The Role of Intermediary Languages in Literary Translations from Russian into Italian: A Brief Historical Survey

Abstract

On the background of the historical development of literary translation from Russian into Italian, the present study will focus on some examples of translations made through intermediate languages. In fact, translating from an intermediary language may lead to well-known adverse effects, such as distortion of the contents or deviations from the original text, but it may also provide interesting insights about intercultural dialogue. The purpose of the work is to highlight some of the problematic areas resulting from these types of translation processes, analysing concrete examples of literary products in which the mediation, mainly through French editions, may affect the content and the form of the original text on the syntactic, semantic and stylistic plans. We will also consider to what extent the loss and gain of meaning have taken place because of such shifts. In this respect, it could be argued that in intermediary translation the employment of adaptation strategies is an important element to produce an acceptable and fluent text to the “receptor language” audience.