
di locuzioni ed espressioni idiomatiche ormai non più percepite nel loro significato
composizionale. Tale uso rimette prepotentemente in discussione l’illusione di una
corrispondenza tra realtà e linguaggio, riportando quest’ultimo e, attraverso di esso,
la materialità del testo costantemente in primo piano. Tale stile è, per di più,
fortemente radicato nella lingua di partenza e nei suoi idiomatismi, un fatto che rende
la sua traduzione alquanto problematica. L’articolo analizza le strategie di traduzione
del “langage-univers” in due tradu ioni italiane del più celebre roman o vianesco,
L’Écume des jours (1947). Di particolare interesse risulta la distanza cronologica tra
i due testi, uno (A. Donaudy) realizzato a metà degli anni sessanta e mai più
ristampato, l’altro (G. Turchetta) pubblicato a quasi trent’anni di distanza, nel 1992,
e costantemente riproposto dall’editore. Una breve introduzione al testo di Vian e al
suo linguaggio verrà seguita dalla presentazione delle due traduzioni italiane e dalla
loro rispettiva collocazione nel panorama editoriale; si passerà poi all’analisi vera e
propria della resa del “langage-univers” nei due testi, per cercare di capire se e
come la presa alla lettera del linguaggio figurato sia stata colta e riprodotta.
Parole chiave: Boris Vian, L’Écume des jours, langage-univers, ritraduzione.
Fino a non molto tempo fa, in Italia Boris Vian doveva ancora essere presentato a
chiunque non facesse parte della ristretta cerchia dei francesisti, o dei letterati più
eclettici: è piuttosto celebre la storiella (forse apocrifa) di quell’editore che, vedendo
una pila di volumi invenduti del nostro autore in una libreria, esclamò sconsolato:
“Niente da fare, questi russi non vendono proprio!”. Poco a poco, tuttavia, la nebbia
che circonda questo eclettico protagonista della Parigi del dopoguerra sembra
diradarsi: le opere che vengono pubblicate anche nel nostro paese sono sempre più
numerose e diversificate1 e, ormai da diverso tempo, non mancano neppure le
ritraduzioni. Proprio di ritraduzioni, e di una ritraduzione in particolare, quella
dell’Écume des jours (1947), forse il più celebre romanzo dell’autore francese, ci
occuperemo in questa occasione.
Prima di immergerci nei testi, però, dobbiamo rispondere a una domanda: che
cosa lega L’Écume des jours alla resa del linguaggio figurato? A farlo è un aspetto
stilistico: Boris Vian è, infatti, unanimemente reputato come uno degli autori francesi
che hanno saputo sfruttare nel modo più originale le possibilità formali della lingua
francese, attraverso un uso sapiente e costante di giochi di parole e prodezze formali
di vario genere. Tra quelle che sono state evidenziate come caratteristiche tipiche
dello stile vianesco, spicca in particolare ciò che Jacques Bens (1963) ha potuto
definire “langage-univers” (“linguaggio-universo”). Con questo termine, Bens vuole
1
Si veda il breve panorama bibliografico tracciato in Regattin 2012: 20-21.
Regattin, Fabio, ‘Il “langage-univers” di Boris Vian in due traduzioni italiane: Schiuma di giorni, La schiuma dei
giorni’, in Donna R. Miller; Enrico Monti (eds) Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative Language, Bologna,
CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 193-202.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Primo romanzo pubblicato a proprio nome da Boris Vian2, L’Écume des jours è
edito da Gallimard nel 1947. Questa la succinta descrizione che ne offre il suo
autore: “Un uomo ama una donna. Lei si ammala. Poi muore”3. Nonostante il
patrocinio di Raymond Queneau, che lo definir entusiasticamente “il più toccante
dei romanzi d’amore contemporanei”4, il testo – come tutte le successive opere a
firma Vian – sarà un insuccesso e verrà sostanzialmente oscurato dalla reputazione
del nostro come autore di polizieschi all’americana firmati con lo pseudonimo di
Vernon Sullivan5.
L’Italia sembra scoprirlo con un certo ritardo: la prima traduzione segue l’uscita
dell’opera originale di quasi vent’anni, e viene pubblicata nel 1965. Un volume
Rizzoli, intitolato solamente Sterpacuore, raccoglie due romanzi del nostro autore,
quello che ci interessa (intitolato in questa versione Schiuma di giorni) e L’Arrache-
cœur (pubblicato da Vian nel 1953), Sterpacuore appunto. Nonostante il ritardo
relativo, il volume Rizzoli costituisce la prima traduzione italiana edita di un testo di
Boris Vian, un fatto che non fa che confermare la consacrazione tardiva dell’autore
francese, riscoperto anche in patria soprattutto a partire dalla fine degli anni sessanta,
in coincidenza con il Maggio francese.
Schiuma di giorni occupa la prima parte del grosso volume Rizzoli (pp. 5-179) ed
è opera di Augusto Donaudy, prolifico traduttore dal francese attivo dai primi anni
quaranta fino ai settanta inoltrati; Donaudy lavora in particolare sulla narrativa, dai
classici ottocenteschi (Il giro del mondo in ottanta giorni di Jules Verne, I tre
moschettieri di Alexandre Dumas) ad autori contemporanei quali Émile Ajar,
Françoise Sagan o Jean d’Ormesson, ma gli si devono anche alcune traduzioni più
tecniche, specialmente nel campo della medicina6. Negli anni che seguono questa
traduzione, mai ristampata e di cui si può quindi immaginare un successo piuttosto
limitato, Rizzoli tenterà nuovamente di imporre Vian in Italia con L’autunno a
Pechino (1969), anche in questo caso con scarse fortune.
2
Lo precede di alcuni mesi la pseudotraduzione dall’inglese J’irai cracher sur vos tombes, pubblicato
sempre nel 1947, sotto pseudonimo, per le Éditions du Scorpion.
3
“Un homme aime une femme. Elle tombe malade. Elle meurt” (cit. in Bens 1976: 30; salvo dove
diversamente indicato, le traduzioni sono nostre).
4
“Le plus poignant des romans d’amour contemporains” (cit. in Bens 1963: 184).
5
Su questi romanzi il lettore interessato potrà consultare Arnaud 1974, Fakra 2001 e Schoolcraft
2010.
6
Lavoro compiuto specialmente per l’editore Richter e C. di Napoli, nel corso degli anni cinquanta,
con testi quali Il vostro fegato (1954), La vostra tensione arteriosa e Il vostro intestino (1955).
194
FABIO REGATTIN
Perché l’Écume torni disponibile al pubblico italiano sarà poi necessario attendere
diversi anni: la seconda e, per il momento, ultima traduzione del romanzo sarà
pubblicata nel 1992 dall’editore milanese Marcos y Marcos, e ristampata
costantemente fino a oggi. Va segnalata la presenza di diversi paratesti: dal 1996
viene introdotta, in guisa di prefazione, un’intervista di Fabio Gambaro a Daniel
Pennac, mantenuta nella posizione originale fino al 2005; a partire da questa data,
viene aggiunta una prefazione di Ivano Fossati, a sua volta uno dei primi scopritori di
Vian con la sua interpretazione del Déserteur (1992, tr. Giorgio Calabrese), e
l’intervista a Pennac scivola a fine volume. In questa occasione il testo è tradotto da
Gianni Turchetta, italianista di fama, specialista di Campana e D’Annunzio e
professore di letteratura italiana presso l’Università di Milano, nonché traduttore
dall’inglese, dal francese e dal serbo-croato.
7
“Gli scrittori si sono sempre mossi all’interno di uno stesso insieme logico, insieme retto, con pochi
scarti, dalle leggi aristoteliche, e nel quale il sistema delle cause e degli effetti non riceve alcuna
contestazione. [Il mondo dell’Écume, invece] è di una coerenza estrema […] ma le sue leggi,
fondamentalmente diverse dalle nostre, non ci sono tutte conosciute. […] Questo mondo […] è
interamente fondato sul linguaggio: nasce da esso, e in esso trova ognuna delle sue giustificazioni […]
attraverso tre metodi diversi: il primo consiste nel rifiutare qualsiasi figura di stile, prendendo la
lingua alla lettera […]; un secondo procedimento porta a una serie di “semi-creazioni” di parole: si
tratta o di parole esistenti e utilizzate in un senso traslato o di parole che subiscono deformazioni
leggere […]; la terza strategia, infine, è quella delle creazioni totali.”
8
A scanso di equivoci, segnaliamo che ci accontenteremo qui di fare nostra la definizione di Bens,
senza interessarci agli aspetti più poetici della scrittura e della “creazione di universi”, più vicina per
certi versi al fantastico o al meraviglioso, di Vian. Un brano come “Le soleil cuisait doucement les
pommes tombées et les faisait éclore en petits pommiers verts et frais qui fleurissaient instantanément
et donnaient des pommes plus petites encore. À la troisième génération, on ne voyait plus guère
qu’une sorte de mousse verte et rose où des pommes minuscules roulaient comme des billes” (Vian
1998: 71), pur trasportandoci decisamente in un mondo altro rispetto al nostro quotidiano, non
presenta nessuna delle caratteristiche elencate da Bens e non sarà quindi preso in considerazione in
questo studio.
9
La scrittura di Vian è sempre in bilico tra gioco e serietà, tra linguaggio e langage-univers. È per
questa ragione che abbiamo deciso di avvalerci del lavoro di analisi di chi ci ha preceduti.
Particolarmente utili sono risultati i suggerimenti (tutti parziali, dato che non esiste alcuno spoglio
195
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
sistematico) contenuti in Bens 1963, nella postfazione anonima a Vian 1998 e in Charras e Landi
2009.
10
D’ora in avanti, per le citazioni dal testo originale, faremo riferimento soltanto al numero di pagina
di questa edizione.
196
FABIO REGATTIN
sistematico delle espressioni in questione e delle loro versioni italiane, per capire
quanto del langage-univers vianesco sia riprodotto anche nei due testi che qui
raffrontiamo, e tramite un’esposizione di alcuni dei casi e delle strategie salienti.
Prima dell’esposizione di alcune cifre è necessaria una rapida discussione relativa
allo stabilimento del corpus e alla pertinentizzazione delle diverse forme di resa
riscontrate. Nel primo abbiamo inserito tutti i casi di langage univers repertoriati da
chi ci ha preceduto (cf. nota 9 supra) e che abbiamo potuto scovare personalmente11;
ne sono stati esclusi, forse in modo arbitrario, soltanto i riferimenti parodistici ai
titoli di opere di Jean-Paul Sartre (del genere Le Vomi per La Nausée), che ci
sembravano appartenere a un altro tipo di postura. Il corpus si compone così di un
totale di 85 occorrenze, suddivise in maniera piuttosto equa: 28 appartengono al
primo tipo, e sono anche le più estese dal punto di vista testuale; 30 sono riferibili al
secondo tipo; 27, infine, quelle relative alla terza categoria.
Nell’analisi delle traduzioni abbiamo suddiviso i tipi di resa in quattro categorie:
(1) riproduzione del gioco formale del testo francese (per esempio, “velours marron
côtes d’ivoire” tradotto con “velluto marrone a coste d’avorio”; ma sono qui
considerati anche i casi, più significativi perché presuppongono una ricerca esplicita,
in cui un allontanamento dalla corrispondenza formale serve proprio a riprodurre il
langage-univers12); (2) mantenimento di una qualche forma di connotazione, pur in
assenza di attenzione esplicita alla forma (casi di nonsense derivanti da una
traduzione letterale, casi in cui è difficile stabilire se un tentativo di riproduzione sia
stato messo in atto o meno, casi di riproduzione con un indebolimento della forza del
gioco originale13); (3) casi di perdita completa del linguaggio-universo (traduzione
letterale sfociante in un linguaggio non connotato, oppure normalizzazione del
riferimento, come nella scelta di tradurre il neologismo “brouzillon”, p. 102, con
“moscone”, Vian 1965: 58); (4) una soluzione che si aggiunge alle prime tre, quella
della nota a piè di pagina, sia in aggiunta (+), sia in sostituzione (x) a una traduzione
adeguata (cf. Toury 1980 e, per l’utilizzo in un contesto simile al nostro, Delabastita
1993).
Le tabelle che seguono riportano i risultati dell’analisi compiuta sulle due
traduzioni. Sull’asse orizzontale della prima trovano posto i diversi tipi di langage-
univers definiti da Bens, e i due traduttori; su quello verticale le diverse strategie di
traduzione che abbiamo appena definito:
11
Senza che questo spoglio abbia pretesa di esaustività: come si afferma nella già citata nota anonima
all’edizione francese dell’Écume, a ogni lettura di questo testo le sue scoperte (cf. Vian 1998: 310).
12
Per esempio, “le plus clair de mon temps […] je le passe l’obscurcir” (p. 211) tradotto con “la
parte più grande del mio tempo […] la passo a rimpicciolirla” (Vian 1992: 169).
13
È il caso dei “sons de trompe d’éléphant” (p. 135) che precedono l’arrivo a una conferenza del
filosofo Jean-Sol Partre, portati evidentemente dalla crasi tra son de trompe, “squillo di tromba”, e
trompe d’éléphant, “proboscide di elefante”; una delle traduzioni (Vian 1965: 78) recita “squilli di
tromba d’elefante”, in cui resta evidente il riferimento alla proboscide ma se ne perde l’idiomaticità.
197
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Donaudy Turchetta
Note (x) 0 6
198
FABIO REGATTIN
1.c. V, 219 oupons la poire en deux […] Mais qu’est-ce qu’on va faire des deux moitiés de
cette sacrée poire?
D, 131 Senta, tagliamo la pera a met […] Ma, adesso, che ne facciamo delle due met di
questa benedetta pera?
T, 175 tagliamo la testa al toro […] Ma che cosa ce ne facciamo della testa di questo
benedetto toro?
Tipo 2:
2.a. V, 35 portecuir en feuilles de Russie
D, 19 portacuoio di fogli di Russia; T, 12 portacuoio in foglio di Russia
2.b. V, 40 membre de l’Institrut
D, 22 membro dell’Institut T, 25 membro dell’Istituto
2.c. V, 105 doublezons
D, 59 doppisuoni; T, 77 dobloncioni
2.d. V, 215 antiquitaire
D, 128 antiquario; T, 172 antiquario
Tipo 3:
3.a. V, 102 brouzillon
D, 58 moscone; T, 76 zambrone [nota]
3.b. V, 159 trousse à doctoriser
D, 95 borsa; T, 123 borsa da sdottoreggiamento
3.c. V, 222 taupes de neige
D, 132 talpe della neve; T, 178 talpe delle nevi
Per tradurre Vian è necessaria non solo la scontata competenza nella lingua di
arrivo, ma anche, più che altrove, una eccellente capacità di maneggiare, fin nei suoi
aspetti più intimi, la lingua e la cultura di partenza. Il primo passo per tradurre il
langage-univers di Vian è, infatti, quello apparentemente scontato della sua
comprensione. In questo senso emerge con più chiarezza – specie se ricordiamo di
trovarci di fronte a traduzioni di qualche anno fa, con tutto ciò che questo comporta
in termini di accesso alla documentazione, a testi paralleli e così via – la difficoltà di
capire le deformazioni vianesche laddove queste siano minime o giochino su
ambiguità linguistiche non facili da reperire. È il caso degli esempi 1.a, dove souci è
un termine polisemico, che significa tanto “preoccupazione” quanto “calendula”, ma
la seconda accezione non viene considerata dai traduttori14; di 2.b, dove abbiamo la
semplice aggiunta di una “r” parassita, probabilmente sfuggita a Donaudy e
Turchetta; di 2.d, dove il termine antiquitaire, molto simile al corretto antiquaire,
può anch’esso essere sfuggito ai traduttori/lettori.
Non causano grandi problemi, poiché il meccanismo di formazione può essere
riprodotto, le modifiche formali come 2.a o i neologismi polirematici come 3.c;
questi ultimi, molto comuni nella terza categoria, ne spiegano l’alto tasso di
traducibilità.
I neologismi assoluti composti da una sola parola vengono quasi sistematicamente
annullati da Donaudy, laddove Turchetta non si priva della possibilità di reinventare:
è il caso, per esempio, di 3.a e di 3.b, che rispecchiano abbastanza fedelmente
l’atteggiamento dei due traduttori di fronte a problemi di questo genere. Il secondo
traduttore sembra dimostrare maggiore attenzione alle sonorità e alle deformazioni
del linguaggio anche in 2.c, dove il termine doublezon può essere segmentato come
double-zon (è il caso del primo traduttore) o, più correttamente, come doubl-ez-on.
14
Ricordiamo, a chi non conoscesse il romanzo, che la protagonista femminile, Chloé, si ammala e
che l’unica cosa capace, in apparenza, di farla stare meglio è la presenza costante di fiori nella propria
stanza.
199
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Proviamo a trarre, da questi dati, un bilancio. Per prima cosa è possibile opporre
le due traduzioni all’occasione che le ha suscitate. Sembra innanzitutto che le
tipologie rilevate da Bens abbiano una qualche validità oggettiva, poiché la
percentuale di resa cambia sensibilmente da categoria a categoria. Come era lecito
aspettarsi, il terzo tipo – meno legato al significante – mostra una maggior
percentuale di realizzazione; allo stesso modo, la prossimità tra italiano e francese
consente una buona resa anche sulle locuzioni idiomatiche, a patto che, come fa
Turchetta, si sia disposti ad allontanarsi da una stretta letteralità. Sarebbe interessante
vedere come altri traduttori si siano confrontati a questo testo, in lingue-culture
vicine al francese ma anche più distanti, dove magari l’esperienza raccolta in certi
adagi e proverbi tradizionali non sia presente – servirebbe però una conoscenza
estremamente estesa delle lingue d’arrivo coinvolte, proprio perché la comprensione
del gioco sul lato formale del linguaggio richiede una competenza non alla portata di
tutti. Andrebbero inoltre valutate – cosa che in questa occasione non abbiamo fatto –
15
La differenza percentuale nella resa è già di per sé significativa, ma lo diventa ancora di più se si
decide di “fare la tara” su quei casi che, tradotti letteralmente, avrebbero già permesso di mantenere il
linguaggio-universo vianesco. Le rese che hanno richiesto uno sforzo di riproduzione cosciente e
attivo da parte del traduttore sono infatti 14 per Donaudy e 25 per Turchetta – si tratta di un aumento
del 78% circa delle traduzioni “inventive” tra la prima e la seconda versione!
200
FABIO REGATTIN
16
Possiamo considerare compensazioni anche le strategie – già studiate – di traduzione del langage-
univers con un linguaggio altrimenti connotato. La differenza tra esse e le compensazioni a cui
facciamo riferimento in questa occasione consiste soltanto nella posizione. Una volta rilevata
l’importanza del langage-univers nel romanzo di Vian, una strategia traduttiva possibile consisterebbe
in effetti nel cercare di produrne alcuni esempi anche laddove il testo originale non ne mostrasse, per
compensare le perdite avvenute in altro luogo testuale.
17
Questo allontanamento, forse alla ricerca di una certa forma di colloquialità che compensasse la
perdita degli elementi più pirotecnici del linguaggio vianesco, va anche oltre i casi di langage-univers.
Basti un esempio a definire una strategia traduttiva onnipresente: nella descrizione del suo
“pianocktail”, Vian riporta, nella voce del protagonista Colin, un fantasioso problema riguardante il
tasto che permette di aggiungere uovo alle preparazioni. “Lorsque l’on joue un morceau trop hot, il
tombe des morceaux d’omelette dans le cocktail” (1998: 30), e Donaudy traduce “quando si esegue un
pezzo troppo ‘hot’ cadono pezzetti di omelette nel cocktail” (1965: 16), mantenendo il gioco
dell’originale. Turchetta (1992: 17) riproduce a sua volta il gioco, “tutte le volte che si suona un brano
troppo ‘hot’, finisce che ti cascano dei pezzi di frittata nel bicchiere” ma con un’espansione tipica del
suo stile traduttivo, segnalata in corsivo.
201
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Bibliografia
Arnaud, N. (éd.) (1974) Dossier de l’Affaire “J’irai cracher sur vos tombes”, Paris:
Christian Bourgois.
Bens, J. (1963) ‘Un langage-univers’, in B. Vian, L’Écume des jours, Paris: Jean-Jacques
Pauvert, 175-184.
Bens, J. (1976) Boris Vian, Paris: Bordas.
Charras, M-C.; Landi, M. (2009) ‘L’Écume des jours’ di Boris Vian. Problemi di traduzione,
Firenze: Alinea.
Delabastita, D. (1993) There’s a Double Tongue. An Investigation into the Translation of
Shakespeare’s Wordplay, with Special Reference to Hamlet, Amsterdam-Atlanta: Rodopi.
Fakra, I. (2001) ‘Vernon Sullivan ou les pseudo-traductions de Boris Vian’, L’art d’aimer 4,
8-10.
Jarry, A. (2002) Ubu roi [1896], Paris: Gallimard.
Regattin, F. (2012) ‘La tragedia di chi crepa in montagna’, in B. Vian, Mille modi per
crepare in montagna, Spoleto: Editoria & Spettacolo, 5-21.
Schoolcraft, R. (2010) ‘Hard-boiled French style: Boris Vian disguised as Vernon Sullivan
(authorship and pseudonymy)’, South Central Review 27, 21-38.
Toury, G. (1980) In Search of a Theory of Translation, Tel-Aviv: The Porter Institute for
Poetics and Semiotics.
Tynjanov, J. (1971) ‘On literary evolution’, in L. Matejka-K. Pomorska (eds) Readings in
Russian Poetics: Formalist and Structuralist Views, Cambridge (MA): MIT Press, 66-78.
Vian, B. (1947) L’Automne à Pékin, Paris: Éditions du Scorpion.
Vian, B. (1953) L’Arrache-cœur, Paris: Vrille.
Vian, B. (1965) Sterpacuore (tr. A. Donaudy), Milano: Rizzoli.
Vian, B. (1969) L’autunno a Pechino (tr. M. Binazzi-M. Maglia), Milano: Rizzoli.
Vian, B. (1993) Lo strappacuore (tr. G. Turchetta), Milano: Marcos y Marcos.
Vian, B. (1999) Autunno a Pechino (tr. D. Comerlati), Palermo: Sellerio.
Testi analizzati
Vian, B. (1965) ‘Schiuma di giorni’ (tr. A. Donaudy), in Sterpacuore, Milano: Rizzoli, 5-
179.
Vian, B. (1992) La schiuma dei giorni (tr. G. Turchetta), Milano: Marcos y Marcos.
Vian, B. (1998) L’Écume des jours [1947], Paris: Le Livre de Poche.
202
Descriptive clashes: Between standardisation and
dynamisation of translated description
RENATA KAMENICKÁ
Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
1. Introduction
This paper is an exploratory study in the poetics of descriptive passages in
fictional narrative translated from English to Czech in the past few decades, with a
focus on strategies relating to the use of figurative language in source and target
texts. The assumption underlying the decision to investigate descriptive passages in
fictional narratives was that in English-to-Czech literary translation, descriptive
elements of the narrative can be expected to reflect two opposing tendencies
discussed in translation studies discourse and literary discourse respectively. Firstly,
translation studies has conceptualised ‘standardisation’, or ‘normalisation’, i.e. a
trend of textemes in source texts – including foremost figurative language elements –
to be converted into repertoremes in target texts, occurring so frequently that it can
be considered as one of the candidate ‘translation-specific tendencies’, formerly
termed ‘translation universals’. It is also believed to characterise translations in
contrast to comparable non-translated texts in the same language. Secondly, literary
scholarship tends to implicitly regard description as of little interest compared to
other aspects of narrativity in modern fiction. Within the framework of this general
disinterest in descriptiveness in modern fictional narratives, two Czech scholars,
Fedrová and Jedličková (2011) discuss a particularly consistent and univocal
Kamenická, Renata, ‘Descriptive clashes: Between standardisation and dynamisation of translated description’, in
Donna R. Miller; Enrico Monti (eds) Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative Language, Bologna, CeSLiC,
‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 203-213.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
discourse within Czech literary scholarship in the second half of the 20th century
which undervalues description in favour of other fictional text types. Figurative,
“dynamised” descriptions are then encouraged and considered superior to classic
“static” descriptions. Projecting the observation by Fedrová and Jedličková into
literary translation, one may assume that literary translators familiar with this
discourse will feel encouraged to “liven up” descriptive passages translated by them
by upholding and enhancing their figurativeness to make them fit with the –
simplified – idea of what “good literature” is. This paper claims that the operation of
these two rather general tendencies in literary and translational scholarship makes
fictional descriptive passages an interesting domain inviting the study of how these
two strategic attitudes intersect in reality and which variations of their joint operation
arise under specific conditions involving parameters such as genre, translator habitus
etc. The exploratory study also attempts to provide some preliminary mapping of
these “descriptive clashes”.
1
The reference to spinach in the title alludes to the assumed unpopularity of spinach among
vegetables, in parallel to the relative unpopularity of description among the textual types the authors
discuss.
204
RENATA KAMENICKÁ
205
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
206
RENATA KAMENICKÁ
2
Back-translation. In Czech: U každé zatáčky známá, temná hustá zeleň stromoví, které rostlo tak
divoce, že se je lidská ruka ještě nepokusila zkrotit, tak nepoddajná zeleň, že si uchovala nesmírnou
krásu a nesmírnou ošklivost, a přesto zároveň i nesmírnou pokoru. Byla sama sebou, nedalo se k ní
nic přidat ani z ní nic ubrat.
207
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
ST: And each climb up was followed by a slope down, at the bottom of which was the same
choke of flowering plants, each with a purpose not yet known to me. (Kincaid 1996: 26)
BT3: And each climb was followed by a slope down, at the end of which the road found itself
again in a choke of wildly flowering shrubs, whose purpose remained unknown to me.
(Kincaidová 2001: 24)
While in English an individual purpose is attributed to each of the plants projected
as animate beings, the Czech version mentions only one summary purpose, resulting
in a rather non-transcendental interpretation. Similar partial or full deletions of
figurativeness in descriptions of place can be found throughout the Czech translation.
The descriptions of majestic mountain sceneries in the foothills of Nepal in The
Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai, usually presented with a touch of gentle loving
irony, are used to build up contrast with the small human fates, such as that of the
main character Sai, an orphan girl stranded among people with whom she has little in
common. Liquids and liquid-like substances play an important role in the novel, both
at the metaphorical level and at the level of the plot. In the beginning of the novel,
Sai is reading an old copy of National Geographic and pondering the sad fate of the
giant squid4:
ST: No human had ever seen an adult giant squid alive, and though they had eyes as big as
apples to scope the dark of the ocean, theirs was a solitude so profound they might never
encounter another of their tribe. The melancholy of this situation washed over Sai. (Desai
2006: 3)
BT5: An adult giant squid had never been seen by anyone; they live in solitude so complete
that even though they have giant eyes the size of an apple to better scope the darkness of the
ocean, it can easily happen that they never see any [other] individual of their own species. Sai
was deeply touched by their sad fate. (Desai 2008: 10)
The translation disregards the important metaphoric domain of “washed over Sai”,
through which Sai, immersed in melancholy, is likened to the giant squid – although
metaphors preserving the domain were easily available – and a different, more
lexicalised metaphor is used.
3
Cz: A za každým výstupem následoval sestup, na jehož konci se silnice opět ocitla v sevření divoce
kvetoucích keřů, jejichž účel mi zůstal utajen.
4
I am aware that the example is rather marginal to the corpus focusing on descriptions of natural
environments. It was included due to the reference to the ocean-dwelling animal and is quoted here as
a good example of disruption of figurative networks.
5
Cz: Dospělou krakatici ještě nikdy nikdo neviděl; žijí v tak naprosté samotě, takže i když mají
obrovské oči velikosti jablka, aby jimi lépe obsáhly temnotu oceánu, může se klidně stát, že nikoho
svého druhu nikdy nespatří. Sai se jejich smutný osud hluboce dotkl.
6
Cz: Měl mnoho drobných tmavě růžových kvítků s podlouhlými hlubokými hrdly a krátkými
zvonkovitými lístky jako rtíky.
208
RENATA KAMENICKÁ
solid objects with shadow, and nothing remained that did not seem molded from or
inspired by it”, (Desai 2006: 2) the action taken by the originally personified vapour
is expressed by a lexicalised metaphor: “the mist gradually swallowed everything”
(Desai 2006: 10). A replacement by simile was used in translating “The caress of the
mist through her hair seemed human, and when she held her fingers out, the vapour
took them gently into its mouth” (Desai 2006: 2) with “she felt as if the mist took
them gently into its mouth”7 (Desai 2006: 10).
This phenomenon was actually the most frequently represented one in the corpus
from among those we have been dealing with. The following examples are from
novels/translations not quoted thus far:
ST: So we went. It was a long enough walk, and the road was hot when we came out of the
woods. I had my dress on, so I did not let myself sweat. The hill was covered with dust. Dust
hung gray, in shifting bands, around the white convent walls. There had been no rain that fall,
and the fields were blowing through the town. But we walked. We passed the place on the
road where Nector had tried to throw me. We had passed this place many times before without
me thinking of Nector, but today I was remembering everything. (Erdrich 1985: 114)
BT8: So we went. It was a long enough walk and the road was burning hot when we came out
of the woods. I did not want to sweat for the sake of the dress. The hill was covered with a
layer of dust. The grey dust was floating in bands next to the white walls of the convent. There
had been no rain that fall and wind was dispersing mould from fields throughout the town.
But we walked with determination. We passed the place on the road where Nector had tried to
get me to the ground. We had passed this place innumerable times and I had never thought of
Nector but today I was remembering everything. (Erdrichová 1995: 125)
The totum pro parte synecdoche in the source text is translated by the non-
figurative meaning even though the context would enable the correct interpretation of
the image in Czech just as effectively as in English.
ST: All these giant trees and boulders of granite seemed intent on making a mystery of the
course of this small brook; fearing, perhaps, that, with its never-ceasing loquacity, it should
whisper tales out of the heart of the old forest whence it flowed, or mirror its revelations on the
smooth surface of a pool. (Hawthorne 1963: 179)
BT9: As if these giant trees and granite boulders were guarding attentively the secret places
through which the brook was flowing, perhaps out of fear that its constant gurgling might
betray some of the mysteries of the forest or reveal them like in a mirror on the surface of one
or another of its pools. (Hawthorne 1962: 206)
The natural sceneries in The Scarlet Letter such as the vicinity of the brook by
which Heather and Arthur Dimmsdale meet are generally depicted as alternately full
of light and shadow, joyful or sombre, reflecting the changing sentiments of the
humans who take refuge in them and mirroring their liveliness or lack of it. The
brook in this scene is personified – in this and other segments – through the actions
and processes attributed to it. The degree of personification, easy to render through
lexicalised verbs in Czech, seems to have felt redundant to the translator, who opted
7
Cz: Jemný dotyk mlhy ve vlasech se Sai zdál úplně lidský, když roztáhla prsty, měla pocit, jako by
si je opar strčil něžně do úst.
8
Cz: A tak jsme šly. Byla to dost dlouhá cesta a silnice rozpálená, když jsme vyšly z lesa. Kvůli těm
šatům jsem se nechtěla zpotit. Kopec pokrývala vrstva prachu. Šedivý prach se vznášel v pásech
kolem bílých stěn kláštera. Ten podzim vůbec nepršelo a vítr roznášel prsť z polí po městě. Ale
šlapaly jsme statečně. Minuly jsme místo na cestě, kde se mě Nector pokusil povalit. Předtím jsme
tudy přešly nesčetněkrát a ani jsem si na Nectora nevzpomněla, ale dnes se mi vybavovalo všechno.
9
Cz: Jako by ty obrovské stromy a žulové balvany bedlivě střežily tajná místa, kudy potůček protékal,
snad ze strachu, aby ustavičným bubláním nevyzradil něco z tajů pralesa nebo nevyjevil je jako
v zrcadle na hladině některé tůňky.
209
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
for a literal one instead. Notice also the shift in meaning in the other (underlined)
personification.
ST: The Fletts’ large, rather ill-favored brick house is nested in a saucer of green: front, back,
and sides, a triple lot, rare in this part of the city, and in spring the rounded snouts of crocuses
poke through everywhere. (Shields 1994: 142)
BT10: The big and little pleasing brick house owned by Fletts is literally surrounded by green
from all sides – the lot is a triple one, which is rare in this part of the city, and little oval heads
of crocuses are poking out everywhere. (Shieldsová 1998: 142)
The last example, from The Stone Diaries, is neither a deleted personification
(which might potentially be a static or dynamic one) nor does it reduce dynamic
figurativeness in the source text in another way: two static images are rendered more
literally (the reference to “little heads” of young plants sprouting in the spring is a
common one in Czech).
10
Cz: Velký a nepříliš půvabný cihlový dům Flettových je doslova ze všech stran obklopen zelení –
parcela má trojnásobnou rozlohu, což je v této části města velmi vzácné, a na jaře všude vykukují
oválné hlavičky šafránu.
11
Cz (shortened): […] do těch proudů smrti uprostřed života, jejichž břehy zahnívaly a měnily se
v bahno, jejichž voda zhoustla ve sliz a podmílala pokroucené mangrovníky, které jako když na nás
kývají v bezmoci krajního zoufalství.
210
RENATA KAMENICKÁ
ST: As we had plenty of wood, and caution was the word, I brought up in the middle of the
stream. The reach was narrow, straight, with high sides like a railway cutting. (Conrad 1902:
56)
BT12: […] I stayed with the steamer still in the middle of the stream. The river was narrow and
straight here, gripped by/in the grip of high slopes on both sides, reminding of railway banks.
(Conrad 1981: 149)
The very plain description by Conrad is indeed dynamised by the use of a
metaphor into a more dramatic depiction of the place. Dynamisation of description is
nevertheless not limited to translators with a markedly writerly attitude such as
Zábrana, as the following examples from The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
(translated by Josef Hanzlík) show. The peach metaphor in “The moon will have
risen, a pale round peach at their windows” (Shields 1994: 164) is supported with
another personifying metaphor when the segment is rendered (back-translated into
English) as “The moon is looking/taking a peek into their windows, a giant round
peach”13 (Shieldsová 1998: 121).
Another example from the same novel:
ST: It [the limestone] comes in two colors, a tight buff mixed with brown, and (my favourite) a
pale gray with darker gray mottles. (Shields 1994: 25)
BT14: The limestone comes in two color variants – buff mixed with brown in one of them, dark
gray speckles interweaving/lacing through the light gray basis in the other (my favourite).
(Shieldsová 1998: 30)
The feature these last three examples share is that they all transform plain
description into “moderate figurativeness”: none of the metaphors introduced by the
translator is a truly innovative one; the grip metaphor in Heart of Darkness as well as
the interweaving metaphor in The Stone Diaries are both metaphors exhibiting a
certain degree of lexicalisation and the metaphor personifying the moon as a subject
looking into the windows is not very innovative by virtue of relying on the moon
personification cliché. There is another thing the examples have in common and that
is the fact that the label ‘dynamisation’ describes them very aptly. Let us remind
ourselves that the target text solutions, apart from being more figurative than the
corresponding source text segments, also transform the static ST attributes ascribed
to objects and situations – the high banks of the reach; the speckles in the grey stone;
the moon that will have risen, i.e. is in the sky – into dynamic attributes which are
marked with an action/process, as predicted by Fedrová and Jedličková (2011: 34,
translation by RK), who say that “[the objects being described] are often of a static
and special nature and are characterised especially by visual qualities; this however
does not preclude temporal phenomena from descriptions”. Gripping something,
interweaving trough a material, taking a peek are actions/processes happening in
time.
5. In conclusion
The exploratory study conducted on a small corpus of parallel descriptive
passages excerpted from six novels in English and their Czech translations provided
12
Cz: Zůstal jsem s parníkem stát uprostřed proudu. Tok řeky tu byl úzký a rovný, z obou stran
svíraný vysokými svahy, připomínajícími železniční násep.
13
Cz: Do oken jim nahlíží měsíc, obrovská bledá broskev.
14
Vápenec se vyskytuje ve dvou barevných variantách – u jedné se žlutohnědá mísí s hnědou, u druhé
(mé oblíbené) protkávají světle šedý základ tmavošedé skvrnky.
211
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
212
RENATA KAMENICKÁ
References
Conrad, J. (1899/1902) Heart of Darkness, Westminster, MD: Bantam Books.
Conrad, J. (1981) Srdce temnoty [1899/1902. The Heart of Darkness, tr. J. Zábrana], in
Neklidné příběhy, Praha: Panorama.
Desai, K. (2006) The Inheritance of Loss, New York: Grove Press.
Desai, K. (2008) Dědictví tráty [2006. The Inheritance of Loss, tr. B. Pešinová], Praha:
Odeon.
Doležel, L. (2000) ‘Poststructuralism: a view from Charles Bridge’, Poetics Today 21 (4),
633-652.
Erdrich, L. (1985) Love Medicine, New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston.
Erdrichová, L. (1995) Čarování s láskou [1985. Love Medicine, tr. A. Jindrová-Špilarová],
Praha: Argo.
Fedrová, S.; Jedličková, A. (2011) ‘Konec literárního špenátu aneb Popis v intermediální
perspektivě’, Česká literatura 59 (1), 26-59.
Hawthorne, N. (1963 The Scarlet Letter [1850], New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston.
Hawthorne, N. (1962) Šarlatové písmeno [1850. The Scarlet Letter, tr. J. Fastrová], Praha:
Mladá fronta.
Kincaid, J. (1996) The Autobiography of My Mother, New York: The Penguin Group.
Kincaidová, J. (2001) Vlastní životopis mé matky [1996 The Autobiography of My Mother,
tr. Z. Pošvicová], Praha: Mladá fronta.
Laviosa-Braithwaite, S. (1998) ‘Universals of translation’, Routledge Encyclopedia of
Translation Studies, London/New York: Routledge.
Levý, J. (2012) The Art of Translation [1963/1983. Umění překladu, tr. P. Corness],
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Øverås, L. (1998) ‘In search of the third code’, Meta 43 (4), 17-18,
http://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/1998/v43/n4/003775ar.pdf (last accessed on
10/2/2014).
Shields, C. (1994) The Stone Diaries [1993], London: Fourth Estate.
Shieldsová, C. (1998) Deníky tesané do kamene [1993. The Stone Diaries, tr. J. Hanzlík],
Praha: Columbus.
Toury, G. (1995) Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond, Amsterdam/Philadelphia:
John Benjamins.
213
Translation as desecration: From Montedidio to God’s
mountain
MYRIAM SWENNEN RUTHENBERG
Florida Atlantic University
Erri De Luca’s 2001 novel, Montedidio draws attention for its allegorical and
metaphorical power, conditioned by linguistic philosophical concerns present in
Biblical Hebrew, whose written repository, the Bible, became the author’s material
for multiple hyper-literal translations1. The 2002 English translation of Montedidio
under the title God’s Mountain by Michael Moore is therefore worthy of close
attention, the more since Italy’s most unique writer has not reached the shores west
of West with the intensity and enthusiasm with which he has conquered Europe. The
issue of “translatability” that, as Lawrence Venuti rightly states (2004: 111), seems
to have dominated the world of translation theory for almost a generation, inevitably
pushes itself to the fore: indeed, translating De Luca’s literary language is not merely
the creation of a metatext over a prototext, i.e. a re-writing of an underlying construct
from a precise socio-cultural optic, as André Lefevere argues (1977: 7) or a re-
writing tout court that allows for “the study of the manipulative processes of
1
For Feltrinelli’s “Classici” series, De Luca edited and translated Esodo/Nomi (1994), Giona/Iona
(1995), Kohelet/Ecclesiaste (1996), Libro di Rut (1999), Vita di Sansone (2002) and Vita di Noè/Noah
(2004).
Swennen Ruthenberg, Myriam, ‘Translation as desecration: From Montedidio to God’s Mountain’ in Donna R.
Miller; Enrico Monti (eds), Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative Language, Bologna, CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del
CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 215-225.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
2
See: Claudio Magris, ‘La Bibbia: una cura dimagrante’, L’indice dei libri del mese, 11/12/1992, 7.
See also: Sergio Quinzio: “Alla ricerca della lingua sacra. La Bibbia secondo De Luca”, Il Corriere
della Sera, 14/5/1994, 31.
3
This thought has been central to my published and forthcoming research on Erri De Luca, including,
in chronological order: ‘Erri De Luca, il “Libro” e la lingua’, Il Veltro 40 (3-4), 1996, 311-315; ‘Prove
di domanda: Intervista silenziosa con Erri De Luca’, Gradiva 1 (7), 1998, 51-62; ‘From water to dust:
A dehydrating essay on Erri De Luca’, Differentia: A Review of Italian Thought 1 (1-2), 1999, 51-59;
‘‘Eccomi’ sulla spiaggia-confine di Tu, mio: Erri De Luca, il mare e l’asciutto’, Narrativa 20-21,
2001, 169-180; Scrivere nella polvere: Saggi su Erri De Luca, Pisa: ETS, 2005.
4
If the name of Eugene Nida seems inevitable with regards to De Luca’s own Bible translations as
influencing his prose, I wish to immediately join Lawrence Venuti (2002: 17) in arguing against the
proselytizing tendencies in Nida’s writings, particularly with regards to the notion of “dynamic
equivalence” in translation (Nida, de Waard 1986: vii, viii, 9) Venuti detects in Nida the missionary
who “himself has promoted a reception of the [biblical] text centered in Christian dogma” (2002: 18).
5
The tension between Neapolitan and Italian is established from the first page of Montedidio when the
narrator’s father is said to be struggling with Italian which he is learning to read and write. Because
for him Italian is not for speaking, the national language sits quietly in books (7), such as the one
being written on a scroll by the young narrator. See also the first chapter, “Napòlide”, of De Luca’s
homonymous collection of essays, Napòlide (5-34).
216
MYRIAM SWENNEN RUTHENBERG
217
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
which coincides with the end of the novel, does Naples open its release valve as it
calls in the new at midnight by emptying its bowels under fireworks, loud shouting
and the deafening noise of shattering objects of old, and under the scream that
accompanies the narrator’s orgasm, his launch of the boomerang, and the rabbi’s
rocket-like take-off for Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. It is at the intersection of the
horizontal and vertical coordinates drawn by the four elements as they relate to what
essentially constitutes the dehydration of Montedidio that the story unfolds on a scroll.
Rolled up in a scroll, the story of Montedidio is the story of its own dehydration. If the
aridity-liquidity dichotomy seems essential for the writing of Montedidio, so is the
biblical Hebrew’s vowel-consonant relationship that it allegorizes.
218
MYRIAM SWENNEN RUTHENBERG
[…] all suprahistorical kinship of languages rests in the intention underlying each language as
a whole—an intention, however, which no single language can attain by itself, but which is
realized only by the totality of their intentions supplementing each other: pure language.
(Benjamin 1999: 78)
Benjamin exemplifies this theory by arguing that the French translation of the
German word “Brot” (bread) as “pain” highlights the identical nature of the intended
object in both languages but their difference in their mode of intention. If the
“kinship” between all languages exists at the level of intention, Benjamin’s
conclusion that languages are therefore ultimately translatable might strike one as
contradictory; it justifies, however, De Luca’s own relationship to translation: awe
and admiration are what De Luca-translator experiences in front of the prose he
himself translates, i.e. the Hebrew Bible, and what condition his loyalty to that text to
such an extent that he prefers word-for-word translations even at the expense of
readability6. The translator’s choices might need to be equally conditioned by these
factors. After all “il traduttore ha tutti i diritti” only “se agisce lealmente” (Berman
2000: 77).
