Adele Cammarata

Abstract
of my licentiate thesis-paper, ready in  autumn 1997 at Palermo University ("Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione - Corso di Laurea in Lingue e Letterature Straniere")

I GIOCHI DI PAROLE IN ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND. TRADUZIONI ITALIANE A CONFRONTO.
(WORDPLAYS IN ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND. COMPARING ITALIAN TRANSLATIONS)
 

The main purpose of my thesis is comparing eight different Italian translations of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, all of them dating from 1963 to 1993, in order to investigate the role that language plays in the original text and the difficulties that the translator encounters with it. In my research I have found that these translations offer not only a mere version of this complex text, but also other direction.

Firstly, there is a general view of the original text, showing all the complexities and the peculiarities of it, a story of Italian translations of Alice, and a presentation of the eight Italian translation I have examined (Bossi 1963, Giglio 1966, Galasso e Kemeni 1967, D'Amico 1971, Carano 1978, Graffi 1989, Bianchi 1990, Busi 1993).

The translations are imbedded in their context: this is a very important aspect of my thesis, because the story of the receipt of this text in Italy is strictly connected to the story of Italian children's literature: there's a progressive shift towards fantasy and wordplay in Italian children's literature since the Sixties of this century and this process is visible through the eight translations I have chosen for my analysis.

Secondly, I have examined from a linguistic point of view (Saussure, Jakobson, Lyons) the three of the main verbal play processes used in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, namely polysemy, omophony and paronomasia. These processes are also used in Italian, but they are peculiar of the English language, while Italian prefers other mechanisms to play with words. This particular difficulty is added to the perennial impossibility of "translating" a classic of literature, due to the distance (in time and space) between author and translator, between author and reader(s), and between translator and reader(s). Which was the public of Alice in 1865? Is it the same now? And in Italy?

Thirdly, I have analysed and compared (in the original text and in its eight Italian translations) some passages containing verbal plays based upon polysemy, omophony and paronomasia. The analysis shows the difficulties of a mere "translation" but also the possibility that translation offers to the recreation of a text in another language.

The conclusion of the thesis is that, at least for this text, as well as for poetry, translation is a Sisyphean task, never ending yet necessary, and that translation could mean re-creation of another text (other texts) in another language for another public in another time and space.


Note
I am now working to the making of an hypertextual version of my thesis paper and to a new original translation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
If you have any query or comment, please mail to: camma@mbox.vol.it

You can find a file version of my thesis (in Italian) at www.lewiscarroll.org/centenary/italian.html