The avant-textes of translations: A study of Umberto Eco’s interaction with his translators

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the relationship between author and translator from within the framework of genetic criticism, a method of textual analysis and interpretation based on the examination of the tangible documents such as writers’ notes, drafts and proof corrections which precede the “final” text. The goal of the study is to discuss how genetic criticism can be used in translation research. The notion of “translation avant-texte” is introduced and illustrated through an investigation of unpublished documents relating to translations into English of Umberto Eco’s novels.

KEYWORDS:

• Translator manuscripts
• genetic criticism
• author–translator relationship
• William Weaver
• Umberto Eco

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Rosa Maria Bollettieri was professor emeritus of English language and translation at the University of Bologna, Italy. She was one of the founders of the Advanced School of Modern Languages for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Bologna (Forlì campus), which she directed from 1992 to 1996. In 2000 she founded the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies on Translation, Languages and Cultures, which she directed for six years. In June 2000 she was elected president of the James Joyce International Foundation. She also published books and articles on metaphor, screen translation, the language of advertising, and political language. Her publications include Oltre l’Occidente. Traduzione e alterità culturale (2009), Joyce and/in Translation (2007), ReJoycings: New Readings of Dubliners (1998), Anna Livia Plurabelle di James Joyce nella traduzione di Samuel Beckett e altri (1996), Multimedia Translation: Which translation for which text? (1996), Il doppiaggio. Trasposizioni linguistiche e culturali (1994), The Languages of Joyce (1992) and Myriadmindedman: Jottings on Joyce (1986).

Serenella Zanotti is associate professor of English language and translation at Roma Tre University, Italy. Her research focuses on a wide range of topics in English linguistics and translation studies, including audiovisual translation, cross-cultural pragmatics, corpus stylistics, history of English language teaching, literary translation and translingualism. She is the author of Italian Joyce: A Journey through Language and Translation (Bononia University Press, 2013) and co-editor of several volumes, including The Translator as Author (LIT Verlag, 2011), Corpus Linguistics and Audiovisual Translation (special issue of Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, 2013), Translating Ethnicity (monographic issue of The European Journal of English Studies, 2014) and Linguistic and Cultural Representation in Audiovisual Translation (Routledge, forthcoming).

Notes

1 [Now, let us take a look behind the scenes, see the workshop, the laboratory, the internal mechanism.]

2 The research for this study was carried out jointly by the two authors. Rosa Maria Bollettieri drafted the sections entitled “Eco and/in translation”; the conclusion; and the first, second and third subsections of “Eco’s translation avant-textes”. Serenella Zanotti drafted the introduction, the sections entitled “Genetic Criticism and Translation” and “The Author–Translator Relationship” and the remaining three subsections of “Eco’s Translation avant-textes”, namely “Explanations/Clarifications”, “Suggestions for Translation” and “Prescriptions”.

3 There is a growing interest in translators’ archives and the genetics of translation. See, for example, the 2012 panel on translators’ archives as part of the Diasporic Literary Archives Project (http://www.diasporicarchives.com) and the special issue of Linguistica Antverpiensia (Cordingley and Montini 2015).

4 For example, Günter Grass’s yearly seminars with his translators (see Groff 2011).

5 We are thinking of Juan Goytisolo, who encourages exchanges among his translators (see Bush 2006).

6 See also Karpinski (2015) and Bricco (2015), who both demonstrate the capacity of genetic criticism to shed light on the author–translator collaboration.

7 As Eco (1976, vii–viii) recalls, the English version of La struttura assente (Eco 1968) resulted in a completely new book, A Theory of Semiotics (Eco 1976), which he rewrote with the help of a native speaker “after two unsatisfactory attempts at translation and many unsuccessful revisions”.

8 We are grateful to Umberto Eco for giving us access to these materials.

9 The inscriptions on the documents read as follows: “Note per i traduttori de il Pendolo di Foucault” (Eco 1988), “Istruzioni ai traduttori dell’Isola del giorno prima” (Eco 1994), “Baudolino, note per i traduttori”. There is no title in the Regina Loana file.

10 Eco also included a letter that he wrote to his Bulgarian translator Tolia Radeva, as well as notes written on the occasion of the second edition of The Pendulum, which were later partly published in Dire quasi la stessa cosa (Eco 2003a).

11 This map does not appear in La misteriosa fiamma della Regina Loana (The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana), in spite of its being full of pictures as announced in the subtitle Romanzo illustrato (An Illustrated novel). See Eco (2004, 2005).

12 From this point Il pendolo di Foucault and Foucault’s Pendulum will be abbreviated to PIt and PEn respectively.

13 This passage is commented on by Eco (2003b, 93) in his Mouse or Rat?

14 In Italian the word stazione can mean “railway station” and “position”.

15 The Italian word pastore means both “shepherd” and “pastor” or “minister”.