3.1. Polysemy
Brigitte Nerlich in Polysemy: Flexible Patterns of Meaning in Mind and
Language, which examines the interdependency of polysemy and metaphor,
establishes polysemy as both consequence and cause of figurative language use; she
furthermore argues that the close relationship between polysemy and figurative
language use can be justified in view of the fact that “[M]any of the extra,
polysemous meanings that a word develops begin as metaphorical extensions of a
6
I reiterate the case of De Luca’s translation of the book of Jonas (1995) Giona/Ionà (Milano:
Feltrinelli), where the story of Jonas is translated word for word and not only by resorting to an
interlinear translation, but also by placing the Italian text from right to left, following the direction of
the Hebrew original.
219
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
primary meaning of that word” (2003: 325). Nerlich subsequently provides the
example of “head” in the sense of “chief person” that presumably originated as a
metaphorical extension of head in its primary sense of upper part of the body’.” One
can make the same claim for “Montedidio”: the title of De Luca’s novel contains
both the primary meaning of the biblical God’s Mountain in Jerusalem that is the
final destination of the Ark of the Covenant; its “extended” meaning is the
neighborhood that took that holy mountain’s name. Raffaniello explains the
displacement of meaning from sacred to profane: “‘Al mio paese leggevo i salmi,
dove sta scritta la domanda: ‘Chi salir nel monte di Dio?’ e la risposta dice: ‘Chi ha
le mani innocenti e il cuore puro’” (64), and after having explained how he survived
the war (by hiding from the enemy under piles of cow dung, pavements, and an
abandoned lime stone quarry, while stealing honey from bee hives and drinking his
own urine mixed in with snow for his survival) he states: “[l]a guerra mi ha pulito il
cuore e lavato le mani con la calce. Quand’è finita ero pronto a salire nel monte di
Dio” (64). He subsequently relates the story of his attempted emigration to the Holy
Land, made impossible by the English Blockade that had prompted the following
thoughts: “Tientelo il tuo monte, tieniti gli Inglesi a Gerusalemme, pigliati quello per
popolo’” (64). Then, reflecting on God’s twisted sense of humor, he continues:
Così lui ci ripensa, leva gli inglesi e a me dà un castigo sotto la specie della presa in giro:
monte di Dio, sì, ma a Napoli. È vero che qui sanno rifare tali e quali i mobili antichi, gli
orologi di lusso e i pacchetti di sigarette americane, ma rifare il monte di Dio è troppa
imitazione, quello sta solo a Gerusalemme. Qua in cima alla salita dove si vede la gobba del
vulcano ci può stare una terrazza panoramica, non lo sgabello dei piedi di Dio. E invece hanno
voluto chiamare questa collina Montedidio e gi che c’erano, quella vicina la vanno a chiamare
Montecalvario, e così fa due. (65)
Rafaniello then echoes the novel’s title one last time: “‘Con il dovuto rispetto, la
terrasanta non ha succursali. Intanto io sono rimasto qui, sulla salita di un altro
Montedidio, come un turista che ha sbagliato prenotazione” (66).
After choosing “God’s Mountain” for the novel’s English title, the translator opts
for the following formulation in his translation of the above passages:
In my town I was reading the Psalms where you find the question, ‘Who shall ascend the hill of
the Lord?’ and the answer says, ‘He that hath clean hands and a pure heart’ … The war
cleansed my heart and washed my hands with lime. When it ended I was ready to ascend into
the hill of the Lord” (67)
‘You can keep your hill, keep your Englishmen in Jerusalem, make them your chosen people’.
So he changes his mind. He takes away the English and plays a joke on me for punishment. He
takes me to the mount of the Lord, but it’s in Naples. It’s true that here they know how to make
perfect copies of antique furniture, luxury watches, and packs of American cigarettes. But
copying the mount of the Lord is going too far. It can only be in Jerusalem. Here on top of the
hill where you could see the sea and the peak of the volcano, you could fit a panoramic terrace,
not the footstool for the feet of God. But they called it Montedidio, the hill of the Lord, and
while they were at it, they called the hill next door Montecalvario, so that makes two. (68-69)
Moore subsequently translates what in the Italian original is the last echo of the
title as follows: “With all due respect, the Holy Land doesn’t have franchises. In the
meantime I’ve stayed here, on the slopes of another hill of the Lord, like a tourist
who made the wrong booking” (69).
The semantic load of the title “Montedidio” has been dispersed; in the translation
the word surfaces once in Italian referring to the neighborhood, while the reference
220
MYRIAM SWENNEN RUTHENBERG
to the Temple Mount from the Book of Psalms has been translated as “who shall
climb the hill of the Lord”, rather than “Who shall climb God’s mountain”, the
homonymous mountain of the title. While “hill of the Lord” is a more commonly
found translation of the passage in question, as a quick on-line search confirms, the
novel’s title has lost its connection to the sacred destination of Rav Daniel,
Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, a place where an angel has told him he shall fly to
simultaneously with a piece of wood from the Ark of the Covenant. While it is true
that the Italian separates the words Monte di Dio in three components to indicate the
Temple Mount, the translator might have attempted to convey the graphic difference
between the two spellings of the Italian Montedidio by alternating Montedidio and
“hill of the Lord/Mount of the Lord”. Unfortunately, the “God’s Mountain” of the
title remains eerily absent in the novel’s epicenter. The tightness and compactness
created by bundling the three words into one for the Montedidio neighborhood,
graphically reflects that area’s spatial characteristics as a tightly packed container of
sorts – indeed like the container for God’s word, the Ark of the Covenant of acacia
wood – but this graphic signifier could not be replicated. The English title is at this
point meaningless, and the very key to the novel’s uniqueness as a tightly packed
“sacred” repository of sorts for two compact, “sacred” languages of sorts, Neapolitan
and Yiddish, is quite literally lost in translation.
Neapolitan, like the sacred language of the Bible, is polysemous in nature as well:
for example, it has only one word for sleep and dream, “suonno,” as the narrator
informs us. De Luca’s attachment to polysemy furthermore illuminates his use of the
following subtle metaphor combined with a personification of the sun, which through
its articulation in dialect expresses awareness its own ambiguous nature, as is hinted
at in the following example: “‘È asciuto, ’o pate d’e puverielle’ dice Mast’Errico, è
uscito il padre dei poveri” (58). And the translation: “‘È asciuto, ’o pate d’e
puverielle’, says Master Errico. The father of the poor has come out” (59). The father
of the poor is subsequently explained as “il sole dei mesi freddi che mette la sua
coperta addosso a quelli che non la tengono” (58) (“In the cold months the sun places
its own blanket over the shoulders of those who don’t have one”, 59). What strikes
this reader is the impossibility of conveying in English what the Italian text cleverly
hints at: the past participle of the verb “uscire” in Neapolitan is “asciuto”, and
therefore one consonant away from the adjective “asciutto”; (and to underscore the
significance of the word play the Italian for the Neapolitan “puverielle”, “poveri” is
one consonant away from the plural of “polvere”, “dust”). Moreover, the
personification of the sun as “father of the poor” and the subject of the verb “asciuto”
that conjures up the dryness of “asciutto” establishes a semantic link between
poverty as a state of “not having” as an economic “dryness”, so to speak. This is no
coincidence if we have earlier highlighted the importance of dryness in the lexical
build-up of Montedidio; the translator is limited to re-writing the Neapolitan and
translating the Italian translation without recourse to an equivalent stylistic device.
3.2. Personification
Earlier we had suggested that the pages of Montedidio compress the city’s energy,
including its people and its objects. Personifications, in fact, contribute to that overall
dynamic, further intensified by the triumph of the active over the passive voice.
Objects and body parts have a will of their own: light goes for a stroll, draws lines
and works itself inside the dark corners of Naples’s bassi; a boomerang quivers in
221
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
fresh air, throbs under its owner’s coat, and pushes up against the sky; the narrator’s
left eye is sly, fast, and understands things in a heartbeat, so it is Neapolitan; Italian
is quiet and sits still in books, houses are deaf, the wind plays tricks; the bloods of
San Gennaro and Santa Patrizia alike liquefy and coagulate spontaneously, etc. The
ideal translation would attempt to respect De Luca’s stylistic manipulations aimed at
conveying Montedidio’s spontaneous, self-propelled energy that does not need an
agent to exist.
Dopo un poco vedo che la [mano] destra è più grossa della sinistra. Cambio mano. Così una
parte del corpo raggiunge l’altra, pareggia sveltezza, forza e stanchezza. Gli ultimi lanci
fermati hanno più spinta a volare, il polso soffre di più a trattenere, allora smetto. (11)
After a while I can see that my right hand’s getting bigger than my left, so I change hands. This
way one side of my body keeps up with the other, equal in speed, strength and exhaustion. My
last few unreleased throws really want to fly. It hurts my wrist to hold them back, so I stop.” (7)
The translation is certainly plausible if readability is of concern, but it is at the
expense of a displacement of the agent from the body part, the pulse, to the implied
first person. “Il polso soffre”, “My wrist “suffers” or “is in pain”, would miss the mark.
Elsewhere opportunities for obeying De Luca’s use of personifications have been
lost in favor of conveying “the general sense”: “Al fuoco dello stoppino il bicchiere
di vino nel vetro piglia luce dentro, l’olio splende, il pane sente il fuoco e si mette a
profumare” (44) has become: “From the flame, the glass of wine in the window
absorbs the light, the oil shines, the bread becomes fragrant” (42).
An attempt to avoid the repetition of the English “glass” for the Italian “bicchiere”
and “vetro” alike by letting the glass of wine capture the candle’s light via a window
rather than the glass, is understandable. However, to convey the luminosity captured
in the glass our translator has preferred a more scientific “absorbs the light” thereby
depriving himself of an opportunity to personify it and equipping it, as De Luca does
in the Italian, with the ability to pull light from the candle wick to it; it attracts it.
Similarly bread can smell the fire, and the fragrance it emits results from its olfactory
abilities. Animating otherwise inanimate substances is often part of a narrative
discourse in counterpoint that characterizes much of De Luca’s prose.
In some instances, however, the translator has opted to bypass the difficulty
entirely: The sentence: “Rafaniello sentiva e teneva le lacrime dentro gli occhi tondi,
ma non uscivano, si affacciavano e tornavano indietro”(83), has become a rather
bland and conventional “Rafaniello listened with tears in his eyes” (93) a translation
that fails to convey Rafaniello’s awareness of his emotional state and, more
importantly, that de-personalizes the rabbi-cobbler’s tears depriving him, a holy man,
of an attribute that confirms his “holiness”: he remains “dry” so to speak. “Rafaniello
felt the tears well up in his round eyes, but they did not come out; they peaked
through the window and went back inside” while more “faithful” to the original
would also respect the personification without sacrificing readability.
The sentence that follows a paragraph that creates an atmosphere of emptiness
after the passing of the narrator’s mother when only “spiriti” roaming around the
kitchen are his companions, the sentence “I grandi vanno dietro ai loro guai e noi
restiamo nelle case sorde che non sentono più un rumore” (75) has morphed into:
“Grown-ups withdraw into their troubles and leave us behind in houses that don’t
make a sound” (81). While the active voice is maintained in translation, and the
sentence’s personified houses still seem to reflect the loneliness that fills the space,
the houses have not stopped producing sounds, but are deaf and hear no more
222
MYRIAM SWENNEN RUTHENBERG
sounds, because one of its inhabitants has died and the others have been muted and
immobilized by her absence.
What earlier I had called the desiccation of Montedidio is prevented: the translation
of the following sentence: “[…] il vapore della solfatara ferma la pioggia, l’asciuga in
aria. Fanno rumore solo le scarpe sul terreno” (86) in translation becomes: “The steam
from the solfatara stops the rain. The only sound is of shoes touching the ground” (97).
The fact that the translator has opted for entirely omitting sulfuric vapors’ unique
quality of preventing rain from touching the ground as it dries it on its way down
compromises the meaning of the sentence in two ways: first, without it one has the
impression that it stops raining on behalf of the vapors; second, the novel’s figurative
language works in tandem with De Luca’s stylistic choices that favor semantic
opposites, notably aridity and liquidity. The translation misses the mark.
In this last example too, liquidity and aridity dwell in each other’s textual vicinity:
“Ai lavatoi a dicembre il vento fa il guappo, spazza la polvere in terra, lucida la notte
in cielo, si porta via il caldo dalle case. Il bumeràn è scatenato […]” (91) finds its
English equivalent in “At the washbasins in December the wind gets all blustery,
sweeping up the dirt on the ground, polishing the nighttime sky, drawing off the heat
from the houses. The boomerang is going wild” (103). In Italian the playfulness of
the wind is rendered by personifying it as a “guappo” who sweeps the dust;
“polvere” is again a highly significant noun; when the author uses it, it is deliberate,
and it is never dirty. The wind loses some of its power through the replacement of the
active voice of the conjugated verb by a less effective gerund.
3.3. Simile
If personifications contribute to the energy of Montedidio, and are indeed
functional to the overall meaning of the novel as a compact space where meaning is
possible only by “voweling” or “liquifying” in an attempt to contradictorily “dry”
language to its most essential parts, similis partake in the textual tour de force: “[…]
quando spazzo il suo angolo mi fa un sorriso e si muovono le rughe e le lentiggini,
pare il mare quando ci piove sopra” (17), felicitously rendered in English as “When I
sweep up his corner he smiles at me, making his wrinkles and freckles ripple like the
sea in the rain” (12). The following simile too, “[…] sfila e riinfila i cassetti senza
rumore, come la lenza in mare, dice, che sale e scende muta in mano a lui” (21) finds
an equally plausible English equivalent in “[…] until the drawers don’t make a sound
when he pulls them out and slides them back in. He says it’s like dropping a fishing
line in the sea. They rise and fall silently in his hands” (17).
Let us finally also consider an example that, according to Gerard Steen (1994:
27), ought to be considered a simile, because, while technically it is not, it is implied
and is an integral part of figurative language use that is typical in literary discourse:
“È venuto a Napoli per sbaglio, voleva andare a Gerusalemme dopo la guerra. È sceso dal
treno e ha visto il mare per la prima volta. Una sirena di bastimento ha suonato e lui s’è
ricordato di una festa al paese suo che comincia con un suono uguale” (25).
Implied is the comparison of the sound of the ship’s horn and the sound of the
shofar made of a rams’ horn that is blown on the Jewish High Holidays of Rosh
Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The English translation reads:
“He came to Naples by mistake. He had wanted to go to Jerusalem after the war. He got off the
train and saw the sea for the first time. A ship blew its whistle and he remembered a festival in
his hometown that began with the same sound” (21).
223
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
224
MYRIAM SWENNEN RUTHENBERG
References
Benjamin, W. (1999) ‘The task of the translator’, tr. H. Zohn, in M. Jennings (ed.) Walter
Benjamin: Selected Writings, New York: Schocken.
Berman, A. (2000) Traduzione e critica produttiva [1995. Pour une critique des traductions.
John Donne], tr. it. G. Maiello, Salerno: Oedipus.
De Luca, E.(1991) Una nuvola come tappeto, Milano: Feltrinelli.
De Luca, E. (1994) Prove di risposta, Roma: Edizioni Nuova Cultura.
De Luca, E. (1998) Tu, Mio, Milano: Feltrinelli.
De Luca, E. (2001) Montedidio, Milano: Feltrinelli.
De Luca, E. (2001) ‘Esercizio di ammirazione’, in F. Nasi (ed.) Sulla traduzione letteraria,
Ravenna: Longo, 31-35.
De Luca, E. (2002) God’s Mountain, [2001 Montedidio, tr. M. Moore], New York:
Riverhead Books.
De Luca, E. (2006) Napòlide, Napoli: Dante & Descartes.
Gentzler, E. (1993) Contemporary Translation Theories, London/New York: Routledge.
Lefevere, A. (1992) Translating Literature: Practice and Theory in a Comparative
Literature Context, New York: MLA.
Nasi, F. (2010) Specchi comunicanti: Traduzioni, parodie, riscritture, Milano: Medusa.
Nida, E.A. (1964) Toward a Science of Translating: With Special References to Principles
and Procedures involved in Bible Translating, Leiden: Brill.
Nida, E.A.; de Waard, J. (1986) From One Language to Another: Functional Equivalence in
Bible Translating, Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson.
Nerlich, B. et al. (2003) Polysemy: Flexible Patterns of Meaning in Mind and in Language,
The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter.
Steen, G. (1994) Understanding Metaphor in Literature, London: Longman.
Steiner, G. (1998) Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature, and the Inhuman
[1970], New York: Yale University Press.
Swennen Ruthenberg, M. (1996) ‘Erri De Luca, il “Libro” e la lingua’, Il Veltro 40 (3-4),
311-315.
Swennen Ruthenberg, M. (1998) ‘Prove di domanda: Intervista silenziosa con Erri De Luca’,
Gradiva 1 (7), 1998, 51-62.
Swennen Ruthenberg, M. (2000) ‘From water to dust: A dehydrating essay on Erri De Luca’
[1999], Differentia: A Review of Italian Thought 1 (1-2), 51-59.
Swennen Ruthenberg, M. (2001) ‘‘Eccomi’ sulla spiaggia-confine di Tu, mio: Erri De Luca,
il mare e l’asciutto’, Narrativa 20-21, 169-180.
Swennen Ruthenberg, M. (ed.) (2005) ‘Scrivere nella polvere: Saggi su Erri de Luca, Pisa:
ETS.
Venuti, L. (2002) The Translator’s Invisibility A History of Translation [1995], 2nd ed.,
London/New York: Routledge.
Venuti, L. (ed.) (2004) The Translation Studies Reader [2000], 2nd ed., London/New York:
Routledge.
Weiss, A. (2006) Figurative Language in Biblical Prose Narrative: Metaphor in the Book of
Samuel, Leiden: Brill.
225
“...like reeds in the wind”. Exploring simile in the English
translations of Grazia Deledda using corpus stylistics
JANE HELEN JOHNSON
Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna
Abstract: A preparatory search for the salient linguistic features of a text or texts can
represent a vital part of the process of translation, particularly of creative writing,
thus enabling the translator to make conscious, informed decisions on how to achieve
functional equivalence in the translation text when appropriate. A corpus stylistic
approach may prove useful for this purpose since quantitative data may be generated
and subsequently examined qualitatively to gain information about stylistic features
(e.g. Mahlberg 2009). Previous research into Gra ia Deledda’s authorial style
(Johnson 2009) using corpus stylistics techniques showed that the lemmas ‘parere’/
‘sembrare’ were particularly frequent. Besides constructing a particular point of view
(Johnson 2010), this frequency was possibly also due to the salience in Deledda’s
works of figurative language such as simile. Unlike metaphor, simile has overt lexical
markers and thus it is hypothesised that corpus stylistics may enable us to focus on
this distinctive stylistic feature in both source and target texts, with a view to assessing
functional equivalence. This paper explores the figurative device of simile in a corpus
of selected novels by Deledda in Italian and English for the purpose of testing this
hypothesis.
Keywords: simile, corpus stylistics, literary translation, style.
1. Introduction
One of the elements that makes a literary work distinctive is its style, the set of
linguistic characteristics which help to create its unique character (Leech, Short
1981: 12). ‘Style markers’ ― “[f]eatures which are significantly more frequent, or
rarer” in the text than another (Enkvist 1985: 20) may become more visible by
sorting and displaying linguistic data by computer so that patterns of recurrent
language become more visible (e.g. Ho 2011: 202). Tools typical of corpus
linguistics such as frequency wordlists and keyword lists may be used to do this, in
preparation for a qualitative analysis of the findings. Bringing together elements of
stylistics and corpus linguistics, this approach is known as ‘corpus stylistics’,
focussing on the “functional and aesthetic association of linguistic patterns” (Biber
2011: 21), while adding a quantitative dimension to qualitative linguistic analysis
(e.g. Ho 2011: 6).
A number of corpus stylistics studies have been published on different aspects of
literary writing (e.g. Semino, Short 2004; Mahlberg 2007a, 2007b, 2009, 2012;
Fischer-Starcke 2009; Culpeper 2002; Toolan 2009; O’Halloran 2007; Ho 2011).
However, little has so far been done in exploiting corpus stylistics with a view to
assisting the translation process (though see Malhberg 2007c).
This article explores certain stylistic features and their function in literary texts in
order to provide insights into how these findings may be useful for the purposes of
the translation process, moving between corpus analysis and close reading of the
text. It focuses on the work of the Italian novelist and Nobel Prize winner Grazia
Deledda (1871-1936), whose authorial style was the subject of earlier corpus-based
Johnson, Jane, ‘“...like reeds in the wind”. Exploring simile in the English translations of Grazia Deledda using
corpus stylistics’, in Donna R. Miller; Enrico Monti (eds) Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative Language,
Bologna, CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 227-239.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
research (Johnson 2009) into keywords and clusters in a purpose-built corpus of her
work1 in comparison with a specially compiled reference corpus of nineteenth-
century Italian novels2. Findings suggested that certain lexical items such as ‘parere’
and ‘sembrare’ (‘seem’ or ‘appear’), emerging as key in two of her most popular
novels, Canne al vento and La madre, contributed to creating a particular point of
view (Simpson 1993). The salience of these lemmas seems to confirm previous non-
corpus-based literary criticism of Deledda’s work (e.g. Dolfi 1979: 61) suggesting
that particular focus is placed on the perception of reality. Subsequent exploration of
these findings showed that the point of view conveyed in the Target Texts
(henceforth TT) did not always correspond to that in the Source Texts (henceforth
ST) (Johnson 2010, 2011).
Besides marking point of view, however, the frequency of ‘parere’/ ‘sembrare’
may also point towards a predilection for a certain type of figurative language such
as simile, while representing an idiosyncratic tendency of the author to express this
lexicogrammatically through the Mental process of perception, as in example 1:
(1)
egli guardava il cielo d’un azzurro struggente e gli pareva d’esser coricato su un bel letto dalle
coltri di seta [Canne al vento]
3
[...] and it seemed to him to be lying........ [Interlinear Translation ]
Giacinto looked at the sky of overwhelming blue and felt as if he had stretched out on a
beautiful bed covered with silk. [Reeds in the Wind]
As defined by Wales (2001), simile is “a figure of speech whereby two concepts
are imaginatively and descriptively compared” (2001: 358), a comparison overtly
marked by a fairly finite number of lexical signals. Our hypothesis is that, unlike
metaphor, which has no overt lexical marker, a distinctive feature of style such as
simile may be highlighted successfully and subjected to a corpus stylistics analysis,
even in raw, ‘untagged’ files, thus revealing idiosyncrasies in style which may then
be focussed on in translation.
In this article we use corpus tools to identify key lexical markers of simile in a
corpus of literature by a single author, investigate the main semantic domains
covered by these similes, and discuss possible problematic issues in translating
simile, using examples from three novels by Grazia Deledda – Canne al vento, La
madre and Elias Portulù – both in Italian and in their English translations, to
illustrate our discussion. Details of the texts are given in Table 1.
ST published tokens TT Published translator tokens
Canne al 1913 60,508 Reeds in 1999 Martha 64,407
vento the Wind King
[CV] [RW]
La madre 1920 36,973 The 1923 Mary 44,538
[MA] Mother Steegman
[MO]
Elias 1903 46,090 Elias 1995 Martha 49,889
Portulù Portulu King
[EP] [PO]
Table 1: Details of the source texts and target texts discussed
1
The Deledda corpus consisted of sixteen novels published between 1892 and 1937.
2
The reference corpus consisted of thirteen novels by Giovanni Verga, Luigi Capuana, Matilde Serao
and Emilio De Marchi, published between 1871 and 1893.
3
Where the TT differs greatly from the ST, a near-literal or Interlinear Translation (IT) is given.
228
JANE HELEN JOHNSON
It is worth noting that two of the novels investigated here were translated by the
same person, a point to which we shall return in section 4.4.
The following section describes our methodology, after which we shall move on
to a discussion of simile in the STs, and then address the issue of simile in English in
general and in the English translations of Deledda’s novels.
2. Methodology
WordSmith 5.0 (Scott) and AntConc 3.2.4 (Anthony) concordancing software was
used to highlight salient stylistic features. Frequency lists were first made of key
words and clusters in comparison with the reference corpus, used to provide
“evidence of language norms” (Wynne 2006: 224). The resulting words and phrases,
key by definition because they appeared with unexpected frequency in Deledda, were
thus taken to be typical of Deledda’s own style. Among these, words and phrases
were identified which could be possible markers of simile.
Keyword lists focus on differences but not similarities, so that they can suggest
what is distinctive of Deledda (how her style differs from others) but will not
highlight to what extent Deledda’s style shares features with others in the reference
corpus. In order to extract this information, the plain frequency lists of words and
clusters in the ST and TT were also examined for evidence of markers of simile.
To investigate the semantic domains connected with the similes, collocates of the
lexical markers of simile were extracted to give a better idea of “the company that
words keep” (Firth 1957: 11). A qualitative analysis of concordance lines was made
to put the collocates into semantic categories to find out what was compared with
what.
Lastly, specific concordances in the ST aligned with the corresponding sections in
the parallel translation corpus were examined in order to focus on figurative
language in translation.
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
MA 4.62 8.98
EP 2.91 4.90
Table 2: Frequency of possible simile markers across the corpora
Table 2 shows that occurrences of ‘parere’/ ‘sembrare’ are more frequent
throughout the Deledda corpus than in the reference corpus, particularly in CV and
MA. Incidence is slightly lower in EP, though it is still higher than in the reference
corpus, suggesting that the predilection for this particular lexicogrammatical marker
of mental perception is typical of Deledda.
Occurrences of ‘come’ are particularly frequent in both CV and MA and indeed
‘come’ appears among the top keywords of CV in relation to the rest of the Deledda
corpus. The same word is actually a negative keyword in EP, meaning that it is less
frequent than would be expected when compared with the rest of Deledda. This,
together with the lower relative frequency of ‘parere’/ ‘sembrare’ in EP, might
suggest that simile has less of a part to play in the style of this novel. However, given
the multifunctionality of ‘come’ in Italian, careful reading of concordances of ‘come’
was required in order to identify and eliminate meanings of the word ‘come’ which
did not involve simile (an example in Canne al vento is “io come faccio, allora?
Grixenda si sposa e se ne va”, where ‘come’ is translated ‘what’ as in the TT: “What
would I do? Grixenda will get married and move away”).
Following this qualitative analysis, the percentages of ‘come’ occurring as simile
or otherwise in each of the three novels were calculated and the results appear in
Table 3.
CV MA EP
‘come’ (648 occurrences) (332 occurrences) (226 occurrences) 4.90
10.71 ptw 8.98 ptw ptw
‘come’ as 86% 90% 75%
simile
‘come’ as non 14% 10% 25%
simile
Table 3: Proportions of the functions of ‘come’ across the three novels
The figures in this table confirm our original impression, that some sort of
comparison in CV and MA played a greater part stylistically than in EP. We should
note here that we have not distinguished between different types of simile such as
literal or (quasi) literal, precision similes or metaphorising similes (Goatly 1997:
185). We are however attesting the presence of some sort of comparative structure,
and examination of concordances of ‘come’ in the Deledda novels suggests indeed
that it is comparison tout court that is typical of her style, as in example 2:
(2)
Anche Noemi si stancher della sua croce d’oro e vorr andare lontano, come Lia, come la
Regina Saba [CV]
Noemi will also get tired of her gold cross and will want to go far away, like Lia, like the
Queen of Sheba [RW]
A simple comparison is drawn here between Noemi and her sister Lia, but the
comparison with the Queen of Sheba is clearly a metaphorising simile.
So far we have focussed on whether or not simile is salient to Deledda’s style.
Having established that this is so, let us now move on to an investigation of the
semantic fields of the lexis in these expressions, using corpus tools to work with
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JANE HELEN JOHNSON
4
Critics (e.g. Gagliardi 2010) have commented that simile is not only present in the narrative structure
of Deledda’s novels but is also mirrored in the characters’ own speech, as in this example.
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
The semantic categories thus extracted clearly relate to major themes in Deledda’s
work such as religion, nature, and the forces of destiny (as also described by non-
corpus based critics of Deledda such as Miccinesi 1975, Gagliardi 2010).
To conclude this section, then, we first listed lexical markers for simile in Italian,
quantified them using corpus software, and compared relative frequencies in order to
make some initial comments about the representation and significance of simile. We
then used the Collocate tool to extract lexis indicating the source domains, after
which concordances were carefully read to identify the semantic categories. Given
how crucial simile can be in conveying meaning and stylistic idiosyncrasies, it is
evident that simile is an issue requiring particular attention in translation.
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JANE HELEN JOHNSON
233
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
234
JANE HELEN JOHNSON
solution perhaps creates more emotional involvement on the part of the TR than the
SR, though such an effect is difficult to measure.
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Presumably this was a lapsus on the part of the translator or the editor, since the
creation of a different metaphor is not justified in the co-text. However, closer
attention to the figurative language here might have made this error easier to spot.
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JANE HELEN JOHNSON
5. In closing
After looking at the product of translation in the form of examples from our TT
corpus, let us return now to the process of translation to bring into perspective what
we have said. When approaching the translation of a literary work, literary translators
need to be aware of the predominant stylistic features vital to the meaning and
perceptual outline of the work to be translated (Cluysenaar 1976: 49). Though a
reliable automatic identification of figurative language would seem utopistic (van
Peer 1989: 302-303), corpus stylistics may be useful in detecting idiosyncrasies of
authorial style such as the prominence of figurative language through looking at
wordlists of works by the same author and moving back and forth between statistical
and qualitative methods. Corpus stylistics may also be useful in highlighting the
recurrence of images from particular semantic domains. In Deledda these include
particular focus on natural elements, religion, and local regional references. Some of
these might create problems for the translator due to unfamiliarity of the grounds for
comparison, or because the figurative language extends further, or because
conventionalised similes have been used. The issue of repetition of the stylistic
elements in themselves may also be addressed through corpus stylistics.
A preparatory search for the salient linguistic features of a text or texts can
represent a vital part of the process of translation, particularly of creative writing. In
this way, the translator is in a far better position to make conscious, informed
decisions on how to achieve functional equivalence in the translation text when this
is deemed appropriate.
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239
Translating metaphor in literary texts: An intertextual
approach
ELIZABETH SWAIN
Università degli Studi di Trieste
1. Introduction
In dealing with literary metaphor translation, this paper addresses a gap in the
literature on a complex topic (Gentzler 2000). It approaches the subject from a
relatively new perspective on metaphor in translation studies: Lemke’s semantically-
based theory of intertextuality (1995). The paper suggests that this theory can go
some way to systematizing the complexities of metaphorical meaning, a problem less
adequately addressed by other meaning-based approaches to translation, e.g.
communicative, functional, cognitive or variously integrated approaches. The
thematic, interpersonal and textual meanings of metaphors can play a key role in
shaping the identity and coherence of a literary text through the intra- and
intertextual relationships they realise. This key role is clearly brought into focus by
considering metaphor in the Lemkean intertextual perspective. The resulting insights
serve an informative purpose in pre- and post-translation analysis and evaluation,
providing new parameters along which ‘equivalence’ can be assessed. The analysis
and discussion are illustrated with reference to Giovanni Verga’s two collections of
short stories about life in rural Sicily – Novelle Rusticane (1880) and Vita dei Campi
(1884) – and English language translations (Lawrence 1928; Cecchetti 1962;
McWilliam 2000) of all or selections from them. These literary texts were chosen for
their wealth and variety of metaphors, and for the notable translation difficulties
which these present, largely on account of the remoteness in time and space of the
represented context.
Swain, Elizabeth, ‘Translating metaphor in literary texts: An intertextual approach’ in Donna R. Miller; Enrico
Monti (eds), Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative Language, Bologna, CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti
di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 241-253.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
242
ELIZABETH SWAIN
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
1
For Neubert & Shreve (1992: 117) intertextuality of a text is “a property of being like other texts of
its kind” and “may be the most important aspect of textuality for the translator”.
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ELIZABETH SWAIN
2
This principle is illustrated in Thibault (1990: 104-112), who shares Lemke’s outlook on
intertextuality.
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
3
Attitude is less meaningful until we know at what (ideational item) it is directed, or what it is caused
by. Intertextual generic formations are perhaps less of a novelty than ITFs: they bear some relation to
Hasan’s notion of generic structure potential, or GSP (Halliday, Hasan 1989), an abstract category for
modelling the activity-based stages of genres.
4
In the appraisal framework for describing the language of evaluation (Martin, White 2005) metaphor
is the most powerful of three postulated forms of implicit evaluation.
5
Giovanni Verga’s two collections of short stories in the verist tradition were published respectively
in 1880 and 1884.
6
Ellen McRae (2011: 277-285) provides an updated list of English language translations of Verga’s
works up to 2011. The translations by D.H. Lawrence of Vita dei Campi and Novelle Rusticane have
been republished several times.
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ELIZABETH SWAIN
world is or should be. Metonyms or synecdochic metaphors are used, particularly for
naming individuals and classes of people (Swain 2001), e.g. pentolaccia (‘nasty
pot’), the protagonist in a story of the same title, and cappelli (‘hats’) a popular term
of reference for the gentry (in Libertà). There are stock metaphors current in local
speech, e.g.“ti mangerei come il pane” (“I could eat you like bread”, lovestruck
Turiddu says to Santa in Cavalleria Rusticana). More rarely, we find literary or
‘original’ metaphors with romantic or pastoral idyllic associations, particularly in
descriptions of nature.
Analysts of metaphor translation and competent translation practitioners deal with
many aspects of the types of metaphors above, and talk about them in different terms,
depending on their particular approach: linguistic; text-linguistic; cognitive;
communicative or functional (3.). Polyvalence, connotations, associations, resonances,
sociocultural context and so forth are referred to in the descriptions and
recommendations for translation procedures (deletion, paraphrase, literal translation,
cultural/functional/communicative equivalent etc.).
Against this background, the advantages of the Lemkean view of intertextuality in
dealing with metaphor translation are several. In Lemke’s theorisation, intertextuality
is not a property of texts; it is about the meaningful relations that are constructed in
communities between texts, synchronically and diachronically, and which distinguish
texts as similar or different, valuable or not, ordinary or rare, familiar or strange. In
this view, to posit that intertextuality is something that can be ‘transferred’ in
translation (cf. Neubert, Shreve 1992) is off the point. The question is rather, what
kinds of intertextual relationships will, can, should or does the translation establish in
the target language culture (TLC), and how? Will, should, can or does the translation
look more like the original, or more like other texts in the TLC?
The different types of metaphorical expressions described above set up various
thematic, orienting and generic intertextual ties, e.g. to ideologies of class and
gender, to the authorial worldview, and to local Sicilian dialect and culture. They
play a key role in building coherence, both locating the work within a literary
tradition and contemporary society (the contexts of creation and reception, Hasan
1989: 100-101), and constructing characterisation, setting and themes (in the
represented, fictional context). The coherence-building role of metaphor can be made
more visible for translation purposes by considering it in the light of the three kinds
of intertextual meanings posited by Lemke. The next section develops this notion
further, and explores the implications for translation. It selects some intertextually
challenging metaphorical expressions from Verga’s short stories and examines them
from the Lemkean perspective outlined in 47. It considers how far translation
strategies like Newmark’s (literal, one-to-one, cultural/functional equivalent etc),
based on notions of equivalence are meaningful in this perspective, and whether or
not it makes any sense to talk about ‘intertextual equivalence’ or, in Neubert’s terms,
of ‘equivalent intertextuality’.
7
On the assumption that, although intertextuality depends partly on individual experience, some
general observations can be made, about thematic, orienting and generic ties.
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
(characterisation, setting and themes in the fictional works, the latter’s identity in
relation to other literary works and genres, and the authorial worldview). Take, for
example, the synecdoche cappelli (‘hats’) in the story Libertà:
1. Le falci, le mani, I cenci, I sassi, tutto rosso di sangue! Ai galantuomini! Ai cappelli!
Amazza! Amazza! Adosso ai cappelli! (Libertà, Verga 1979: 338)
a. Sickles, hands, rags, stones, everything red with blood! The gentry! The hatfolks! Kill them
all! Down with the hatfolks! (tr. Lawrence 1984: 151)
b. The sickles, the hands, the rags, the very stones, everything red with blood. “Get the rich
men!” – “Get the hats!” – “Kill them all!” – “Let’s get the hats!” (tr. Cecchetti 1962: 207)
c. Sickles, rags, hands, stones were all dripping with it [blood].”Get the bigwigs! Get the felt
hats! Kill ’em! Kill ’em! Get the felt hats!” (tr. McWilliam 2000: 208)
‘Cappelli’ has generic links to the literary movement verism (it is popular speech),
and thematic and orientational links to social class differences in 19th century Sicily
(peasants versus the ruling middle and upper classes), to a political ideology of
revolution (the story is based on an uprising in 1860 in Bronte, Sicily, in the context
of Italian unification), and to the affective disposition (hatred) of a downtrodden
class towards its rulers. This kind of multi-functionality makes many of Verga’s
metaphorical expressions challenging to translate. The above three translations each
use some kind of (semi)literal or one-to-one procedure, resulting in the neologisms
‘hatfolks’; ‘hats’ and ‘felt hats’. The synecdoche’s affective meanings of bitterness
and hate are here recoverable from the co-text, as is its thematic referent (‘gentry’
‘rich men’ ‘bigwigs’). Lawrence’s compound noun ‘hatfolks’ perhaps conveys better
and more spontaneously than ‘hats’ the class associations, which Cecchetti explains
in a scholarly footnote (1962: 141), and which in McWilliam’s ‘felt hats’ emerge
with difficulty.
Some metaphorical expressions in Verga have salient orientational intertextual
meanings that are particularly pressing for the translator. This is often the case with
metaphorical nicknames (Swain, 2001). The brevity of the short story genre does not
generally permit well-roundedness of characters. Also, verismo, the literary genre
within which Verga is writing, is supposed to be a documentary-like form of
dispassionate writing. Verga partly circumvents these constraints on characterisation
through the orientational meanings of metaphors, which have to be recovered from
the intertextual environment. They imply the positioning of the fictional characters
and of the communities to which they belong (their prejudices, superstitions, beliefs).
Metaphors enable the foregrounding of attitudinal dispositions of otherwise ‘flat’
characters, endowing them with passion and emotional depth. They are at times
relatively unproblematic in translation, e.g. the sexual hunger inherent in la Lupa, the
female protagonist of the story is recoverable from the literal translation ‘She-Wolf’
by Cecchetti and McWilliam, as is the furtiveness and stealth of Gramigna, a bandit
and social outcast, when the comparison to a wolf (‘come un lupo’, Verga 1972: 204)
is literally rendered with ‘like a wolf’ (Cecchetti 1962:89; Lawrence 1988: 149;
McWilliam 2000: 93).
However, the name Gramigna (‘dog grass’) is itself metaphorical and implies
ideological and attitudinal meanings that must be intertextually retrieved.
McWilliam, Cecchetti and Lawrence all opt to carry over the Italian name into the
English translation, and provide a technical footnote (Cecchetti 1962: 88; Lawrence
1987: 147) explaining its pejorative meaning as a noxious weed, harmful to farmers’
crops. Other metaphorical names play a role in characterisation. Pentolaccia is the
nickname of the protagonist of a story with the same title. Ideationally, the vehicle is
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ELIZABETH SWAIN
a cooking pot, though already the pejorative suffix -accia gives it a negative
evaluative meaning (‘a nasty cooking pot’). Lawrence’s rendering, Brothpot, leaves
the pejorative association out of the translation, unlike Cecchetti’s solution: Stinkpot.
The name is also symbolic of shame and stupidity: Pentolaccia’s wife is unfaithful to
him with a wealthy noble, and with the money she receives for her favours, is able to
keep a full pot of food on the hob for the unsuspecting, cuckolded husband. These
thematic, ideological and orientational meanings of metaphors have to be inferred
from the inter- and intratextual environment.
Idioms are also multifunctional in their intertextuality, capturing not only local
colour but attitudes and ideologies. All three translations below substitute with a
partially equivalent ‘face to face’ the idiomatic expression vedersi sul mostaccio,
which has intertextual orienting ties to a southern Italian ideology of male virility and
honour, and to an attitude of offended dignity. These meanings are lost in the
translation. The context is the aftermath of the violent peasant uprising against the
upper classes recounted in Libertà: Neli Pirrù is on trial in the courtroom for his role,
and in the audience sees the apothecary’s son, who has taken up with his wife in
revenge, while Neli has been in prison:
2. Neli Pirrù doveva vedersi sul mostaccio quello dello speziale, che s’era imparentato con lui
a tradimento! (Libertà, Verga 1979)
a. Neli Pirru had to see the apothecary’s lad face to face, the fellow who’d become his relation
underhand! (tr. Lawrence 1984: 157)
b. And Neli Pirru had to find himself face to face with the apothecary’s son, who had become
a relative of his in such a tricky way! (tr. Cecchetti 1962: 215)
c. And there was Neli Pirru, standing face to face with the chemist’s son, who had played him
such a trick to become his in-law! (tr. McWilliam 2010: 214)
This is a case perhaps of what Lemke calls “missing registers” (1985): there is no
equivalent ideology in Anglo-Saxon communities with which to cohere. To capture
these intertextual interpersonal meanings and establish a tie with the source culture
(SC) intertextual system it would be necessary to supplement the translation with a
paraphrase, or semi-literal translation capturing attitudinal meaning, e.g. “his
moustache bristled at the sight of the apothecary’s son…”.
Metonyms for local institutions are also intertextually challenging for translation.
The Ruota refers thematically to the practice of leaving illegitimate or unwanted
babies on a wheel in the wall of a convent, and ties orientationally with a discourse
of sin, shame and poverty. The anonymous visitor would then ring the bell and the
nuns would come, turn the wheel and take away the child, who would likely be
raised to a life of semi-slavery in service. The excerpt in which the metonym appears
describes the killing of a priest during the peasant uprising in Libertà:
3. Non mi ammazzate, ché sono in peccato mortale! — La gnà Lucia, il peccato mortale; la gnà
Lucia che il padre gli aveva venduta a 14 anni, l’inverno della fame, e rimpieva la Ruota e le
strade di monelli affamati. (Libertà, Verga 1979)
a. Lucia being the mortal sin; Neighbour Lucia, whose father had sold her to the priest when
she was fourteen years old, at the time of the famine winter, and she had ever since been filling
the streets and the Refuge with hungry brats. (tr. Lawrence 1984: 192)
b. Lucia was his mortal sin. Lucia, who had been sold to him by her father when she was
fourteen, during the famine winter, and who now filled the Cloister Wheel and the streets with
starving urchins. (tr. Cecchetti 1962: 207)
c. Gna Lucia was the mortal sin he meant. Her father had sold her to the Reverend when she
was fourteen, the winter of the famine, and she had been filling the Cloister Wheel and the
streets with starving brats ever since. (tr. McWilliam 2000: 209)
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Perhaps because the institution of the Ruota (‘baby hatch’ or ‘foundling wheel’)
was obsolete in the SC, Lawrence here has chosen a cultural semi-equivalent, the
Refuge, which loses the axiological ties to a discourse of sin which in the Italian ST
is opposed to a discourse of social injustice and exploitation. Cecchetti (1962: 207)
and McWilliam supply technical, ideational explanations for their closer rendering
‘Cloister Wheel’, respectively in a foot- and end-note. Even if more accurate
translations had been used, it is doubtful whether the ideology of shame would be
more intertextually accessible, given the historical and cultural gap.
