Resiting genre : a study of contemporary Italian travel writing in English translation

This thesis aims to highlight the presence of a large and varied production of contemporary Italian travel writing and to analyse the reasons for its 'invisibility' in the Italian literary system and critical tradition. Through the use of a comparative approach to genre and of current theories developed in the area of Translation Studies, the thesis will outline the different status attributed to travel writing in the Anglo-American and the Italian literary systems. Such a comparative approach allows the study to escape the narrow confines of a perspective based on the idea of national literature and to adopt a wider view, which, in turn, highlights the presence of phenomena otherwise easily overlooked or discarded as insignificant. The peculiar characteristics of travel writing, a genre mostly based on the representation of the Other for a home audience, are also analysed in order to point out their affinity with translation practices and, ultimately, to underline the 'double translation' implied by translated travel writing. The case studies which make up the remaining part of the thesis are intended to illustrate different aspects of the genre of travel writing; to provide scope for an analysis of its boundaries and connections with other genres (ranging from ethnography to autobiography, from journalism to fiction, from the essay to the novel); and to illustrate the way in which generic expectations influence both the selection of texts for translation and the strategies adopted when translating and marketing them for a new audience. The writings of twentieth-century Italian explorers to Tibet, and their translations into English, constitute a significant case of adaptation of foreign texts to the needs and expectations of a British audience (and to the British interests in the geographical area concerned). The works of Oriana Fallaci and their different reception in Italy with respect to the UK and the USA illustrate the way in which personal biography and generic choices can intersect, determining both the popular image and the critical success of an author and of her work. Calvino's choice to sublimate the genre of travel writing in the stylized fiction of Le citta invisibili is treated as an example of the way in which a text which is meant to provide an escape from a low-status genre can become an icon of that same genre once it is translated and read in a different cultural context. Finally, the case of Claudio Magris's Danubio and of its English-language translation provides evidence of the complex network of literary references which marks the reception of a text in different cultures, and of the way in which generic affiliation can both promote the recognition of a 'marginal' text and constrain its more idiosyncratic (and original) characteristics

Description, appropriation, transformation : Fascist rhetoric and colonial nature

During the period of Fascism, a variety of discourses and representations where attached to colonial landscapes and to their uses. African nature was the subject of diverse rhetorical strategies, which ranged from the persistence of visions of wilderness as the locus of adventure to the domesticating manipulations of an incipient tourist industry aiming to familiarize the Italian public with relatively tame forms of the exotic. Contrasting images of bareness and productivity, primitivism and modernization, resistance to change and dramatic transformation found their way into accounts of colonial territories ranging from scientific and pseudo-scientific reports to children’s literature, from guide books to travel accounts, all of which were sustained not just by written texts but also by iconographic representations. The article will look at the specific example of accounts of Italian Somalia in order to explore Fascist discourses about colonial nature and its appropriation. Documents examined will include early guidebooks to the colonies, a small selection of travel accounts aimed at the general public, as well as the works of a number of geographers and geologists who were among the most active polygraphs of the period, and whose writings addressed a wide range of Italian readers

Translation and mediation

Translation is frequently relegated to the margins of language education, either as an outdated pedagogical method or as a specialist set of skills which are only relevant to advanced learners intending to become professional translators and interpreters. A new appreciation of the pedagogical role of translation is emerging, however, in parallel with what has been identified as ‘the multilingual turn’ in language education and with broader, less rigid conceptualizations which bring notions of translation and mediation in close contact with each other. The present article argues for a redefinition of translation as part of a continuum of practices which include not just interlingual translation but also self-translation, translanguaging and other forms of linguistic mediation. Having redefined translation as the ability to move between languages and across complex linguistic repertoires, the chapter will present a discussion of the links connecting translation with mediation and of the fundamental role both practices can play in language education. This move requires a reassessment of how we define and represent not just translation and its relationship with mediation but also language and language learning. Labels such as ‘mother tongue’, ‘native speaker’ or ‘foreign languages’ build on powerful metaphorical images which reinforce and naturalize monolingualism as a normative condition. Learners’ language repertoires, however, are much more complex and dynamic. Raising awareness of these realities is a crucial step in the development of mediation skills and can help us to counter prevailing views which favour negative attitudes marked by what I call ‘language indifference’