Literary Translation and Publishing

The course offers a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 9 credits.
For students enrolled in the "Translation and Editorial Consulting" curriculum (both bilingual and monolingual), taking the exam for 9 credits is mandatory.
Students from other curricula may take the exam for 6 credits. In that case, it is mandatory to take the exam on Parts I and II.

Part I: Introduction to Translation Studies
Translation has long been a subject of reflection and has often served as a kind of contrast medium, illuminating crucial issues not only in the linguistic field but also in literary, religious, political, and philosophical domains. However, it was in the 1970s that translation studies emerged as an academic discipline, developing along various branches (linguistic, sociological, historical, to name just a few).
The first part of the course aims to provide an overview of the evolution of thought and scholarship on translation—particularly literary translation—from a comparative and transnational perspective. It will show how discourse on literary translation has evolved in different national and linguistic contexts, and how the very nature of translation studies has fostered dialogue among these diverse approaches.
For the exam, each student will not only develop a basic understanding of the field but will also explore a key text (or group of texts) related to a specific theoretical approach.

Part II: Literary Translation in the Publishing Context
The mediation of publishing plays a crucial role in the conception, production, and dissemination of translated literature. Equally important for the success of the translation endeavour is an awareness of the various functions of translation—broadly understood here as a social activity—within the editorial mediation process. This includes not only the act of translation itself but also related activities such as reading works submitted for translation, scouting, editing, and different kinds of exchanges (rights trading, book fairs, etc.).
The second part of the course focuses on the various forms in which translation—specifically literary translation—takes place within the publishing world, with particular reference to the Italian publishing context of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Part III: Retranslating the Classics
Endless translation, plural translation: these are just some of the definitions used for the retranslation of classics. Why do we return to translating a work? What criteria guide these choices? And how is such an operation carried out in the publishing world?
This part of the course seeks to answer these questions by considering their literary, editorial, and translational implications. Special attention will be given to the positioning of new translations, their dialogue with existing ones, paratextual and extratextual elements, and the translation approaches adopted by different translators.
The course will conclude with a case study: the Italian translations of Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, examining the publishing history of each translation based on archival documents and critical reception.