Metaphors also reinforce thematic meanings through their intertextuality. The
opening lines to Pane Nero contain three metaphors, whose tenors are major
recurrent themes throughout the stories: death, discord, illness and loss of material
goods. The vehicles are actions: closing eyes (for dying); waging war (for having an
argument), and eating, of flesh (for weakening the body) and of belongings (for
obligations to pay bills incurred by death). These vehicles imply orientational
meanings towards the themes in their marked lexical choices (euphemism in the first
case, and hyperbole in the latter two), which have to be intertextually recovered.
They compound the pessimistic outlook of the individual story and the stories
collectively. The three translations below show different priorities:
4. Appena chiuse gli occhi compare Nanni, e ci era ancora il prete colla stola, scoppiò subito
la guerra tra i figliuoli, a chi toccasse pagare le spese, ché il reverendo lo mandarono via con
l’aspersorio sotto l’ascella. Perché la malattia di compare Nanni era stata lunga, di quelle che
vi mangiano la carne addosso, e la roba della casa. (Verga 1979: 300)
a. Neighbour Nanni had hardly taken his last breath, and the priest in his stole was still
there, when the quarrel broke out between the children as to who should pay the costs of the
burial, and they went at it till the priest with the aspersorium under his arm was driven away.
For Neighbour Nanni’s illness had been a long one, the sort that eats away the flesh off your
bones and the things out of your house. (tr. Lawrence 1984: 109)
b. No sooner had Nanni closed his eyes for the last time, with the priest standing over him in
his stole, than his children were at one another’s throats over who should foot the bill for the
funeral. The priest was sent packing empty-handed, with the aspergillum under his arm. For
Nanni had been sick a long time, with the sort of illness that costs you an arm and a leg and
the family furniture too. (tr. McWilliam 2010: 173)
c. As soon as Nanni closed his eyes, and the priest with his stole on was still there, a war
broke out among the children as to who had to pay for the funeral, and they drove the reverend
away, the aspersorium under his arm. Because Nanni’s illness had been long, one of those
which eat the flesh on your bones and the things you have in your house (tr. Cecchetti
1962: 165)
McWilliam adds idiomatic expressions where there are none (‘foot the bill’ and
‘sent packing’) emphasising social dialect and local colour, and makes the
orientational meanings of conflict more immediate (‘at one another’s throats’). On
the other hand his translation loses the evocation of wasting flesh which is kept by
Lawrence and Cecchetti, and the reference to the family furniture implies a shift to a
more middle class register (Parks 2011).
The ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings of metaphors we have seen
above have an intra- and intertextual dimension entailing multiple thematic, orienting
and generic ties with local dialect and social mores, and more generally with
ideology and discourses (on marital infidelity, honour, shame, gender, moral
integrity), genres and registers in the real and (other) fictional worlds. Such
intertextual ties are part of the meaning of metaphors. I propose that in the particular
patterns of ties which they instantiate and repeat throughout a story or across the set
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ELIZABETH SWAIN
of stories, metaphors in Verga’s novelle position the text less as similar to other,
prior texts, and much more as distinct from other, prior texts. These patterns of intra-
and intertextual ties realise a binding function, not unlike referencing and lexical
cohesion in texts (Halliday and Hasan, 1976; Thibault, 1990). They contribute to the
stories’ unity, coherence and identity, which are intertextually as well as textually
determined, and this has implications for metaphor translation.
6. Concluding remarks
Lemkean intertextuality means a shift in the analytical focus from the
writer/reader/translator/text, to the intertextual environment of texts. Intertextuality is
not a textual property or a form of mental processing, or a formal relationship
between discrete, bounded elements in one text and another. It is the set of
relationships which pertain between texts in a community and which enable members
of that community to distinguish convergences and divergences between texts of
various kinds. I have argued that this focus on the intertextual environment is
sensitive to the meaning-making potential of metaphor in literary texts.
Lemke’s distinction of intertextual relations into thematic (ideational)
orientational (interpersonal) and generic (textual) types provides a framework for
generalising about the complex meanings of metaphor. Metaphor can be seen as
more or less conventional couplings of ideational and (implicit) interpersonal
meanings whose text-specificity is interpreted through multiple thematic, orienting
and generic relations with the surrounding textual and intertextual environment. This
perspective constrains thinking in terms not of ‘transferring’ the intertextuality of
metaphors, but in terms of degrees of contiguity between the ST and TT intertextual
environments, which attempts to translate metaphor will probe. This leaves the
question of translation procedure for metaphor substantially open, and suggests
rather the usefulness of more empirical research on how metaphors in literary texts
have been translated and how they mean through intertextuality in the original and
translated versions.
References
Bakhtin, M. (1981) ‘Discourse in the novel’ [1935], in M. Holquist (ed.) The Dialogic
Imagination, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Broeck, van den, R. (1981) ‘The limits of translatability exemplified by metaphor
translation’, Poetics Today 2 (4), 73-87.
Chiapelli, F. (1954) Giovanni Verga. Lettere al suo traduttore, Firenze: Le Monnier.
Deignan, A., Potter, L. (2004) ‘A corpus study of metaphors and metonyms in English and
Italian’, Journal of Pragmatics 36, 1231-1252.
Dagut, M.B. (1976) ‘Can “metaphor” be translated?’, Babel: International Journal of
Translation 22 (1), 21-33.
El Refaie, E. (2003) ‘Understanding visual metaphor: The example of newspaper cartoons’,
Visual Communication 2 (1), 75-95.
El Refaie, E. (2009) ‘Metaphor in political cartoons: Exploring reader responses’, in C.J.
Forceville; E. Urios-Aparisi (eds) Multimodal metaphor, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 173-
196.
Federici, E. (2007) ‘The translator’s intertextual baggage’, Forum for Modern Language
Studies 43(2), 147-160.
Gentzler, E. (2000) ‘Metaphor in translation’ in O. Classe (ed.) Encyclopaedia of Literary
Translation, London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 941-945.
251
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
252
ELIZABETH SWAIN
Verga, G. (1979) Tutte le novelle [1888], a cura di Carla Riccardi, Milano: Mondadori.
Reference edition available on line: http://www.classicitaliani.it/verga/novelle/verga_04_
Novelle_rusticane.htm (last accessed on 27/11/2013).
Verga, G. (1984) Short Sicilian Novels [1883 Novelle Rusticane; 1928 UK], tr. D.H. Lawrence,
London: Dedalus.
Verga, G. (1987) Cavalleria Rusticana and Other Stories [1880 Italy; 1928 UK], tr. D.H.
Lawrence, London: Dedalus.
Verga, G. (1962) The She-Wolf and Other Stories, tr. G. Cecchetti, Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California.
Verga, G. (2010) Cavalleria Rusticana and Other Stories [1883 Novelle Rusticane],
tr. G.R.H. McWilliam, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
253
Tradurre le ripetizioni in Noi di Evgenij Zamjatin
ALESSANDRO NIERO
Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna
Abstract: L’intervento, che nasce come riflessione a margine della tradu ione del
romanzo My [Noi, 1919-20] dello scrittore russo-sovietico Evgenij Ivanovič Zamjatin
(1884-1937), intende attirare l’atten ione sulla difficoltà che deve affrontare il
traduttore quanto debba rendere una figura antichissima, ma a tutt’oggi efficace, qual
è la ripetizione. Per Noi (come per altre opere dello scrittore), infatti, Zamjatin ha
adottato una vera e propria ‘strategia della itera ione’, di cui si trovano consistenti
tracce anche negli scritti teorico-pratici dello scrittore e in Tecnica della prosa,
singolare volume che raccoglie le sue lezioni tenute nel 1920 a tutta una serie di
aspiranti scrittori del tempo presso la asa delle Arti dell’allora Pietrogrado. Una
nutrita serie di esempi, seguita da un commento che illustra i casi più problematici,
documenta come il traduttore sia tenuto a rispettare il più possibile la trama di unità
lessicali uguali fra loro o aventi radici simili nella lingua di partenza, anche a costo
di entrare in collisione con le consuetudini della lingua di arrivo. Il ‘sistema’ di
ripetizioni zamjatiniano, infatti, è intrecciato profondamente con la poetica stessa del
romanzo non soltanto sul piano stilistico e strutturale, ma anche tematico.
Parole chiave: Evgenij Zamjatin, traduzione letteraria, ricezione letteratura russa in
Italia, Noi (romanzo), ripetizione.
1.
Tradurre Evgenij Zamjatin, scrittore russo-sovietico nato nel 1884 a Lebedjan’ (a
sud-est di Mosca) e morto a Parigi nel 1937, significa confrontarsi con uno stile
straordinariamente, quasi maniacalmente, sorvegliato, dove le parole sembrano
soppesate con il bilancino e non avvicendabili – in russo, ben s’intende – da sinonimi
di sorta, uniche e insostituibili, quasi raggelate nella loro perfezione. Ciò, in potenza,
potrebbe anche rivelarsi un vantaggio per un traduttore: una volta individuata la
parola nella lingua di arrivo (LA) che semanticamente intersechi nel modo più ampio
possibile quella della lingua di partenza (LP) – cosa non semplice, va da sé, ma non
impossibile – il gioco parrebbe fatto, il traghettatore dal russo all’italiano potrebbe
ritenere concluso il proprio compito.
Il lavoro procederebbe così se le parole trascelte volta per volta da Zamjatin
ricorressero con frequenza ‘normale’ nelle sue opere. Così, purtroppo, non è, e il
ricorrere si fa più intenso laddove, banalmente, il numero delle pagine da voltare in
italiano è maggiore. Se riferiamo una cosa così apparentemente ovvia è perché,
prima di intraprendere una nuova versione del romanzo più noto e importante di
Zamjatin, My [Noi, 1919-20] (vedi Zamjatin 2013)1, ci eravamo resi conto solo
parzialmente di quanto la scrittura zamjatiniana fosse imperniata in modo così saldo
su uno dei procedimenti retorici più antichi, ossia la figura della ‘ripetizione’. Quanto
ci era capitato di tradurre – la coppia di “racconti inglesi”, Ostrovitjane [Isolani] e
1
L’opera, che prende il titolo dal pronome in prima persona plurale (Мы [Noi]), si configura come un
romanzo di carattere antiutopico ambientato nel futuro, dove viene presentata una società di stampo
totalitario regolata da un sistema di efficienza e precisione industriale di tipo tayloristico.
Niero, Alessandro, ‘Tradurre le ripetizioni in Noi di Evgenij Zamjatin’, in Donna R. Miller; Enrico Monti (eds)
Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative Language, Bologna, CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti di
Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 255-266.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Lovec čelovekov [Il pescatore di uomini], e il racconto Iks [Ics] (cfr. Zamjatin 1999b,
2001) – era materiale di entità relativamente ridotta e, di conseguenza, sollevava
percentualmente in misura minore questo problema. È stato approntando un nuovo
Noi ‘italiano’2 che la questione ci si è appalesata in tutta la sua complessità: la
‘strategia dell’iterazione’ messa in atto dallo scrittore ha evidenziato quali possano
esserne i risvolti per chi cerchi di proporne un analogo in un’altra lingua.
2.
Alla voce ‘ripetizione’ dell’arcinoto Dizionario di linguistica e di filologia,
metrica, retorica, troviamo, testualmente, che «la ripetizione è una delle relazioni
sintattiche e semantiche a cui è affidata la coesione testuale» ed è vista «come
procedura dell’adiectio e opposta alla variatio» (Garavelli 2004: 658). Sempre alla
stessa voce si accenna alla vitalità della variatio stessa nelle lingue neolatine,
laddove sarebbe molto attenuata o inesistente in altre, tra cui, per esempio, l’inglese e
il tedesco (cfr. 659). Tra le lingue che tollerano piuttosto bene l’iterarsi di questa o
quella unità lessicale, anche a breve distanza, si può annoverare anche il russo.
Fin da subito, quindi, si profila un problema di ‘galateo’ scrittorio: un testo
programmaticamente incurante di variatio come quello approntato da Zamjatin può
entrare in rotta di collisione stilistica con l’italiano, dove, invece, avviluppare uno
stesso concetto in una rete di vocaboli di significato molto simile continua
complessivamente a essere ritenuto contrassegno del ‘bello scrivere’.
Come procedere? Sul piano prescrittivo un teorico della traduzione come
Newmark suggerisce che le ripetizioni andrebbero conservate, “a meno che
l’originale non sia scritto male o trascurato” (1988: 254). Possiamo dire con certezza
che non è il caso di Zamjatin. Secondo Nida una traduzione non dovrebbe alterare i
“modelli di ridondanza” dell’originale, pena una scoperta innaturalit della
traduzione stessa (1975: 42). Qui, tuttavia, non si tratta di semplici ripetizioni da
conservare in quanto tali, né di un ‘semplice’ loro dosaggio che ambisca a
rispecchiare la maggiore o minore ‘marcatezza’ ingenerata dal loro accumularsi,
tenendo conto del peso specifico che esse hanno nelle rispettive lingue: qui siamo di
fronte a una questione più ampia, ossia – come si diceva sopra – di una ‘strategia
dell’iterazione’ o, se vogliamo, di una ‘poetica della ripetizione’. La ‘trama’ di unit
lessicali che occorrono con frequenza ‘inusitata’, oltre che creare coesione e
compattezza, – veri puntelli su cui si regge l’edificio della prosa zamjatiniana –
assolve a una funzione di guida per il lettore, che si orienta nel corso della narrazione
proprio grazie a questo lessico che si propone e ripropone (e vi sono casi in cui è
demandato all’uso di quella – e solo quella – parola l’intendimento di questo o quel
punto della vicenda).
Zamjatin stesso che, in quell’insieme di considerazioni di carattere squisitamente
prescrittivo (finanche didattico) che è Tecnica della prosa, chiede al traduttore
“l’occhio ubbidiente del copista” (Zamjatin 1970: 110), si è soffermato su questo
2
La prima edizione italiana di My risale al 1955 per la cura di Ettore Lo Gatto (cfr. Zamjatin 1955, poi
variamente ristampato). Nel 2007 (cfr. Zamjatin 2007) ne è uscita una nuova edizione, per la quale
rimandiamo a quanto già osservato nella postfazione a Zamjatin 2013: «Segnalo doverosamente anche
l’edizione di Noi apparsa per Lupetti Editore nel 2007 (e le due edizioni successive 2009, 2011),
sebbene, pur avendo meritoriamente riportato sulla scena editoriale italiana il romanzo, non introduca
grandi elementi di novit , giacché presenta una traduzione molto vicina a quella ‘storica’ di Ettore Lo
Gatto» (Niero 2013: 274, nota 2).
256
ALESSANDRO NIERO
3.
Riportiamo qualche esempio tra quelli che ci sono parsi più significativi.
Il primo riguarda l’aggettivo nelepyj che, contemplato assieme alle occorrenze
come avverbio (nelepo) e sostantivo (nelepost’), appare più di cinquanta volte. I
dizionari consultati – tre cartacei (Majzel’-Skvorcova 1977; Dobrovolskaja 1997;
Kovalëv 2007), uno on-line (Bol’šoj ital’jano-russkij [sic] i russko-ital’janskij
slovar’) – propongono queste soluzioni: ‘assurdo’, ‘ridicolo’, ‘spropositato’, ‘goffo’,
‘sgraziato’, ‘insensato’ (alle quali ci sentiremmo di aggiungere ‘incongruo’).
La nostra scelta, dopo una non breve indecisione tra ‘assurdo’ e ‘insensato’, è
caduta su quest’ultimo (che tra l’altro ci consente di ricorrere ad ‘assurdo’ per
rendere, in tutta una serie di casi, sia il sostantivo absurd sia l’aggettivo absurdnyj).
Ed ecco i contesti in cui si colloca il vocabolo in questione3:
Originale Traduzione
1 […] эти нелепые, безалаберные, глупо- […] questi insensati, squinternati, mucchi
толкущиеся кучи пара. (141) di vapore in stolida accozzaglia. (9)
2-3 Мне вспомнилась […] картина в музее: Mi era tornato in mente […] il quadro in
их тогдашний, двадцатых веков, un museo: il viale com’era una volta, al
проспект, оглушительно пестрая, tempo dei loro ventesimi secoli, una ressa
путаная толчея людей, колес, assordantemente variopinta e aggrovigliata
животных, афиш, деревьев, красок, di persone, ruote, animali, locandine,
птиц... […] Мне показалось это так alberi, colori, uccelli… […] Mi è
неправдоподобно, так нелепо, что я не sembrato così inverosimile, così insensato,
3
In questo e nel successivo specchietto riportiamo direttamente a piè di citazioni i numeri di pagina
riferibili a Zamjatin 2011 (LP) e a Zamjatin 2013 (LA). Abbiamo evidenziato in corsivo soltanto la
parola interessata. Gli altri, rarissimi, corsivi in italiano restituiscono parole che, in russo, sono
evidenziate grazie alla razrjadka, ossia un’accentuazione della spaziatura tra le varie lettere.
257
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
258
ALESSANDRO NIERO
259
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
мужество – или тут было что-то еще temerariet oppure qui c’era qualcosa che
непонятное мне. (248) ancora mi sfuggiva. (186)
40-42 – Это немыслимо! Это нелепо! Неужели – È impensabile! È insensato! Ma davvero
тебе не ясно: то, что вы затеваете, – это non vi è chiaro? Ciò che state ordendo è
революция? una rivoluzione.
– Да, революция! Почему же это – Sì, una rivoluzione! Cosa c’è di
нелепо? insensato?
– Нелепо – потому что революции не – È insensato perché una rivoluzione non
может быть. Потому что н а ш а […] può esserci. Perché la nostra […]
революция была последней. (255) rivoluzione è stata l’ultima. (194)
43 – […] Так вот: назови мне п о с л е д н е – […] E dunque: dimmi qual è l’ultimo
е число. numero.
[…] […]
– Но, I, – это же нелепо. Раз число – Ma, I, è una cosa insensata. Dal
чисел – бесконечно, какое же ты momento che il numero dei numeri è
хочешь последнее? (255) infinito, come vuoi che faccia a dirti qual è
l’ultimo? (194-195)
44 […] и вдруг нелепое ощущение чего-то […] e all’improvviso ho l’insensata
постороннего, осевшего на лицо – чего impressione che qualcosa di estraneo mi si
никак не смахнуть. (256) sia posato sulla faccia e io non lo possa
scacciare con la mano. (197)
45 […] какой нелепый предрассудок […] che insensato pregiudizio […]! (206)
(261)
46-48 Нелепое чувство – но я в самом деле È insensato, ma in effetti sento di essere
уверен: да, должен. Нелепое – потому certo che, sì, io devo. È insensato perché
что этот мой долг – еще одно престу- questo mio dovere è un ulteriore crimine.
пление. Нелепое – потому что белое не È insensato perché il bianco non può
может быть одновременно черным, contemporaneamente essere nero, doveri e
долг и преступление – не могут crimini non possono coincidere. (212)
совпадать. (265)
49 […] нелепо жду какого-то чуда […] […] aspetto insensatamente un qualche
(268) miracolo […] (217)
50 […] и не видел никакого выхода из […] non vedendo via d’uscita da quella
всего этого нелепого положения. (279) insensata situazione. (235)
51 Нелепая, смешная, человеческая Una verità insensata, ridicola, umana!
правда! (280) (237)
52 И все это как-то нелепо, ужасно связано E tutto ciò, in qualche modo insensato e
с Машиной – я знаю к а к, но я еще не terribile, c’entra con la Macchina: io so in
хочу увидеть, назвать вслух – не хочу, che modo, ma ancora non voglio vederlo,
не надо! (283) dirlo ad alta voce – non lo voglio, non lo
accetto! (241)
53 Кровать – как-то нелепо, наискось Il letto spostato dalla parete in modo
отодвинутая от стены. (286) insensato, sghembo. (246)
54 И это все время неотвязно, нелепо, E ciò per tutto il tempo mi ricorda – in
мучительно напоминает мне о чем-то, о modo sconnesso, insensato, tormentoso –
чем нельзя, о чем сейчас – не надо. qualcosa di cui non si può parlare,
(288) inopportuno in quel momento. (249)
55 Никакого бреда, никаких нелепых Nessun delirio, nessuna metafora
метафор, никаких чувств: только insensata, nessun sentimento: meri fatti.
факты. (293) (258)
260
ALESSANDRO NIERO
24. Al caso 54, per mantenere la contrapposizione fra nelepyj e lepyj, quest’ultimo ha
subìto nella LA un consistente slittamento di senso: da ‘buono’, ‘bello’, ‘acconcio’,
‘avvenente’, lepyj (slavo ecclesiastico, oggi usato raramente) è diventato ‘sensato’.
Complessivamente presi, questi casi rappresentano, comunque, un prezzo da pagare
non altissimo per recuperare la scia lessicale entro cui Zamjatin vuole che il lettore si
muova.
4.
Il terzo esempio ad alta frequenza di apparizione e a cui intendiamo riferirci – si
tratta dell’aggettivo ostryj (e dell’avverbio correlato ostro nonché dei verbi e dei
sostantivi che ne contengono palesemente la radice) – è il più problematico. Già in
russo l’ampiezza semantica del vocabolo e la notevole variet di contesti in cui può
essere usato sono foriere di difficoltà per chi voglia ricorrere a un traducente sempre
uguale o di medesima radice. A seconda delle collocazioni, ostryj può essere reso
(sempre avvalendosi dei dizionari summenzionati) con ‘acuto’, ‘tagliente’, ‘affilato’,
‘aguzzo’, ‘pungente’, ‘appuntito’, ‘acuminato’, ‘puntuto’, ‘a punta’ (detto di oggetti:
ed è il caso che ci interessa maggiormente); ma può anche significare ‘sottile’ (vista,
udito), ‘perspicace’ (ingegno, mente), ‘mordace’ (lingua), ‘acre’, ‘penetrante’
(odore), ‘piccante’ (cibo), ‘forte’, ‘ardente’ (sentimento), ‘teso’, ‘grave’, ‘critico’
(situazione), ‘pericoloso’ (malattia) e altro ancora.
La nostra scelta è caduta – principalmente e con alcune eccezioni – su ‘aguzzo’,
ma con gli effetti collaterali che i casi stessi si incaricheranno di evidenziare, ossia,
principalmente, una certa estensione della sfera di applicazione della parola in
261
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
oggetto, alla quale vengono come ‘spremute’ qualit metaforiche che non sembrano
esserle connaturate ab origine.
Originale Traduzione
1 И тотчас же эхо – смех – справа. Mi sono voltato: denti bianchi –
Обернулся: в глаза мне – белые – insolitamente bianchi – e aguzzi mi si
необычайно белые и острые зубы sono impressi negli occhi, un viso
[…]. (143) femminile sconosciuto. (12)
2 Какие белые острые зубы! (143) Che denti bianchi e aguzzi! (13)
3-4 Я увидел острым углом вздернутые Ho visto le sopracciglia inarcarsi ad
к вискам брови – как острые рожки angolo acuto verso le tempie, quasi
икса […]. (143) fossero le asticelle aguzze di una ics
[…]. (13-14)
5 […] необычайно белые и острые […] denti insolitamente bianchi e
зубы […]. (149) aguzzi […]. (23)
6 […] плотно облегающее черное […] un abito nero molto aderente, il
платье, остро подчеркнуто белое bianco delle spalle nude e del seno che
открытых плечей и груди […]. (150) spiccava accentuato [...]. (24)
7 […] белые острые зубы. (157) […] bianchi denti aguzzi. (35)
8 Oстрая улыбка-укус. (159) Un aguzzo sorriso-puntura. (38)
9 И сверкнули глаза – два острых Uno scintillio anche negli occhi: due
буравчика, быстро вращаясь, ввинчи- piccoli trapani aguzzi che, girando
вались все глубже […]. (161) veloci, si avvitano sempre più in
profondit […]. (42)
10 Резкие, быстрые – острым топором Bruschi trochei, rapidi come un’ascia
– хореи. (169) affilata. (56)
11 На один мельчайший дифференциал Per un minuscolo differenziale di
секунды мне мелькнуло рядом с ним secondo mi è parso guizzargli [a R-13]
[R-13] чье-то лицо – острый, accanto un viso, – un triangolo aguzzo,
черный треугольник – и тотчас же nero – poi subito scomparso […]. (56-
стерлось […]. (169-170) 57)
12 Сверкнуло нестерпимо-острое Una lama di luce insopportabilmente
лезвие луча […]. (170) aguzza ha balenato […]. (57)
13 Я молча смотрел на нее. […] И я La guardavo in silenzio. […] E ho
увидел странное сочетание: высоко notato una strana combinazione:
вздернутые у висков темные брови – sopracciglia inarcate alte, presso le
насмешливый острый треугольник tempie a formare un beffardo triangolo
[…]. (172) aguzzo […]. (62)
14 Oстрые зубы, улыбка. (173) Denti aguzzi, sorriso. (62)
15 Она была в легком, шафранно- Indossava un vestito leggero, color
желтом, древнего образца платье. giallo zafferano, di foggia antica. Era
Это было в тысячу раз злее, чем mille volte più feroce che se fosse stata
если бы она была без всего. Две nuda. Due estremità aguzze spuntavano
острые точки – сквозь тонкую ткань dal tessuto sottile […]. (63)
[…]. (173)
16 Темные брови – высоко к вискам, Sopracciglia scure inarcate alte, verso
острый насмешливый треугольник le tempie; un beffardo triangolo aguzzo
[…]. (174) […]. (65)
17-18 Острые зубы – острый, насмешли- Denti aguzzi, l’aguzzo e beffardo
вый треугольник бровей. (176) triangolo delle sopracciglia. (68)
19 Я записываю это, только чтобы Trascrivo tutto ciò soltanto per
показать, как может странно запу- mostrare come possa stranamente
таться и сбиться человеческий – smarrirsi e sviarsi una cosa precisa e
такой точный и острый – разум. aguzza come la ragione umana. (70)
(177)
20 Я не отрывался от часов, я был – Non staccavo gli occhi dall’orologio,
острая, дрожащая секундная ero una lancetta dei minuti aguzza e
262
ALESSANDRO NIERO
263
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
264
ALESSANDRO NIERO
Bibliografia
Bol’šoj ital’jano-russkij [sic] i russko-ital’janskij slovar’, http://dic.academic.ru/contents.nsf
/ita_rus/ (consultato il 25 giugno 2013).
Dobrovolskaja, J. (1997) Dizionario russo-italiano/ Russko-ital’janskij slovar’, Milano:
Hoepli.
Garavelli, B.M. (2004) ‘Ripetizione’, in G.L. Beccaria (a cura di), Dizionario di linguistica e
di filologia, metrica, retorica, Torino: Einaudi, 658-659.
Kovalëv, V. (2007) Russo/ Russkij: dizionario russo-italiano/ italiano-russo, 3a ed.,
Bologna: Zanichelli.
265
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
266
Igra slov: tradurre il palindromo nei testi russo-sovietici.
ifficoltà, strategie, implicazioni culturali1
GABRIELLA ELINA IMPOSTI & IRINA MARCHESINI
Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna
Abstract: Secondo Umberto Eco tradurre significa “capire il sistema interno di una
lingua e la struttura di un testo dato in quella lingua, e costruire un doppio del sistema
testuale che, sotto una certa descri ione, possa produrre effetti analoghi nel lettore”
(2003: 16). Il compito del traduttore si complica notevolmente in presenza del
linguaggio figurato, diventando particolarmente arduo quando si incontra una sua
peculiare manifestazione: il gioco di parole (calembour, igra slov). infatti possibile,
secondo Bubnov (2002a), collocare simili fenomeni di ludolinguistica all’interno del più
ampio contesto del linguaggio figurato più precisamente, Bice Mortara Garavelli
(2003 130) considera questi “metagrafi” come “manifesta ioni della poesia figurata”.
Il problema della tradu ione dei giochi di parole è molto attuale nel caso di buona parte
delle sperimentazioni avanguardiste e dei testi postmoderni, caratterizzati da uno
spiccato atteggiamento ludico nei confronti della parola, come hanno sottolineato a più
riprese i teorici della letteratura novecentesca. In base a queste premesse, nel presente
contributo vengono analizzati una serie di case-studies tratti da opere “moderne” e
“postmoderne” russo-sovietiche, verificando la fattibilità della loro tradu ione in
diverse lingue. Nello specifico, si riportano esempi di anagramma e palindromo, in
quanto dispositivi che consentono non soltanto un’originale rielaborazione del
significante, ma anche una ricca (e conseguente) sedimentazione di significati, requisito
indispensabile per la creazione del linguaggio figurato. In prospettiva comparativa
s’intende presentare un percorso che parte da scritti futuristi (Velimir Chlebnikov), per
poi approdare ai complessi rompicapi linguistici proposti da Saša Sokolov alla fine
degli anni Settanta. Una simile indagine è sostan ialmente volta a discutere, da un
punto di vista teorico, la questione della tradu ione dei giochi di parole inoltre, si
rifletterà sui problemi traduttivi legati al contesto culturale russo-sovietico.
Parole chiave: anagramma, palindromo, letteratura sovietica, Velimir Chlebnikov,
Vladimir Nabokov, Saša Sokolov.
Secondo Umberto Eco tradurre significa “capire il sistema interno di una lingua e
la struttura di un testo dato in quella lingua, e costruire un doppio del sistema testuale
che, sotto una certa descrizione, possa produrre effetti analoghi nel lettore” (2003:
16). Il compito del traduttore si complica notevolmente in presenza del linguaggio
1
Pur nel confronto e nella stesura congiunta, la parte introduttiva e il primo paragrafo di questo
articolo sono stati scritti da Gabriella Elina Imposti, mentre il secondo paragrafo e la conclusione da
Irina Marchesini.
Imposti, Gabriella Elina; Marchesini, Irina, ‘Igra slov: tradurre il palindromo nei testi russo-sovietici. Difficolt ,
strategie, implicazioni culturali’, in Donna R. Miller & Enrico Monti (eds) Tradurre Figure / Translating
Figurative Language, Bologna, CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 267-278.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
figurato, e in particolare nel caso del gioco di parole (calembour, igra slov, pun,
wordplay). Secondo Bubnov (2002a) è infatti possibile collocare simili fenomeni di
ludolinguistica all’interno del più ampio contesto del linguaggio figurato2. Bice
Mortara Garavelli, inoltre, considera questi “metagrafi” come “manifestazioni della
poesia figurata” (2003: 130). In maniera analoga, Leech definisce il gioco di parole
come “a foregrounded lexical ambiguity which may have its origin either in
homonymy or polysemy” (1969: 209). Infine, Delabastita lo identifica come “the
general name for the various textual phenomena in which structural features of the
language(s) are exploited in order to bring about a communicatively significant
confrontation of two (or more) linguistic structures with more or less similar forms
and more or less different meanings” (1996: 128).
Egli distingue quattro gruppi di wordplay:
1. Basato sulla somiglianza fonetica (paronomasia, allitterazione, assonanza, antanaclasi,
poliptoto, derivazione, omeoteleuto, apofonia, cacofonia e neologismo).
2. Il gioco di parole fondato sulla polisemia, come la sillepsi e il zeugma.
3. Basato sull’omofonia, la cui manifestazione tipica è il calembour.
4. Il gioco di parole fondato sulla trasformazione, che comprende tutte le figure basate
sull’alterazione della struttura fonetica e grafica di una parola per crearne un’altra, come
3
l’anagramma, portmanteau word, metatesi, metagramma, eterogramma e palindromo.
Il problema della traduzione dei giochi di parole4 è molto attuale nel caso delle
sperimentazioni avanguardiste e dei testi postmoderni, caratterizzati da uno spiccato
atteggiamento ludico nei confronti della parola, come hanno sottolineato a più riprese
i teorici della letteratura novecentesca, tra cui Best-Kellner (1997), Gutleben (2002),
Hutcheon (1984), Stonehill (1988) e Waugh (1984). Il traduttore (inteso come lettore
particolare e privilegiato) che ha a che fare con testi del genere dovrà anzitutto
comprendere lo specifico codice linguistico che devia in maniera creativa rispetto
alla norma. Egli dovr poi tradurre questo “linguaggio cifrato” cercando di
riprodurne, come indica Eco, gli “effetti” presenti nell’originale.
In questa sede ci soffermeremo in particolare sul palindromo, che Bartezzaghi
(2011) definisce come “una sequenza di lettere o di sillabe che possa essere letta
anche in senso retrogrado dando come esito o la sequenza di partenza o un’altra
sequenza pure dotata di senso”. Sempre secondo lo stesso autore, si possono
distinguere tre tipi di palindromo di una parola singola:
(a) una sequenza di lettere che non porta a una parola esistente (esso → osse);
(b) una sequenza di lettere che corrisponde a una parola esistente (asso → ossa);
(c) una sequenza di lettere che corrisponde alla parola di partenza (osso → osso).
Al di l dell’interesse tradizionalmente manifestato dall’enigmistica, soprattutto
per i palindromi del tipo (c), occorre rilevare che anche in campo letterario la figura
del palindromo ha conosciuto e conosce tuttora una vasta fortuna, in particolare in
ambito russo, dove, come vedremo, viene ad assumere un ruolo significativo nella
poetica dell’avanguardia prima e del postmoderno poi.
2
Aleksandr Bubnov è lo studioso russo che, ad oggi, pare essersi occupato maggiormente di
palindromi, giochi di parole e linguaggio figurato. Per un quadro completo sui rapporti tra questi
elementi, cfr. Bubnov (1997), (2002b), (2005). I russi in generale sembrano all’avanguardia in questo
campo. Si vedano anche Voskresenskij (1971), Rybinskij (2000), Lukomnikov-Fedin (2002).
3
La seguente schematizzazione è stata ricavata dalle autrici a partire dal saggio di Delabastita (1996).
4
Sui problemi traduttivi in generale, si veda Salmon (2003) e (2004).
268
GABRIELLA ELINA IMPOSTI & IRINA MARCHESINI
5
Tr. it.: “Il palindromo attiva gli strati nascosti della coscienza linguistica e costituisce un materiale
eccezionalmente prezioso per la sperimentazione. [...] Il palindromo non è privo di senso, ma al
contrario è dotato di una molteplicit di significati. [...] Nella lingua russa infatti richiede l’abilit di
vedere ʻla parola nella sua interezza’, ovvero di percepirla come un disegno unitario [...]. In tal modo,
la lettura all’inverso muta la natura semiotica del testo nel suo opposto”. Qualora non diversamente
segnalato, tutte le traduzioni sono da considerarsi nostre.
6
Tr. it.: “Prima gioco di bambini si è trasformata in gioco di giganti” (Kručenych 1928: 18).
7
Grigor’ev 2000: 123-124, 127.
8
Tr. it: “tavola periodica della parola”.
9
Tr. it.: “Un riflesso dei raggi del futuro, proiettati dall’ʻIo’ inconscio sul cielo della ragione”, così
scrive Chlebnikov in Svojasi, SP, II, 8-9, ora in Chlebnikov (1986: 37).
269
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
ПЕРЕВЕРТЕНЬ Turnabout
(КУКСИ, КУМ МУК И СКУК)
Кони, топот, инок, Horses, tramping, a monk,
Но не речь, а черен он. Yet no speech, but black is he.
Идем, молод, долом меди. We go a lad, over the dale of copper.
Чин зван мечем навзничь. Rank is named with the sword downward.
Голод, чем меч долог? Hunger by what is the sword long?
10
Stepan Timofeevič (Sten’ka) Razin (c.a. 1630-1671), cosacco del Don che negli anni 1670-71
capeggiò la più grande rivolta cosacca della storia russa di epoca prepetrina.
11
Tr. it.: “L’unica opera di grandi dimensioni in letteratura costruita sul modello del palindromo”,
Kručenych (1928: 18).
12
Cfr. Markov (1962: 157). Osserva inoltre Barbara Lönnqvist (1986: 299) che “[t]he palindrome
functions on the formal level as a realization of the philosophy of inversion pervading Chlebnikov’s
poetic word”.
13
Tr. it.: “Io sono un Razin al contrario, sono un Razin alla rovescia, lui rubava e bruciava e io della
parola sono il dio”.
14
Cfr. Birjukov (2003).
15
Cfr. anche Greber (1998b) per una trattazione più ampia del palindromo come cronotopo della
rivoluzione.
16
Gary Kern (1976). Il testo della traduzione, che in inglese ha il titolo ʻTurnabout’, è riportato per
intero in appendice a Greber 1998a.
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GABRIELLA ELINA IMPOSTI & IRINA MARCHESINI
È evidente che l’obiettivo stesso della traduzione, quello cioè di creare nel lettore
un “effetto analogo” a quello dell’originale, viene qui disatteso. Infatti, al di là della
mera ricostruzione del significato delle singole parole non si riesce a ricreare “il
valore intrinseco della costruzione eufonica”17 di questa poesia palindromica, tutta
intessuta sulla ripetizione di sequenze di suoni in ordine inverso che comporta un
evidente “indebolimento dell’aspetto semantico”18.
Il poeta tedesco Oskar Pastior, invece, in Mein Chlebnikov (2003) si cimenta con
un intero componimento palindromico, che non tenta di riprodurre il senso, per così
dire “superficiale” del testo chlebnikoviano, ma piuttosto si mette in competizione
con il poeta russo:
[a]n Chlebnikov [...] reizte mich gerade die Unmöglichkeit, seinen Wortgeflechten mit einer
Sinn-Klang-Rhythmus-Übertragung beizukommen – als Herausforderung, seine poetische
Methode, die er als “Sternensprache” universell theoretisiert [...] [K]ann ich auch sagen, daβ
die Arbeit an und mit Chlebnikov stellenweise wie ein Freiheitsrausch war... 19
Pastior sceglie allora di tradurre la figura del palindromo in quanto tale,
sacrificando l’aderenza alla lettera per conservare il principio strutturale di fondo del
componimento.
Come si vede, Pastior, pur rinunciando a tradurre alla lettera, conserva come
centrale il tema del “cavallo” dal quale prende l’avvio il componimento
chlebnikoviano e scrive ‘à la’ Chlebnikov, attualizzandolo nella lingua d’arrivo.
Come sottolinea Ingold (2003: 107), il poeta tedesco “macht sich Chlebnikov
zueigen (und behauptet sich zugleich – in der Rolle des ‘Übersetzers’ – als Dichter),
17
“самоценность эвфонической конструкции”, Jakobson (1921).
18
“ослаблени[e] смыслового момента [...]”, Jakobson (1921).
19
Tr. it: “Di Chlebnikov [...] mi ha attratto solo l’impossibilit di ottenere quel suo intreccio di parole
con una comunicazione senso-suono-ritmo - come una sfida al suo metodo poetico, che ha teorizzato
universalmente come “linguaggio delle stelle” [...] Posso affermare che il lavoro su e con Chlebnikov
era a tratti simile ad un’euforia di libert ” , Pastior (2003: 103-105).
271
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
272
GABRIELLA ELINA IMPOSTI & IRINA MARCHESINI
273
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
25
“una sequenza di lettere che non porta a una parola esistente”, http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/
palindromi_(Enciclopedia_dell’Italiano)/ (consultato il 18/11/2013).
26
Tr. it.: “riempiamo ancora qualche pagina con una chiacchierata su qualcosa” (Sokolov 2007: 211).
27
Si ricordano brevemente le due modalità tipiche della repressione dissidente: lavori forzati o
internamento in un ospedale psichiatrico.
28
Tr. it.: “ho paura che a lui, a Nikolaj Gorimirovič, non piacerà quello che scrivo: lui, nonostante
tutto, come si scriveva nei romanzi di una volta, è non molto, ma leggermente troppo stanco e cupo.
Credo che se il mio libro finirà nelle sue mani, lui telefonerà a vostro padre – non va dimenticato che
lui e vostro padre sono vecchi compagni d’arme, hanno prestato servizio nientemeno che nell’esercito
di Kutuzov – lei è al corrente, dirà, della bella pasquinata che ci hanno ammannito? [...] [H]o paura
che questo chiarimento darà luogo a molte spiacevolezze nei miei confronti, compresa la più
spiacevole di tutte: ho paura che mi spediranno subito là, dal dottor Zauze” (Sokolov 2007: 209).
274
GABRIELLA ELINA IMPOSTI & IRINA MARCHESINI
29
Emersa dalla discussione con il prof. Alessandro Niero, che ringraziamo.
30
A questo proposito, si pensi anche alla “dedica” dell’autore, anch’essa inserita nel paratesto (prima
dell’incipit del romanzo): “[с]лабоумному мальчику Вите Пляскину, моему приятелю и соседу.
Автор” (Sokolov 2009: 6) Trad. it.: “[a]l ragazzo debole d’intelletto, Vitja Pljaskin, mio amico e
vicino di casa. L’autore” (Sokolov 2007: 5).
31
Il narratore di Škola dlja durakov è infatti inaffidabile.
275
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
ST (Russkij) “minodvesp”
TT1 (Italiano) “Omino Due SP” TT2 (Italiano, proposta) “dueponimos”
TT3 (English) “mynoduesp” TT4 (English, proposta) “spued onym”
TT5 (English, proposta) “dupes onym”
3. Conclusioni
Nel campo ancora parzialmente inesplorato della traduzione dei giochi linguistici,
intesi come linguaggio figurato, sembra impossibile trarre conclusioni generalizzanti;
l’unica regola che si può ravvisare, forse, consiste nel fatto che si possono osservare
tecniche diverse adottate in determinate circostanze. Nei casi qui presentati sono
emerse almeno due tendenze:
la traduzione dei giochi di parole attraverso un’alternativa che conservi o la
forma o il/i nucleo/i semantico/i del gioco;
la traduzione dei giochi di parole attraverso una espressione corrispondente
nella lingua d’arrivo.
Nella prima ipotesi, ci si avvicina alla proposta di Eco, che vede la traduzione
come la creazione di un effetto analogo all’originale nella lingua d’arrivo. Ciò può
avvenire tramite forme espressive non connotate, oppure, come succede in traduzioni
più eleganti, attraverso il ricorso ad altre forme retoriche, come fece Nabokov figlio
pensando al “cognate anagram”.
La seconda ipotesi, invece, si verifica con successo nel caso in cui si abbia a che
fare con dei calchi o con prestiti linguistici di vocaboli derivati soprattutto dal latino
o dal greco; la variazione tra calchi sarà minima, e dunque forma ed effetto saranno
più facilmente trasmissibili nella traduzione. Sarà quindi possibile tradurre il
palindromo con un palindromo, come abbiamo visto nel caso della traduzione inglese
di Sokolov.
