Dacia Maraini in Poland. On the Translation of the Novel La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa

Abstract

The article is a study on the presence of Dacia Maraini’s works in Poland and an in-depth analysis of particular translation aspects in the Polish version of the novel La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa (1990, cfr. Długie Życie Marianny Ucria, 1996). The first part focuses on the history of the Polish translations of Maraini’s works from 1977, when a fragment of the novel Donna in guerra appeared in Polish, until the publication of the novel Dolce per sé in 2003, examining the reception of Maraini’s work by literary critics. In the second part of the article, through an analysis of Halina Kralowa’s translation, the author focuses on the problem of translation of realia and dialect in light of the theories formulated by leading translation studies scholars (Vlahov and Florin, Slobodník, Venuti, Newmark, Hejwowski and others). In the dialectic between foreignization and domestication, which always accompanies the rendering of a literary text in another language, the main objective of the article is to outline the strategies adopted by the translator in order to transfer to the metatext the local color, polyphony and other dominants of the novel.