Alessia Oppizzi - Università degli studi di Napoli L'Orientale

she spins out her stories creates a unique lacework where tout se tient since each single stitch contributes
to the whole.
Translating Virginia Woolf implies appropriating these impressions and techniques, as well as bridging
the gap between the perception of feelings and the way they are worded. It also implies creating a
palette to paint a comparable picture for the TL reader, who expects to enjoy rhythms, sounds,
suggestions, and impressions which can somehow evoke the original. And yet, despite the effort to get
this aim, the perfect finish of a translated text may be more aspiration than fact.
Being aware of how difficult it can be to get this aim, I would like to discuss a couple of issues which
are of some relevance in literary translation, namely 1) the role of textual components - first and
foremost speech styles such as FIS – and 2) the crucial challenge of keeping the stylistic features of the
original.
Indeed, what happens when a highly peculiar text goes through translation? How much important is it
to avoid forms of modulation which can thin down the semantic thickness of a text as well as blur its
neat formal framework?
Examples from published translations will help to answer these questions.
Paola Faini is associate professor of English at Roma Tre University. Her research interests include
translation theory (practice and pedagogy) and the language of drama. Her main works are Tradurre.
Dalla teoria alla pratica and Tradurre. Manuale teorico e pratico. She has also translated works by Fielding,
Woolf, Maugham, Lessing, and edited plays by Farquhar, Goldsmith, Wilde, and Pinter.
Eleonora FEDERICI (University of Calabria)
Translating Feminist Discourses in “The Journal of Mistress Joan Martyn” and Virginia Woolf’s later production
My paper deals with some of the later writings by Virginia Woolf from “The Journal of Mistress Joan
Martyn” to “Anon” and “The Reader” where the author outlines from a feminist perspective a different
literary canon, a ‘dismantled’ idea of tradition and a proposal for new genres. All these issues are carried
out through allusions and detailed remarks to the use of language and the notion of translation itself. In
creating a new modality of writing and a new method based on different educational premises Woolf
envisages the importance of the texture of language together with an idea of translation as a practical
but also a metaphorical act. Feminist discourses are translated in all Woolf ’s texts especially the critical
production but these later writings offer an interesting angle on her role as a ‘translator’ of women’s
rights and as a new kind of literary critic up-to-date and foreseeing. A final part of my paper will take
into consideration translations of these works into Italian.
Eleonora Federici è Professore Associato di Lingua e Traduzione Inglese presso l’Università della
Calabria. Le principali aree di ricerca sono le teorie e pratiche della traduzione, analisi del discorso e LSP
(in particolare il linguaggio del turismo e della pubblicità). E’ co-curatrice di The Controversial Women’s
Body: Images and Representations in Literature and Arts (2004) e autrice di The Translator as Intercultural Mediator
(2006). Ha recentemente tradotto Un pacifico matrimonio di Doris Lessing.
Vita FORTUNATI (Università di Bologna)
Anna Banti traduce Jacob’s Room
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