Tuttavia, un requisito fondamentale per la traduzione dei giochi di parole sembra
essere la profonda conoscenza dell’autore e dell’opera sulla quale si lavora. Se questa
indicazione è vera a livello generale nell’ambito della traduzione letteraria, nel
contesto specifico della produzione metafinzionale diventa condizione imprescindibile,
considerate le difficoltà che questo tipo di narrazioni presentano. C’è, infine, un punto
di partenza vincolante per il lettore, e quindi anche per il traduttore, una fioca luce
che potrebbe illuminare il suo cammino ermeneutico; scrive Howard W. Bergerson:
“[t]he palindromic poet’s only obligation is that his palindromic dream should have a
clear meaning for him; for, obviously, the reader – if he finds the poem obscure – has
a right to the assurance that there exists a meaning to be discovered” (1973: ix).
32
Per una rassegna storica sul palindromo, e forme affini, cfr. Dubois (1983). Sulla funzione “magica”
del palindromo si veda anche Lotman (1992: 23).
276
GABRIELLA ELINA IMPOSTI & IRINA MARCHESINI
Bibliografia
AA.VV. (2013) ‘ропот’, in Dizionario Russo-Italiano Abbyy Lingvo, http://www.lingvo-
online.ru/ru/Translate/ru-it/ропот (consultato il 18/11/2013).
AA.VV. (2013) ‘топор’, in Dizionario Russo-Italiano Abbyy Lingvo, http://www.lingvo-
online.ru/ru/Translate/ru-it/топор (consultato il 18/11/2013).
Bartezzaghi, S. (2011) ʻPalindromi’, in Enciclopedia dell’Italiano, http://www.treccani.it/
enciclopedia/palindromi_(Enciclopedia-dell’Italiano)/ (consultato il 31/05/2013).
Bergerson, H.W. (1973) Palindromes and Anagrams, New York: Dover Publications.
Best, S.; Kellner, D. (1997) The Postmodern Turn, New York: Guilford.
Birjukov, S. (2003) ʻRevizor roz i ver. (O palindromii)’, in Roku Ukor. Poetičeskie načala,
Moskva: RGGU, 159-235.
Bubnov, A.V. (1997) ‘Minim: Palindrom kak minimal’nyj tekst’, Novoe Literaturnoe
Obozrenie 23, 321-328.
Bubnov, A.V. (2002a) Lingvopoetičeskie i leksikografičeskie aspekty palindromii:
dissertacija doktora filologičeskich nauk, Orel.
Bubnov, A.V. (2002b) ‘Palindromija: Ot perevertnia do pantogrammy’, Novoe Literaturnoe
Obozrenie 57 (5), 295-312.
Bubnov, A.V. (2005) ‘Avangard i palindromija ili Palindromija i Avangard’, Russian,
Croatian and Serbian, Czech and Slovak, Polish Literature 57 (3-4), 233-244.
Chlebnikov, V. (1986) Tvorenija, Moskva: Sovetskij pisatel’, http://www.rvb.ru/hlebnikov
(consultato il 31/05/2013).
Curl, M. (1982) The Wordsworth Dictionary of Anagrams, London: Wordsworth Reference.
Delabastita, D. (1996) ‘Introduction’, The Translator (Special issue: Wordplay and
Translation: Essays on Punning and Translation) 2 (2), 1-22.
Donner, M. (1996) I Love Me, Vol. I S. ordrow’s Palindrome Encyclopedia, Chapel Hill,
NC: Algonquin Books.
Dossena, G. (2004) Il dado e l’alfabeto. Nuovo dizionario dei giochi con le parole, Bologna:
Zanichelli.
Dubois, Ph. (1983) ‘(Petite) histoire des palindromes’, Littératures 7, 125-139.
Eco, U. (2003) Dire quasi la stessa cosa, Milano: Bompiani.
Garavelli Mortara, B. (2003) Manuale di retorica [1988], Milano: Bompiani.
Greber, E. (1998a) ‘A chronotope of revolution: the palindrome from the perspective of
cultural semiotics’, The Palindromist 6, http://www.palindromist.org/chronotype
(consultato il 30/05/2013).
Greber, E. (1998b) ‘Palindromon – revolutio’, Russian, Croatian and Serbian, Czech and
Slovak, Polish Literature 48 (1), 159-204.
Grigor’ev, V.P. (2000) Budetljanin, Moskva: Jazyki russkoj kul’tury.
Gutleben, Ch. (2002) ‘Palinodes, Palindromes and Palimpsests: Strategies of Deliberate Self-
Contradiction in Postmodern British Fiction’, Miscelánea: A Journal of English and
American Studies 26, 11-20.
Hutcheon, L. (1984) Narcissistic Narrative. The Metafictional Paradox, London/New York:
Routledge.
Ingold, F.P. (2003) ʻPaβt ins Ohr. Ein Wort zu Pastiors Chlebnikov’, in O. Pastior, Mein
Chlebnikov, Basel: Engeler, 106-108.
Jakobson, R. (1921) Novejšaja russkaja poe ija, Praha. Ripubblicato in Selected Writings.
Vol. V: On Verse, Its Masters and Explorers, The Hague; Paris; New York: Mouton,
1979, 299-354, http://philologos.narod.ru/classics/jakobson-nrp.htm (consultato il
31/05/2013).
Kern, G. (1976) ʻTurnabout’, in V. Khlebnikov, Snake Train. Poetry and Prose, ed. G. Kern,
tr. G. Kern; R. Sheldon et alii, Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 65.
277
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
278
Poetry
Poesia
Lingue in sala rianimazione: sulle poesie di Roger
McGough e la loro traduzione in italiano
FRANCO NASI
Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia
Abstract: Nella introduzione alle Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth invitava i poeti
ad abbandonare le espressioni figurate, ormai sterili, che facevano parte del
repertorio della “Poetic diction” (così, ad esempio “ eathery tribes” come modo
figurato e irrigidito per dire uccelli) per aprirsi alla lingua realmente usata dalla
classe medio e medio bassa della società. Analogamente i Pop poets di Liverpool
(Adrian Herni, Brian Patten, Roger McGough) invitano a ignorare il poetichese
(inteso appunto come repertorio di figure poetiche convenzionali) o il linguaggio
criptico di certa poesia modernista, per utilizzare piuttosto la lingua parlata dalla
gente comune all’epoca della società di massa. Espressioni idiomatiche, colte nella
pubblicità dei mass media, o frammenti di conversazione entrano così nella poesia, in
modo simile a quanto era successo con la contemporanea pop art di Warhol o
Rauschenberg. Ma queste espressioni (singole parole, espressioni idiomatiche, frasi
proverbiali ecc.), spesso assunte nel linguaggio quotidiano senza più alcun
riferimento al significato denotativo, ma irrigidite come catacresi, vengono
sorprendentemente risignificate attraverso processi di ricontestualizzazione o di
minima varia ione fonetica. osì il pesce “monkfish” in una poesia per bambini di
Roger McGough torna ad essere un “pesce religioso” (Ever see an oyster in a cloister
/ then how about a monkfish?), oppure l’espressione figurata “to have the cake and
eat it too”, diventa il pretesto per una macabra ma umoristica poesia (The ake. I
wanted one life / you wanted another / we couldn’t have our cake / so we ate each
other). Prendendo in considerazione in particolare le opere poetiche di
RogerMcGough, sulle quali ho lavorato in questi anni in prima persona come
traduttore, cercherò di individuare queste espressioni figurate, di ordinarle secondo
categorie retoriche (catacresi, idiomatismi, espressioni proverbiali ecc.), di studiarne
i meccanismi attraverso i quali i poeti le risignificano e, infine, di proporre alcune
possibili traduzioni, con alcune considerazioni sulle strategie traduttive alla luce delle
più recenti acquisizioni della traduttologia.
Parole chiave: espressioni idiomatiche, poesia, metafore morte, Roger McGough.
Nasi, Franco, ‘Lingue in sala rianimazione: sulle poesie di Roger McGough e la loro traduzione in italiano’, in
Donna R. Miller & Enrico Monti (eds), Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative Language, Bologna, CeSLiC,
‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 281-298.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
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FRANCO NASI
1.2. Una seconda premessa, altrettanto ovvia, è che non solo ci sono tanti tipi di
metafora, ma che essi si intrecciano con altre figure della poesia in modi diversi, per
cui la loro traduzione presenta gradi variabili di difficoltà. Per indicare queste
variazioni mi servo di un tecnicismo sportivo: il coefficiente di difficoltà. In molti
sport si assegna la vittoria a chi riesce a raggiungere una meta nel minor tempo
possibile: così avviene nelle gare di velocità a piedi, a nuoto o con qualche mezzo. Si
tratta di trasferire un corpo (quello dell’atleta) da un luogo a un altro. In questi sport
non sono previste valutazioni sullo stile con cui uno corre, nuota, guida o pedala. In
altri invece non solo il corpo deve raggiungere la meta, ma deve farlo anche in modo
elegante. Sono gli sport in cui da regolamento anche l’occhio vuole la sua parte: i
tuffi, ad esempio, oppure la ginnastica. Le evoluzioni che il corpo fa sono scrutinate
e valutate sulla base di tabelle complesse che determinano il grado di difficoltà
dell’esercizio. Lo stesso si può dire della traduzione delle figure: non si tratta solo di
portare una figura da un testo a un altro, ma di fare in modo che in questo trasporto
siano esaltate, e se possibile mantenute, tutte le peculiarità di quella figura, e cioè i
suoi numerosi legami con gli altri elementi del testo, con le convenzioni sincroniche
e diacroniche in cui quella figura si significa e che la rendono semanticamente ed
esteticamente preziosa.
Esemplifico con due poesie: la prima è del newyorkese Billy Collins (2001: 147)
che si diverte a giocare con espressioni metaforiche da lui stesso create, ma
presentate come fossero cliché e si intitola Idiomatic; la seconda, The wrong beds, è
di Roger McGough (2003: 368) che comincia la poesia con una metafora originale
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
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FRANCO NASI
1
Comunicazione personale dell’autore.
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
strategie traduttive indicate da Newmark sono più varie e ammettono sia l’aderenza
letterale sia la sostituzione con equivalenti consolidati nella cultura di arrivo, che
però spesso risultano poco accurati (Newmark 1988:109). Che le “dead metaphors”
siano veramente morte, e abbiano abdicato così al loro essere metafore per diventare
“an expression that no longer has a pregnant metaphorical use” (Black 1993: 26) è un
tema, come noto, messo in discussione da più di trent’anni dalla linguistica cognitiva.
Così scrive Kövecses (2002: XI), chiudendo con il riferimento al seminale studio di
Lakoff e Johnson:
The ‘dead metaphor’ account misses an important point: namely, that what is deeply
entrenched, hardly noticed, and thus effortlessly used is most active in our thought. The
metaphors […] may be highly conventional and effortlessly used, but this does not mean that
they have lost their vigor in thought and that they are dead. On the contrary, they are ‘alive’ in
the most important sense – they govern our thought – they are ‘metaphors we live by’.
Di fronte alle attenzioni del traduttore molte metafore morte, moribonde o solo un
po’ assopite sembrano per miracolo tornare in vita. Non succede sempre. Catacresi
come “collo di bottiglia” o “gamba di un tavolo” trovano in inglese corrispondenti e
poco evocativi “bottle neck” o “table leg”. Ma gi di fronte a una banale “freccia
dell’auto” si può rimanere interdetti: ci si accorge subito che in un’espressione del
tipo “The arrow! you forgot to put the arrow!”, urlata a un amico che guida
distrattamente, c’è qualcosa che non va, e che dietro il nome che designa
quell’oggetto che si accende e si spegne ci deve essere una motivazione legata alla
storia della tecnologia: ad esempio che le prime autovetture segnalavano il cambio di
direzione con astine meccaniche a forma di freccia, manovrate a mano che
fuoriuscivano dalla carrozzeria. In inglese d’altronde si usa “blinker” per freccia. La
parola potrebbe restare così, inerme, nel suo isolamento necrotico, fino a quando un
traduttore, un bambino o un poeta non decidessero di ridare attenzione al soggetto
secondario dell’interazione metaforica, trasformando così l’auto in una diligenza del
Far West colpita dalle frecce degli indiani o un essere che sbatte le ciglia (blinks).
In un saggio molto rigoroso, ma anche ricco di suggestioni sulla tipologia delle
metafore e sulla loro traduzione, Michele Prandi riporta una bella meta-metafora del
grammatico medievale Geoffrey de Vinsauf, secondo il quale una metafora è una
pecora che salta lo steccato e si trova in un campo straniero: “Propria ovis in rure
alieno”. A quel punto l’animale può decidere di tornare nel recinto spaventato o può
restare nel campo straniero cercando di sopravvivere alle bestie nemiche, o
accettando le regole del luogo, o imponendo le proprie regole. Per Prandi è
importante sottolineare come i vari tipi di metafora abbiano una comune origine, che
consiste in un “conceptual transfer and interaction” (Prandi 2010: 306), che possono
tuttavia portare a esiti diversi. Ci sono situazioni in cui le metafore tendono a
diventare coerenti (“consistent metaphors”) con il sistema linguistico e di pensiero, e
l’interazione fra “tenor” e “subsidiary subject” tende ad annullarsi, nel senso che il
termine sostitutivo sembra identificarsi completamente con il senso primario o
viceversa. Così, ad esempio, il termine “ala” nell’espressione “ala di un edificio”,
perde ogni riferimento all’ala di un uccello o di un aereo e diventa mero sinonimo di
“parte”. Ci sono invece altre situazioni in cui l’interazione resta “conflittuale”
(conflictual); il contrasto tra i due elementi che interagiscono è chiaro e la metafora è
vivente e creativa (living). Per quanto il “subsidiary subject” possa perdere ogni
specificit semantica originaria a favore del “tenor”, per Prandi, alla cosiddetta
metafora morta manca “the irreversibility of real death – like the sleeping girl of the
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FRANCO NASI
fairytale, a dead metaphor can be raised to new life at any moment” (Prandi 2010:
310). Nessuno può vietare a un bambino, ad esempio, di far muovere le ali a un
edificio e permettergli così di volare. Né lo si può vietare a un poeta. Sarà poi
compito del traduttore cercare, con il rispetto dovuto al testo e alle rivitalizzate
metafore, di far quadrare il cerchio nella lingua e nella cultura di arrivo, sapendo,
come sostiene Prandi, che il compito forse più complesso è proprio quello della resa
delle “metafore coerenti”:
The most difficult metaphors to translate are not creative, conflictual metaphors, rich in content
and typically designed for open-ended interpretation, but consistent, conventional metaphors,
documented by extended uses of polysemous words and by idiomatic uses of complex
expressions. This does not imply that the translation of conflicting metaphors is free of risk.
These risks, however, are of a completely different nature. (Prandi 2010: 319)
2. Mots de la tribu
Esaurite, per ora, le premesse, presenterò brevemente una caratteristica della
poetica di McGough, che assumerò come “case study”. In una sua breve
composizione, il poeta di Liverpool informa il lettore su dove egli trovi ispirazione e
materiali:
Smithereens
I spend my days
collecting smithereens.
I find them on buses
in department stores
and on busy pavements.
At restaurant tables
I pick up the leftovers
of polite conversation
At railway stations
the tearful debris
of parting lovers.
I pocket my eavesdroppings
and store them away.
I make things out of them.
Nice things, sometimes.
Sometimes odd, like this. (McGough 1976: 44)
Si parte dunque dalla lingua d’uso, non da repertori tematici o stilistici della
tradizione poetica consolidata. Adrian Henri, compagno di McGough nell’avventura
così particolare e frizzante dei poeti pop di Liverpool, scrive in una sua dichiarazione
di poetica quanto la lingua veramente parlata dalla gente debba costituire il repertorio
privilegiato a cui guardare per l’elaborazione del testo poetico. Riprendendo un
celebre verso di Mallarmé (“donner un sense plus pur aux mots de la tribu”), Henri
scrive:
To me the implications of this are obvious: to purify the dialect of my tribe. My tribe includes
motor-bike specialists, consultants, gynaecologists, Beatles fans, the people who write
‘Coronation Street’, peeping toms, admen, in fact the language of everyone saying anything
about anything in English. This implies the whole spectrum of specialist jargon, argot, dialect.
More specifically I think my concern should be with the whole area of language as it impinges
on me, now. (Henri 1986: 76)
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Missed
out of work
divorced
usually pissed
he aimed
low in life
and
missed.
Immagino che si potrebbe discutere se out of work o pissed siano metafore. Credo
che non ci sarebbero dubbi sul fatto che to aim low sia un’espressione figurata, ma
anche che è un ribaltamento di un’espressione convenzionale: nella vita di solito si
“punta in alto”, così come more is up e less is down. È l’antitesi della metafora
spaziale (Orientational metaphor) che Lakoff e Johnson (2003: 14-21) considerano
pressoché universale (e quindi, in un qualche modo, con un coefficiente di difficoltà
traduttivo basso). La traduzione presenta semmai qualche problema in più per il
ritmo (metro, rima, allitterazioni) e per la scelta di un termine che renda bene quel
“pissed” (“metafora recente” così gergale e pregna). Facile invece la resa
dell’espressione idiomatica che è stata rivitalizzata grazie a una capriola imprevista:
puntare in basso sono capaci tutti, ma fallire pur puntando in basso è una iattura
assoluta. Una possibile traduzione potrebbe essere la seguente:
Mancato
disoccupato
divorziato
di solito sballato
ha puntato
in basso nella vita
e ha
mancato. (McGough 2004: 100-1)
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FRANCO NASI
Espressioni idiomatiche che vengono ascoltate per caso e portate nella sala
rianimazione della poesia sono numerose nella raccolta completa di McGough per
adulti. Spesso la poesia prende le mosse semplicemente dalla ripresa del senso
letterale di uno dei termini che compongono l’idiomatismo.
The cake
I wanted one life
you wanted another
we couldn’t have our cake
so we ate each other.
Una traduzione quasi parola per parola potrebbe essere:
La torta
Io volli una vita
tu volesti un’altra
non potevamo avere la nostra torta
così ci mangiammo l’un l’altro.
Una traduzione letterale, che non è traduzione parola per parola (Berman 2003:
88), dovrebbe occuparsi anche di quello che non c’è nelle singole parole, come il
rimando implicito fra hate (odiare) e ate (passato di mangiare), e i giochi fonetici, la
compattezza ritmica dell’enunciato nella sua interezza:
La Torta
Io volevo una vita
tu ne volevi un’altra
non potemmo tenere la torta
e così ci mangiammo a vicenda.
Nel terzo e quarto verso si cerca di restituire la compattezza dell’originale con la
ripetizione del pattern degli accenti (∪ ∪ — ∪ ∪ — ∪ ∪ — ∪), e alcune allitterazioni
(/t/ e /m/), anziché forzare le rime con inversioni sintattiche e banali soluzioni
grammaticali (come, ad esempio, “La torta tener non potevamo / e a vicenda noi ci
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
La moglie piena
Io volevo una vita
tu ne volevi un’altra
ubriachi tutta la notte
ci siamo riempiti di botte. (McGough 2004: 90-91)
Non so quale delle tre versioni sia accettabile. Forse tutte e tre, dipende: ciascuna
ha una sua ragion d’essere. E si torna alla premessa numero tre: è importante che il
traduttore renda esplicito il proprio progetto traduttivo, evitando di nascondersi dietro
a una presunta e impossibile invisibilità, causa prima di morte di tanti testi in
traduzione.
Un ultimo caso, ma l’elenco potrebbe continuare a lungo, è Having my Ears
Boxed, un’espressione metaforica con cui si descrive una punizione una volta in uso
nelle scuole britanniche. Il maestro colpiva lo studente indisciplinato sulle orecchie
con le mani raccolte a formare una sorta di piccola cassa armonica: l’effetto di
rintronamento era terribile. L’espressione letteralmente significa infatti “inscatolare
le orecchie di qualcuno”. Qui di nuovo l’espressione viene presa alla lettera dall’io
che nella poesia è un bambino e che, davanti alla porta del preside, attende di
ricevere la punizione temuta, immaginandosi che di lì a poco le orecchie gli saranno
tirate fino a staccarsi e poi riposte in un paio di scatole: “Separate coffins of polished
pine / L and R. ‘Gone to a better life’”, “Bare singole di pino verniciato / S e D.
‘Passate a miglior vita’” (McGough 2004: 20-21).
Per riuscire a cogliere nelle forme metaforiche “morenti” o sclerotizzate dall’uso
queste infinite potenzialità liriche e narrative, è necessario tenere le orecchie ben
aperte o fidarsi, come suggeriva Rodari, di quell’ “orecchio acerbo” che hanno anche
gli adulti:
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FRANCO NASI
3. Un bestiario di animali-verbali
Quest’ultima sezione è dedicata alla lettura, accompagnata da qualche breve
commento, di alcune traduzioni alle quali ho lavorato negli ultimi tempi. Si tratta di
un libretto di poesie per bambini di McGough intitolato Imaginary Menagerie. Era
stato pubblicato per la prima volta nel 1988 con le illustrazioni di Tony Blundell di
molti degli animali immaginari con cui McGough aveva riempito il suo serraglio.
Recentemente (2011) McGough ha ripubblicato il libro presso un diverso editore
illustrando le poesie personalmente, in una sorta di autotraduzione intersemiotica. Di
solito, e questa considerazione ci riporta alla premessa numero tre, gli editori di libri
per ragazzi acquistano i diritti dei libri come oggetti comprensivi di testo e immagini.
Questo significa che il traduttore non solo deve affrontare i vincoli intratestuali delle
poesie (ritmi, giochi di parole, figure ecc.) e intertestuali (riferimenti ad altri testi,
parodie, allusioni ecc.) ma deve fare anche i conti con vincoli paratestuali come le
immagini, che limitano le soluzioni traduttive. In questo caso specifico, visto che gli
animali che McGough ha ripreso sono spesso animali-verbali e che in italiano le
soluzioni costringevano a metamorfosi traduttive imbarazzanti, il poeta, con grande
generosità, si è dichiarato disponibile a disegnare nuovi animali per la versione
italiana, che esce dunque dall’editore Gallucci di Roma con il testo in inglese,
l’immagine originale, la traduzione italiana e, dove necessario, con una nuova
immagine, che sarà una traduzione intersemiotica fatta dall’autore “originale” di un
testo che una volta era suo, ma che con la traduzione è diventato “più o meno” suo.
3.1 Iniziamo con esempi in cui il nome dell’animale contiene un altro nome, come
il “torpedone” che porta in sé un “pedone” o il “canestro” che accoglie un “cane”.
Sono parole matrioska o, se posso permettermi una metafora originale, parole
incinte. Alcune avranno un coefficiente di difficoltà traduttivo minimo come:
Anaconda
Ever see
an anaconda
drive through town
on a brand new Honda?
Non chiedergli
di salire
o in pancia
vai a finire. (McGough 2013: 18-19)
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Wordfish
Wordfish
are swordfish
in a state of undress
Criss-crossing
the ocean
in search of an S.
Restando nell’ambiente ittico si può forse azzardare una sostituzione:
Pesci orfani
Orfani
sono scorfani
un po’ sotto stress
vanno in cerca
per il mare
di un C e di una S. (McGough 2013: 138-139)
3.2. Pesce spada, come pescecane è spesso percepita come una sola parola, come
ferrovia: non credo che quando si pronuncia quella parola si pensi a una via di ferro.
Ci avviciniamo alla catacresi; e su animali il cui nome è diventato un automatismo
McGough si diverte. Al ristorante, quando si ordina un Monkfish (in italiano “Coda
di rospo”) non si pensa a un pesce religioso che si è messo il saio. Ma se cambia
l’ambientazione il pesce ritorna ad essere quello che forse era all’origine:
Ever see
an oyster
in a cloister?
Nuns in a shoal?
A monkfish praying
for a lost lemon sole?
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FRANCO NASI
I Badgers, cattivi e avidi più che mai, arraffarono tutto quel che poterono dai
poveri abitanti della foresta, mentre i Goodgers, altruisti di natura, cercarono di
aiutare tutti. Come prevedibile, alla fine i Goodgers, a differenza dei Badgers, non
sopravvissero e si estinsero. Intervenne poi Pan, che volle che i Goodgers non
venissero dimenticati, e segnò con il bianco indelebile dei giusti il muso dei Badgers,
che da quel giorno diventarono striati e un po’ più mansueti. Il coefficiente di
difficoltà della traduzione è piuttosto alto perché oltre alla ripresa del significato
etimologico e al gioco con la parola matrioska, il nome dà vita a una storia piuttosto
articolata, a conferma della premessa numero uno, e cioè che non dobbiamo
preoccuparci troppo di un anello della catena, ma dell’intero. Come succede spesso
nelle traduzioni, alcune possibili soluzioni sono sotto il naso: basta imparare ad
ascoltare anche la lingua in cui si traduce (quella della importanza della
“padronanza” della lingua di arrivo e delle sue istituzioni poetiche è una quarta
premessa che non si dovrebbe mai dimenticare). In italiano Badger è un animale, ma
tasso è anche un albero, il nome di un poeta e la percentuale da dare agli strozzini e
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
alle banche per un prestito. Nella poesia i Badgers dopo le “piaghe” della storia
vessano il resto degli animali, e spillano loro tutto quel che hanno, mentre i
Goodgers sono generosi. In un periodo in cui l’economia è ossessivamente presente
nei nostri discorsi viene immediato pensare che i Badgers in italiano siano tassi
cattivi e alti mentre i Goodgers siano tassi buoni e bassi. (Da qui una quinta
premessa: le traduzioni sono figlie del loro tempo).
3.3. Nel libro ci sono animali dai nomi invitanti come Bushbaby (galagoni) o
Anteater (formichiere), che McGough con un gioco di prestigio trasforma in quasi
omofoni animali impossibili, ma molto attivi già nel nome (omen nomen): ecco che il
galagone si trasforma in una piccola spazzola (Brushbaby) e il formichiere in
mangiatore di zie (Aunteater). Il grado di difficoltà qui obbliga forse a qualche
capriola di troppo, costringendo di conseguenza il poeta illustratore a inventarsi
nuovi disegni per la “Spuzzola” e il “Pappagallo carnivoro” italiani:
Brushbaby Spuzzola
The brushbaby La spuzzola
lives under the stairs vive sotto le scale
on a diet of dust mangia polvere
and old dog hairs e peli di cane
Catapillow
A catapillow
is a useful pet
To keep
upon your bed
Then rest
Your weary head.
In italiano una possibile versione potrebbe essere la seguente:
Caramicia
La caramicia
da notte
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FRANCO NASI
è un buon
animaletto
ottima
se fa freddo
quando
vai a letto. (McGough 2013: 46-47)
3.5. Idiomatismi. La prima definizione che si trova sui dizionari di Bookworm è “a
person usually devoted to reading and studying”, e solo in seconda battuta un insetto
che infesta i libri. Il primo significato della parola è ben presente, ma, come nelle
catacresi, spesso dimenticato. Facile, partendo da lì per McGough costruire una
storia sui “worms” più intelligenti che il poeta conosca, alcuni dei quali anche
vegetariani, attentissimi a evitare di mangiare “names of animals / or references to
meat”. Anche quando giunge la loro ora di morire lo sanno fare con grande dignit e
compostezza: “they slip between the pages / curl up and eat ‘The End’” (McGough
2013: 36). A volere fare una traduzione “spendibile” e a “equivalenza dinamica”
dovremmo ricorrere alla frase idiomatica italiana. Abbiamo anche noi i nostri animali
colti, naturalmente i topi da biblioteca. Basterà cambiare alcuni dettagli e la storia
funziona anche in italiano.
È ovvio che ci troveremo di fronte a una traduzione addomesticante, ma non
potremmo fare altrimenti in questo caso. Un verme da biblioteca in italiano avrebbe
connotazioni ben diverse. Inoltre, come ben mostra J.J. Lecercle nel suo corposo Una
filosofia marxista del linguaggio, una parola come “verme” può diventare oggetto di
riflessioni molto interessanti. Il caso che Lecercle analizza è quello di un articolo
apparso in un’edizione francese del giornale popolare inglese The Sun, “noto per le
sue campagne xenofobe” al tempo della guerra contro l’Iraq. Il giornale titolava
“Chirac est un ver”, titolo che accompagnava un fotomontaggio con un enorme
verme con la testa di Chirac. Lecercle fa notare come questo trasferimento di
significato sia da una parte insensato, perché in inglese worm ha un significato
spregiativo mentre in francese quel campo connotativo sarebbe semmai
figurativamente coperto da un animale come il cane (“He made me feel like a worm”
– cioè insignificante – in francese sarebbe tutt’al più “Il me traite comme un chien”) ,
ma d’altra parte evidenzia come il testo francese non sia “nato” in francese, ma sia
una forzatura della lingua inglese: in breve, un esempio di imposizione linguistica,
che Lecercle chiama imperialista.
L’operazione di traduzione del Sun è corretta e semplicistica. È corretta, perché
l’enunciato “Chirac è un verme” è impeccabilmente grammaticale; […] ma è
semplicistica. Il traduttore ha aperto mentalmente un dizionario inglese-francese alla
parola “worm” […] Questa concezione del linguaggio, che fa della lingua una lingua
veicolare, uno strumento di comunicazione trasparente […] ignora completamente che
cos’è una lingua naturale: cioè il fatto che questa, chiamata così dalle lingue artificiali,
è in realtà una costruzione culturale. Afferrare una lingua per il verso obliquo
attraverso le connotazioni, significa comprendere che una lingua è anche una storia,
una cultura, una concezione del mondo, e non solamente un dizionario e una
grammatica. (Lecercle 2012: 21)
Le filastrocche, i nonsense, le poesie giocano spesso con il “senso obliquo” della
lingua e fanno sentire l’urgenza di prestare attenzione anche a quelle lingue altre, che
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
sono anche negli strati fossili della lingua quotidiana, che forse troppo spesso
dimentichiamo o releghiamo ai margini della “langue”. Perché, come scrive Paolo
Bagni, in uno studio che meriterebbe ripetute rivisitazioni sia per la densità
concettuale sia per la grazia stilistica, la metafora non è “mediazione”, ma “mediet ”,
è esitazione, “stare in mezzo”:
Stare tra: tra normalità e contraddizione, tra l’appartenere e il diventare altro, tra l’ovvio e
l’inaudito, tra il mai pronunciato e il luogo comune, tra il non mai inteso e il già saputo, tra
l’esibita evidenza del dire e il taciuto orizzonte di un non detto, tra ciò che non è ancora e ciò
che è già. (Bagni 2003: 224)
E poco oltre, l’auspicio che la lingua riesca a salvarsi dall’appiattimento della
semplificazione, dall’asserzione definitiva, omologante di un linguaggio univoco,
grazie a una “scintilla di felicit verbale” che è custodita dai cliché, dalle metafore:
Quando nel luogo comune emergono le condizioni di un dire che sempre oltrepassa ciò che è
comune per catturare l’altro, quando, catturati dal già detto, sempre di nuovo troviamo
l’imminenza di qualcosa ancora da dire: allora, ecco, è il tempo della parola che dobbiamo
interrogare. […] Che la metafora esiti tra appartenenza e metamorfosi: in ciò che è comune
saper catturare l’altro, saper diventare altro, così da rispettare la promessa di un destino
metaforico, ma per ritrovare in ciò che è stato il tempo dell’attesa, così che niente di ciò che è
stato realmente vada perduto. (Bagni 2003: 226)
3.6. Tornando ai vermi, ai topi da biblioteca e alle espressioni idiomatiche:
qualcuno dei lettori più affezionati alle traduzioni “vere”, quelle con la T maiuscola,
si sarà spazientito e avrà pensato che queste non sono vere poesie, e che neppure le
traduzioni sono vere traduzioni; o forse avrà già raggiunto un livello di insofferenza
tale che, come dicono gli inglesi, avrà uno scatto d’ira, “a Hairy canary”. C’è anche
lui nel bestiario di McGough, che non lavora più solo con semplici parole
(catacretiche, incinte, sciarade ecc.) da cui derivare con o senza leggere variazioni
fonetiche o grafiche storie, ma con espressioni idiomatiche, come quelle viste in
precedenza, che danno vita attraverso la sovrapposizione di piani semantici, a storie
curiose:
Canary Canarino
Beware Sta’ attento
the canary al canarino
gone hairy se gli spuntano i peli
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FRANCO NASI
Bibliografia
Aristotele (1968) La metafisica, ed. G. Reale, Napoli: Loffredo.
Bagni, P. (2003) Come le tigri azzurre. Cliché e luoghi comuni in letteratura, Milano:
Saggiatore.
Black, M. (1954) ‘Metaphor’, in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 55, 273-294.
Black, M. (1993) ‘More About Metaphor’, in A. Ortony (ed.) Metaphor and Thought,
Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 19-43.
Berman, A. (1995) Pour une critique des traductions: John Donne, Paris: Gallimard.
Berman, A. (2003) La traduzione e la lettera o l’albergo nella lontananza [1999. La
Traduction et la lettre ou l’auberge du lointain, tr. G. Giometti], Macerata: Quodlibet.
Collins, B. (2001) Sailing Alone Around the Room. New and Selected Poems, New York:
Random House.
Eco, U. (2003) Dire quasi la stessa cosa, Milano: Bompiani.
Folena, G. (1991) Volgarizzare e tradurre [1973], Torino: Einaudi.
Gramsci, A. (2001) Quaderni dal carcere, ed. V. Gerratana, Torino: Einaudi.
Henri, A. (1986) Tonight at Noon, London: Rapp & Whithing.
Kövecses Z. (2002) Metaphor: A Practical Introduction, London/New York: Oxford
University Press.
Lakoff, G.; Johnson, M. (2003) Metaphors We Live By [1980], Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press.
Lecercle, J.J. (2011) Una filosofia marxista del linguaggio [2004. Une philosophie marxiste
du language, tr. it W. Montefusco], Udine: Mimesis.
McGough, R. (1976) In the Glassroom, London: Jonathan Cape.
McGough, R. (2003) Collected Poems, London: Viking.
McGough, R. (2004) Eclissi quotidiane. Poesie scelte 1967-2002, tr. F. Nasi, Milano:
Medusa.
McGough, R. (1988) An Imaginary Menagerie, ill. T. Blundell, London: Viking.
McGough, R. (2011) An Imaginary Menagerie, ill. R. McGough, London: Frances Lincoln.
McGough, R. (2013) Serraglio immaginario, traduzioni aperte di F. Nasi, ill. R. McGough,
Roma: Gallucci.
Newmark, P. (1988) A Textbook of Translation, London: Longman.
Nord C. (1997) Translation as a Purposeful Activity: Functionalist Approaches Explained,
Manchester: St. Jerome.
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Ortega y Gasset, J. (2001) Miseria e splendore della traduzione [1937. Miseria y esplendor
de la traducción, tr. it. C. Razza], Genova: Melangolo.
Peirce, C.S. (1923) Chance, Love and Logic, ed. M.R. Cohen, London: Kegan Paul, Trench,
Trubner.
Prandi, M. (2010) ‘Typology of Metaphors: Implications for translation’, Mutatis Mutandis 3
(2), 304-332.
Reiss, K.; H.J. Vermeer (1984) Grundlegung einer allgemeinen Translationstheorie,
Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Richards, I.A. (1936) The Philosophy of Rhetoric, London/New York: Oxford University
Press.
Rodari, G. (1973) La grammatica della fantasia, Torino: Einaudi.
Rodari, G. (1979) Parole per giocare, Firenze: Manzuoli.
Steen G. et al. (2010) A Method for Linguistic Metaphor Identification: From MIP to
MIPVU, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Wordsworth W. (1992) Sul sublime e sulla poesia. Saggi di estetica e di poetica, ed.
M. Bacigalupo e F. Nasi, Firenze: Alinea.
298
“only a finger-thought away1”: Translating figurative
language in Troupe’s and Daa’ood’s poetry
VÉRONIQUE BÉGHAIN
Université Bordeaux Montaigne
Abstract: This paper focuses on the issues raised by the translation of idioms,
amphibology, wordplay, onomatopoeia, neologisms and portmanteau words, in the
perspective of pinpointing the specific challenges one meets when translating oral
poetry, and keeping in mind the interconnection between orality and literacy as an
essential element of a Black aesthetic. As it examines some pieces by American poets
Quincy Troupe and Kamau Daa’ood in translation, it aims at bringing to light the
specific problems raised by the interweaving of the visual and the aural as made
particularly salient by figurative language. It argues that, in a literal and
metaphorical meaning as well, collaboration is of the essence when translating
figurative language. Drawing on Clive Scott’s idea that “the ‘work’, the outcome of
an ongoing sequence of avant-textes remains, in some senses, hypothetical” and on
Paul Valéry’s representation of the work of translation as “caus[ing] us in some way
to try walking in the tracks left by an author; and not to fashion one text upon another,
but from the latter to work back to the virtual moment of its formation”, it argues that,
when translating figurative language in performance poetry, the translator may be
viewed as an arranger who uses the source text as score, taking his turn in a
continuum of performances both written and oral which ensure the survival of the
poems.
Keywords: performance poetry, Quincy Troupe, wordplay, neologism, amphibology.
1. Introduction
What is figurative language? Definitions almost always include imagery,
metaphor, simile, hyperbole, synecdoche, puns, personification. They may also
include additional figures of speech such as onomatopoeia, idioms, alliteration. This
flexibility and variability in the definition of figurative language immediately points
to the questionability of a reduction of figurative language to what belongs to the
sphere of the image and encourages us to include in a discussion of figurative
language in translation elements which are usually deemed to belong to the field of
rhythm and sound. Indeed, puns and wordplay for instance may rely on sound effects
which, in oral poetry, are of crucial import. In his introduction to a collection of
essays on punning and translation, Dirk Delabastita remarks that “classificatory
assessments must be made in a global and context-sensitive manner, that grey zones
may exist between prototypically clear points of reference” (Delabastita 1997: 5). I
shall argue that translating Troupe’s and Daa’ood’s poetical works, which make up
the corpus of my case-study, requires an increased attention to those “grey zones”
which, largely because we are dealing with performance poets who write oral poetry,
are an overarching feature of their poetry, as they accommodate the oral and the
written word.
1
The phrase appears in Troupe’s poem “memory” (Troupe 2002: 79).
Béghain, Véronique, ‘“only a finger-thought away”: Translating figurative language in Troupe’s and Daa’ood’s
poetry’, in Donna R. Miller; Enrico Monti (eds) Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative Language, Bologna,
CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 299-311.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
While figurative language is often divided into “figures of thought” (tropes) and
“figures of speech” (schemes or rhetorical figures), the dividing line is anything but
clear (see Teilanyo 2007: 310). I shall thus rely on Abrams’ 1988 most inclusive
definition of “figurative language” as involving “a deviation from what speakers of a
language apprehend as the ordinary, or standard significance or sequence of words,
in order to achieve some special meaning or effect” (Abrams 1988: 63).
Meanwhile, while the translation of metaphors is certainly a crux in translation
studies, the emphasis on metaphor has tended to obscure the debate on the translation
of figurative language by sidetracking other figures and phenomena which may be of
equal interest and import to translators. Meschonnic was among the first translators
and theoreticians who pointed out the damageable neglect of sound and rhythm
resulting from excessive concern with metaphors. Therefore, I propose to elude that
all-powerful monarch of figurative language, metaphor, in this article, though Troupe
himself evokes metaphor in his poems, not in a roundabout way, but most directly, as
he repeatedly uses the word “metaphor” itself, thus not only calling a spade a spade,
but possibly pinpointing a characteristic feature of his craftsmanship as a poet, as is
exemplified by the following two excerpts.
& it is the collected face of collected memory that wears
2
the metaphor of collected dust
the collective mathematics of lamenting calibrations
hieroglyphics
cracking & peeling & curling in stone, dust storms swirling
around edges
(“skulls along the river”, Troupe 2002: 103)
2
All subsequent words appearing in bold type are my emphasis.
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2. Background
Though they differ in many ways, the poetic works of those two writers, related as
they both are to the Black Arts Movement and the Watts Writers Workshop (a
creative writing workshop which emerged in the wake of the 1965 Watts riots in Los
Angeles), call for a joint examination. For the purpose of this article, their mutual
interest in the interplay of the vocal and the visual will be foregrounded, to the
detriment of more distinctly individual features. While, as is the case with other poets
who emerged with the Black Arts Movement such as Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez,
K. Curtis Lyle or Ojenke, their poetry testifies to the influence of the sounds of jazz,
its visual dimension was downplayed for a long time. As was pointed out by Du Ewa
Jones in his 2002 landmark article on orality and textuality in jazz poetry,
because many [...] of the jazz-inflected poems penned by Black Arts writers during the mid-
1960s and early 1970s were composed with the intent for oral recitation in public community
spaces such as theatres, neighborhood centers, church parish halls, and yes, coffee shops, the
achievements of their compositional effects on a textual level have not been sufficiently
appraised. (Du Ewa Jones 2002: 77)
Besides, not all of Troupe’s or Daa’ood’s poetry is jazz poetry, far from it. I will
thus focus on that “textual level”, trying not to forget though the background I have
just delineated, which has left a durable imprint on their poetics. It is indeed the
specific problems raised by the translation of this interweaving of the visual and the
aural as made particularly salient by figurative language in their poetry which will be
my main concern here.
3. Idioms
Troupe’s poems are characterised by firmly anchored cultural references, also
called “culturèmes” (Ballard 2005: 126), preeminently encapsulated in figures of
speech, such as African American idiomatic phrases or metaphors borrowed from
basketball lingo.
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whose native language is not syntactically well equipped to accommodate such fast
changes in rhythm, the first task of the translator is to find his/her way in a
wilderness of basketball lingo, much as Magic Johnson is finding his through the
jungle of “human trees” the players are metaphorically referred to as.
up & down, you see everything on the court, off the high
yoyo patter, stop & go dribble, you shoot
a threading needle rope pass sweet home to kareem
cutting through the lane, his skyhook pops the cords
now lead the fastbreak, hit jamaal on the fly
now blindside a behind the back pinpointpass for two more
off the fake, looking the other way
(“a poem for ‘magic’”, Troupe 2002: 152)
d’un bout à l’autre, tu vois tout sur le terrain, alors que tu dribbles
façon yoyo, stop & go, tu fais une passe
dans le style fil dans le chas d’une aiguille, tranquille, à kareem
qui traverse la raquette, son tir crochet met en plein dans le filet
et puis tu contre-attaques, tu passes à jamaal à la volée
et tu enchaînes avec une passe aveugle dans le dos
tout en feintant et en regardant de l’autre côté
3
(“poème ‘magic’”, Troupe 2014 )
3
All references to Troupe 2014 are references to my forthcoming translation of his poems (see
References).
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Incidentally, when first confronted with the idiom, I asked Troupe if it referred to
a kung-fu character (I was thinking of a character in the 80s film The Last Dragon).
His answer was: “No. But if you think it works here as referencing both things, then
by all means use it like that.” This testifies to Troupe’s ready acceptance of
additional ambiguities brought in by the translation and points to his conception of
translation as part of the process of “cumulative increase” (Scott 2006: 109) that
writing itself is. In that perspective, one might say that Troupe belongs to a
postmodernist tradition which acknowledges that, intertextuality being part of the
very dynamic of translation (see Scott 2006: 116), a “postmodernist vision of the
unowned text” (Scott 2006: 115) may allow for substantial interventions on the part
of the translator.
