Rivista internazionale di tecnica della traduzione n.26 - 2024

This paper illustrates how subtitling can prove an effective drill to train students of interpreting and translation. The criss-cross of different semeiotic codes (images, music and voices) and language registers (spoken and written) and the role played by technical constraints (time in and time out, subtitle length, dialogue speed and interaction with images) provides a fruitful testbed for the competences students need to develop. After giving a brief theoretical background, the article dwells on the details of the subtitling process and describes examples drawn from the experiences drawn from courses taught at the University of Trieste.

In this paper my attention will focus on two closely related issues in drama translation, namely intertextuality and the definition of what has been variously termed as ‘version’, ‘adaptation’, or ‘rewrite’. Approaches to playtexts have been variously seen as ‘processes of acculturation’; ‘major adjustments’;‘issues of cultural relocations’; or as ‘reconfigured text (as performance’). The concept of intertextuality will be explored thoroughly in its wider theoretical context, including discourse analysis and literary criticism, to see how it becomes relevant for the process of translation, and drama translation in particular. Furthermore, version, rewrite and adaptation, as a product of intertextuality, will be analysed in the attempt to reach some tentative conclusions on the state-of-the-art on this topic.

This paper aims at investigating some of the main translation problems that arose during the realization of a translation proposal of German judicial acts written at the beginning of the 19th century. More specifically, the source texts were published in the volume E.T.A. Hoffmann. Juristische Arbeiten edited by Friedrich Schnapp (1973) and were written for the most part by E.T.A. Hoffmann during the work of the newly established Prussian Committee of inquiry (Immediat-Untersuchungskommission). The analysis, carried out on the basis of the functionalist approach, highlights both the technical and the historical dimension of the source texts and comments on some of the main translation choices made to render the dual nature of the text into the target language as well. The informative function of the target text has allowed the translator to adopt an overall domesticating approach, even though foreignization was sometimes chosen over naturalization in order to preserve the historical dimension of the text.

On the basis of some reflections on the critical role of language in memoirs written by translingual authors, I look to the the reasons why Chicano writer Reyna Grande (Iguala de la Independencia, 1975-) decided to self-translate her memoir The Distance between us (2012) into Spanish. I also discuss the possible reasons for the controversial reception of the Spanish version of the book, drawing on the translanguaging approach to sociolinguistics. I argue that part of the criticism expressed by the Spanish-speaking readership concerning the translingual elements in the memoir is based on the same ideology of purism that marginalizes non-Anglophone immigrants in the US. As a result, Latinos tend to be stigmatized because of their translanguaging practices not only as English speakers, but also as Spanish speakers.