Abstract:
This thesis aims to demonstrate how the translation of regional writing can provide insights into 'other' cultures. It suggests that when the foreignness of the text is highlighted, clarified and creatively rendered, it can serve as a valuable instrument of intercultural understanding. This premise is tested through an analysis of the translations into English of selected texts by two Sicilian writers, Giovanni Verga and Andrea Camilleri, which have a strong regional emphasis, with an abundance of 'untranslatable' cultural elements running through them. Verga, the founding father of literary sicilianità, or Sicilianness, created a literary language composed of Italian vocabulary and dialectal syntax, while Camilleri has created a linguistic blend that, in an almost complete inversion, is suffused with dialect vocabulary but retains an Italian syntactic and grammatical system. My research draws on several translation theories: Lawrence Venuti's championing of the visible translator, the links between translating and travel writing as discussed by Michael Cronin and Susan Bassnett, and the recent 'creative turn', as proposed by Loffredo and Perteghella, which foregrounds the creativity and subjectivity of the translator. My analysis considers the translators' treatment of the four specific regional elements of dialect, idiom, metaphor and culturally specific items, and tests their accordance with these theories and with the translations' effectiveness in rendering the sicilianità in the texts. The findings suggest that the translators who were most successful at providing their readers with insight into the source culture and language were those who had a strong paratextual presence, clearly articulated their strategies and the challenges of the text, interpreted and clarified the regionally specific elements for the reader, and retained and creatively rendered the original imagery and the linguistic and cultural peculiarities of the text.