Meanwhile, the translation of “hoodoo” also raised an interesting issue. While the
word, rooted in a Southern folk tradition and frequently used with the same meaning
as voodoo, may mean “bad luck”, amongst many African American poets, musicians
and visual artists, as I was told by Troupe, it means instead a new world kind of
magic, Magic Johnson being thus viewed as a kind of witch-doctor or magician when
he creates a basketball move like the one “translated” in the poem. The French word
“diableries”, while it allows for the introduction of a welcome alliteration (making up
for other lost alliterations), appears as a satisfying equivalent in that it conjures up a
similarly harmless, if not playful, type of magic.
Sometimes, idioms may be conflated with personal references. A sociolect may
also be an idiolect. It is the case with “you am” here, which is a phrase older
Southern African American people use. Troupe mentioned in a conversation that its
usage evolved out of a personal experience he had with an old woman he met one
day in the elevator of the apartment building he lives in. While my choice of “t’es” to
translate “you am” conveys the a-grammatical and oral character of the expression, it
fails to aggregate the various connotations the American expression holds for
Troupe: older people, Southern people, a neighbour’s idiolect. (Besides, it fails to
convey the interesting conflation of “you” and “I”, which in the source-text reads as
a hint of the identification of poet and basketball player and the consequent elevation
of the poet’s artistry through his elevation of the player’s craftsmanship.) Again,
recapturing the orality of the line appeared as a priority here, which results in the
regrettable, though amply meditated, neglect of colloquial vernacular, among other
things.
If we briefly go back to the first excerpt from “a poem for ‘Magic’”, we also
notice that difficulties may emerge from syntactical ambiguity in addition to lexical
ambiguity. The present participle “cutting” may be read as referring either to Magic
Johnson or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, one of his teammates, here simply evoked as
“kareem”4. This syntactical ambiguity is typical of Troupe’s poetry and might be one
of the most challenging difficulties the French translator is confronted with. It relies
on a rhetorical figure known as amphibology in stylistics and it will be at the heart of
my next part.
4
Troupe frequently uses first names, such as “kareem” or “jamaal”, thus relying on his readers’
familiarity with the celebrated basketball players of the time, while the use of lower case letters
instead of capital letters as initials further adds to their “communalisation”. Troupe frequently uses
lower case letters when capital letters might be expected, as in titles.
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4. Amphibology
Like Amiri Baraka arguing that “the clearest description of now is the present
participle” while encouraging his fellow poets to “worship the verb” (Baraka 1966:
175) in his seminal 1964 essay “Hunting Is Not Those Heads on the Wall”, Troupe
embraces a poetics of process notably implemented by the frequent use of present
participles. What are French translators’ strategies when confronted with an
outstanding use of amphibology in poems larded with overstretched present
participles whose potential grammatical subjects and objects are numerous and
indefinite?
This is illustrated by an excerpt from “what is it poetry seeks”, which I have
selected because the poem itself revolves around issues of sense vs sound and
situates the aim of poetry preeminently in the search for figures of speech, here
envisioned both as sculptures (cutting a figure of speech) and shaven faces, with a
likely bilingual pun on “figure” and “face”.
what does poetry seek beyond
turning a phrase, or two,
cutting a figure of speech with a word
sharp as a shaver’s wish
to rid the face of hair,
slicing through the tangle of texts
as a razor blade would lopping off
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5. Wordplay
As is pointed out by Delabastita, the distinction between wordplay and soundplay
is “anything but watertight or unproblematic” (Delabastita 1997: 5). For obvious
reasons, in performance poetry, wordplay is most often soundplay. In order to
accommodate the requirement that the poem could be performed, the translators may
have to prioritise performance over silent reading, hence sounds versus meaning. In
other cases, semantics cannot be overlooked and the translators will have to neglect
soundplay.
The most prominent use of wordplay in Troupe’s poems lies in his recurrent
spelling of “I” as “eye”.
bones gone home to stone, eye say
(“skulls along the river”, Troupe 2002: 103)
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Troupe thus appears to conflate vision with subjectivity. But there are other
reasons for the wordplay. In an interview he gave to The American Poetry Review in
2005, Troupe explains that he uses “eye” instead of “I” in his poems, though not in
his prose writing, because of his “embrace of the concept of the ‘third eye’ in the
centre of the forehead that comes out of Egyptian philosophy and culture” (Troupe
2005: 53). Since it is impossible in French to match that wordplay with a relevant
word in terms of both sound and meaning, the translator is forced to ignore the
interesting remotivation of the word “I” through homophony and content himself
with the one-dimensional personal pronouns “je” or “moi”. This choice appears even
more constrained if the translator keeps in mind that the poem might be read aloud
and even more so if it is performed on stage. Any translation of the semantic content
of “eye” would block the audience’s access to the more global meaning of the poem
since it would make it syntactically incomprehensible. The macro-textual perspective
here should prevail over the micro-textual one.
Now, how does a French translator negotiate Daa’ood’s wordplay in “c sharp”
(which also reads as “see sharp”) and “b natural” (which also reads as “be natural”)?
Confronted with such polysemy and unable to invest the written with the oral the
way the source text does, the Passages collective of translators has clearly prioritised
here silent reading vs. reading aloud, on the one hand, and the musical background of
the work, on the other hand.
c sharp, b natural
music music
all is music
b sharp, c natural,
music music
life is music
(“Liberator of the spirit”, Daa’ood 2012: 44)
do dièse, si bécarre
musique musique
tout est musique
si dièse do bécarre
musique musique
la vie est musique
(“Libérateur de l’esprit”, Daa’ood 2012: 45)
To capture what Meta Du Ewa Jones (2002: 66) calls “the dynamic interplay
between vocal and visual characteristics in musically influenced Black poetry” is an
authentic challenge to translators. While, to quote Du Ewa Jones (2002: 67), “the
sound of language has a visual dimension”, as is clearly manifested here, this visual
dimension may be lost in translation, as is wordplay in this instance.
6. Onomatopoeia
Another variety of soundplay, onomatopoeia regularly features in American
performance poetry, providing as it does an efficient means of bridging the gap5
between writing and the jazz music this poetry claims as a major source of
5
Troupe portrays the poet as “stretch[ing] rubber sentences into bridges of music” (“words that build
bridges toward a new tongue”, Troupe 1999 : 107).
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solos célestes
voguent sur des lamentos galactiques
ça emporte, c’est le déclic
be-bop les doigts qui claquent et hop
(“Libérateur de l’esprit”, Daa’ood 2012: 45)
Here, the translators seem to have clearly acknowledged the need to prioritise
sound vs. sense, as the prepositional phrase “from the top” has been translated as “et
hop” which barely means the same thing but most adequately conveys both the
dynamics of the line and the assonantic wordplay it relies upon, thus taking into
account the musical background of the poem and its author. Onomatopoeia (as used
in “et hop”) thus appears as an interesting resource to make up for the loss of the
consonantic wordplay supported by both “fingerpop” and “from the top” as they
interact with the initial and semantically crucial “be-bop”.
6
On that tradition, see Du Ewa Jones 2002: 67 and 88, n.1.
7
This interest is notably emblematised by his running a literary series called “Artists on the Cutting
Edge: Cross Fertilizations” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego from 1993 to 1999,
bringing together poets (John Ashbery, Derek Walcott, Kamau Brathwaite, etc.), novelists (Toni
Morrison, William Gass, etc.) and musicians, about which he comments: “I loved mixing up
everything because this is the way things truly are in the United States: mixed up.” (Troupe 2005: 54)
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
reasons I called my last book of poems Transcircularities, which you won’t find in
the dictionary because I made the word up.” (Troupe 2005: 53)
While his 2002 collection of poems was entitled Transcircularities, his latest
collection of poems, published in 2012, is entitled Errançities. The word includes a
truly and literally remarkable cedilla (“ç”) which immediately conjures up French as
a language, and it is evidently coined with the French word “errance” (meaning
“wandering”) combined with the English word “cities”. The cedilla may thus be said
to be literally bridging the gap between the two languages, while alerting the
reader/translator as to the bilingual grounding of the portmanteau word. While it is
merely ornamental in that case, since it has no impact whatsoever on the
pronunciation of the word (the pronunciation would remain the same without the
cedilla), it may be viewed as signalling the author’s intention to situate his work on
hybrid grounds.
Now, one may want to account for the use of a French word by Troupe even
before one settles to translate this title (or not). Troupe’s biography offers a possible
explanation for his choice of French here. Since 2003 he has spent his time between
New York and Guadeloupe where until 2011 he had a small place, which might
account for the strabismus of the title he gave to the 2012 collection. Besides, and
possibly more importantly, in an interview he gave in 2005, he recalls that “France
was the first place that accepted [him] as a black person” (Troupe 2005: 52) when he
was there as a young man in his twenties, having joined the army in the sixties and
ending up in Metz, while he was playing basketball all over Europe. He explains that
“when [he] came back to the United States, [he] had a different view about whites,
informed by [his] experience in France.” (Troupe 2005: 52) His title’s straddling two
languages may thus be accounted for by a desire to absorb or appropriate a culture
which had a profound impact on him in that it welcomed him as a black man, thus
acting as counterweight to the racial bias he had to struggle with and against during
his childhood and teenage years in St. Louis. In that perspective, the title cannot but
remain bilingual in the French translation.
With the use of neologism possibly registering social disruptions or disturbances
inside the language, Troupe may appear to take his cue from a “tradition of black
liberties taken with language” (Mackey 1998: 519), also exemplified in the works of
such Caribbean poets as Aimé Césaire or Edward Kamau Brathwaite, with their
“marronage” or “calibanization” (see Mackey 1998: 518-519), his own “versioning”
of English to be understood as part of what some have identified as “a politics of
neologism” (James Clifford quoted by Mackey 1998: 518).
8. Conclusion
In the poem “it all boils down”, Troupe writes:
a shopping list of syllables is what poets carry
when confronting the winds of language
beyond that only the wind knows what it is doing–
(“it all boils down”, Troupe 2002: 148)
This vision of poetry as dictated by chance and accident may provide the ground
for an approach of translation allowing for a degree of freedom on the part of the
translator. My belief that free translation is legitimate in this particular instance is
also grounded in the exchanges I have had with the poet. I recall one particular
episode which I try to keep in mind whenever the burden of translating such multi-
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layered poems becomes too heavy. As I was working with Troupe back in the
summer of 2011 when he was an artist-in-residence in Bordeaux, I came to him with
a lexical problem I was faced with. I presented him with two options regarding the
translation of the word “packed” as it appeared in the metaphorical lines “sentences,
packed with local / idioms” in an early version of the poem “Sentences”: one option
was “bourrées” which would be more colloquial and the other “saturées” which
would be more formal, the register of “packed” in that context being difficult to
match. His reaction was astounding: Let me change the original word, then! And he
settled for the word “saturated” in the source text (“Sentences”, Troupe 2012: 157).
So much for the idealisation of the original or source text and its supposedly
intangible character! Naturally, it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, due to the fact
that the original was still in limbo so to speak as Troupe was in the process of
revising his text as I was translating it. But it raised in me an awareness of the extent
to which some writers are ready to see translation as a journey back to the origins of
the work, what with the instability it implies for the so-called original, which then
becomes nothing more than an “avant-texte” as is suggested by Clive Scott when he
interestingly argues that “the ‘work’, the outcome of an ongoing sequence of avant-
textes remains, in some senses, hypothetical” (Scott 2006: 107). French modernist
poet Paul Valéry conceives of the work of translation as “caus[ing] us in some way
to try walking in the tracks left by an author; and not to fashion one text upon
another, but from the latter to work back to the virtual moment of its formation”
(Valéry 1992: 120-1).8 My experience as a translator of Troupe’s poetry has made it
possible for me to “swim back” so to speak to this prenatal virtual space where the
“work” is not yet the “work”, thus durably printing on my mind the notion that there
is no such thing as an intangible original, the episode I have just related being
possibly a mere illustration of a reality which far exceeds it: namely, in Scott’s terms,
that “the translator is, after all, an editor, someone who is transmitting, resocialising,
re-embedding the text in what amounts to a collaborative enterprise, not someone
who is merely fossilising a text in its sacred monumentality.” (Scott 2006: 110)
Never is this truer than when one proceeds to translate poetry and, more particularly
in poetry, figurative language.
As he discusses the functional role of poetry readings in the Black Arts
Movement, poet and scholar Lorenzo Thomas argues that:
All poetry is incomplete until it is read aloud. Nevertheless, the poem printed on the page is
effective when it functions as a memorandum to excite the reader’s recall of a previous
performance, or serves as a score for future vocal reproduction. If the poet has done the job of
preparing that alphabetic transcription well, she can be sure that the poem will live. (Thomas
1998: 320)
His vision of the written poem as incomplete, as both “memorandum” and
“score”, both past- and future-oriented and bound to “live” only when performed,
echoes a now common vision of translation as guaranteeing the survival of the source
text and contributing to its fertilisation in time – a vision rooted in the German
romantic tradition and promoted by Benjamin and Berman among the first. When
translating performance poetry, the translator may thus be viewed as just another
8
“Le travail de traduire, mené avec le souci d’une certaine approximation de la forme, nous fait en
quelque manière chercher à mettre nos pas sur les vestiges de ceux de l’auteur ; et non point à
façonner un texte à partir d’un autre ; mais de celui-ci, remonter à l’époque virtuelle de sa formation”
(Valéry 1957: 215).
309
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
arranger who uses the source text as score, taking his turn in a continuum of
performances both written and oral which ensure the survival of the poems.
And I will conclude with a reflexive poem by Troupe which makes it clear that to
him poetry is incomplete, a poem ironically entitled “at the end” and aptly devoid of
any period, in which he playfully relies on the polysemy of the words “period” and
“point”. It called for a specific strategy in order to solve the delicate problem of puns
grounded in polysemy here, and the translation shows how I have literally imprinted
my collaborative presence on the text through puns grounded in the polysemic
potential of my own language.
earth la terre
a point un terme
that starts qui ouvre sur
another point un autre terme
References
Abrams, M.H. (1988) A Glossary of Literary Terms, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Ballard, M. (2005) La traduction, contact de langues et de cultures, Arras: Artois Presses
Université.
Baraka, A./LeRoi Jones (1966) ‘Hunting is not those heads on the wall’, in Home, New
York: William Morrow & Co., 173-178.
Daa’ood, K. (2012) Notes d’un griot de Los Angeles/Griot Notes from L.A., tr. collectif
Passages, Bègles: Le Castor Astral.
310
VÉRONIQUE BÉGHAIN
311
Tradurre la grammatica poetica di Ungaretti: Una lingua
aperta al cosmo
ÈVE DE DAMPIERRE-NOIRAY
Université Bordeaux Montaigne
1
Quest’idea, che appare nella famosa lettera di Ungaretti a De Robertis del 2/3/1944 costituisce la tesi
di Violante Picon (1998) nel suo libro su Ungaretti traduttore. Si ritrova nei lavori di Savoca (2004,
2007) su Góngora tradotto da Ungaretti.
De Dampierre-Noiray, Ève, ‘Tradurre la grammatica poetica di Ungaretti: Una lingua aperta al cosmo’, in Donna
R. Miller; Enrico Monti (eds) Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative Language, Bologna, CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni
del CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 313-323.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
questione delle traduzioni della sua opera: fra i circa venticinque titoli che cita Isabel
Violante Picon nella sezione “Ungaretti tradotto/Ungaretti traduttore” della sua
bibliografia, soltanto uno rinvia alla traduzione dell’opera ungarettiana. L’interesse
del poeta per il lavoro di traduzione e per il confronto tra testo originale e testo
tradotto dovrebbe spingerci a considerare il suo testo tradotto come una parte
importante della ricezione della sua opera poetica.
La questione della traduzione di Ungaretti è così interessante che, in certi casi
come quello della recente traduzione in arabo (Ungaretti 2007), la traduzione
andrebbe avvicinata alla concezione che il poeta aveva della poesia araba in rapporto
al paesaggio del deserto, concezione esposta in vari testi fra i quali il Quaderno
egiziano del 1931 (Ungaretti 1996: 65-69)2. Pur non trattando nel presente articolo di
questa recente traduzione araba – ci limiteremo infatti alle traduzioni francesi e
inglesi – ci conviene però ripartire dal paesaggio. Questo motivo essenziale nella
poesia ungarettiana rivela il modo in cui la traduzione ci avvicina a una caratteristica
della prima “stagione poetica” (Piccioni 1992: xxxi) di Ungaretti: l’apertura della
lingua al cosmo.
2
Dal resto, in uno dei suoi primi testi di prosa sull’Egitto (Ungaretti 1993: 111-115), il poeta evocava
già i grandi nomi della poesia anteislamica fra i quali il famoso ‘Imru-l-qais e immaginava
un’assemblea di poeti arabi (si veda anche Ungaretti 1972: 22).
314
ÈVE DE DAMPIERRE-NOIRAY
315
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
tutta la sua pienezza di senso”, origine della loro lingua ermetica, viene spiegato
come un nuovo rapporto con lo spazio, una nuova posizione dell’uomo, in senso
innanzitutto fisico, nella natura e nel mondo. Tutto sembra partire dall’esperienza
della guerra: “la vita messa a dura prova (affrontée) all’immensa sofferenza della
guerra” con i suoi “ritorni all’elementare” è vissuta come “immediatezza nuda del
sentimento, spavento davanti alla natura, identificazione spontanea ed inquieta con
l’essenza cosmica delle cose”3. Quest’esperienza, per essere trascritta, esige una
nuova parola capace di dire questo legame con il mondo.
Si capisce allora perché fra le particolarità della lingua di Ungaretti con cui si
scontra la traduzione (e con cui si scontrano coloro che si interessano alla
traduzione), le forme verbali sono le più frequenti. Durante i primi anni di scrittura
poetica, ci colpisce innanzitutto la frequenza dei sintagmi che hanno a che vedere
con il verbo e con la sua costruzione (preposizione, prefisso o pronome), che si tratti
di transitività o di costruzione riflessiva o pronominale. Nei versi di una decina di
poesie scritte fra 1915 e luglio 1917 (Ungaretti 1992: 24-69), leggiamo:
La linea / vaporosa muore / al lontano cerchio del cielo (Levante)
Allibisco all’alba / Mi si travasa la vita / Ora specchio i punti del mondo (Lindoro di deserto)
Colle mie mani plasmo il suolo diffuso di grilli / mi modulo di / sommesso uguale / cuore /
[…] e mi trasmuto / in volo di nubi (Annientamento)
316
ÈVE DE DAMPIERRE-NOIRAY
317
Tabella 1. Le traduzioni a confronto
G. Ungaretti Trad. di J. Lescure o Ph. Jaccottet Trad. di J. Chuzeville (1939) Trad. di D. Bastianutti (B) 1997
(L’Allegria, 1919) (1973) Trad. di A. Frisardi (F) 2002
1 “Levante”
La linea La ligne Vaporeuse (B) is dying in the distant / canopy
vaporosa muore vaporeuse s’efface la ligne meurt. (F) dies / in the distant circle
al lontano cerchio del cielo au cerceau lointain du ciel Au lointain cercle du ciel
2 “Agonia”
Morire come le allodole assetate sul […] comme les alouettes altérées sur […] comme les alouettes assoiffées (B) thirsty larks / upon a mirage
miraggio le mirage Sur le mirage (F) skylarks thirsty / over the mirage
3 “Lindoro di deserto”
Allibisco all’alba Je blêmis de stupeur c’est l’aube J’ai l’effarement de l’aube
Mi si travasa la vita La vie se transvase en moi Et la vie en moi se change
Ora specchio i punti del mondo Je reflète à présent les coins du […] s’égarent les points du monde]
monde]
4 “A riposo”
E piombo in me Et je tombe en moi (F) I plummet into myself
E m’oscuro in un mio nido Et je m’enténèbre dans mon coin And go dark in my nest
5 “Annientamento”
Colle mie mani plasmo il suolo Avec mes mains je donne De mes mains je pétris le sol (B) I mold the earth
diffuso di grilli figure au sol] Tout unifié de grillons alive with crickets
mi modulo di diffus de grillons Je me module I modulate myself
sommesso uguale je me module D’un cœur soumis in
cuore tout bas Et monotone humble kindred
d’un cœur égal heart
6 “Monotonia” (F) I was brought back to life
a un arpeggio à un arpège À quelque arpège by an arpeggio
perso nell’aria égaré dans l’air Perdu dans l’air drifting in the air
mi rinnovavo je redevenais neuf Je me retrouvais nouveau
318
7 “Sonnolenza”
[…] un gorgoglio
di grilli che mi raggiunge
e s’accompagna et poursuit son chemin
alla mia inquietudine avec mon inquiétude
8 “Perché”
Reggo il mio cuore Je soutiens mon cœur (B) my heart
che s’incaverna qui s’encave that crashes within me
e schianta e rintrona et ébranle et gronde that bursts and rumbles
9 “Mattina”
M’illumino Je m’éblouis (B) I grow radiant
d’immenso d’infini In the immensity of it all
10 “Trasfigurazione”
Come una nuvola
mi filtro je me filtre
nel sole au soleil
319
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
320
ÈVE DE DAMPIERRE-NOIRAY
321
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
(significato del verbo encaver, che si usa per il vino), ma di un movimento che
possiamo definire, se accettiamo di snodare la morfologia lessicalizzata del verbo,
come un diventare caverna, entrare in caverna, racchiudersi in se stesso e
nell’oscurità. Sembra che testo originale e traduzione siano capaci a volte di
collaborare per fare sorgere dal verso due neologismi invece di nessuno. Al
contrario, l’inglese “my heart / that crashes” fa entrare nel verso una violenza visuale
e sonora molto lontana dalla progressione lenta verso l’oscuro del verbo italiano e
della sua traduzione francese.
Ora mordo
come un bambino la mammella
lo spazio
322
ÈVE DE DAMPIERRE-NOIRAY
di tenebre” (Ungaretti 1992: 7, 26, 45, 64) – questa posizione che prova a esprimere
la grammatica reinventata di Ungaretti. La permanenza di questo motivo, centrale
nelle lezioni brasiliane su Virgilio, Dante e Petrarca, si manifesta tramite una
particolarità editoriale: nel 1969, le lezioni brasiliane di Ungaretti e altri suoi saggi
sui classici, diventati a loro volta classici, furono raccolti, insieme a diversi saggi
sulla traduzione (di Shakespeare, Racine, Góngora, Mallarmé, ecc.) e sulla poesia, in
uno stesso volume assemblato da Ungaretti e tradotto, sempre con il poeta, dal suo
amico Jaccottet: Innocence et mémoire (1969). La raccolta, che esiste soltanto in
traduzione, si può leggere come un lungo processo di traduzione dove Ungaretti
sembra decifrare i testi con l’idea, sempre presente in mente, di questo rapporto fra
l’individuo poeta e l’universo.
Che si tratti di evocare i maestri tradotti, di commentare i classici italiani o di
inventare, nei versi scritti vent’anni prima, una nuova grammatica poetica, vediamo
risorgere la posizione del soggetto virgiliano sotto la volta celeste, sub nocte, attento
al movimento del carro stellato della notte, commisurando l’infinito dello spazio (che
per Dante o Petrarca sarà l’eternità) con la propria condizione di uomo sempre teso
fra l’infinito e l’effimero della vita umana.
Bibliografia
Giachery, E. (1998) Luoghi di Ungaretti, Roma: Ed. Scientifiche Italiane.
Livi, F. (1986) ‘Ungaretti’ in Dictionnaire des Auteurs, Laffont Bompiani, 4 vol., Paris:
Robert Laffont Bouquins.
Mileschi, C. (2009) ‘Passé, patrie et poésie: une lecture du poème 1914-1915 de Giuseppe
Ungaretti’, Chroniques italiennes 15 (1), 1-19.
Ossola, C. (2010) ‘Introduzione’, in G. Ungaretti, Vita d’un uomo. Traduzioni poetiche, a
cura di C. Ossola e G. Radin, Milano: Mondadori, “I Meridiani”.
Piccioni, L. (1992) ‘Prefazione’ in G. Ungaretti, Vita d’un uomo [1969], Milano: Mondadori,
xiii-ci.
Pietromarchi, L. (2007) ‘La ville antérieure. Il porto sepolto de Giuseppe Ungaretti et
Alexandrie’, Études alexandrines 14, 139-146.
Savoca, M. (2004) Góngora nel Novecento in Italia (e in Ungaretti), Firenze: Olschki.
Savoca, M. (2007) ‘Ungaretti e Gongora. La traduzione come forma di “produzione”
originale’, in Giuseppe Ungaretti: Lingua, poesia, traduzione, HIVT (Anversa) & Paris-
IV Sorbonne, 27-29 novembre 2007.
Ungaretti, G. (1969) Une aspiration indéfinissable, in Innocence et Mémoire, tr. Ph. Jaccottet,
Paris: Gallimard.
Ungaretti G., Amrouche, J. (1972) Propos improvisés, Paris: Gallimard.
Ungaretti, G. (1984) Petrarca, poeta dell’oblio, in Invenzione della poesia moderna. Lezioni
brasiliane di letteratura italiana (1937-1942), a cura di P. Montefoschi, Napoli: E.S.I.
Ungaretti G. (1993) Viaggio in Egitto [1923], in Il Povero nella città, Milano: SE, 111-115.
Ungaretti, G. (1996) Il Deserto. Quaderno egiziano 1931 [1961], Milano: Mondadori.
Ungaretti, G. (2007) Hayâtu rajullin (Vita d’un uomo), tr. A. al-Siwi, Le Caire: Dar Merit.
323
“The eye’s kiss”: Contextualising Cees Nooteboom’s Bashō
HERMAN VAN DER HEIDE
Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna
Abstract: Taking its cue from the poem ‘Bashō’ by the Dutch poet Cees Nooteboom
and its translations in English and Italian, this essay explores the intercultural and
intertextual relations underlying the process of translating a travel experience into
poetry and its reflections in the different languages. The poem being concerned with
the conceptual metaphor of the journey, the figure of the poet is confronted with an
image of the traveller. Its intimate link with perception calls for a revisitation/revision
of the relationship between the visual experience and the sign. The perversion of the
separation between signifier and signified in linguistics and its consequences for
poetry and poetics are considered in the light of Giorgio Agamben’s study Stanze on
the image and the word in medieval love poetry, and of his more recent work on
signatures. The fourfold structure of ‘Bashō’ reflects the presocratic mythology of the
four elements, based on the metaphorical opposition between space and time. Writing
is equated with water and time, observation with earth and space. Nooteboom’s
cosmopolitanism is rooted in Dutch soil, which is ambiguously demonstrated in the
fourth section of the poem through the metaphor of the pumping station. The essential
ground for the equation of the poet with the pumping station (in Dutch: gemaal) is the
elevation of the water to a higher level, which is lost in the English and Italian
versions. In space the metaphorical system of the poem is reflected in the fourfold
structure of the compass-card and the journey to the North is its main thematic
connection to the poet’s interior journey.
Keywords: translation, metaphor, poetry, travel.
When Stephen Dedalus, in the beginning of the third chapter of Joyce’s Ulysses,
is walking on the beach near Sandymount and is confronted with the external world,
he muses: “Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the
nearing tide, that rusty boot” (1960: 45). Annotators of Ulysses have referred the
reader to the 16th century German theologian Jakob Boehme1. The passage from the
semiotic to the semantic, from perception to meaning is a movement from semiotics
to hermeneutics and finds in the signature the domain in which reading is translated
into writing. The polarity of the sign and the problematic mediation between the two
poles are central in Giorgio Agamben’s aesthetic theory. In his recent book on
method, Signatura Rerum, he traces the theory of signatures from Paracelsus and
Boehme, through Warburg, Foucault and Benveniste, to a philosophy of signatures,
which he recognises in Walter Benjamin’s ‘mimetic faculty’ (Agamben 2008: 72).
Already in his book Stanze, Agamben occupied himself with the duplicity of the
poetic sign (Agamben 1977). He investigated the endeavour to reconcile image and
word in the classical and medieval theory of the pneuma, the doctrine of the spirit in
which all aspects of medieval culture intermingle, from medicine to cosmology, from
psychology to rhetoric and soteriology. This ghostly presence he sees exemplified in
Provencal love poetry, in the ‘Stilnovo’ and Dante. In translating figurative language
an awareness of the fundamental unity of the poetic sign within the poetic space calls
1
For instance, Thornton 1961: 41.
Van der Heide, Herman, ‘“The eye’s kiss”: Contextualising Cees Nooteboom’s Bashō’, in Donna R. Miller;
Enrico Monti (eds) Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative Language, Bologna, CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del
CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 325-331.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
for a continuous quest for the ‘right word’. While investigating the Dutch poet Cees
Nooteboom’s poem ‘Bashō’ and its translations in English and Italian, I was
confronted with a number of metaphors which evoke the medieval tradition of love
poetry. So I was sent back to Agamben’s theory. Here I will concentrate mainly on
the first of the four stanzas of the poem:
326
HERMAN VAN DER HEIDE
movement of the poem and some knowledge of Japanese culture, haiku poetry and
the figure of Bashō seems necessary for its successful reception. The second focus is
on the north-south opposition. The concepts of north and south, east and west define
our thinking about place, direction and movement. This fourfold division of space
acquires metaphorical significance in language and redraws the map of the poetic
sphere. Lakoff and Johnson speak of ‘orientational metaphors’ which ‘organize a
whole system of concepts with respect to one another’ (1980: 14). By an ‘accident of
cartography’, as the protagonist of Ian McEwan’s novel Solar (2010) has it, the
South pole is placed under the North, which suggests a hierarchy and gives the North
pride of place. There is specific mention in ‘Bashō’ of a journey to the North – a
journey to the north of Japan actually took place in the life of the poet Bashō – , and
the capitalisation of this place, which features in the fourth part of the poem as the
conclusion of the journey, lends special importance to it.
The division of the poem in four sections, stanzas of twelve verses each, its metre
of four feet to a line and the metaphorical use of the compass-card, suggest a
geometrical figure of a square within a circle, where time is represented by the circle
and space by the square. Nooteboom’s ‘fourfold vision’, which calls to mind
Heidegger’s Geviert2, extends the compass-card to the pre-socratic division of the
elements. To this we may add the time sequence of the four seasons, so important for
haiku poetry. Derrida suggests a classification of metaphor by its source. It assumes a
place of origin and a process of migration:
In classifying metaphors of origin (natural metaphors), we should soon need to have recourse
to the mythology of the four elements. […] But we should find corresponding to this empirical
aesthetics of sensible contents, a corresponding transcendental and formal aesthetics of
metaphors which would be the condition of possibility for the empirical aesthetics. We should
be led back by it to the a priori forms of space and time. (Derrida 1974: 26)
The first problem is the question of the identity of the protagonist, or the
protagonists. The first verse opposes – or juxtaposes – two figures: an old man and a
poet. The absence of a verb makes for a static picture. The line could be divided into
two parts and placed on a page like a haiku, but the second verse introduces time:
He is on his way to the North he is making a book with his eyes.
The peculiar elliptic form of the verses invokes the haiku. The first verse lacks a
verb and connects a concrete image metonymically in a focalised place, old man
among the reeds, to an abstraction: mistrust. We may read the abstraction as a
comment on the concrete image. According to the (haiku) technique known as ‘the
principle of internal comparison’ the two parts that make up the whole are compared
to each other, not in simile or metaphor, but as two phenomena, each of which exists
in its own right.3 In this network of ambiguities what immediately strikes the reader
is the duplicity of the poetic line, the contradictory images and the contrast between
concrete and abstract. Though there is a clear reference to the haiku techniques, there
are also many formal differences. First and foremost the rigid syllable count of the
Japanese form has no correspondence in Nooteboom’s line and the piling up effect of
the accumulation of verses – there is no enjambment in the first stanza – runs counter
to the concision and intensity of the haiku. The beginning is a picture, there is no
movement, but the second with the progressive aspect of the verb (‘he is making’)
2
On Heidegger’s Geviert, ‘fourfold’ see Young 2006.
3
See for this principle Henderson 1958: 18.
327
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
and the expression ‘on his way’ introduces movement and future time. There is a
clear break in the middle of both verses. The repetitive rhythm stresses the duality
creating an effect of opposition.
Does the third person singular refer to the old man, to the poet or to both? Or
perhaps the first ‘he’ to the old man and the second to the poet? Who is this old man
then and why does he evoke the mistrust of the poet? Perhaps the old man is the
outer form of the poet? While he absorbs the world around him is he creating poetry,
a book? The reeds suggest a Japanese print, but may also have symbolic associations.
It is not clear why there should be mistrust (in Dutch: achterdocht, ‘suspicion’,
Ferrari has ‘sospetto’) from the poet. Or is it the poet who should be mistrusted?
Certain poets certainly might be, witness the beginning of the second stanza:
We know poetic poetry the common dangers
Of moonstruckness, belcanto.
Coetzee decided to translate the Dutch word achterdocht with ‘mistrust’. The
concept rendered by the Dutch word certainly has this element of suspicion and the
negative prefix may connect with Dutch words, such as misverstand,
‘misunderstanding’, which is relevant in this context of cultural differences. What
gets lost in translation, however, is the spatial element, achter means ‘behind’, and
there is also an association with English ‘afterthought’. Nooteboom definitely plays
on the contrast achter – voor (behind – before/in front of) with its inevitable
confusion between space and time in this first stanza. The mistrust, or suspicion, of
the poet indicates an unresolved identification of observer and observed.
The third verse invites the connection with the pneumatic doctrine of medieval
love poetry, where the element of water is associated with the source of Narcissus.
Agamben stresses the medieval conviction that Narcissus, presented at the beginning
of the Roman de la Rose, is not so much in love with himself, but with the image of
himself (1977: 78). He is making the book of himself with his eyes:
He is writing himself upon the water
The water serves as the mirror in which the image appears, but water cannot retain
the image:
Love only in things cut out of clouds and winds.
The appearance of the word ‘love’ in the fourth verse is certainly significant. Here
the image is no longer received passively from the water, but transformed through
the airy element into the love object. Nooteboom’s metaphor for the material
transformation is reminiscent of the biblical commandment against idolatry: Gij zult
u geen gesneden beeld maken , “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or
any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or
that is in the water under the earth”: the graven image of Exodus 20:4. The Dutch
verb used, snijden, refers to the act of cutting and the art of sculpture, which brings to
mind the story of Pygmalion, the subject of a long digression just before the
conclusion of the Roman de la Rose. As Agamben convincingly shows, the myth of
Pygmalion exemplifies the movement from the reflected image, with which the
Roman began, to the artistically constructed image. The love object is an idol. The
metaphor is repeated in the second stanza, where Narcissus’ image is connected with
Pygmalion’s idol and transformed into language:
Out of the world you cut an image that bears your name
328
HERMAN VAN DER HEIDE
The missing link in the pneumatic circulation is provided by what animates the
idol, the pneuma, in ‘Bashō’ represented by clouds and winds. Nooteboom’s curious
definition of love only in things – in Dutch the things have the definite article, de
dingen – stretches the pneumatic love theory to a poetic statement. Or even, as
circumstantial evidence connected with the life story of Bashō might show, a poetic
testament. In Nooteboom’s novella Mokusei!, subtitled ‘a love story’, the
protagonist, a photographer, falls in love with his Japanese model. She is the perfect
model and is described only in terms of static images: her face is like a mask, she is
compared to a statue of a drowned girl and their love making is curiously silent and
static. The affair ends as it had begun with the photographer observing his lover
while she is sleeping.
In the poem the importance of the pneumatic metaphor is confirmed by its last
verse, given in italics, which might indicate that it is a reference to, or a quotation
from, Bashō’s work:
I too was tempted by the wind that blows the clouds.
Coetzee’s translates the Dutch verleid, meaning ‘seduced’, with ‘tempted’.
Moreover, the Dutch word is connected with leiden, ‘to lead’, verleiden is temporally
and spatially defined: ‘being led astray’. In this case I think the connotation to the act
of love is necessary, though the association with temptation with its religious
overtones might also be appropriate. As usual Ferrari follows the original more
closely: ‘Anch’io sono sedotto dal vento che sospinge le nubi’. The ‘fluttering
breezes’ in Coetzee’s translation of line six is another clear reference to the pneuma.
The original has wuivende luchten (literally: ‘waving skies’), while Ferrari translates
‘cieli ondeggianti’, evoking the watery element. What binds the image to the word is
the eye’s kiss of verse seven:
Always the eye’s kiss translated into the words’ drive.
This central metaphor of the stanza shows the necessity of translating the image
into language. The love knot is here a figure to signify the figurative, to use Derrida’s
phrase. It connects the poet’s vision to his destiny. In the poetic word the
reconciliation between desire and its elusive object can take place. In poetic practice
Narcissus succeeds in obtaining his proper image through the poetic circulation in
which the image generates desire, desire is translated into words and the words
delimit the space within which enjoyment is possible. The phrase – the eye’s kiss –
also evokes the Nordic technique of the ‘kenning’, known from Old Norse and Anglo
Saxon poetry, where disparate elements are linked in a single phrase. The English
genitive in Coetzee’s translation for the Dutch de kus van het oog stresses this effect,
in line with the haiku technique of internal comparison4.
That the journey to the North is an interior journey is confirmed by Japanese
tradition. Basho’s famous travel book The Narrow Road to the Deep North
(奥の細道 Oku no Hosomichi), which was probably Nooteboom’s model for much
of the thematic content of “Bashō”, is an account of a journey to the north of Japan
interspersed with poems (Bashō 1966). In Japanese ‘deep north’ may be a homonym
for ‘interior’. The journey to the North is conceived as a journey within (‘oku’ means
‘within’). In Dutch ‘Deep North’ is usually translated as ‘high’ or ‘far’ North.
4
The technique is also exploited by the Swedish poet and Nobel Prize winner Tomas Tranströmer in
his haikus. See for instance Tranströmer 2011.
329
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
330
HERMAN VAN DER HEIDE
References
Agamben, G. (1977), Stanze. Il fantasma e la parola nella cultura occidentale, Torino:
Einaudi.
Agamben, G. (2008) Signatura rerum. Sul metodo, Torino: Bollati Boringhieri.
Basho, M. (1966) The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches, Introd.
and tr. N. Yuasa, London: Penguin Books.
Derrida, J. (1974) ‘White mythology, metaphor in the text of philosophy’, tr. F.C.T. Moore,
New Literary History 6 (1), 5-74.
Feng, G.F.; English, J. (1989) Tao Te Ching, New York: Vintage books.
Henderson, H.G. (1958) An Introduction to Haiku. An Anthology of Poems and Poets from
Bashō to Shiki, New York: Doubleday & Company.
Joyce, J. (1960) Ulysses, London: The Bodley Head.
Lakoff, G.; Johnson, M. (2003) Metaphors We Live By [1980], Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press.
McEwan, I. (2010) Solar, London: Jonathan Cape.
Nooteboom, C. (1982) Mokusei! & De Boeddha achter de schutting, Amsterdam: de
Arbeiderspers.
Nooteboom, C. (1989) ‘Bashō’ in : Het gezicht van het oog, Amsterdam: de Arbeiderspers.
Nooteboom, C. (2003a) Le Porte della Notte, tr. F. Ferrari, Spinea-Venezia: Edizione del
Leone.
Nooteboom, C. (2003b) Así pudo ser. Poesía selecta, tr. F. García de la Banda, Madrid:
Huerga y Fierro.
Nooteboom, C. (2004) ‘Bashō’ in Landscape with Rowers. Poetry from the Netherlands,
Introd. and tr. J.M. Coetzee, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Olson, J.L. (2008) Rooted Cosmopolitanism in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney, Joseph
Brodsky and Derek Walcott, PhD dissertation, University of Michigan.
Thornton, W. (1961) Allusions in Ulysses. A Line-by-line Reference to Joyce’s Complex
Symbolism, New York: Simon and Schuster.
Tranströmer, T. (2011) Il grande mistero [2003 Den stora gåtan], a cura di M.C. Lombardi,
Milano: Crocetti.
Young, J. (2006) ‘The fourfold’, in C.B. Guignon (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to
Heidegger, 2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 373-392.
331
Fairy-Tales and Folklore
Fiabe e folklore
Translating figurative language: The case of Pinocchio in
English
SILVIA MASI
Università di Pisa
1. Introduction
Le Avventure di Pinocchio. Storia di un Burattino (Collodi 1981/1883) is one and
many stories at the same time, a text rich in “hidden depths” (Lawson Lucas 1996:
xii) and stimuli aiming at different emotional and intellectual responses, read and
enjoyed by audiences of children and adults, who find different pleasures in it (see
West in Brock 2009: 164 ff.). Paraphrasing Gibbs (1998: 110), the tale is dominated
by themes which reflect underlying conceptual metaphors such as the “nose as
measure of truth, the conscience as audible agent, and goodness as humanity”. It
indeed represents an enduring supply of still pertinent motifs that revolve around and
tend to build up on the general ideas of the life journey towards responsible human
adulthood, the role education has in it, the tension between conformity and
transgression. The indissoluble bond between such a potential wealth of topics and
flexible readership has surely contributed to the prolific afterlife of the tale, as
demonstrated by the profusion of its translations, adaptations, transpositions and
reworkings all over the world ever since its publication1.
1
For a review of relevant work on critical analyses of the tale from multiple perspectives, the
appraisal of its reception abroad, as well as a survey of some of its major transpositions and
developments see, e.g., Stych 1971, Sachse 1981, Perella 1986, Tommasi 1992, Wunderlich, Morrisey
Masi, Silvia, ‘Translating figurative language: The case of Pinocchio in English’, in Donna R. Miller; Enrico
Monti (eds) Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative Language, Bologna, CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti
di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 335-348.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
the very first translation of the tale into (British) English by Murray (1892)
(henceforth TT1);
the first translation of the work into American English by Cramp, with
editorial revision by Lockwood (1901/1904) (henceforth TT2), based on
Murray’s version but largely purged of violent events and episodes of
misbehaviour of young characters;
Della Chiesa’s (American) version, published in the UK in 1914 and in the
USA in 1925 (henceforth TT3), regarded as the ‘reference’ translation in the
US;
Murray’s version revised by Tassinari (1951) (henceforth TT4);
the translation by the university Professor and poet Rosenthal (1983)
(henceforth TT5), commissioned by the Fondazione Nazionale Collodi to
celebrate the 100th anniversary of Pinocchio as a book and ideally addressed
to contemporary American children, as specified in the introductory section4;
the annotated text by the American Professor Perella (1983/1986) (henceforth
TT6), which aims to be as “philologically close to the letter, imagery, and
syntax of Collodi’s text as tolerable English allows” (75), thus especially
addressing learned adult readers;
Lawson Lucas’s annotated translation (1996) (henceforth TT7), especially
addressing the learned adult (British) reader (cf. Lathey 2006: 14) and which
2002, Pezzini and Fabbri 2002, Sherberg 2006, O’Sullivan 2006, West 2006, West’s Afterword in
Brock 2009, Nasi 2010.
2
For a detailed analysis of the different target audiences addressed or presupposed by the TTs under
observation and a more extended account of relevant socio-historical conditions see Masi (2013).
3
A selection of TTs was first collected for another work on Pinocchio (cf. Bruti and Masi 2009), and
has been enriched with more versions at a later stage for further interrelated research (see Masi 2013).
