How Not to Get Lost in Translation? Transferring Croatian Realia Into Italian Culture

Abstract

Literary works written in non-standard varieties are generally significantly less frequently translated than those written in the standard variety. Although the last 30 years have seen more than 600 Italian literary prototexts get published in Croatian (Mikšić and Huber 2023: 38-39), very few of them are written in a non-standard variety. In this paper we analyze the Italian translation of Croatian culture-specific items excerpted from Hotel Zagorje, a contemporary Croatian novel written by Ivana Bodrožić in 2010. Apart from the Standard Croatian variety, the novel contains an array of urban vernaculars and rural varieties (namely, the urban vernaculars of Zagreb and Vukovar, the rural Kaikavian speech of Kumrovec and a local Serbian vernacular). These varieties simultaneously make the prototext difficult to translate due to numerous culture- specific items and suitable for a methodological analysis in class, since the translation abounds in the examples of usage of various translation strategies. For this reason, analysis of the Italian translation of said novel (Hotel Tito, translated by Estera Miočić in 2019) was included in the Translation theories course taught as a part of the Department of Italian Studies’ graduate programme at the University of Zagreb’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Culture-specific items are defined as concepts typical of a certain culture (Liebmann 2015: 14), which means that their translation creates a lexical gap. Translators typically try to fill in this gap by using various translation strategies. The classification of these diverse strategies as well as their typologies were taken from various sources (Ivir 1991, Mailhac 1996, Osimo 2011, Pavlović 2015, Veselica Majhut 2020). They vary from the borrowing of foreign lexemes which denote culturally-specific items to the formation of neologisms and the use of footnotes, if the translator wants their text to be appropriate (Toury 1995: 56) and thus enrich the target culture with new knowledge. On the other hand, generalization, paraphrases or even complete omission are used when the translator is aiming for an acceptable (Toury, ibid) metatext in the target culture. Venuti (2002: 20 et passim) calls these two opposites foreignization and domestication. The so-called domesticated translations make their translators seem invisible, but deprive the reader of a broader perspective and new knowledge. According to the Skopos theory, a functional translation theory which emphasizes the purpose a translation will have (Reiss and Vermeer 2014), the translator is an intercultural mediator. They assess which strategies should be used and how the metatext should be formed to accomplish successfully its function in the target culture and with the target reader. The traductological analysis of literary translations helps students gain a deeper insight into the nature of the literary translation as a process. A part of it is carried out by each student independently, in the form of a seminal paper, while the rest is done together with the teacher during lessons. It has been observed that the students’ attitudes on what constitutes a high-quality literary translation change over the course of the teaching process. The overall results of the analysis show that students notice and classify correctly the translation strategies used to translate culture-specific items. They are also able to recognize correctly that the translation in question is an example of an acceptable (Toury 1995), i.e. domesticated translation (Venuti 2002, Osimo 2011), thus proving that they have mastered the curriculum of the course. Students recognized correctly that the most frequently used strategy was neutralization, employed in cases when the original expressions belong to various diatopic, diastratic and diaphasic varieties. Following this strategy, local speech and slang are translated into Standard Italian. Neutralization is followed by generalization and paraphrasing, both of which are far less frequent. Students consider all these strategies to be inappropriate and perceive the parts of text in which they are used as examples of bad translation. On the other hand, they have a positive view of the use of explanation. This strategy is mostly applied when translating the names of the toponyms (mountains, rivers, lakes, parts of the city). It is also sometimes used for some brand names and products, although these terms are mostly translated using the generalization strategy, which usually introduces an Italian general hyperonym instead of a Croatian brand name (for example: ‘a certain type of candy’ > ‘candy’). Students perceive generalization as bad translation and change their mind only when introduced to the notion of overtranslating and Umberto Eco’s idea that translating means creating – in the best possible scenario – just roughly the same text (Eco 2003). One of the ways to achieve an acceptable translation (Toury 1995) is by using paraphrasing. This strategy is frequently used in the analyzed metatext, mostly when translating the structure of the Croatian education system and Croatian eating habits. We noted several examples of adaptation as well. Students regard them as successful interventions which facilitate the understanding of the metatext. When adapting, the translator often uses diatopically neutral terms or changes the diatopic markedness of the prototext into the diaphasic markedness of the metatext. These subtle semantic changes are usually not noticed by our students. Borrowing is one of the few used strategies that result in the foreignization of the metatext, since the reader is introduced to the culture-specific items belonging to the source culture. Almost all instances of borrowing refer to culinary terminology and are accompanied by footnotes which explain their meaning. Students generally believe that this strategy should be used far more frequently. Liebmann (2015: 32) states that, to translate successfully, the translator should be bicultural. The analysis of translation strategies used in the translation of Hotel Zagorje has shown that culture is a very complex concept, and that not even native speakers of a language have full command of all its culture-specific items. Our overall results show that our students regularly consider the foreignization of the translation to be a negative phenomenon. Frequent neutralizations, generalizations and paraphrasing make them perceive the metatext as “a too free translation”. It seems that, in cases where the target language is their own mother tongue, students value an acceptable translation much more than an appropriate one. At the same time, when the target language is Italian, they seem to place a much higher value on appropriate translations of Croatian prototexts.