The Spanish translation of the Italian dialects. The case of "L’isola di Arturo" by Elsa Morante

Abstract

This study wants to focus the attention on the difficulties of a translator in dealing with literary texts with a special language, dialects and a peculiar syntax. To carry out reflections on these issues, it is useful to study an extract from the Italian novel L’isola di Arturo (1957), by Elsa Morante. Eugenio Guasta translated this novel into Spanish for the first time in 1960 and, currently, this Spanish version is the only existing in the Spanish literary market. The fragment chosen, La pasta, presents translational problems on which it has carried out a precise linguistic analysis, to demonstrate the doubtful validity of translation choices of Guasta. For this purpose, this study presents both a new Spanish translation proposal of the extract mentioned, and a comparison between the same fragment translated by Guasta and the new translation. Through this comparison, this study provides reflections, data and explanations that attempt to demonstrate the need for a new translation of L’isola di Arturo, closer to the literary features of the original novel and its peculiar language.