4
The translation has in fact met with criticism especially because of the many alterations of the
original rhythm (see, e.g., Perella 1986, Wunderlich 1987; for a different view on such alterations see
Masi 2010).
336
SILVIA MASI
3. Translation procedures
Figurative language, metaphors in particular, have been often regarded as a
translation problem which may require different procedures to be overcome, with
consequent modification or loss of the intended effect of the original (see Dagut
1976, van den Broeck 1981, also cited in Schäffner 2004). For Dagut (1976: 22), a
metaphor consists of an “individual flash of imaginative insight”, a creative product
resulting from the violation of a linguistic system and being therefore highly culture-
specific. The main function of metaphoric language is to shock readers by creating
an aesthetic impact, hence the importance of its maintenance in translation. In fact,
the exact reproduction, in translation, of the same image and correlated associations
as those of the source is generally quite a rare case. Among the proponents of
relevant alternative procedures are, for instance, van den Broeck (1981) and
Newmark (1981). Although they adopt different approaches (descriptive and
normative, respectively, see Schäffner 2004: 1256), their strategies are largely
congruent, and Newmark’s more extended classification can be viewed as
complementing van den Broeck’s. Below is a list of the main procedures emerging
from the analysis (an elaboration partly adapted from Newmark’s classification),
which is here applied to different figures besides metaphor:
5
http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-7636-2261-9 (reviewed 1/5/2004, last accessed 18 April
2012).
337
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
c) Replacing the figure in SL with another figure of the same category in the
target language (TL), displaying variable degree of adaptation (and with
possible loss of original associations);
d) Replacing SL figure with figure of a different type in TL, e.g. metaphor by
non-metaphoric image (simile; simile + sense paraphrase; sense paraphrase
only);
e) Deletion of SL figure (and possible compensation).
4. Overview of examples
Pinocchio is an endless source of similes, metaphors, hyperboles, etc., which are
used, for instance, to convey intensified human instincts and needs (such as hunger),
evoke strong emotions, portray a personified environment and express social
criticism. Below is a selection of a variety of examples (from the many that emerged
from the manual analysis of TTs but which have not been included for lack of space).
Far from being exhaustive, it is however noteworthy in representing diverse
categories and translation procedures. In the examples, the TTs are approximately
ordered on the basis of the translation strategies mentioned above, i.e. from versions
adopting (a) to (e).
4.1. Simile
Similes are quite frequent in the ST and often involve culture-bound words from
such domains as fauna, flora or food6. The following is a case in point, taken from
chapter 35, when Pinocchio tells his father about the way the terrible Shark had
swallowed him:
1) […Allora un orribile Pesce-cane…] m’inghiottì come un tortellino di Bologna
A simile is maintained in each TT, but while [TT8] simply borrows the SL image,
[TT6] complements the borrowing with an explicatory endnote (indicated below, as
elsewhere in the paper, by an asterisk), thus potentially satisfying the curiosity of a
learned adult reader:
[TT8] as if I were a Bologna tortellino
[TT6] […] as if I were a Bolognese tortellino*
[TT5] replaces the original with a more extended simile which works as an
explicatory gloss within the body of the text, more suitable to cater for the needs of a
younger audience:
[TT5] like one of those bits of meat wrapped in pasta – tortellini – that the good people of
Bologna love to eat
The other TTs replace the original with different items still from the culinary
domain (with the exception of [TT2]):
[TT1] as if I had been a little Bologna tart
[TT7] like a bit of spaghetti*
[TT10] like a ravioli
[TT4] as if I had been a meat pasty
6
For an analysis of procedures employed for the translation into English of culturemes in Pinocchio
see Masi (2013). Similes with food items, in particular, are among those lexical choices that often
highlight geographical differences across TTs (on the translation of gastrolingo in Pinocchio also see
Masi 2010).
338
SILVIA MASI
7
I am grateful to L. Merlini Barbaresi for this remark (personal communication).
8
[R]’s version often opts for this type of cultural relocation and also displays idiomatic uses even
where there were none in the ST.
339
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
4.2. Metaphor
The example below is from chapter 16 and describes Pinocchio hung by the
assassins on the Great Oak: his motion caused by the wind is conveyed through the
image of a festive Tuscan folkdance (trescone), with humorous, almost tragicomic
overtones due to the contrast with the dramatic situation:
3) [… sospeso per il collo], ballava il trescone alle ventate di tramontana […]
In several TTs the metaphor is maintained, albeit the original image is replaced in
various ways. In [TT7] the original folkdance (admittedly obscure even for an
average contemporary Italian) is substituted for with another example of less
stringent form of exoticism used by this translator:
[TT7] dancing the tarantella in the gusts of north wind
[TT10], [TT6] and [TT9] choose a target culture item, with [TT10] enriching the
original with overt personification of the wind (which has become a ‘dancing
partner’):
[TT10] dancing a jig with the north wind
[TT6] [TT9] dancing a jig to/in the gusts of the north wind
[TT1] and [TT4], instead, just preserve the dancing metaphor with no reference to
the festive atmosphere evoked by the specific kind of dance in question, with
possible correlated downplay of humour:
[TT1] [TT4] dancing up and down in the gusts of the north wind
In [TT5] the image of dancing is inserted in a different strategy that replaces the
original metaphor with a more extended simile:
[TT5] bouncing about in the blasts of the cold wind as though he were dancing
[TT8]’s solution is more similar to a paraphrase of the sense of the excerpt,
although exceptional in the use of whirling, which confers kinaesthetic suggestions
to the description of the rhythmic manner of motion of the object-puppet caused by
the wind:
[TT8] whirling to the rhythm of the gusts of the north wind
Finally, the remaining versions focus on the motion of the object with even more
prominent deletion of the original image and the correlated cultural/humorous
associations:
[TT3] being knocked helplessly about by the wind
[TT2] swinging backwards and forwards
4.3. Hyperbole
Hyperbolic effects are pervasive and tend to superimpose on several other figures
in the tale9. Different means can be employed to create them. In the example below,
describing Pinocchio’s hunger in chapter 5, we have an accumulation of images, i.e.
a hyperbolic climax also containing similes and idiomatic expressions, and where the
last segment, in particular, involves synesthetic overtones, as a sensation (hunger) is
conveyed as a concrete entity that can be cut:
9
On the compound nature of hyperbole see, e.g., Ravazzoli 1978.
340
SILVIA MASI
4) […] l’appetito diventò fame, e la fame, dal vedere al non vedere, si convertì in una fame da
lupi, in una fame da tagliarsi con il coltello
[TT8], [TT6], [TT7] and [TT10] preserve the crescendo of the original through a
literal translation of the peculiar Italian idiom in the last position. [TT8] and [TT6]
more prominently convey the synesthetic conversion as suggested by the idea of
thickness; also, [TT6] once again complements the literal translation with an endnote
especially devoted to the idiom in question:
[TT8] his appetite became hunger, and in the bat of an eye the hunger was transformed into a
wolfish craving, into a hunger so thick you could cut it with a knife
[TT6] his appetite became hunger; and in a twinkle of an eye he had become as hungry as a
wolf: a hunger so thick that you could cut it with a knife*
[TT7] that appetite became hunger and, in the twinkling of an eye, the hunger turned into a
ravenous hunger, a craving that you could cut with a knife
[TT10] his appetite had turned into hunger, and then suddenly it was a wolflike hunger – a
hunger you could have cut with a knife
[TT5], [TT3] and [TT9] delete the synesthetic idiom, but maintain the hyperbolic
contours of the three-piece sequence (cf. l’appetito diventò fame, / e la fame, dal
vedere al non vedere, si convertì in una fame da lupi, / in una fame da tagliarsi con il
coltello) by reserving the last position for another idiomatic expression of the
passage (fame da lupi), surely more accessible to the TL audience. This is rendered
in slightly different ways, replacing, in some cases, the wolf of the original with
other animals (cf. bear – still as famished agent – in [TT3], and horse – as potential
prey-patient – in [TT9]):
[TT5] he was terribly hungry. Then he became frantic, like a starving wolf
[TT3] the queer, empty feeling had become hunger, and the hunger grew bigger and bigger,
until soon he was as ravenous as a bear
[TT9] he wasn’t just hungry any more: he was starving – so starving he could have eaten a
horse
In the remaining versions the hyperbolic effect is far less intense: in [TT2] the
wolf simile is maintained but is inserted in a shorter sequence, while in [TT1] and
[TT4] we have a paraphrase of the idiomatic sense:
[TT2] the appetite became hunger, and the hunger finally became like that of a wolf
[TT1] his appetite had become hunger, and in no time his hunger became ravenous – a hunger
that was really quite insupportable
[TT4] his appetite had become hunger, and in no time at all his hunger became ravenous – a
hunger that was really difficult to bear
In the subsequent excerpts (taken from chapters 31 and 33, respectively), the
hyperbolic effect of the description of the Omino di burro, the coachman leading
naughty boys to Toyland, is intensified by the repeated use of diminutives10.
Interrelating with their modifiers and other elements of the co-text11, diminutive
nouns such as omino, visino, bocchina, mostriciattolo in fact contribute to the
10
For examples of diminutives with hyperbolic quality see Mortara Garavelli (1988: 182).
11
The passage also involves metaphors, similes, and irony – cf. bel mestiere in the segment from ch.
33 – differently modulated in the TTs. By way of illustration, the metaphor visino di melarosa is often
replaced with a simile, which in the case of [TT1] and [TT4], for instance, is rendered through the
image of an orange instead of that of an apple; [TT9] proposes more divergent and idiomatic similes
(cf. like a cat trying to get on the right side of a fellow with a pilchard and as if butter wouldn’t melt
in his mouth), while the ironic component mentioned above is replaced by a more explicit real
business in [TT5] or omitted in other versions (e.g. in [TT2]).
341
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
12
On the evaluative meanings of diminutive and augmentative suffixes see Merlini Barbaresi (2002).
342
SILVIA MASI
In [TT9], we have a more neutral reference to smallness (cf. small person), made
only once, and such a reference is deleted altogether in [TT2], with the consequent
subversion of the effect of the original and the promotion of opposite features of the
character’s appearance (i.e. fatness and bigness):
[TT9] a small person who is almost as broad as he is tall, soft and unctuous as a pat of butter,
with a rosy face, a mouth that is always wreathed in smiles and a thin, mellifluous voice that
sounds like a cat trying to get on the right side of a fellow with a pilchard
[…] what the coachman’s game was. This horrid little monster, who looked as if butter
wouldn’t melt in his mouth
[TT2] a man very fat and round, like a big ball of butter, with an oily smile, a face like an
apple, and a thin, caressing voice like that of a cat trying to win the affection of its mistress!
[…] what the trade of the driver was? That monster, who had a face of milk and honey
The following passage is from chapter 28 and describes the smell inside the
fisherman’s cave where Pinocchio is about to be fried and eaten by the green
creature. Hyperbole (and irony, see later on) depends, once more, on the interrelation
of morphological and lexical means, i.e. the diminutive form odorino followed by the
idiom da mozzare il respiro. Moccolaia refers to the burnt wax of a candle-butt, i.e. a
mixed smell of smoke and burnt oil/grease. In this case, the diminutive form clearly
conveys evaluative meaning, which can be interpreted as being either positive (not
completely implausible from the bizarre fisherman’s perspective), or more likely,
ironic (hence negative, especially from Pinocchio’s perspective):
6) [… una grotta buia e affumicata, in mezzo alla quale friggeva una gran padella d’olio, che
mandava] un odorino di moccolaia, da mozzare il respiro
In this case the TTs under analysis display quite disparate solutions. [TT6] is the
only version that reproduces the potential irony of the original through the use of a
positive value adjective:
[TT6] a delicious smell like candlesnuff such as to cut your breath short
Other TTs maintain the hyperbolic effects to different degrees by means of
different types of replacements. [TT7], [TT10] and [TT5] replace the original with a
rendering that foregrounds the intensity of the smell:
[TT7] such an odour of candle-grease as to take your breath away
[TT10] such a whiff of candle snuff as to take your breath away
[TT5] The greasy smell was so strong you could hardly breathe
[TT8], instead, appears to have interpreted the original as a true diminutive (see
little and enough), with downplay of the hyperbolic effects of the passage:
[TT8] gave off a little snufflike odor that was enough to take away your breath
[TT3] and [TT9] maintain the hyperbolic effect especially thanks to the idiom in
final position and also provide an overt negative evaluation of the smell in question:
[TT3] […] sending out a repelling odour of tallow that took away one’s breath
[TT9] […] [cooking oil], which stank so badly that it took Pinocchio’s breath away
[TT1] and [TT4], instead, insert an overt negative evaluation of the smell within a
paraphrase of the original idiom (suffocating), also using a rather idiosyncratic
rendering13:
13
A hypothesis about the source of the awkward rendering may be the Candlesnuff Fungus (Xylaria
hypoxylon), which looks similar to a snuffed-out candlewick, hence the name.
343
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
[TT1] [TT4] […] sending out a smell of mushrooms that was suffocating
Lastly, [TT2] completely deletes the SL figures.
344
SILVIA MASI
jocular effect contributing to an overall idea of contradiction. The latter aspect is also
conveyed by the overt antithetic contrast between mountain (montagna) and plains
(pianure), as well as implied meadows (cf. pascolare/graze) and torrid zone (zona
torrida):
8) […] Non starò qui a farvi menzogna delle grandi difficolt da me soppressate per
comprendere e soggiogare questo mammifero, mentre pascolava liberamente di montagna in
montagna nelle pianure della zona torrida
[TT8], [TT6] and [TT7] show different attempts at preserving a great deal of the
effects described above. [TT8] tends to recreate paronomastic effects through the
adapted borrowing suppressated, the compensatory alliteration of bilabial nasals in
make mendacity and keeps the literal translation of the antithetic pairs of the original:
[TT8] I won’t stand here and make mendacity of the great difficulties that I suppressated in
order to comprehend and subjugate this mammal, while it was freely grazing from mountain to
mountain on the plains of the Torrid Zone
[TT6], too, proposes fairly similar solutions, but emphasises alliteration (make
mention, mendacious) and absurdity/humorousness through the awkward
combination of mendacious difficulties (which overtly states the falsity of the
character’s speech); the passage is also complemented by an endnote:
[TT6] I will not here make mention of the mendacious difficulties suppressated* by me in
order to reprehend and subjugate this mammal while he was grazing freely from mountain to
mountain in the plains of the torrid zone
In [TT7] the puns on words mainly rest on laying (lying) and suppressed
(surpassed):
[TT7] I shall not engage in laying before you the great difficulties suppressed by me in order to
comprehend and subjugate this mammal, while he was freely grazing from mountain to
mountain on the plains of the torrid zone
Almost all the remaining versions delete paronomastic effects, while maintaining
the antithetic ones (see [TT1], [TT4] [TT5], [TT9] and [TT10]). [TT9], in particular,
seems to compensate for some of the lost effects through a more informal style (cf.
the stronger dialogism through the use of your and of the question mark, and the
informal collocation tall stories), as well as a more emphatic antithesis thanks to the
double reference to the Equator :
[TT9] Will I waste your precious time with tall stories about my intrepid efforts to capture and
subdue this mammal, as it roamed freely from mountain to mountain on the great equatorial
plains of the equator? I will not.
[TT10] only preserves the original antithetic pairs, with a verbose style (cf., e.g.,
surmounted, aforementioned, whilst):
[TT10] I shall not stand here deceiving you with regard to the great difficulties surmounted by
myself in captivating and subjugating the aforementioned mammal, whilst he grazed freely
from mountaintop to mountaintop in the torrid zone.
[TT3], instead, deletes the antithesis, but tries to appeal to the reader by referring
to the distant and exotic wilds of Africa (as an intensifier of the presumed
aggressiveness of the donkey Pinocchio):
[TT3] I shall not take your time tonight to tell you of the great difficulties which I have
encountered while trying to tame this animal, since I found him in the wilds of Africa.
345
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
[TT2] proposes a paraphrase with complete deletion of all the effects mentioned
above.
5. Conclusions
The examples and heterogeneous variety of the phenomena covered in the
analysis surely deserve a broader investigation than what was here allowed, also
considering the temporal dimension, as the selected TTs span over more than a
century. The present study has nonetheless highlighted significant ST – TT
asymmetries as well as some translation trends of different TTs. The asymmetries
often originate from the unique compact clusters of figures and correlated
associations in the ST (e.g. hyperboles superimposing on metaphors, similes and
irony, metonymy intertwining with irony, paronomasia working hand in hand with
antithesis, etc.) which usually require disentanglement and a combination of different
procedures for translation.
Although further exploration is obviously necessary, the different TTs can be
placed on a cline depending on the procedures they appear to privilege (from (a) to
(e), see § 3). [TT8] and [TT6] tend to use borrowings and literal translations, often
complemented with explicatory endnotes in the case of [TT6]. The other TTs,
instead, tend to use a more varied combination of procedures. [TT7], for instance,
either uses less stringent forms of exoticisms or replaces the originals with TL
counterparts (sometimes providing an explicatory endnote); [TT10] displays both
some literal renderings and more creative replacements; [TT5] often replaces the
originals with more extended and explicit patterns; [TT9] privileges more substantial
replacements; [TT3] shows generic replacements and deletions, all the more
prominent in [TT1], [TT4], and [TT2] in particular.
The identification of such trends is here envisaged as an appraisal of each TT’s
functional priorities in relation to its overtly declared or presupposed primary target
audience. Indeed, the translation of figurative language in the various TTs appears to
have different dominant functions:
I) that of a ‘magnifier’ of the concrete domain (to an extent made plausible by the
presupposed fantastic nature of the world at issue), i.e. performing an
expressive/emotive function, so as to enhance the appeal of the story esp. to young
readers by emphasising their affective-emotive reaction, their involvement, their
imaginative potential (e.g. this functional configuration is variously performed by
versions such as [TT5], [TT9], [TT10] and [TT3]);
II) that of a ‘threshold’ to a more abstract domain of signification primarily
accessed by adults, fulfilling a compound informative and expressive function (i.e.
learned entertainment through irony and social satire) (e.g. these functions are
differently fulfilled by [TT6], [TT7] and [TT8]).
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346
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Newmark, P. (1981) Approaches to Translation, Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Nasi, F. (2010) Specchi comunicanti. Traduzioni, parodie, riscritture, Milano: Medusa.
O’Sullivan, E. (2006) ‘Does Pinocchio have an Italian passport? What is specifically
national and what is international about classics of children’s literature’, in G. Lathey
(ed.), The Translation of Children’s Literature. A Reader, Clevedon: Multilingual
Matters.146-162.
Pezzini, I.; Fabbri, P. (a cura di) (2002) Le avventure di Pinocchio. Tra un linguaggio e
l’altro, Roma: Meltemi.
Ravazzoli, F. (1978) ‘I meccanismi linguistici dell’iperbole’, in L. Ritter Santini; E.
Raimondi (a cura di) Retorica e critica letteraria, Bologna: Il Mulino, 69-86.
Sachse, N. D. (1981) ‘Pinocchio in U.S.A.’, Quaderni della onda ione Na ionale “ arlo
ollodi” 14.
Schäffner, Ch. (2004) ‘Metaphor and translation: Some implications of a cognitive
approach’, Journal of Pragmatics 36, 1253-1269.
Stych, F. S. (1971) ‘Pinocchio in Gran Bretagna e Irlanda’, Quaderni della Fondazione
Na ionale “ arlo ollodi” 7.
Tommasi, R. (1992) Pinocchio: analisi di un burattino, Firenze: Sansoni.
West, R. (2006) ‘Pinocchio on screen: teaching filmic versions of the Puppet’s Tale’, in M.
Scherberg (ed.), Pinocchio and its Adaptations, New York: The Modern Language
Association of America, 119-126.
Wunderlich, R. (1987) ‘Pinocchio at 104’, Children’s Literature 15, 186-192.
Wunderlich, R.; Morrisey, T. (2002) Pinocchio Goes Postmodern: Perils of a Puppet in the
United States, London/New York: Routledge.
Primary sources
Brock, G. (2009) The Adventures of Pinocchio, New York: New York Review of Books.
Canepa, N. (2002) The Adventures of Pinocchio. Story of a Puppet, South Royalton, VT:
Steerforth Italia.
Collodi, C. (1883/1983) Le avventure di Pinocchio. Storia di un burattino, Edizione critica a
cura di Ornella Castellani Polidori, Pescia: Fondazione Nazionale Carlo Collodi.
Cramp, W. S. (1901/1904) Pinocchio. The Adventures of a Marionette, with editorial
revision by S.E.H. Lockwood, Boston: Ginn And Company.
Della Chiesa, C. (1914/1925/2000) The Adventures of Pinocchio, Florence: Giunti.
Lawson Lucas, A. (1996) The Adventures of Pinocchio, London/New York: Oxford
University Press.
Murray, M. A. (1892) Pinocchio. The Tale of a Puppet, London: Dent and Sons.
347
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
348
“My mother thinks I eat like this”/ “Mia madre pensa che
io mangi come un maialino”: The translation of picture
books and of their many languages
ANNALISA SEZZI
Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia
Abstract: Children under a certain age (7-10) are not able to understand figurative
language and interpret it literally. However, children’s literature fully exploits its
expressive potential, even in genres addressed to very young readers since the
presence of a “difficult” language may actually stimulate the child’s imagination
(Rodari 1997: 7). An interesting case is that of picture books, in which words and
images both contribute to creating the narration given that, in these literary products
for small children, figurative language combines in many ways: on the one hand, the
illustrations might help in understanding the transferred meaning while, on the other,
they generate a complex game of echoes between literal and figurative meanings
(Terrusi 2012: 101). If, according to Epstein (2013: 23), the translator should try to
face figurative expressions, the challenge in picture books is sometimes almost
insurmountable because of the multimodal nature of these texts. The aim of this paper
is therefore to examine how the figurative language is realized and how translators
handle it. In particular, a selection of fifteen picture books by British and American
classical authors has been analyzed; some of them turned out to be particularly useful
for a preliminary classification.
Keywords: picture book, figurative language, multimodality, illustrations.
Sezzi, Annalisa, ‘“My mother thinks I eat like this”/ “Mia madre pensa che io mangi come un maialino”: The
translation of picture books and of their many languages’ in Donna R. Miller; Enrico Monti (eds), Tradurre
Figure / Translating Figurative Language, Bologna, CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN
1979-932X, pp. 349-359.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
that boys and girls are able to conceive and comprehend abstract concepts when they
are eleven and, subsequently, only then are they able to understand and enjoy
idiomatic expressions, for example: “From sixth grade through the beginning of high
school (ages 11-14), youngsters acquire the ability to reason abstractly and can
appreciate such complex literary devices as irony, analogy, idiom, sarcasm, and
allegory” (2006: s.p.). Furthermore, if children around three can partly recognize a
metaphor, this has to be “tangible and salient, referring to sensory objects (e.g.
clouds are pillows, leaves are dancers)” (2006: s.p.).
Contrary to all advice and research, children’s literature exploits the considerable
expressive potential of figurative language, even in genres which are addressed to
very young children. As a matter of facts, and against all expectations, the language
of children’s literature can be highly metaphorical and sophisticated, mostly in those
texts for so-called pre-readers, even to the point that they are often used to stimulate
children’s metaphorical and inferential skills:
[…] contrary to what might predicted from the current knowledge about younger children’s
metaphorical language comprehension ability, the popular children’s literature contains a great
deal of sophisticated metaphorical language. An average of 54 metaphors per 1,000 words of
text was found in the books. […] Books targeted at very young readers contain as much
metaphorical language as books aimed at older children. (Colston, Kuiper 2002: 36)
These figures are even more astonishing when considering the typology of texts
marketed for the age group under six years of age, the picture book.
1
“The debate – and the relative disagreement among critics – starts from the correct (or incorrect)
spelling of the word under consideration: picturebook? picture-book? picture book? This may appear
to be hair splitting but in point of fact it reports an uncertainty and, at the same time, a need for a
precise and univocal connotation.” Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are the author’s.
350
ANNALISA SEZZI
Tuttavia l’espressione italiana mantiene nel sostantivo albo l’idea di una raccolta, di un
fascicolo, simile agli “albi di figurine”, all’“albo da disegno”, e nell’aggettivo illustrato la
derivazione dal verbo illustrare, nel senso di “corredare di figure un testo”, “rendere chiaro”,
“illuminare”, quasi che le immagini fossero successive al testo verbale e avessero la semplice
funzione di chiarirlo o decorarlo. Tutto questo genera una certa ambiguità e non lascia traccia
della qualit narrativa insita negli albi illustrati […]. 2 (Dal Gobbo 2007: 42)
In fact, the narrative quality of the picture books that Dal Gobbo mentions is
connected to a basic editorial distinction between “picture book” and “illustrated
book”, a distinction which depends on the relationship between the images and the
verbal text. Given that the readers of picture books cannot actually read but mainly
listen to the adult’s voice (reading the words aloud) while watching the illustrations,
picture books are conceived and built on the interplay between verbal and visual
elements. Thus, images and words equally collaborate in the construction of meaning
(Schwarcz, Schwarcz 1984; Shulevitz 1985) with no one of the two elements
prevailing upon the other. This specific relationship, which involves multiple
semiotic codes, has been described with several expressions ranging from
“iconotext” to “synergy” or “multimodal text”, referring to Kress and van Leuwen.
As a result, the reading experience of the picture book is shared by the adult aloud
reader and the child reader-viewer, thereby constructing a dyadic situation
(Cardarello 1995) which is allowed by the co-presence of the verbal and visual codes
and thus inscribed in the picture book itself. In particular, the pages work as a
metronome which beats the rhythm of the text (Tontardini 2012: 27).
The complex multimodality of picture books is then enhanced by the fact that
even their paratext and their entire structure are relevant so as to re-interpret the
aesthetic experience they subsume, as highlighted by Tontardini: “[…] vedere, con
gli occhi ma anche con gli altri sensi che l’albo illustrato chiama in campo, agisce su
corde profonde che permettono ai lettori di strutturare pensiero, attraverso un sistema
verbo visuale”3 (Tontardini 2012: 25). The touching experience and the turning of
their pages are part of the sophisticated intellectual situation they activate between
the two differently-aged readers and the book itself. Besides the emotional
involvement, the picture book stimulates both the child-reader’s senses and
intelligence: he/she is led to understand the difference between verbal and iconic
language as well as learn and memorize words and realize that reading is a pleasure
(see Cardarello 1995). Thus, “[l’]esperienza dell’albo illustrato produce forme di
pensiero, organizzative, deduttive, interpretative”4 (Tontardini 2012: 47).
2
“Yet, the Italian expression retains the idea of a collection, of a booklet, in the noun albo, similar to
the album for picture-cards or the drawing album, while the adjective illustrato is a derivation from
the verb to illustrate, in the sense of “equip a text with images”, “to make clear”, “to illuminate”,
almost as if the images were subsequent to the verbal text and had the simple function of clarifying or
decorating it. All this generates a certain ambiguity and does not leave traces of the narrative quality
inherent to picture books […].”
3
“[…] to see, with the eyes but also with all the other senses that a picture book involves, strikes
children’s innermost chords, which allow readers to structure their thought, through a verbo-visual
system.”
4
“The experience of the picture book produces organizational, deductive and interpretative forms of
thought.”
351
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
352
ANNALISA SEZZI
forme poetiche […]”6 (Terrusi 2012: 101). Distinctively, because of the very nature
of these multimodal texts, their figures of speech are usually realized on both levels,
that is verbally and visually, in several ways: on the one hand, the illustrations might
facilitate the child’s understanding of the content of the figure of speech; on the
other, the pictorial content of the images might generate a game of echoes between
figurative and non-figurative meanings (Terrusi 2012: 101) so that often “images can
enhance the verbal figurative language” (Nikolajeva, Scott 2006: 212).
In this regard, Rau emphasizes that picture books are an inexhaustible mine for
exploring the potential of metaphorical language. Yet, Rau laments that if pictorial
metaphors have been an object of study in many fields (see, for example, Forceville
2008), the multimodality of picture books in relation to figurative language has been
largely overlooked:
“Although Lakoff’s and Johnson’s theory7 allows for a wider interpretation, almost for a
decade research was limited to linguistic metaphors. Since the 1990s pictorial metaphors have
been studied in art, advertising and comic books.” (Rau 2011: 147)
Similarly, and considering the translation of children’s literature in general, the
only extensive study on translating figurative language in books for young readers
(not in picture books however) is by Epstein, who suggests that “[i]f an author uses
expressive language, regardless of whether scientists or a given culture believe
children can understand this language, translators have to find a way to approach and
handle it” (Epstein 2010: 23).
Given all their “languages”, it is therefore obvious that the translation of picture
books is a great challenge for the translator.
3. “My mother thinks I eat like this”/ “Mia madre pensa che io mangi come un
maialino”
The aim of this paper is to examine the many paths that figurative language may
follow when entering into contact with a multimodal product for children as well the
problems it poses to the translator. The corpus of texts that are analyzed is a selection
of fifteen contemporary picture books8 by classical British and American authors and
their Italian translations. In particular, some of them turned out to be interesting for a
drafted preliminary classification. All the figures of speech have been studied
together with the idiomatic expressions, whereas personification has been left out
from the analysis because it dominates children’s literature.
6
“We can recognize the structure of figures of speech common to the poetic forms within the
combination of narrative elements of a picture book.”
7
“The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.”
(Lakoff, Johnson 1980: 5)
8
Where the Wild Things Are by M. Sendak (1967); The Giving Tree (1964) and Who Wants a Cheap
Rhinoceros? (1993) by S. Silverstein, War and Peas (1974) by M. Foreman and Ups and Downs by B.
Gill and their respective translations did not turn out to be very significant.
9
See Nikolajeva & Scott (2006) for the different interactions between verbal and visual in picture
books.
353
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Express, by C. Van Allsburg (1984), the verbal text says that “it seemed as if we
could scrape the moon” while the train taking the little protagonist to the North Pole
in order to meet Santa Claus was climbing the mountains, running “over peaks and
through valleys like a car on a roller coaster”. The style of the illustration is
realistic10 and the image only obliquely evokes the verbal simile and the hyperbole.
The iconic text which accompanies the words shows the train on the ridge of a
mountain whose top cannot be seen, suggesting in this way its highness. Moreover,
almost only the lights of the train are visible; similarly, the image may visually
remind one of a roller coaster. The Italian target text – Polar Express translated in
2004 by S. Daniele and published by Salani – easily retains the same figures of
speech: it can be read that “[…] le montagne erano talmente alte che sembravano
toccare la luna”11 and that the train passed “[…] picchi e valli come una macchina
dell’otto volante”12. In the following double spread, there is an oxymoron and
another simile: the Polar Cap is defined as “a barren desert of ice” and the lights of
the North Pole look like those of a “strange ocean liner sailing on a frozen sea”. In
the image, the Polar Express is on a long bridge. Sky and earth seem to mix up. The
point of view of the observer is located under the bridge. Again, the pictorial style is
realistic; however, the idea of an unlimited space is conveyed by the reflection of the
lights on the iced surface and by the snowflakes falling indistinctively both on the
ground and on the water. The train is heading towards some buildings whose dark
contours and smoking chimneys may call to mind a transatlantic. The Italian
translation makes the two figures of speech identical: “un arido deserto di ghiaccio”
and […] “sembravano quelle di una strana nave da crociera che solcava un oceano
ghiacciato”.
In the “green” picture book Dinosaurs and All That Rubbish by M. Foreman
(1974), it is said that, after the devastation of the eco-system of the earth caused by
pollution, the trees and the flowers “[…] spread like the smile of the world”. The
corresponding double spread represents three smiling and dancing dinosaurs and
some mammoths that are running towards a forest. The Italian target text (I dinosauri
contro il mondo immondizia published in 1975 by Elle, the name of the translator is
not mentioned) again adheres to the source text: “[…] si allargò come un sorriso in
tutto il mondo”. As it can be seen, these examples of “private” (see van de Broeck
1981: 75) figures of speech are not problematical from a translational point of view.
Another example of a “private” simile – in which the image does not pose any
obstacle – is in Swimmy by L. Lionni, the story of an intelligent little black fish that
finds a way to not be eaten by some bigger fish. Indeed, in this specific instance, the
illustration drops a hint to the translator of the Italian target text (Guizzino issued in
1977 by Emme and translated by Lionni himself, even if not indicated). The main
character meets a lobster which is said to “walk[ed] about like a water-moving
machine”; the translator – taking cue from the colors of the crustacean and from the
form of the claws – comes up with a synthetic solution for an almost untranslatable
expression into Italian: “[…] si muoveva come una ruspa arrugginita”13.
10
http://bethgismondiblog.tumblr.com/post/7225404599/illustration-heroes-chris-van-allsburg (last
accessed on 30/11/2012).
11
“The mountains were so high that they seem to touch the moon.”
12
“[…] peaks and valleys like a car on a roller coaster.”
13
“[…] moved like a rusty scraper.”
354
ANNALISA SEZZI
By the same token, it is the image which inspires the Italian translator of the
picture book There’s a Nightmare in my loset by M. Mayer (1968), but, in this case,
the English verbal text is not characterized by any particular figure of speech. The
story is very simple – a little boy meets the monster hidden in his closet and
discovers that it is not as threatening as it seems – and even the verbal text is
undemanding. The translator of the Italian edition (Brutti sogni in ripostiglio
published in 1989 by El Edizioni with the translation of G. Lughi) translates the
sentence “[M]y nightmare began to cry” – probably in order to make the reading
more exciting – with an Italian idiomatic expression, “[…] il brutto sogno cominciò a
piangere come una fontana”14, the text supported by the image of the Nightmare
desperately crying.
A simile at the visual level supports the translator in a picture book at the limits of
untranslatability. In the Night Kitchen by M. Sendak (1970) narrates the dreamlike
adventure of Mickey who, in his parents’ kitchen, is mistaken for some milk by three
identical cooks. The picture book is completely built on assonances and on wordplay
that is almost untranslatable into Italian as their pivot is the resemblance between the
name of the little hero and the word “milk” (Mickey/milk) (see Nières-Chevrel
2003). Since the translator could not reproduce the initial wordplay which makes the
narration start, she verbalizes a visual simile, the fil rouge of the entire story sustaining
the wordplay itself. In order to allow the Italian reader to understand why Mickey – in
the Italian picture book named “Luca” (Luca, la luna e il latte published in 1971 by
Emme and translated by S. Maltini) – is thought to be the milk, the translator ignores
the source text15 at the beginning and specifies that Luca was “[…] bianco come il latte
nella luce della luna”16. This is reinforced and justified by the image of the light yellow
moon and by the image of the naked baby and his pale skin.
14
“To cry like a fountain”, i.e. “to cry buckets.”
15
“Past the moon and his mama and papa sleeping tight […].”
16
“[…] white like milk under moonlight.”
355
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
17
“They saw the colors as they had many little palettes in their heads.”
18
“Seaweeds were growing from multi-colored candies.”
356
ANNALISA SEZZI
water and “had the jellyfish for dessert”. The illustration directly shows the
visualization of the literal meaning of the compound word (see Nikolajeva, Scott
2006: 211): in the sea there are some fish whose backs look like jelly candies. This
figure of speech is lost in the Italian translation (Adesso ti prendo! published in 1994
by EL Edizioni with the translation of G. Lughi) where there is an evident contrast
between the image and the verbal text since the “meduse” have a different shape.
The second example is in I Keep Changing by B. Gill and A. Reid, first published
in 197119. It is a picture book which teaches children that many perspectives upon
things exist. The Italian edition (Continuo a cambiare. I Keep Changing published in
2006 by Edizioni Corraini and translated by Corraini Studio) is a nice and innovative
example20 in which there are both the source text (in italics under the Italian
translation) and the target text. Different English idiomatic expressions – which have
a direct identical Italian equivalent and which activate the same underlying image –
are employed. Yet, the verbal idiomatic expression “to eat like a bird” in the English
source text is completed by the image; in fact, the text is “My father think I eat like
this” and the illustration depicts a canary. Similarly, the idiomatic expression “to eat
like a pig” in the next page is accompanied by the verbal text, “My mother thinks I
eat like this” and the image shows a big pink pig. In the Italian translation the two
idiomatic expressions are fully verbalized: “Pap pensa che io mangi come un
uccellino” and “Mamma pensa che io mangi come un maialino”21.
Nonetheless, there are few examples of this kind given the impossibility to find
many idioms based on the same image in both languages: another example which
shows this difficulty is the title of a still bilingual picture book by M. and F. Barbero,
published by B edizioni in 2007 and translated into English by M. Nebiolo: the
Italian idiomatic expression “attacchiamo bottone!” (“attach a button”, i.e. “to talk
endlessly”) is translated with an English idiomatic expression which has the word
“button” in it but has a different meaning, “Right on the button”.
4. Conclusions
Some conclusions can thereby be drawn from the analysis of the corpus and from
the consequent classification of the different ways in which figurative language
combines in picture books presented in this paper. Figures of speech can be de facto
found not only at the verbal level, but also at the verbal and visual levels in a
symmetrical relationship, or they can be realized through the interaction of the two
codes, thus exploiting the multimodal potential of picture books. Obviously, these
different situations imply different solutions and different problems when translation
comes into play.
Two main tendencies are actually detected. Difficulties in the translation of the
figurative language in picture books seem to increase when the figures of speech are
more and more lexicalized: when they are original creations of the authors they seem
to be more easily translatable, even if they are found also at the pictorial level.
However, when the verbal and the visual are simultaneously involved there is a
general tendency to make the figures of speech more transparent at the verbal level.
19
Translated into Italian and published by Emme Edizioni with the title Se… in 1971.
20
This specific Italian publishing house publishes many innovative children’s picture books with the
source text and its Italian translation.
21
“My father thinks I eat like a little bird”; “My mother thinks I eat like a little pig”.
357
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Given the multimodal nature of these texts, serious problems arise when verbal
and pictorial languages are closely interconnected: not only for linguistic reasons but
also due to differing notions of childhood in the two cultures. In this case, losses and
evident changes are detected.
It is also true, however, that, verbal and visual figures of speech can unexpectedly
become a source of inspiration for the translator.
Primary References
Barbero, F.; Barbero, M. (2007) Attacchiamo bottone!/ Right on the button!, tr. in. M.
Nebiolo, Torino: Bedizionidesign.
Foreman, M. (1972) Dinosaurs and All That Rubbish, London: Puffin Books.
Foreman, M. (1975) I dinosauri contro il mondo immondizia, Trieste: EL.
Foreman, M. (1975) Guerra e pasta, Milano: Emme Edizioni.
Foreman, M. (2002) War and Peas [1974], London: Andersen Press.
Gill, B. (1973) Ups and Downs, USA: Addison-Wesley.
Gill, B. (1974) I Su e i Giù, tr. it. G. Niccolai, Milano: Emme Edizioni.
Gill, B.; Reid, A. (2006) Continuo a cambiare/ I Keep Changing, tr. it. CorrainiStudio,
Mantova: Edizioni Corraini.
Lionni, L. (1967) Frederick, New York: Dragonfly Books.
Lionni, L. (1967) Federico, tr. it by L. Lionni, Milano: Emme Edizioni.
Lionni, L. (1974) Fish is Fish, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Lionni, L. (1977) Guizzino, tr. it by L. Lionni, Milano: Emme Edizioni.
Lionni, L. (1987) Swimmy [1963], New York: Dragonfly Books.
Lionni, L. (2006) Un pesce è un pesce, Milano: Babalibri.
Mayer, M. (1989) Brutti sogni in ripostiglio, tr. it G. Lughi, Trieste: EL.
Mayer, M. (1992) There’s a Nightmare in My loset [1968], New York: Penguin Books.
Ross, T. (1984) I’m oming to Get You!, London: Andersen Press.
Ross, T. (1994) Adesso ti prendo!, tr. it. G. Lughi, Milano: Salani.
Sendak, M. (1969) Nel paese dei mostri selvaggi, tr. it A. Porta, Milano: Emme Edizioni.
Sendak M. (1970/1971) Luca, la luna e il latte, tr. it S. Maltini, Milano: Emme Edizioni.
Sendak, M. (2001) Where the Wild Things Are [1963], London: Red Fox.
Sendak, M., (2001) In The Night Kitchen [1970], London: Red Fox.
Silverstein, S. (1992) The Giving Tree [1964], New York: Harper Collins.
Silverstein, S. (2000) L’albero, tr. it D. Gamba, Milano: Salani.
Silverstein, S. (2011) Chi vuole un rinoceronte a prezzo speciale?/ Who Wants A Cheap
Rhinoceros?, tr. it. P. Splendore, Roma: Orecchio acerbo.
Van Allsburg, C. (1985) The Polar Express, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Van Allsburg, C. (2004) The Polar Express, tr. it. S. Daniele, Milano: Salani.
Secondary references
Broeck, R. (van den) (1981), ‘The limits of translatability exemplified by metaphor
translation’, Poetics Today 2(4), 73-88.
Cardarello, R. (1995) Libri e bambini. La prima formazione del lettore, Firenze: La Nuova
Italia.
Colston, H. ; Kuiper, M. (2002) ‘Figurative language development research and popular
children’s literature: Why we should know “Where the Wild Things Are”’, Metaphor &
Symbol 17 (1), 27-43.
Dal Gobbo, A. (2007) ‘La definizione del picturebook’, Liber. Libri per bambini e ragazzi
75, luglio-settembre, 42- 45.
Epstein, B.J. (2012) Translating Expressive Language in hildren’s Literature, Bern: Peter
Lang.
358
ANNALISA SEZZI
359
Proverbi e metafore del Pentamerone di Basile: Esperienze
traduttive a confronto
ANGELA ALBANESE
Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia
Abstract: In uno studio del 1941 il critico Speroni individuava nel Cunto de li Cunti,
secentesca raccolta di fiabe in dialetto napoletano di Giambattista Basile, la presenza
di ben 290 proverbi e 222 espressioni idiomatiche. I proverbi e i detti proverbiali
rappresentano di fatto una costante nel progetto testuale del Cunto, se si pensa che
sentenze moraleggianti, wellerismi o veri e propri proverbi aprono e chiudono tutte le
favole, oltre ad inserirsi nel corpo stesso del testo. E lo stesso vale per l’inusitato
numero di metafore sparse per tutta l’opera, da quelle con cui l’autore si diverte a
indicare sistematicamente l’alternarsi del giorno e della notte, a quelle sulla morte o
a quelle riferite alle attività corporali, dalla sessualità alla defecazione. Il loro
numero eccezionale e la loro peculiare struttura possono rappresentare un vero
rompicapo e una sfida per il traduttore. Lo sapevano bene tanto i riscrittori
ottocenteschi inglesi del Cunto quanto quelli contemporanei: fra gli altri, gli italiani
Benedetto Croce (autore della prima traduzione integrale dell’opera in italiano),
Michele Rak, o l’americana Nancy Canepa, la cui singolare resa delle espressioni
proverbiali e idiomatiche, appiattita sul testo di partenza, bene esemplifica come lo
spettro dei modi del tradurre possa risultare assai differente a seconda che si privilegi
una traduzione source-oriented o target-oriented. Il contributo proposto intende
appunto evidenziare, attraverso il confronto di alcune traduzioni dal dialetto
napoletano all’italiano (Croce) e all’inglese (Canepa), le strategie messe in atto dai
singoli traduttori, sollecitate da specifiche motivazioni, finalità, scelte stilistiche e di
poetica.
