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Article published In: Target
Vol. 26:1 (2014) ► pp.32–62

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Poetry translators and regional vernacular voice

Belli’s Romanesco sonnets in English and Scots

 | Newcastle University
Published online: 7 March 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/target.26.1.02jon
This study investigates how poetry translators tackle source regional voice within their wider approach to poetic text. It analyses eleven translators’ ‘outputs’ of Scots and English translations from Giuseppe Belli’s 19th-century regionallanguage sonnets, which are set in working-class Rome. Each output was coded for voice (space, community, tenor marking), text-world space, and poetic form (rhyme, rhythm), then analysed quantitatively and qualitatively; translator interviews and translators’ written commentaries provided extra data. Translators ranged along a spectrum (apparently genre-specific) between two extremes: (1) ‘relocalising’ voice into target regional language/dialect with similar workingclass and informal features to Belli’s originals, whilst relocalising place and person names to target-country analogies, and recreating rhyme and rhythm; (2) translating into standard (supra-regional, literary/educated, neutral-toformal) English, whilst preserving Belli’s Roman setting, but replacing rhyme and rhythm by free verse. This reflects a spectrum between two priorities: (1) creatively conveying poetic texture; (2) replicating surface semantics.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Translating regional voices in poetry
    • 1.2Belli’s Romanesco sonnets
    • 1.3Reading and translating poetry
    • 1.4Language varieties
    • 1.5Translating regional voices and text worlds
  • 2.Methods
    • 2.1Data sources
    • 2.2Analysis
  • 3.Findings
    • 3.1Correlations
  • 3.2Tackling Belli’s vernacular voice
    • 3.2.1Preferences and interconnections
    • 3.2.2Relocalised vernaculars
    • 3.2.3Delocalised vernaculars
    • 3.2.4Diverging to standard language
  • 3.3Space-marked text worlds
    • 3.3.1Voice and text-world space
    • 3.3.2Relocalised text worlds
    • 3.3.3Preserving the source-poem text world
    • 3.3.4Mixed text worlds
  • 3.4Poetic form, voices and text worlds
    • 3.4.1Poetic form
    • 3.4.2Reflecting voice and sound
    • 3.4.3Free verse and standard voicing
  • 4.Conclusions
    • 4.1Regional voice and genre
    • 4.2Poetic approaches
      • 4.2.1Problem spaces and poetic texture
      • 4.2.2Poetic texture and regional vernacular
      • 4.2.3Normalisation and literary norms
    • 4.3Creativity and regional voice
    • 4.4Ideologies and identities
    • 4.5Voices and signals
    • 4.6Further research
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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