Parole chiave: proverbi, metafore, traduzione, Basile, Cunto.
Albanese, Angela, ‘Proverbi e metafore del Pentamerone di Basile: Esperienze traduttive a confronto’, in Donna
R. Miller; Enrico Monti (eds), Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative Language, Bologna, CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni
del CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 361-373.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
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malinconica Zoza, figlia del re di Vallepelosa, il principe Tadeo suo promesso sposo
e, insieme a lui, la corona e il titolo di principessa. Solo nell’ultima delle cinquanta
fiabe la schiava sarà smascherata e per questo mortalmente punita. Il proverbio posto
in apertura inaugura una costante nel progetto testuale del Cunto. Il ricorso
sistematico a espressioni proverbiali ne fa una componente strutturale dell’opera e le
conferisce un’architettura stabile, essendo ogni fiaba aperta e chiusa puntualmente da
sentenze moraleggianti, wellerismi o veri e propri proverbi (cfr. Rak 1986: lxiii-lxiv).
Almeno due sembrano, al riguardo, le questioni su cui è opportuno soffermarsi.
Da una parte, l’effettiva replicabilit dell’impianto strutturale garantisce una
maggiore facilità di memorizzazione delle fiabe e quindi la possibilità che vengano
riraccontate, visto che il Cunto era prima di tutto un passatempo di corte da leggere e
recitare ad alta voce nell’occasione rituale del dopopranzo. E poi la replicabilità degli
stessi proverbi che, nella loro formulazione standardizzata e fissa, si prestano
appieno ad essere dispositivi di memoria, autentiche formule mnemoniche. Tratti
peculiari del proverbio sono proprio la sua fissità e la precisa successione delle
parole, il cui spostamento o semplice inversione andrebbe a pregiudicare il ruolo
essenziale degli elementi prosodici e metrici, la rima, l’assonanza, il ritmo, che
invece sono espedienti mnemonici necessari. I proverbi, ha scritto Meschonnic, non
si descrivono, si riconoscono (Meschonnic 1976: 420) e se è possibile riconoscerli è
proprio in virtù dell’ordine fisso delle parole di cui sono costituiti e degli
accorgimenti retorici e metrici che ne agevolano la memorizzazione. Il linguaggio
proverbiale assolve la sua funzione didascalica e morale passando prima attraverso
una funzione mnemonica: le singole parole che lo realizzano sono parole reclutate
dall’arte della memoria, parole fortemente iconiche, capaci, attraverso l’immagine
evocata, di richiamare immediatamente, insieme al detto, il monito morale sotteso.
Sulle caratteristiche di fissità, di ripetibilità, di autonomia sintattica e semantica
dei proverbi valgano le lucide considerazioni di Paolo Bagni riportate nella sua
postfazione al saggio di Jean Paulhan L’esperien a del proverbio:
Non è allora tanto la peculiarità della struttura che fa il proverbio, quanto la sua fissità, fissità
che è originalità prosodica, che si destina alla citazione, alla ripetizione. Proprio perché
citabile, ripetibile, il proverbio s’iscrive in una situazione: e attraverso la fissità della sua
formula iscrive in sé questa situazione; e attraverso la ripetizione, e la sua irriducibile
intonazione, funziona come un fuori-testo nel testo […]. (Bagni 2000: 44)
Proverbi, dunque, come micro-testi nel testo che, grazie alla loro forma chiusa e
sempre identica a se stessa, riescono a riadattarsi perfettamente all’interno di
situazioni narrative differenti, a valere per più circostanze. È quanto accade ai
proverbi di Basile, la cui compiutezza semantica, autonomia e relativa
impermeabilit ne permettono la continua adattabilit in fiabe diverse all’interno
della stessa opera e in opere diverse.
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Comme la Notte spase li vestite nigre perché se conservassero da le carole […] (290)
[Quando la Notte stese i vestiti neri perché si preservassero dalle tarme…] (291)
Metafore erotiche, riferite ad appassionate notti d’amore:
[…] e fatto apparecchiare le tavole, fecero no magnare de signore, lo quale scomputo se iezero
a corcare a no bello lietto addoruso de colata, dove Cienzo, auzando li trofei de la vittoria avuta
co lo dragone, trasette trionfando a lo Campeduoglio d’Ammore. (Basile 1986: 152-154)
[… e, fatte apparecchiare le tavole, fecero un pranzo da signori e quando lo finirono, andarono
a coricarsi in un bel letto odoroso di bucato, dove Cienzo, alzando i trofei della vittoria ottenuta
sul dragone, entrò trionfando nel Campidoglio d’Amore]. (153-155)
o come quelle, più frequenti, che alludono ad un amplesso andato in bianco per
motivi disparati e spesso di rabelaisiana comicità:
E, chiamanno la zita a portare lo quatierno pe saudare li cunte amoruse, essa, puostose lo
spruoccolo ‘n mocca, pigliaie la figura de n’urzo terribele e le ieze ‘ncontra. (Basile 1986: 362)
[E, chiamando la sposa per farsi portare il quaderno su cui saldare i conti dell’amore, lei, messo
il bastoncino in bocca, si trasformò in un orso terribile e gli andò incontro]. (363)
Metafore corporali, “con cui Basile celebra i fasti della defecazione nei suoi colori
e odori” (Calvino 1996: 142):
[…] fece no maro de liquido topazio e l’arabi fumme ‘nfettarono lo palazzo. (Basile 1986: 546)
[… fece un mare di topazio liquido e i profumi arabi ammorbarono il palazzo]. (547)
Metafore legate alla morte che, pure assai frequente nella raccolta, non è mai
descritta in modo esplicito:
Ma, ‘nante che se stotasse la cannela de la vita a lo ‘ncanto dell’anne […]. (Basile 1986: 356)
[Ma, prima che si spegnesse la candela del vivere all’asta degli anni…]. (357)
La scelta degli esempi è senz’altro arbitraria e riduttiva, eppure sollecita subito
qualche considerazione. Intanto non è superfluo rilevare che, nel caso delle metafore
usate da Basile – e per quelle relative all’alternarsi del giorno e della notte si tratta
per lo più di personificazioni – non è in gioco il semplice uso metaforico di una
parola rispetto alle altre che compongono il sintagma, ma ci si trova di fronte ad
interi enunciati metaforici, potremmo dire a metafore estese, ossia intere frasi di
parole tutte usate metaforicamente, nelle quali la metafora scaturisce dalla tensione
fra tutti i termini e per la cui comprensione può risultare insufficiente la semplice
sostituzione con gli equivalenti letterali. Più utile a ricostruirne il significato può
invece rivelarsi la conoscenza del contesto nel quale l’espressione metaforica è usata,
delle circostanze che la ispirano e delle intenzioni di chi la pronuncia (cfr. Black
1992: 46-48). Non trattandosi di una pratica di pura sostituzione dei termini
metaforici con corrispondenti termini letterali, ma di un’esperienza di cortocircuito
fra il significato letterale e quello metaforico da cui scaturisce un’inedita estensione
di significato, è necessario uno sforzo da parte del lettore, una sua “risposta creativa”
1
Il testo di riferimento è qui l’edizione a cura di Michele Rak, con testo italiano a fronte, Milano,
Garzanti, 1986.
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ANGELA ALBANESE
che gli permetta di trovare connessioni fra parole e immagini del tutto distanti e
dissimili fra loro (cfr. Black 1992: 115).
L’impiego insistito di metafore da parte di Basile è chiaro indizio che in tale uso,
per di più potenziato dall’esuberanza lessicale del dialetto napoletano, si riveli non
un divertito intento decorativo, quanto piuttosto la personale risposta dell’autore alla
poetica barocca e ad una concezione “interattiva” della metafora, secondo cui essa è
capace di creare nuove similarità, piuttosto che limitarsi ad esprimere similarità già
esistenti (Black 1992: 54-66). Lo ha già ribadito, fra gli altri, Giovanni Getto
scrivendo appunto che per Basile “non si tratta soltanto di un gioco, di un capriccio
verbale che trovi la sua giustificazione in se stesso, nel gratuito svolazzo e nella
variopinta tavolozza” (Getto 2000: 311, ma cfr. almeno anche Anceschi 1960;
Calcaterra 1961, Picone, Messerli 2004, Guaragnella 2011); si tratta piuttosto del
riflesso nella scrittura del modo di sentire barocco, di una nuova poetica che proprio
in questa figura retorica ritrova non solo il mezzo per creare meraviglia ma, più
problematicamente, una forma nuova di esercitare il pensiero che, non censurando i
rimandi e le ripetizioni, scatena di continuo l’immaginazione, da cui deriva una
costante elaborazione semantica. La metafora, avrebbe scritto Tesauro nel suo
trattato sull’arte dell’argutezza, è fra tutte le figure retoriche la più “ingegnosa” e
“acuta: però che l’altre quasi grammaticalmente si formano e si fermano nella
superficie del vocabulo, ma questa riflessivamente penetra e investiga le più astruse
nozioni per accoppiarle” (Tesauro 1978: 67). A una teoria “tensionale” della
metafora, lontana dalla teoria “nominale” aristotelica - intesa come semplice
fenomeno di sostituzione di un termine con un altro - rimanda anche l’indagine
ermeneutica di Paul Ricœur, per il quale la metafora “consiste in effetti in un errore
calcolato: assimila cose che non stanno insieme, ma, grazie a questa stessa
incomprensione, fa sorgere una relazione di senso, fin qui non rilevata, tra termini
che la classificazione anteriore avrebbe impedito di mettere in comunicazione”
(Ricœur 1994: 150 e XXVII).
Se da questa prospettiva critica ci si sofferma ad osservare l’impalcatura stilistica
del Cunto de li Cunti, si comprende allora che il lavoro retorico di Basile, nel
generare metafore, iperboli, paronomasie, allusioni, sa restituire al lettore una
scrittura seducente e vigorosa il cui intento non è solo quello puramente decorativo di
dare una forma a un contenuto, o di sovrapporre un ornatus al senso letterale già
perfettamente compiuto in sé, ma di dare corpo alle parole, “di plasmare
l’immaginazione facendone parole” (Hillman 1983: 358). Ciò vuol dire che le figure
stilistiche generate dall’azione retorica diventano esse stesse vera sostanza del testo,
annullando di fatto la sterile illusione dicotomica di un significato separato dal
significante.
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rime, che per lo più il tedesco è impotente a riprodurre” (cfr. Imbriani 1875: 452-454,
ma si veda anche Sorrentino 2012). Ma lo sapevano bene anche i traduttori italiani
del Cunto, primo fra tutti Benedetto Croce, alla cui versione del 1925, la prima in
forma integrale, va il merito di aver rimesso letteralmente in vita il testo, dopo il
prolungato silenzio a cui lo aveva destinato per tutto l’Ottocento l’Italia
risorgimentale e postunitaria.
Ci si soffermerà qui di seguito su qualche esempio di traduzioni di proverbi e di
metafore basiliane facendo riferimento proprio alla versione italiana di Croce, e
comparandone il progetto traduttivo, le scelte stilistiche, di poetica e le strategie
adottate con quelle della studiosa americana Nancy Canepa, autrice nel 2007 della
più recente versione inglese del Cunto. La scelta di mettere a confronto, attraverso
pochi esempi, la resa di proverbi e metafore di Croce e di Canepa è dettata non certo
dall’intenzione di un giudizio comparativo che evidenzi la bont di una versione
rispetto all’altra, ma dalla più concreta esigenza di comprendere come il tempo
storico delle traduzioni e le differenti poetiche dei due traduttori abbiano indirizzato
in modi del tutto diversi le loro scelte (cfr. Albanese 2013).
Ma partiamo da Croce, del quale non si può tacere la profonda conoscenza
dell’opera di Basile, attestata, fra l’altro, gi nel 1891 dal tentativo, limitato a sole
due giornate, di edizione dell’opera in dialetto napoletano, oltre che da numerosi
interventi critici, fra cui l’importante monografia contenuta nei Saggi sulla
letteratura italiana del Seicento del 1911 e la lunga e densa introduzione che il
filosofo premette alla traduzione del 1925. Qui Croce si preoccupa di rendere
esplicito il proprio progetto traduttivo:
[…] e sono stato fedelissimo alle parole del testo, cercando di non scemare la quantità, e di
alterare il meno possibile la qualità, delle immagini che contengono; ma mi son condotto con
piena libertà di rifacimento verso la sintassi, che nel Basile è difettosa e spesse volte pessima
[…]. Ho resistito alla tentazione, alla quale altri sarebbe soggiaciuto, di sostituire per
equivalenza agli idiotismi napoletani vocaboli e frasi dell’uso fiorentino vivo; e mi sono
studiato di lasciare al libro, non solo tutti i suoi ornati barocchi, ma anche un certo sapore
napoletanesco. (Basile 2001: XXVI)
Seppure fermo nel proposito dichiarato di fedeltà alle parole del testo, sì che vi
resti forte l’impronta della sua napoletanità, si impone per Croce l’obbligo di
intervenire “con piena libertà di rifacimento” sulla sintassi, che egli giudica
“difettosa” e “pessima”. Già nel suo saggio del 1911 aveva lamentato le costruzioni
sintattiche gonfie e sovrabbondanti così frequenti in Basile, scrivendo che i cunti
sono “capricciosamente ornati” di “ricami e frange”, e che “metafore stravaganti,
equivoci e giochetti di parole, allusioni, enumerazioni, sinonimie scherzose, si
succedono e s’intrecciano senza posa” (Croce 1911: 56).
Anche Canepa è studiosa di Basile attenta e di lunga data: la sua frequentazione
con l’opera dello scrittore napoletano è confluita nell’importante studio monografico
sul Cunto e la nascita del racconto fiabesco (1999), in contributi critici (cfr. almeno
2002, 2003, 2004) e, nel 2007, nella traduzione integrale del testo. Un’operazione,
questa, che Jack Zipes nella sua prefazione non ha esitato a definire “a prodigious
accomplishment” (Basile 2007: XIV) e a cui riconosce l’indubbio merito di aver
contribuito in maniera decisiva alla conoscenza di un testo poco noto nella cultura
angloamericana, se si pensa che la traduzione più recente era ancora quella di Penzer
del 1932, basata sulla versione di Croce.
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Allo slittamento del piano semantico e figurale del proverbio inglese che, nelle
sue forme più ricorrenti, restituisce immagini di galline e pesci, fa da controcanto la
traduzione di Canepa, ancora una volta aderente al testo di partenza e all’ordine di
significato del proverbio originale.
Coerentemente con quanto dichiarato dai due traduttori nell’iniziale progetto
traduttivo, la resa dei proverbi conferma un’evidente divergenza nelle strategie
adottate: del tutto uniformata al testo di partenza quella di Canepa, e fortemente
stranierizzante, e invece alla ricerca della forma bella e della compattezza stilistica
quella di Croce, che a tal fine non disdegna di prendersi qualche libertà con il testo di
Basile, sottoponendolo a piccoli aggiustamenti e zeppe, “togliendo e aggiungendo e
variando dove l’arte ciò richieda” (Croce 1946: 161).
Proviamo ora a soffermarci su alcuni passaggi dell’opera in cui ricorrono
espressioni metaforiche per verificare se, anche in questo caso, vi sia coerenza fra le
dichiarazioni d’intenti dei traduttori e le strategie effettivamente messe in atto. Il
primo esempio è tratto dalla fiaba La palomma (La colomba, II, 7), e il momento è
quello finale in cui le disavventure di una coppia d’innamorati, separati dalle
avversità, si risolvono felicemente con una bella festa di nozze. Così Basile chiude il
racconto:
E, cossì decenno e scomputa la festa, iettero a corcarese e, pe confermare lo stromiento fatto de
la nova fede promessa, ‘nce fece fermare dui testemonie e li travaglie passate fecero chiù
saporite le guste presente […] (Basile 1986: 392, corsivo nostro)
dove l’audace allusione metaforica è a quei “dui testemonie”, ossia ai testicoli
dello sposo che, autentici testimoni del patto nuziale, ne suggellano meglio di
chiunque altro la validit , diventando i protagonisti della notte di nozze. Com’è facile
intuire, la metafora sessuale, innescata dall’uso figurato dell’espressione “far firmare
due testimoni”, è qui rafforzata dal gioco di parole testimoni/testicoli, che Basile si
diverte a costruire ricorrendo ad un minimo slittamento fonetico. Questa la versione
di Croce:
E, terminato il festino, andarono a letto; e il principe, per confermare il rogito della nuova fede
promessa, volle che fosse firmato da due testimoni, e i travagli passati fecero più saporiti i gusti
presenti […]. (Basile 2001: 164, corsivo nostro)
Pur riportando integralmente la metafora sessuale basiliana, Croce si preoccupa
tuttavia di inserire una nota a piè pagina riferita a quei “due testimoni”,
commentando laconico che si tratta di un “bisticcio salace, che non ha bisogno di
spiegazione” (Basile 2001: 164). Una nota che smaschera i ferri del traduttore
svelandone la volontà censoria. Così invece Canepa:
When this was said and the festivities had ended, they went to bed, and to authenticate the
contract of their newly promised loyalty the prince had his two witnesses sign it. And the past
hardships made the present pleasures more tasty […]. (Basile 2007: 194, corsivo nostro)
Anche la versione di Canepa, che riprende alla lettera il testo di partenza, è
accompagnata da una nota a piè pagina che esplicita, senza l’imbarazzo e la reticenza
di Croce, il sottinteso riferimento di Basile ai “testicles” (Basile 2007: 194). Come
spesso accade in altri luoghi del Cunto, ci si trova anche in questo caso di fronte ad
espressioni metaforiche originali, non radicate in uno specifico tessuto culturale e
linguistico ma frutto dell’estro barocco dell’autore napoletano; la loro resa in un’altra
lingua non comporta perciò particolari difficoltà traduttive, potendo il traduttore –
come qui fanno Croce e Canepa – limitarsi ad assicurare nell’altra lingua almeno il
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5. Le traduzioni di Croce e di Canepa, seppure qui limitate alla sola resa delle
espressioni figurate, bene esemplificano come lo spettro dei modi del tradurre possa
risultare assai differente a seconda che si privilegi una traduzione target-oriented o
source-oriented. Se maggiore affinità fra i due traduttori si è riscontrata nella resa
delle metafore basiliane, con una comune aderenza al livello lessicale e semantico
del testo di partenza, pur fatto salvo un più mirato intento censorio di Croce, la
traduzione dei proverbi ha invece chiaramente delineato una diversa strategia messa
in atto e coerentemente sostenuta, come si è visto, da un ben definito progetto
traduttivo iniziale.
La scelta di Canepa di tradurre i proverbi, i modi di dire e le espressioni
metaforiche va nella direzione della lettera del testo di partenza e, nel caso specifico
dei proverbi, trascura l’accomodante ricerca dei loro equivalenti certo più familiari
alla lingua e alla cultura d’arrivo, privilegiando il livello lessicale e semantico
dell’originale a scapito di quello fonetico, retorico, metrico e ritmico (cfr. Albanese
2010 e 2013).
Croce d’altra parte non è certo un traduttore invisibile, e i suoi interventi sul testo
basiliano portano in realtà tutto il peso della sua poetica e della sua ideologia;
innumerevoli altri passaggi si potrebbero riportare a evidenziare un procedimento di
pressoché costante pulizia del testo da termini da lui avvertiti come scurrili. Al
traduttore, sostiene convinto Croce, una volta che abbia colto il tono e lo spirito del
testo di partenza dovr essere lasciata “larga libert di variazioni e di eliminazioni e
di aggiunte, dov’egli le senta necessarie” (Croce 1946: 149, ma sulla traduzione
crociana si veda anche Albanese 2012a: 119-145 e 2012c: 87-117).
Nel caso di Croce e di Canepa siamo di fronte a riflessioni differenti e a specifiche
motivazioni, scelte stilistiche e di poetica che hanno sollecitato soluzioni diverse. È
difficile dire, in un caso o nell’altro, se si tratti delle scelte giuste, così com’è difficile
dire, più in generale, se ci sia un modo giusto di tradurre il linguaggio figurato. Si
potrà essere liberi di giudicare più o meno riuscite e più o meno adeguate le
traduzioni analizzate, ma quello che interessa per una critica che davvero possa dirsi
“produttiva” (cfr. Berman 2000) è evidenziare che qui le scelte dei due traduttori
rispondono in maniera conforme a precise intenzioni di poetica traduttiva, esplicitate
peraltro in un dettagliato progetto. “Il traduttore ha tutti i diritti, se agisce lealmente”
(Berman 2000: 77), che è anche dire che il traduttore è leale se dichiara quello che fa;
e la lealt dei traduttori consiste qui nell’aver adottato delle scelte del tutto coerenti
con la loro posizione e con il loro progetto traduttivo (Berman 2000: 59-61). Sulla
necessità della coerenza come imperativo morale per il traduttore si era soffermato
già Schleiermacher il quale, dopo aver delineato i due atteggiamenti diversi nei
confronti del testo da tradurre, quello etnodeviante o straniante e quello
addomesticante, concludeva avvertendo che “le due vie sono talmente diverse che,
imboccatane una, si deve percorrerla fino in fondo con il maggiore rigore possibile”
(Schleiermacher 1993: 153).
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Croce, B. (1911) Saggi sulla letteratura italiana del Seicento, Bari: Laterza, 3-103.
Croce, B. (1946) Intorno a un’antologia di traduzioni italiane delle liriche di Goethe, in
Goethe, 4ª ed., II, Bari: Laterza.
Galiani, F. (1827) Del dialetto napoletano, in Scelta di scrittori ne’ dialetti del Regno delle
Due Sicilie e nella lingua maccaronica latina, I, Napoli: pe’ tipi della Minerva, 1-279.
Getto, G. (2000) Il Barocco letterario in Italia [1962], Milano: Mondadori.
Guaragnella, P. (2011) ‘Motti, sentenze e proverbi “in novella”. Su Lo cunto de li cunti di
Giambattista Basile’, Verbis 2, 123-142.
Hillman, J. (1983) Re-visione della psicologia, tr. A. Giuliani, Milano: Adelphi.
Imbriani, V. (1875) ‘Il gran Basile’, Giornale napoletano di filosofia e lettere, II, 429-459.
Meschonnic, H. (1976), ‘Les proverbes, actes de discours’, Revue des Sciences Humaines 41
(163), 419-430.
Paulhan, J. (2000), L’esperienza del proverbio, tr. R. Campi, a cura di P. Bagni, Bologna: Il
Capitello del Sole.
Picone, M.; Messerli, A. (eds) (2004), Giovan Battista Basile e l’invenzione della fiaba,
Ravenna: Longo.
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373
Necessity teaches the naked woman to spin: Translating
Icelandic idioms
SILVIA COSIMINI
Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna
Abstract: The Icelandic language sports a vast variety of idioms (orðatiltæki) widely
used in everyday speech, in literature and by the media. Native speakers of Icelandic
are aware of the richness of this corpus and are constantly encouraged to keep it
alive: newspapers feature dedicated columns, and every week a different expression is
printed and explained on milk cartons. A good grasp of these orðatiltæki is considered
a prerequisite for mastering Icelandic as a foreign language. Icelandic idioms have
been classified by linguists, as Friðjónsson and Sveinsson, in five different groups.
They are all quite clearly defined as being different from proverbs (málshættir), which
do not require structural connection. They often preserve extinct morphological
features, i.e. inflectional endings now lost, and are phonetically relevant, highlighted
by alliteration or rhyming schemes. Some of them originate from the Bible or other
religious writings; some others stem from Icelandic medieval literature, like the sagas,
or give a vivid picture of Icelandic society and material culture. In various degrees
they all pose problems of recognition and translation into the target language. The
paper will give a brief survey of the classification and usage of Icelandic orðatiltæki
with examples taken from a prominent Icelandic author and their translation into
English and into Italian. The paper will then attempt to suggest possible translation
strategies, focusing also on a new approach whose aim is to maintain − where
feasible − the culture-specific material in the target language(s).
Keywords: Icelandic, idioms, translation, Halldór Laxness.
1. Introduction
The present paper is divided in two main parts. The first part aims to give a brief
overview of Icelandic idioms, and to define their role in Icelandic language and
society; I will then indicate how they are classified by Icelandic linguists, making use
of examples in both English and Italian from the novels of the celebrated Icelandic
author, Halldór Laxness, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955. In the
second part a more practical approach will deal with their translation. As a full-time
translator of Icelandic literature, I know all too well how frustrating it can be to
admit defeat when confronted with a seemingly untranslatable idiom; however, it is
stimulating to look for and – in some cases – find solutions that reflect the cultural
context of the original Icelandic expression while still making sense in Italian.
2. Icelandic Idioms
The Icelandic language offers a remarkable variety of idioms that are widely used
in everyday speech, in the media, and in literature. To take just one recent example,
the title of an article on the Icelandic state radio and television website (published on
www.ruv.is, November 12th, 2012): bjórinn þótti úlfur í sauðargæru means literally
“the beer was thought to be a wolf in sheep’s skin”, that it to say, something
dangerous lay behind its deceptively innocuous appearance. The image can be found
both in the New Testament (“beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s
Cosimini, Silvia, ‘Necessity teaches the naked woman to spin: Translating Icelandic idioms’, in Donna R. Miller;
Enrico Monti (eds) Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative Language, Bologna, CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del
CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 375-384.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
clothing”, Gospel of Matthew 7, 15; it is also falsely attributed to Aesop as fable 451
in the Perry Index), and reflects a common European cultural background that should
not pose too many problems in English or Italian translations. The same cannot be
said about another recent example from an Icelandic newspaper (published on
Víkurfréttir, September 16th, 2012): að leggjast undir feld literally means “to lie
down under a fur”, while metaphorically it means “to think deeply about something”,
“to meditate on something”. The cultural reference behind this image is familiar to
most Icelanders: it derives from a reputedly historical episode, in which Þorgeir of
Ljósavatn, a medieval chieftain, has to decide whether the whole nation should
convert from paganism to Christianity in the year 1000 and he is said to have laid for
a whole day under a fur to meditate (as related in Landnámabók, or the Book of
Settlements, I, 16). For native speakers, the expression has a rich cultural resonance
and represents a link with the past which is impossible to recreate in translation: the
allusion is culturally specific to Iceland and its implications are hard for a non-native
speaker or reader to fully appreciate (Cacciari, Tabossi 1993: 24). In the following
discussion idioms that underline the distinctiveness of Iceland and its culture will be
examined.
As in any other language, Icelandic idioms (Icelandic: orðatiltæki) are defined as
phrasal units whose meaning cannot be derived from the ordinary meanings of their
syntactic components (Pulman 1993: 249). They are characterised formally by
polilexicality, that is, they consist of at least two words. They all need syntactical
contextualisation, and thus clearly differ from proverbs (Icelandic: málshættir),
which are micro texts, or independent assertions, that do not require any structural
connection to be understood (Sverrisdóttir 2009: 151). An idiom, on the other hand,
is recognised as a configuration – that is, a unitary expression which has a meaning
beyond that of its constituent elements (Cacciari, Tabossi 1993: 6). In this sense, the
“literal meaning” of the idiom, whenever available, usually has little or nothing to do
with the idiomatic meaning (D’Arcais 1993:79). Idioms are also characterised by
cohesiveness – they have a fixed meaning and users perceive them as a single entity.
But the most important feature for a nation such as Iceland, which has always relied
on language to assert its own identity, is that idioms often violate grammar and in
some instances do not respect grammatical, syntactical or lexical rules. They might
preserve archaic declension stems, for example, or reveal unorthodox overlapping of
noun declensions, or deploy obsolete terms. They can diverge from lexical,
morphological or syntactic norms, or they can retain obsolete formal features, and
thus bear witness to the history and the development of the Icelandic language.
Idioms are very important for Icelanders. In an extremely language-conscious
nation, they are a source of pride and pleasure, and worthy of being looked after with
care and attention. Widely deployed in the media, in advertising and wordplay, they
also appear in everyday speech, where they do not seem to signal any particular
socio-linguistic stratum or idiolectal register. In the Icelandic media discourse that
followed the 2008 economic crisis there was a striking increase in the use of idioms
relating to seamanship, as if the lives of nineteenth-century fishermen had suddenly
become more comprehensible to modern, urban Icelanders who had fallen victims to
the global recession (see for example the chapter titles in Jóhannesson 2009). In the
preface to his book, Sveinsson (1993: 7) says that idioms are “the spice of the
language”: they are regularly used to enrich a narrative, their metaphorical colour
rendering it more engaging. Many native speakers of Icelandic are fully aware of the
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SILVIA COSIMINI
richness of this corpus and are constantly encouraged to keep it alive: for example, a
national dairy products company undertook a campaign to refresh national awareness
of idioms by printing and explaining a different figurative expression on one litre
cartons of milk every week. In some other countries, like Great Britain for example,
photographs of missing children are printed on milk cartons; it would be interesting
to explore the notion that idioms may in some sense be seen as the missing children
of the Icelandic linguistic culture.
To explain it more clearly, let’s turn to one of the texts on the cartons, the idiom
“að verða ekki um sel”, which literally means “to dislike seals”, while its underlying
idiomatic meaning is “to become uneasy”, “to dislike the look of something”. It
derives from the folkloric notion that seals can be dangerous creatures, appearing
suddenly and without noise and thus sometimes frightening people. Moreover, seals
are supposed to have a disturbing, almost human appearance, that has been a source
of unease to Icelanders since settlement times. For reasons that are far from clear, it
has always been a disquieting experience for an Icelander to look into the eyes of a
seal. The figurative meaning is therefore driven by a conceptual metaphor that exists
independently as part of Icelanders’ overall conceptual system (Gibbs 1993: 69).
There is no way to establish how ‘dead’ this idiom is, whether native speakers
immediately understand the association with ancestral fear of seals. It is certainly
very challenging, if not impossible or out of place, to preserve the same image in the
target languages, no matter how eager the translator is to retain the image of this life-
changing encounter with a seal – and it is no easier to find a zoomorphic equivalent,
as exemplified below with excerpts taken from Laxness’ novels. Neither the English
translators nor myself succeeded in doing so, opting each time for a different
solution, as suggested by the context:
ST: [...] sér meiri kandís, þá fór honum ekki að verða um sel. Tvær sneisafullar grautarskálar
– einn kvenmaður [...] (Laxness 1934-35: 65)
TT1: [...] more sugar to eat with it, he began to feel a certain misgiving. Two basins full to the
brim – one woman [...] (Laxness 2008: 53)
TT2: [...] e si staccò altro zucchero, allora cominciò a vedersela brutta. Due terrine piene –
una donna [...] (Laxness 2004a: 65).
None of the solutions seems as colourful or evocative as the original. A further
example from the same book shows how translators did not stick to the same solution
in all occurrences:
ST: [...] og þá fór nú Bjarti ekki að verða um sel, hann hafði fylgst með öllu sem gerðist, en
nú [...] (Laxness 1934-5: 172)
TT1: [...] Bjartur began to feel rather worried; he had followed everything with great interest
so far, but this [...] (Laxness 2008: 129)
TT2: [...] E a Bjartur la cosa smise di piacergli, aveva seguito tutto quello che era accaduto ma
adesso [...] (Laxness 2004a: 157)
Another novel prompts more examples:
ST: [...] ofmikið fransbrauð. Mér fór ekki að verða um sel, ég var óvanur að sjá kvenfólk og
fanst það [...] (Laxness 1957: 170).
TT1: [...] too much white bread. I began to feel a little uncomfortable; I was not used to
seeing women and always found [...] (Laxness 2000: 130);
TT2: [...] troppo pane bianco. Cominciai a sentirmi un po’ a disagio, non ero avvezzo a
vedere donne e lo trovavo [...] (Laxness 2007: 187).
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TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
2.2.1. Orðtök
Orðtök (figures of speech) are fixed idioms used metaphorically or figuratively,
with their overall meaning not corresponding to the meaning of their individual
constituent elements. Sverrisdóttir (2009: 162) notes that in German they are known
as idiomatische Redewendungen, or Idiome.
For example, “að vera heill á húfi” means “to be safe”, “to be unhurt”, but literally
it means “to be in one piece, undamaged on the ship” where húfur is part of a ship.
The expression occurs for the first time in a medieval saga and over time has become
a standardised expression. This example illustrates of one of the most prominent
features of Icelandic idioms, which can sometimes help the poor translators to
identify them, in that the two words are linked by alliteration, a common feature of
Germanic poetry. Again, in both the English and the Italian version the underlying
image of the ship is lost, the idiom has been neutralised and translated by means of
equivalent expressions, as we can see from the following examples:
ST: [...] en þó kom þar að lokum að hann stóð heill á húfi uppá eystri bakka Jökulsár á Heiði
[...] (Laxness 1934-35: 145)
TT1: [...] but finally the moment arrived when he was standing safe and sound on the eastern
bank of glacier river [...] (Laxness 2008: 110)
TT2: [...] ma alla fine si ritrovò tutto intero sulla riva orientale del Jökulsá á Heidi [...]
(Laxness 2004a: 133)
ST: Hér sérðu hana dóttur þína heila á húfi, sagði konan hreykin að hafa vakið þetta [...]
(Laxness 1934-35: 173)
TT1: Here you see your daughter sound in wind and limb”, said Gudny, proud of having
recalled this object [...] (Laxness 2008: 130)
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SILVIA COSIMINI
TT2: Guarda un po’ qua tua figlia viva e vegeta, disse la donna orgogliosa di averla [...]
(Laxness 2004a: 158).
In most cases, the alliterative pair of terms has been in fact translated with a figure
of speech, by transferring it into the ‘Pairs’ category (see 2.2.4.).
2.2.2. Talshættir
A second category identifies talshættir (phrases, or sayings; Redewendungen in
Sverrisdóttir 2009: 162) or fixed idioms: their meaning is not metaphorical but
somewhat altered or unusual; their meaning can nevertheless be inferred from the
meaning of the constituent elements.
“Þegar öllu er á botninn hvolft” for example, means literally, “when everything
has been turned onto the bottom/upside down”, that is to say, “when the matter has
been considered thoroughly”, or “everything considered”. It relates to the work of
coopers, whose final task was to make the bottom of a barrel, which could only be
fixed and secured when the barrel had been turned upside down. In the following
examples, none of the translators has managed, or chosen, to retain the barrel image:
ST: [...] ætli maður komist ekki nær sköpunarverkinu í fabúlunni en sönnu sögunni þegar öllu
er á botninn hvolft. (Laxness 1968: 99)
TT1: [...] I wouldn’t be surprised if one comes closer to the Creation in the fable than in the
true story, when all’s said and done. (Laxness 2004b: 80)
TT2: [...] magari ci si avvicina alla creazione più nelle favole che nel racconto vero, in fin dei
conti. (Laxness 2011: 91)
Another example:
ST: [...] á myndunum, að það er, þegar öllu er á botninn hvolft, alseinginn raunverulegur
munur á Frakklandi og [...] (Laxness 1934-35: 145)
TT1: [...] to the conclusion, after minute and conscientious comparison of the pictures, that
there is no fundamental difference between France [...] (Laxness 2008: 426)
TT2: [...] delle fotografie, che quando si va a studiar la cosa per il dritto e per il rovescio,
non c’è affatto alcuna reale differenza tra la Francia [...] (Laxness 2004a: 511).
379
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
2.2.4. Samstæður
The fourth category comprises samstæður (pairs; Zwillingspaare; are called
orðapör by Sverrisdóttir 2009: 165), pairs of words used repeatedly in fixed form
and meaning. Linked by a conjunction they appear in a sequence which cannot be
changed. Usually their meaning is quite transparent, though there might be cases in
which there is a metaphorical element. They often feature alliteration or internal
rhyme.
“Í blíðu og stríðu”, “through thick and thin”, “in good times and bad”. The
association between blítt (neuter of adj. blíður, “tender, mild”) and strítt (neuter of
adj. stríður, “hard, strong, difficult”) can be found in medieval literature and is
probably elliptical, referring to the weather; the neutral forms of the adjectives are
apparently used here as nouns. We have an example in:
ST: [...] að það er gamalær sem hefur skrölt með mér í blíðu og stríðu, hún er beint undan hrút
frá honum [...] (Laxness, 1934-35: 162)
TT1: [...] It’s an old ewe that’s pegged along with me through thick and thin; she was sired
by one of the late reverend Gudmundur’s tups [...] (Laxness 2008: 410)
TT2: [...] che c’è una vecchia pecora che mi ha accompagnato nel bene e nel male, è stata
appunto montata da un ariete [...] (Laxness 2004a: 489)
A more interesting example:
ST: [...] Strandbáturinn athugar sinn gáng í blíðu og stríðu, smýgur milli fjallanna miðfirðis
[...] (Laxness 1931-2: 9)
TT1: The mail boat toiled meditatively onward through thick weather and clear, crept
among the mountains in mid-fjord [...] (Laxness 1973: 11) [which makes the concept behind
the image explicit]
TT2: Il battello postale in servizio lungo la costa orientale islandese, arranca prudentemente
attraverso la nebbia compatta. Orientandosi sulle stele e sulle rocce a picco, s’insinua nel
fiordo di Axlar […] (Laxness 1958: 5) [the Italian translation from 1958 has completely lost
the pair]
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SILVIA COSIMINI
vet om inte Eyolf kommer sig’ och väntade otåligt i detta hopp, och överskylde bristerna
under tiden. (Fröberg Idling, 2006: 33)
TT: […] nel suo libro Skáldatími (Vita di poeta) sui viaggi compiuti nell’Unione Sovietica di
Stalin, il premio Nobel islandese Halldór Laxness scrive: “Molti – e io ero tra questi –
temevano anche che, mettendo a nudo l’inconfutabile miseria del socialismo staliniano nel
paese socialista ‘per eccellenza’, si sarebbe danneggiato il socialismo nel mondo in generale.
Ci si diceva: ‘prima o poi le cose cambieranno’ e si aspettava impazienti, animati dalla
speranza, coprendo, nel frattempo, le magagne. (Fröberg Idling 2010: 29-30).
381
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
the requirements of the target-oriented translation. Some idioms are, as we have seen,
in their very essence Icelandic, and it would be a great pity if they were to be lost in
translation. Idioms should not always be a crux desperationis.
There’s no way to know if for most idioms the meanings of the constituent words
and their internal structure are still current and functional in the process of
understanding and interpreting. They may be obsolete, but their visual impact, their
image, remains and offers, at least in some cases, a taste of Icelandic culture.
Although a risk aversion strategy is sometimes preferable, I am persuaded that a
translator should try wherever possible to give readers some sense of the source
world – to use the idiom in order to provide a fleeting glimpse of an alien reality,
without stumbling into distracting exoticism. If a metaphor is the product of our own
culture (Lakoff, Johnson 2003: passim), a translator can enable readers to engage
with a different culture through its metaphors, thereby providing some sense of how
Icelanders organise their conceptual and lexical knowledge, and establishing
connections across domains. As Berman (2003: 54) says, the equivalent of a locution
is not a substitute for it; on the other hand, speakers possess a so-called
“consciousness of a proverb” that enables them to recognise immediately the new
formulation. As we know, unlike actual words, idioms have a syntactic structure that
may be fossilised, but on occasions is very flexible and open to modification
(Cacciari, Tabossi 1993: xii). They vary considerably in the extent to which they may
sustain lexical substitutions, syntactic operations, and semantic productivity
(1993: 19) and we have many examples of semantically productive idiom variants in
everyday conversation and in the media (1993: 8). Translators can therefore take
advantage of possible variations or internal modifications to try and create – where
opportunity arises – a new idiomatic version, provided that it fits the context and
satisfies the usual requirements of acceptability in the target language. Translating is
a form of interpretation, as we know, and each translation is the result of personal
strategies and choices; but I have always thought that it could be interesting if a
nearly dead or opaque idiom in the source language could generate another such
idiom in the target language. There may be very few possibilities/opportunities for
this – and the results may be speculative and subject to strict evaluation of context
and acceptability. Yet if, for example, “að hverfa eins og dögg fyrir sólu” (“disappear
like dew in front of the sun”; where the accusative -u ending of the word sól, “sun” is
a fossilised form which has been lost in modern Icelandic) appears to have an exact
equivalent in the Italian “sciogliersi come neve al sole” (“melt like snow in the sun”),
we should nevertheless realise that in Iceland the sun does not melt snow as rapidly,
and might thus prefer the perfectly acceptable (to my ears at least) alternative
“sciogliersi come rugiada al sole” (“melt like dew in the sun”).
In “vera eins og álfur út úr hól”, “to be like an elf out of his hillock”, meaning “to
be at a loss, perplexed in a foreign environment”, the simile derives from the fact that
outside their traditional folkloric place of residence, elves are considered to be
largely incapable of survival. The idiom can probably be translated as “essere come
un pesce fuor d’acqua” (“to be like a fish out of water”), but I see no contextual
problem with “essere come un elfo fuori dal poggio” (to be like an elf out of his
hillock”). Again, would it be reasonable to have a “ciliegina sulla torta” (a cherry on
top of the cake”) in Iceland, instead of a “rúsinan í pylsuendanum” (“the raisin at the
end of the sausage”)? I find “leccare la morte da un guscio” (“to lick death from the
shell”; “að lepja dauðann úr skel”) more striking than “vivere di stenti” (“to be on the
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References
Berman, A. (2003) La traduzione e la lettera o l’albergo nella lontananza [La traduction et
la lettre ou l’auberge du lointain, Paris: Seuil, 1999], a cura di G. Giometti, Macerata:
Quodlibet.
Burger, H.; Buhofer, A.; Sialm, A. (1982) Handbuch der Phraseologie, Berlin/New York: de
Gruyter.
Cacciari, C.; Tabossi, P. (eds) (1993) Idioms: Processing, Structure and Interpretation,
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Flores D’Arcais, G. (1993) ‘The comprehension and semantic interpretation of idioms’, in C.
Cacciari; P. Tabossi (eds) Idioms: Processing, Structure and Interpretation, Hillsdale,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 79-98.
Friðjónsson, J.G. (1997) Rætur málsins, Reykjavík: Íslenska bókaútgáfan.
Friðjónsson, J.G. (2006) Mergur málsins. Íslensk orðatiltæki: uppruni, saga og notkun,
Reykjavík: Mál og Menning.
Fröberg Idling, P. (2006) Pol Pots leende, Stockholm: Atlas.
Fröberg Idling, P. (2010) Il sorriso di Pol Pot, tr. L. Cangemi, Milano: Iperborea.
Gibbs, R.W. (1993) ‘Why idioms are not dead metaphors’, in C. Cacciari; P. Tabossi (eds)
Idioms: Processing, Structure and Interpretation, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, 57-76.
Halldórsson, H. (1958) Örlög orðanna: þættir um íslensk orð og orðtök,
Akureyri: Bókaforlag Odds Björnssonar.
Halldórsson, H. (1986) Ævisögur orða. Alþýðlegur fróðleikur um íslensk orð og orðtök,
Reyjavík: Almennabókafélag.
Hastrup, K. (2004) A Place Apart. An Anthropological Study of the Icelandic World [1998],
London/New York: Oxford University Press.
Jóhannesson, G.Th. (2009) Hrunið. Ísland á barmi gjaldþrots og upplausnar, Reykjavík:
JPV.
Lakoff G.; Johnson M. (2003) Metaphors We Live By [1980], Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press.
Laxness, H. (1931-1932) Salka Valka, Reykjavík: Vaka-Helgafell.
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384
Problemi di traduzione dei proverbi metaforici nei dizionari
bilingui francese-italiano
GIOVANNI TALLARICO
Università degli Studi di Verona
Tallarico, Giovanni, ‘Problemi di traduzione dei proverbi metaforici nei dizionari bilingui francese-italiano’ in
Donna R. Miller; Enrico Monti (eds) Tradurre Figure / Translating Figurative Language, Bologna, CeSLiC,
‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni’, ISSN 1979-932X, pp. 385-398.
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
2. I proverbi metaforici
Concentriamoci ora su un aspetto particolare dei proverbi: la metaforicità. Com’è
noto, la metafora (etimologicamente, dal greco meta pherein “portare al di l ,
trasferire”) consiste in una “sostituzione” resa possibile dalla somiglianza, da un
tratto semantico comune che diventa il tertium comparationis tra due elementi messi
in relazione.
Per lungo tempo, la metaforicità ha costituito il primo e più importante tratto
definitorio del proverbio2, secondo una tradizione che risale ad Aristotele.
Se Anscombre (2008; 2009) attribuisce uno statuto metaforico a tutti i proverbi,
per la maggioranza degli autori non tutti i proverbi sono necessariamente metaforici.
1
Vale la pena ricordare che per Anscombre (2003; 2005) i proverbi non sono expressions figées,
poiché la grande maggioranza ammette delle varianti.
2
Cf. Schapira (1999).
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GIOVANNI TALLARICO
Secondo Arnaud (1991) esistono infatti proverbi metaforici e altri che non lo sono: i
primi sono idiomatici (il loro senso non deriva dalla combinazione dei sensi delle
loro componenti), mentre i secondi vengono definiti letterali (è il caso di Tale padre
tale figlio)3. Nella prospettiva di Tamba (2000), esistono, da un lato, proverbi
metaforici e, dall’altro, proverbi che possiedono un senso letterale, composizionale o
frastico. Quando senso convenzionale e senso composizionale coincidono, avremo
un’interpretazione letterale del proverbio (sens phrastique); altrimenti, sarà
necessario ricorrere a un’interpretazione metaforica (sens formulaire).
Il punto di vista di Kleiber (2000) merita un’attenzione particolare. Secondo
l’autore, i proverbi del tipo Il calzolaio ha sempre le scarpe rotte o L’abito non fa il
monaco non rientrano tra i proverbi metaforici, poiché la relazione tra il senso
letterale e quello proverbiale è di tipo iponimico-iperonimico; al contrario, proverbi
del tipo “Chat échaudé craint l’eau froide”4 o Quando non c’è il gatto, i topi ballano
possono essere considerati realmente metaforici perché, rispetto a quelli del primo
tipo, il passaggio dal senso letterale al senso del proverbio necessita una traslazione
da un ambito non umano (nella fattispecie, animale) all’ambito umano (tuttavia,
rimane sempre necessaria un’elevazione da un tipo di situazione particolare a una di
livello molto generale). Nel nostro contributo, adotteremo questo criterio ristretto
(passaggio dall’ambito non umano all’ambito umano) per l’identificazione dei
proverbi metaforici.
Così come i proverbi non sono soltanto forme di un repertorio, ma costituiscono
modelli culturali che orientano i nostri comportamenti in base ai valori centrali in una
determinata società, così le metafore non sono solamente figure retoriche, bensì
strumenti per concettualizzare il mondo, veicoli di rappresentazioni culturali5.
Kövecses (2005) ci ricorda inoltre che la metafora non si realizza principalmente nel
linguaggio, ma nel pensiero: noi capiamo il mondo con le metafore, non ci limitiamo
a parlarne. Sebbene molte metafore si basino su esperienze umane “incarnate” (es.:
AFFETTO È CALORE, a causa della correlazione tra il caldo e l’amore genitoriale),
esistono anche metafore che non sono universali: ambiti astratti possono infatti
venire còlti in maniere diverse da cultura a cultura.
Stabilita la correlazione tra metafore e proverbi sul piano culturale e cognitivo,
dedichiamoci ora ai problemi di traduzione delle forme proverbiali.
3
Tuttavia, Schapira (1999: 67) osserva che i proverbi metaforici sono decisamente i più numerosi.
4
Letteralmente: “Il gatto che si è scottato teme l’acqua fredda”.
5
Cf. Dobrovolskij; Piirainen (2005).
6
Come ricorda Navarro Brotons (2010), la vicinanza tra due lingue non è una garanzia definitiva per
trovare un equivalente.
387
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
7
Cf. infra, par. 1 per i criteri definitori adottati da Anscombre.
8
Cf. infra, n. 1.
9
Cf. Sardelli (2010), la quale insiste sulle tecniche attanziali nella traduzione.
10
Cf. Anscombre (2000).
11
La ricerca automatica del cd-rom del Larousse non ha purtroppo permesso l’estrazione di proverbi.
Abbiamo quindi utilizzato questo dizionario esclusivamente come verifica per la traduzione di
proverbi già riscontrati nel corpus.
388
GIOVANNI TALLARICO
12
Cf. infra, par. 2.
13
Trattasi di un criterio intralinguistico: la presenza di varianti proverbiali nella lingua di partenza
andrà a illustrare tale criterio.
389
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
1. Petite pluie abat grand vent, basta un nonnulla per calmare le acque. G
“Il suffit parfois de peu de chose pour apaiser une grande querelle” (PR15).
Secondo Kleiber (2000: 46) questa frase è un detto se ci si limita al senso letterale
e meteorologico, ma funziona come proverbio se si carica di un senso figurato
relativo all’ambito umano.
A livello traduttivo, viene conservata l’equivalenza semantica ma non quella
ritmica16. Inoltre, la metafora meteorologica viene persa nella traduzione, che si
limita a una riformulazione e non costituisce un proverbio17.
2. Chien qui aboie ne mord pas, can che abbaia non morde. HP
Tous les chiens qui aboient ne mordent pas, can che abbaia non morde. G
“Les personnes qui menacent et manifestent leur colère ne sont pas les plus
dangereuses” (PR), del tutto analogo alla definizione offerta da GI per il proverbio
equivalente italiano: “Chi minaccia e strepita non fa danno”.
La variante citata da G (Tous les chiens qui aboient ne mordent pas) appare in due
edizioni del Dictionnaire de l’Académie française (1694 e 1762)18 ed è oggi desueta
in francese. Peraltro, questa forma desta qualche perplessità: simile a una premessa
maggiore di sillogismo, presenta un determinante restrittivo del soggetto (Tous) che
secondo Schapira (1999: 77) rischia di ridurne l’estensione e rendere l’espressione
non proverbiale.
Nella traduzione italiana, l’equivalenza semantica e metaforica vengono
conservate, così come quella ritmica (4+3).
Anche gli altri due dizionari del corpus presentano il medesimo proverbio, ma non
sono stati presi in considerazione: L lo riporta alla voce chien (quindi al di fuori del
nostro campione) e B non lo contrassegna con la marca “prov.”, confermando
l’ipotesi di Anscombre secondo cui il principio metalinguistico può rivelarsi
problematico.
3. Qui veut noyer son chien l’accuse de la rage = ogni pretesto è buono per
sbarazzarsi di qcn., qcs. HP
Secondo Arnaud (1991) si tratta di un enunciato interamente metaforico19,
chiosato da PR: “On juge sévèrement ce qu’on a décidé de supprimer, de détruire”.
G riporta la stessa locuzione, presentandola come citazione di La Fontaine20, con
la traduzione letterale “Chi vuole annegare il proprio cane lo accusa di rabbia”.
14
Indichiamo in neretto il lemma da cui è tratto il proverbio; nel caso dei verbi, ovviamente il lemma
corrisponderà alla forma all’infinito.
15
Per questo e gli altri dizionari citati, cf. bibliografia per le abbreviazioni.
16
In francese, notiamo infatti uno schema binario 4+4.
17
Cf. Ballard (2009: 43), a proposito della traduzione delle metafore proverbiali.
18
Cf. Gómez-Jordana (2012: 261-266).
19
Per uno studio dell’evoluzione diacronica di questo proverbio, cf. Gómez-Jordana (2012: 239-253).
20
Citazione apocrifa: la fonte autentica è Molière, Les femmes savantes.
390
GIOVANNI TALLARICO
Alla voce21 chien, G ripresenta la stessa locuzione, non la indica come proverbio e
propone la traduzione “Per sbarazzarsi di qlcu i pretesti non mancano mai”.
B, s.v. rage: “Quand on veut noyer son chien, on dit qu’il a la rage (o la gale), chi
il suo cane vuole ammazzare qualche scusa ha da trovare”.
L, s.v. rage: “Qui veut noyer son chien l’accuse de la rage, chi il suo cane vuole
ammazzare, qualche scusa deve pigliare”.
Per HP e G, non esiste quindi un proverbio italiano attestato che sia equivalente,
mentre, in altri lemmi (esclusi dal nostro campione), B e L trovano una
corrispondenza, fornendo due varianti diverse.
4. Tant va la cruche à l’eau qu’à la fin elle se casse, tanto va la gatta al lardo che
ci lascia lo zampino. HP
“À s’exposer un danger, on finit par le subir; trop exagérer, on finit par lasser”
(PR); e, per quanto riguarda il proverbio traducente: “Chi continua ad arrischiarsi in
cose pericolose o illecite alla fine viene colto sul fatto e le sconta tutte” (GI).
La metafora della cruche (brocca) viene quindi traslata nell’ambito zoologico, il
che rende l’equivalenza soltanto parziale.
6. À laver la tête d’un âne on y perd sa lessive, a lavar la testa all’asino si perde il
ranno e il sapone. G
“C’est perdre son temps que d’essayer d’instruire un imbécile, ou de vouloir faire
entendre raison un obstiné” (TLFi). Per l’equivalente italiano: “Chi compie una
buona azione verso persone volgari, rozze, villane, perde inutilmente il suo tempo e
quello che ha donato, senza che i beneficiati si accorgano di quanto è stato fatto per
loro” (LeM).
L’equivalenza proposta rispetta tutti i parametri adottati (categoriale, statistico22,
stilistico, semantico e ritmico).
7. Faute d’un point, Martin perdit son âne, per un punto Martin perdé la cappa. B
L’espressione non è stata rilevata nei dizionari monolingui o negli altri bilingui
esaminati; secondo Pitt no (1992), si tratta di una “locuzione che si usa per riferirsi a
chi, per un nonnulla, ha perduto una grande occasione, a chi vede sfuggirsi lo scopo
ormai raggiunto”. Non si tratta quindi di un proverbio.
8. Entre l’arbre et l’écorce il ne faut pas mettre le doigt = non bisogna ficcare il
naso negli affari altrui. HP
Entre l’arbre et l’écorce il ne faut pas mettre le doigt, tra moglie e marito non
mettere il dito. B/G/L
21
D’ora in avanti, abbreviamo s.v.
22
La frequenza del proverbio è infatti scarsa in entrambe le lingue.
391
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
“Il ne faut pas s’immiscer dans une affaire où il y a des intérêts contradictoires”
(PR); e, per l’italiano Tra moglie e marito non mettere il dito: “I rapporti d’una
coppia sono tanto complessi e segreti da non consentire a nessuno di giudicare e
quindi di intervenire in una lite, dato che di solito quello che appare è molto diverso
da quello che è” (LeM).
Risulta evidente che l’equivalenza proposta da HP è una falsa corrispondenza.
Gli altri tre dizionari propongono invece un proverbio autentico, con una
sfumatura “lessiculturale”, collegata all’ambito familiare: una metafora botanica
(arbre/écorce) si oppone a una di matrice familiare (moglie/marito).
10. Les arbres cachent la forêt, non bisogna perdersi nei dettagli. L
C’est l’arbre qui cache la forêt23, perdersi nei particolari senza avere una visione
d’insieme. HP
“Les détails empêchent de voir l’ensemble” (PR).
Viene offerta una parafrasi del proverbio francese: solo la dimensione stilistica
viene conservata, ma si perdono tutte le altre, a cominciare dalla metafora vegetale.
11. La bave du crapaud n’atteint pas la blanche colombe, raglio d’asino non sale
in cielo.
Il senso è quello indicato per l’italiano da LeM: “Le parole degli sciocchi, dei
miseri, dei ciarloni, non raggiungono mai i centri dove si governa, si comanda, si
decide”.
S.v. crapaud, B propone: “sentenza d’asino non va in cielo”, e G: “raglio d’asino
non giunge al cielo”; s.v. bave, L traduce: “l’elefante non sente il morso della pulce;
raglio d’asino non sale in cielo”.
Le traduzioni mostrano l’esistenza di tre varianti in italiano; ma, quel che più
conta, le metafore zoomorfe vengono conservate insieme agli altri livelli di senso.
Sulla base delle considerazioni precedenti, proponiamo una tabella riassuntiva che
presenta, per i 12 proverbi esaminati, le equivalenze riscontrate a livello categoriale,
lessicologico24, statistico, stilistico, semantico e ritmico.
23
Questa forma si avvicina molto a quella della frasi situazionali.
24
La dicitura “var.” sta a indicare la presenza di varianti proverbiali.
392
GIOVANNI TALLARICO
1. Can che abbaia non morde, chien qui aboie ne mord pas. HP
Rimandiamo alla sezione precedente per i commenti. Il proverbio soddisfa tutti i
parametri adottati.
25
Secondo Anscombre (2011) tale forma, ripresa in un dizionario di proverbi francesi (Maloux),
traduce alla lettera un proverbio inglese (The mill cannot grind with the water that is past) e non
costituisce un autentico proverbio francese.
393
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
4. L’acqua cheta rovina i ponti, il n’est pire eau que l’eau qui dort. HP/G/L
Acqua cheta rompe i ponti, il n’est pire eau que l’eau qui dort. B
“Nuoce maggiormente chi opera in silenzio, nascostamente” (GI).
Anche in questo caso, l’equivalenza proposta è adeguata a tutti i livelli.
6. La prima acqua è quella che bagna, il n’y a que le premier pas qui coûte. B
“Il momento del primo approccio con una persona o una realt spiacevole è quello
più difficile da affrontare e gestire; i primi mali e le prime disillusioni sono quelli che
più ci affliggono e tormentano” (Z).
In questo caso, notiamo che la frequenza del proverbio italiano è molto inferiore
alla forma corrispondente francese; inoltre, l’equivalenza semantica (a livello di
significato, prima ancora che metaforica) non viene soddisfatta.
9. L’arco sempre teso si spezza, il ne faut pas trop tirer sur la corde (o ficelle). G
Il proverbio italiano viene messo in relazione con un precetto francese; siamo
quindi al di fuori di una possibile equivalenza categoriale, con ciò che ne consegue
agli altri livelli.
Sul piano metaforico, si rimane nell’ambito del concetto di flessibilità, per cui
l’equivalenza semantica “tiene”.
394
GIOVANNI TALLARICO
10. Tanto fumo, poco arrosto = beaucoup de blablabla, mais rien de concret. HP
“Essere tutto fumo e niente arrosto, molto fumo e poco arrosto, più fumo che
arrosto, (fig.) si dice di persona o cosa che nonostante l’apparenza conclude o vale
poco” (GI).
Rileviamo innanzitutto che, tanto in italiano quanto in francese, non abbiamo a
che fare con un proverbio, piuttosto con un modo di dire: trattasi infatti di frase
situazionale e non generica26.
La presenza di varianti lessicologiche viene attestata dagli altri dizionari del
corpus:
B, s.v. fumo: “molto fumo e poco arrosto, molto fumo e poca brace, une belle
façade et pas grand-chose derrière”.
G, s.v. fumo: “molto fumo e poco arrosto!, ce n’est que du vent!”.
L. s.v. fumo: “molto (o tanto) fumo e poco arrosto, plus de bruit que de besogne”.
11. Meglio un asino vivo che un dottore morto, mieux vaut un chien vivant qu’un
lion mort. HP/L
Meglio un asino vivo che un dottore morto, un chien vivant vaut mieux qu’un lion
mort. G
Meglio un asino vivo che un dottore morto, chien en vie vaut mieux que lion
mort. B
“Non vale la pena di rovinarsi la salute con lo studio eccessivo” (GI); “Meglio una
cosa modesta disponibile che una cosa di valore di cui non è possibile usufruire”
(LeM).
Si tratta di un probabile calco e adattamento di un versetto dell’Ecclesiaste27,
divenuto poi proverbio28.
Malgrado le leggere varianti, il proverbio fornito in traduzione è equivalente sotto
tutti gli aspetti; sul piano metaforico, si rimane sempre nell’ambito zoomorfo.
12. Raglio d’asino non sale in cielo, la bave du crapaud n’atteint pas la blanche
colombe. HP
Raglio d’asino non sale al cielo, prière de fou n’est point écoutée. G
È quanto meno bizzarro che G non adotti la stessa traduzione di HP, dato che
l’abbiamo riscontrata nella sezione francese-italiano (v. 4.1.1.). La traduzione di G
non è comunque originale, trovandosi già in Arthaber (1929).
Ad ogni modo, i criteri adottati per misurare l’equivalenza vengono soddisfatti in
entrambi i dizionari.
13. A lavar la testa all’asino si perde il ranno e il sapone, à laver la tête d’un âne,
on perd sa lessive. G
Rimandiamo alla sezione precedente per i commenti. Il proverbio soddisfa tutti i
parametri adottati.
26
Paradossalmente, l’equivalenza categoriale viene quindi conservata benché nessuna delle due forme
sia un proverbio.
27
9.4: “Meglio un cane vivo che un leone morto”.
28
Classico esempio di proverbialisation, cf. Schapira (2000).
395
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
5. Conclusione
Quali risultati emergono dalla nostra analisi? Innanzitutto, non stupisce notare
come i parametri presi in considerazione si manifestino preferibilmente in blocco.
Tuttavia, nel caso di alcuni proverbi, soltanto certi valori vengono soddisfatti. È
l’ambito ritmico a risultare più problematico: quand’anche tutti gli altri valori siano
rispettati, la “coesione fonetica” del proverbio equivalente può far difetto, come nel
caso dei proverbi n. 529 (FR_IT) e n. 5-6 (IT_FR). A livello categoriale, se nel lato
FR_IT 4 proverbi su 12 non trovano un equivalente italiano (33%), nel lato IT_FR
sono soltanto 2 su 14 (14%). I proverbi che soddisfano tutti i criteri presi in esame
sono invece 6 nella sezione FR_IT (50%) e ben 9 nella sezione IT_FR (64%): il
“fondo comune” linguistico e culturale è senz’altro all’origine di questa sostanziale
contiguità tra le forme proverbiali francesi e italiane.
Per quanto riguarda la strategie traduttive, non abbiamo riscontrato né calchi né
falsi proverbi; nei casi di intraducibilità, si fa quindi ricorso esclusivamente alla
chiosa, conservando il solo livello semantico. Che cosa avviene rispetto alle metafore
proverbiali? L’ambito zoomorfo è prevalente in entrambe le sezioni; in italiano
spicca in particolare la figura dell’asino, con ben 4 proverbi30. In francese abbiamo
riscontrato anche diverse metafore vegetali (con la parola albero, soprattutto), mentre
in italiano è rilevante l’ambito naturale non animato (numerosi sono in particolare i
proverbi relativi all’acqua).
29
Un raro caso dove i valori ritmici sono meno “densi” nel proverbio di partenza.
30
Bloc-Duraffour (1977) recensisce 25 proverbi italiani dove figura questo animale.
396
GIOVANNI TALLARICO
Nel caso dei proverbi senza equivalente attestato, come abbiamo detto, i
lessicografi si sono mostrati assai cauti, e non hanno proposto né calchi né falsi
proverbi. Tuttavia, come osserva Kleiber (2010), i proverbi metaforici sono
traducibili direttamente (a differenza delle espressioni idiomatiche) senza penalizzare
la comprensione: l’elevazione verso il senso “iperonimico” o “sovraordinato” fa sì
che una traduzione letterale dei proverbi n. 5 e n. 10 francesi risulterebbe del tutto
leggibile in chiave metaforica, ossia: Bisogna rompere il nocciolo per avere la
mandorla e Gli alberi nascondono la foresta/ l’albero che nasconde la foresta. Pur
conservando il senso “costruito” del proverbio, questa scelta cauta e “conservatrice”
da parte dei dizionari non fornisce all’utente degli equivalenti “inseribili in discorso”
ed è di scarso aiuto per il traduttore. Una soluzione mista (chiosa esplicativa tra
parentesi abbinata a un calco o un falso proverbio) potrebbe forse salvaguardare sia
l’aspetto semantico sia quello pragmatico.
Infine, la presenza di varianti in entrambe le sezioni conferma il punto di vista di
Anscombre: la fissità formale non costituisce un tratto definitorio dei proverbi.
Bibliografia
Anscombre, J.-C. (2000) ‘Parole proverbiale et structures métriques’, Langages 139, 6-26.
Anscombre, J.-C. (2003) ‘Les proverbes sont-ils des expressions figées?’, Cahiers de
lexicologie 82 (1), 159-173.
Anscombre J.-C. (2005) ‘Les proverbes: un figement du deuxième type ?’ Linx 53, 17-33.
Anscombre, J.-C. (2008) ‘Les formes sentencieuses: peut-on traduire la sagesse populaire?’,
Meta: journal des traducteurs/Meta: Translators’ Journal 53 (2), 253-268.
Anscombre, J.-C. (2009) ‘La traduction des formes sentencieuses: problèmes et méthodes’,
in M. Quitout; J. Sevilla Muñoz (eds) Traductologie, proverbes et figements, Paris:
L’Harmattan, 11-35.
Anscombre, J.-C. (2011) ‘Classification des formes sentencieuses et traduction d’énoncés
parémiques’, in F. Baider et al. (eds) La marque en lexicographie, Limoges: Lambert-
Lucas, 67-86.
Arnaud, P.J.L. (1991) ‘Réflexions sur le proverbe’, Cahiers de lexicologie 59 (2), 6-27.
Ballard, M. (2009) ‘Le proverbe: approche traductologique réaliste’, in M. Quitout; J. Sevilla
Muñoz (eds) Traductologie, proverbes et figements, Paris: L’Harmattan, 37-53.
Bloc-Duraffour, C. (1977) Le ‘bestiaire’ des proverbes italiens, Université Paris X-Nanterre:
Centre de recherches de langue et littérature italiennes, Documents de travail et
prépublications n° 9.
Dobrovolskij, D.; Piirainen, E. (2005) Figurative Language: Cross-cultural and Linguistic
Perspectives, London: Elsevier.
Gómez-Jordana Ferary, S. (2012) Le proverbe: vers une définition linguistique. Étude
sémantique des proverbes français et espagnols contemporains, Paris: L’Harmattan.
Greimas, A.J. (1970) ‘Les proverbes et les dictons’, in A.J. Greimas, Du sens. Essais
sémiotiques, Paris: Seuil, 309-314.
Kleiber, G. (2000) ‘Sur le sens des proverbes’, Langages 139, 39-58.
Kleiber, G. (2010) ‘Proverbes: transparence et opacité’, Meta: journal des
Traducteurs/Meta: Translators’ Journal 55 (1), 136-146.
Kövecses, Z. (2005) Metaphor in Culture. Universality and Variation, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Navarro Brotons, M.L. (2010) ‘Traducción de paremías metafóricas: entre la opacidad y la
transparencia’, in P. Mogorrón Huerta; S. Mejri (eds) Opacidad, idiomaticidad,
traducción. Opacité, idiomaticité, traduction, Alicante: Universidad de Alicante, 285-
298.
397
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Dizionari
Il Boch. Dizionario Francese-Italiano, Italiano-Francese (2007) Bologna-Paris: Zanichelli-
Le Robert (= B).
Il Nuovo Dizionario Garzanti di Francese (2006) Novara: De Agostini (= G).
Il Nuovo Hachette-Paravia. Il dizionario francese-italiano, italiano-francese (2007) Torino:
Paravia (= HP).
Il Larousse Francese. I dizionari Sansoni (2006) Milano: Rizzoli Larousse (= L).
398
Authors
Autori
Arduini Stefano
Stefano Arduini is associate professor of General Linguistics at the University of
Urbino (Italy). He is member of the Executive Committee of the Nida Institute in
New York and co-director of the Nida School of Translation Studies. He is honorary
professor of the Universidad Nacional San Marcos in Lima (Perù), director of the
series Polus Rethorica (Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Roma) and member of the
Scientific Committee of the series Quintiliano, Retórica y Comunicación
(Universidad de la Rioja, Spagna). Arduini has published over eighty articles as well
as the following books: Sulla conversazione, 1987; Linguistica e scienze del
linguaggio, 1989; Retorica e traduzione, 1996; Prolegomenos a una teoría generál
de las figuras, 2000; La ragione retorica, 2004 (2012 Universidad de la Rioja),
Manuale di traduzione, 2007; he cos’è la linguistica cognitiva, 2008; Dizionario di
retorica, Covilhã (Portugal) 2010. He has edited: Translation and Rewriting, Koiné,
II, 1-2, 1995-1996; Translating Similarity and Difference (with Robert Hodgson)
2007; Metaphors, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura 2007; Paradoxes, Rome,
Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura 2011.
Agorni Mirella
Mirella Agorni is associate professor of English Language and Translation at the
Catholic University in Milan, and teaches in Brescia. Her research interests include
translation studies, linguistics and ESP. She has authored or edited works on
translation, Translating Italy for the Eighteenth Century (2002), La traduzione.
Teorie e Metodologie a confronto (2005), Travelling Texts/Reisende Texte:
Prospettive linguistiche e traduttologiche negli studi sul turismo (2012), Comunicare
la città. Turismo culturale e comunicazione. Il caso di Brescia (2012). She is
currently working on the language of tourism.
Albanese Angela
Educated as an Italianist, Angela Albanese holds a Ph.D. in Languages and
Comparative Cultures from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. She
focused her research on Italian Literature of the 16th and 17th century, and Theory of
Translation. Among her recent publications: ‘Un trattato cinquecentesco sulla
memoria: L’Arte del Ricordare di G.B. Della Porta’ (Giornale Storico della
Letteratura Italiana, 2011); ‘Teoria e pratica del tradurre in Benedetto Croce’ (Studi
di Estetica, 2011); Metamorfosi del Cunto di Basile. Traduzioni, riscritture,
adattamenti (Longo, 2012), and with F. Nasi (eds), I dilemmi del traduttore di
nonsense (Longo, 2012).
Béghain Véronique
Véronique Béghain is full professor at Bordeaux Montaigne University (Bordeaux,
France). She is the author of John Cheever (Paris, Belin, 2000), Les Aventures de
Mao en Amérique (Paris, P.U.F., 2008), chapters of books and articles on American
literature (Cheever, Baker, Pancake, Tuten, Cather), American art (Pop Art, Warhol,
Avedon), American opera (Bernstein, Adams) and translation. She has translated
works by Oscar Wilde (Véra ou les Nihilistes, Gallimard, 1996), Francis Scott
Fitzgerald (Contes de l’âge du ja , Gallimard, 2012), Charlotte Brontë (Villette,
TRADURRE FIGURE / TRANSLATING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Cosimini Silvia
Silvia Cosimini graduated in Philology of the Germanic Languages from the
University of Florence in 1992 and moved to Reykjavík for a research project at the
Árni Magnússon Institute, graduating in Icelandic at the University of Iceland in
1996. After some years’ experience in publishing and teaching, she has been working
for more than ten years as a literary translator from Icelandic into Italian, translating
the works of great Icelandic contemporary authors as Jón Kalman Stefánsson, Thor
Vilhjálmsson and the Nobel Prize Halldór Laxness. In 2011 she was awarded the
Italian National Prize for Translation.
De Dampierre-Noiray Ève
A former student at ENS Ulm, Eve de Dampierre-Noiray is ‘agrégée’ in Modern
Literature, and associate professor in Comparative Literature (Bordeaux Montaigne
University). Her work on 20th century European and Arabic literature (prose, essays,
poetry) examines the links between history and fiction, the image of Egypt and the
Arab world, but also translation in relation to poetical creation. She wrote De
l’Égypte à la fiction, published by Classiques Garnier in 2014.
Eco Umberto
Umberto Eco is an internationally renowned novelist, semiotician, philosopher, and
translation scholar. He is emeritus professor of the University of Bologna and
president of the Scuola Superiore di Studi Umanistici.
Godbout Patricia
Patricia Godbout is a professor of translation and comparative Canadian literature at
the Université de Sherbrooke (Québec, Canada). She has contributed a book and
many articles to the study of literary translation in Canada. She’s now working on a
monograph on fictional translators and interpreters in Québécois literature since
1960, as well as preparing the critical edition of Anne Hébert’s short stories and
plays. She is also a literary translator, mainly of essays on Canadian literature.
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AUTHORS / AUTORI
and Italian Futurism, on contemporary Russian women writers and the development
of gender studies in Russia. She is also interested in literary translation and has taken
part in several international conferences on this topic (the proceedings are in print).
Kamenická Renata
Renata Kamenická is associate professor and head of the English-language
Translation Programme at the Department of English and American Studies, Faculty
of Arts, Masaryk University. Her PhD dissertation in Translation Studies,
Explicitation and Translator’s Style (2007; Charles University, Prague), discussed
explicitation and implicitation as markers of a translator’s style in literary translation.
She has published mainly empirical papers covering various topics in literary
translation and methodology in translation pedagogy. Apart from the topic addressed
at the Tradurre Figure conference, her other current research interest concerns
personality-related approaches to translation. She has translated both fiction and non-
fiction from English into Czech.
Kövecses Zoltán
Zoltán Kövecses is professor of Linguistics in the Department of American Studies
at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. His main research interests include
the theory of metaphor and metonymy, the conceptualisation of emotions, the
relationship between cognition and culture, and the issue of cultural variation in
metaphor. He has taught widely at several American and European universities,
including the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (1994 and 1996), Rutgers
University (1987, 1989, 1990), University of Massachusetts at Amherst (1987),
Hamburg University (1992-1993), Odense University (2000), the University of
California at Berkeley (2003), and the University of Granada (2005). He is an
associate editor of the journals Cognitive Linguistics and Metaphor and Symbol, and
also serves on the advisory board of several scholarly journals, including the Review
of Cognitive Linguistics. His most important books include Language, Mind, and
Culture. A Practical Introduction (Oxford UP, 2006); Metaphor in Culture.
Universality and Variation (Cambridge UP, 2005); Metaphor. A Practical
Introduction (Oxford UP, 2002/2010); Metaphor and Emotion (Cambridge UP,
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Lindqvist Yvonne
Yvonne Lindqvist is an associate professor at the Institute for Interpretation and
Translation Studies, within the Department for Swedish and Multilingualism at the
University of Stockholm. Her research is interdisciplinary and it combines
Descriptive Translation Studies, Cultural Studies, Literary Studies and Linguistics.
Her thesis Translation as a Social Practice – Toni Morrison and The Harlequin
Series Desire in Swedish (2002) dealt with translation strategies within the high and
low prestige literary field, comparing and contextualising 3 translations of The Nobel
Prize Laureate Toni Morrison and 3 Harlequin romances published in Sweden during
the 1990s. It also contains a substantial analysis of the Swedish cultural and literary
field, aiming to pin down the habitus of the studied translators. Lindqvist’s later
research focuses on developing a multimodal translation analysis with culinary
literature as textual material and systemic functional grammar as a theoretical
framework. Her deep interest in the sociology of translation is put into work in her
most recent research project – on the meeting of literary peripheries on the global
translation field – concerning the translation of Caribbean French, Spanish and
English literature into Swedish.
Magagnin Paolo
Paolo Magagnin, PhD, is lecturer of Chinese at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice and
member of the ‘LaboraTorio sulla Traduzione delle Lingue Orientali’ (Ca’ Foscari
University) and ‘irAsia’ (Université de Provence, Aix-en-Provence) research groups.
His fields of research cover the Chinese fiction of the Republican era (1912-1949),
contemporary Chinese literature (1976-), early Western translations of Chinese
Republican literature, translation criticism, ideological factors in translation,
translation of humour, translation of figurative language, and contemporary Chinese
political discourse. He is also a translator of contemporary Chinese fiction into
Italian, his latest publications in the field being Se non è amore vero, allora è
spazzatura by Zhu Wen (Metropoli d’Asia, 2010) and Intrigo a Shanghai by Xiao
Bai (Sellerio, 2013).
Manfredi Marina
Marina Manfredi is a lecturer in English Language and Translation at the
University of Bologna, Italy, at the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures
and Cultures. She teaches English Language and Linguistics for undergraduate
students and English Translation in the MA level course in ‘Language, Society and
Communication’. Her main research interests lie in the field of Translation Studies
and range from the theory of translation, especially related to linguistic-cultural
approaches, to translation practice in the field of specialised, semi-specialised and
literary texts, and translation teaching, with special focus on Systemic Functional
Linguistics and translation. Her current work mainly concerns translation of
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AUTHORS / AUTORI
popular science and business/economics for press magazines, for the web and
audiovisual translation.
Marchesini Irina
Irina Marchesini is postdoctoral research fellow in Contemporary Russian Literature
in the Department of Modern Languages Literatures and Cultures at Bologna
University. In 2012 she earned a Ph.D. in Russian Studies at Bologna University.
The study of extreme, experimental narratives, such as Sokolov’s, Bitov’s and
Nabokov’s works, are among her primary academic interests. She has published
numerous essays on Vladimir Nabokov, Sokolov, Soviet culture and cinema,
translation and self-translation.
Masi Silvia
Silvia Masi is a lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the University of
Pisa, Department of Philology, Literature and Linguistics. She holds a Ph.D. in
Linguistics of Modern Languages (English Language) from the same University. Her
research interests are in the fields of lexical semantics and pragmatics (esp. in a
contrastive English-Italian perspective), text linguistics and translation. Her research
has mainly produced various articles published in national and international journals
or collections. Recent work includes ‘Metadiscourse in English and Italian: An
Analysis of Popular Scientific Discourse Online’, in S. Kermas, T. Christiansen
(eds), The Popularization of Specialized Discourse and Knowledge across
Communities and Cultures, Edipuglia (forth.), ‘Does Pinocchio have an English
Passport?’, RILA 2013/1, ‘Exploring greetings and leave-takings in original and
dubbed language’, (with V. Bonsignori and S. Bruti), in A. Remael, P. Orero and M.
Carroll (eds) Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility at the Crossroads.
Media for All 3, Rodopi (2012); Studies in Lexical Contrastive Semantics: English
vis-à-vis Italian Spatial Particles, Plus – Pisa University Press (2011).
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Monti Enrico
Enrico Monti is associate professor in Translation Studies at the University of Haute-
Alsace (France) and head of the Applied Foreign Languages (LEA) Department. He
received his PhD from the University of Bologna, where he pursued his research on
metaphor translation as a postdoctoral fellow (2011-2012) under the supervision of
Donna R. Miller. His scholarship focuses mostly on translation studies, and he has
published articles on both literary and specialised translation: ‘Translating the
Metaphors We Live By’ (EJES 13:2, 2009), ‘Metaphors for metaphor translation’
(Thinking Through Translation With Metaphors, 2012), ‘Échos de la traduction dans
la presse culturelle’ (Synérgies, 2013). A member of ILLE (Institut de recherche en
Langues et littératures européennes), he has co-directed with Peter Schnyder a
volume on retranslation, Autour de la retraduction (Paris, Orizons, 2011) and a
volume on Traduire à plusieurs/ Collaborative Translations (forthcoming in 2014).
For more information: https://uha.academia.edu/EnricoMonti.
Nasi Franco
Franco Nasi teaches Translation theories and Italian Contemporary Literature at the
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. He has written extensively on Romantic
aesthetics, twentieth-century poetry and theater, and translation theory, and has
translated American and English poets (Roger McGough and Billy Collins among
others) into Italian. His most recent publications include Specchi comunicanti.
Traduzioni, riscritture, parodie (Medusa 2010), La malinconia del traduttore
(Medusa 2008), Per una fenomenologia del tradurre (Officina 2009, ed. with M.
Silver) and I dilemmi del traduttore di nonsense (Longo 2011, ed. with A. Albanese).
Niero Alessandro
Alessandro Niero (1968), Ph.D, is associate professor of Russian Literature at the
Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Culture (University of Bologna).
From 2000 to 2011, he taught Russian Literature and held seminars on translation
from Russian into Italian, working as Junior Lecturer at the School for Interpreters
and Translators in Forlì (University of Bologna) and at the Faculty of Foreign
Languages and Foreign Literatures (University of Bologna). His main research
themes are Russian literature of the XX century (in this field he published Una
«incognita» di Zamjatin: problemi di traduzione, Fasano [Brindisi]: Schena 2001,
and L’arte del possibile. Iosif Brodskij poeta-traduttore di Quasimodo, Bassani,
Govoni, Fortini, De Libero, Saba, Venezia: Cafoscarina 2008), Russian-Italian
literary contacts (the reception of Emilio Salgari in Russia, Soviet Russia and Post-
Soviet Russia), translation of Russian poetry (Evgenij Rejn, Irina Ermakova, Sergej
Stratanovskij, Dmitrij Prigov, Afanasij Fet, Georgij Ivanov) and the ‘superfluous
man’ as a literary type in Russian literature of the XIX century. He was awarded the
National Translation Prize (Rome, 2006), the Lerici Pea Mosca prize (Moscow,
2008) e and the Read Russia prize (Moscow 2012).
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AUTHORS / AUTORI
Regattin Fabio
Fabio Regattin è ricercatore di Lingua e traduzione - Lingua francese all’Universit
di Bologna, e traduttore per l’editoria e il teatro. Tra i suoi principali campi di
ricerca, la traduzione per il teatro, la traduzione dei giochi di parole e i rapporti tra
traduzione ed evoluzione culturale. Ha tradotto e curato testi teatrali di numerosi
autori francesi e francofoni e scritto un libro, Le jeu des mots. Réflexions sur la
traduction des jeux linguistiques (Bologna, Emil).
Schäffner Christina
Christina Schäffner is professor of Translation Studies, Aston University,
Birmingham, UK. Her main research interests are Translation and Politics, Political
Discourse Analysis, Translation didactics, and Metaphor research. She is responsible
for one of the four sub-projects of the Marie Curie initial training network TIME
(Translation Research Training: an integrated and intersectoral model for Europe)
established with support from the European Commission. Amongst her recent
publications is the volume Political Discourse, Media and Translation (2010), which
she co-edited with Susan Bassnett.
Sezzi Annalisa
Annalisa Sezzi has a Master’s Degree in Literary Translation (EN>IT) from the
Catholic University of Milan where she also completed her undergraduate studies in
Foreign Languages and Literatures. She received her PhD in Comparative Language
and Cultural Studies from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia with a thesis
on the translation of picture books: This isn’t a drawing, mommy it’s a story!”
translating the voice of the adult reader in pre-school picture books. She currently
has a postdoctoral research fellow position at the Department of Studies on Language
and Culture, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. Her research interests include
translation, translation of children’s literature and translation of information books
for children. She has published articles in numerous academic journals.
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Shuttleworth Mark
From November 2000 until September 2013 Mark Shuttleworth was a senior lecturer in
Scientific, Technical and Medical Translation at Imperial College London where he was
in charge of the MSc in Scientific, Technical and Medical Translation with Translation
Technology. Since October 2013 he has been a senior lecturer at UCL. He is an
established PhD supervisor and as and, when time permits, he is also active as a
translator. His publications include the Dictionary of Translation Studies, which appeared
in 1997 and which was translated into Chinese in 2005, as well as works on metaphor in
translation, translation technology, translator training and medical translation.
Spinolo Nicoletta
Nicoletta Spinolo è dottoranda di ricerca presso il DIT (Dipartimento di Interpretazione
e Traduzione) dell’Universit di Bologna (Sede di Forlì). Il suo progetto di ricerca
riguarda la traduzione del linguaggio figurato in modalità di interpretazione simultanea
e l’individuazione di tecniche interpretative dello stesso da applicare alla didattica
dell’interpretazione di conferenza. Svolge attivit didattica presso la Scuola di Lingue e
Letterature, Interpretazione e Traduzione (sede di Forlì), con attività di supporto alla
didattica dell’interpretazione e della traduzione, oltre ad esercitare la professione di
interprete di conferenza e traduttrice come libero professionista.
Steen Gerard
Gerard Steen is professor of Language and Communication at VU University
Amsterdam. He has held positions at the University of Utrecht and the University of
Tilburg and taught graduate courses in many countries. He is director of the
Language, Cognition, and Communication research programme at VU University
Amsterdam and founding director of the Metaphor Lab. Apart from about 100
articles and book chapters, professor Steen has published seventeen books, edited
volumes, and special issues of scholarly journals. Two of these have been translated
into Arabic and Japanese. He is associate editor of Metaphor & Symbol and serves on
the editorial board of seven other international scholarly journals in language and
literature. His main interests are metaphor, genre, and discourse, and theoretical and
methodological issues in doing interdisciplinary work with psychologists and
communication scientists.
Swain Elizabeth
An applied linguist, Elizabeth Swain began her career in TESOL and taught English in
France, Spain, the UK and Italy before taking up her present post of researcher and
lecturer in English language and translation at the Department of Political and Social
Science of Trieste University, Italy. Her research interests lie in applications of linguistic
theory to English language teaching and to discourse analysis. She is particularly
interested in interpersonal meaning and has published articles on evaluation and point of
view in written diplomatic, journalistic and academic discourse and the multimodal
discourse of political cartoons. Other published work includes articles on aspects of
language and humour and literary translation, and an edited volume of selected papers
from the 2006 edition of the Euro-International Systemic Functional Linguistic
Conference and Workshop. She is currently writing a book on diplomatic discourse.
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AUTHORS / AUTORI
Tallarico Giovanni
Giovanni Tallarico is a lecturer in French Linguistics at the University of Verona.
After a Ph.D. at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore / Université Paris 7-
Diderot, he has taught French (language and translation) in different Italian
universities. His main research interests concern bilingual lexicography (especially in
its intercultural dimension) and translation studies. He has also worked as a translator
for Università Bocconi Editore and as a dictionary editor for De Agostini publishing
house. He now takes part in the Laboratoire de lexicographie sportive at the
University of Verona and collaborates to the Dictionnaire alphabétique et
analogique du français des activités physiques et sportives (DAAFAPS), under the
supervision of professor Pierluigi Ligas.
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CeSLiC – Centro di studi linguistico-culturali
Ricerca – Prassi – Formazione
Donna R. Miller holds the Chair of English Linguistics at the Department of modern languages,
literatures and cultures of the University of Bologna, where she coordinates its English Language
Studies Program and heads the Department’s Research Centre for Linguistic-Cultural Studies
(CeSLiC). Her research has largely focused, in a Systemic Functional Linguistics perspective, on
register analysis, particularly in institutional text types, her corpus-assisted investigations having
specifically explored the grammar of evaluation in terms of appraisal systems. Currently her
interests also extend to issues of World Englishes. For the past few years she has dedicated much
study to the Hasanian model of ‘verbal art’.
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