Dialogue in and between Different Cultures - International ...

68 Elena Xeni
− in cases where it is impossible to find a fully adequate equivalent in
colloquial speech, the translator should make the target text less colloquial,
since according to Leighton “although attempts in recreations of colloquial
speech can enrich a translation, they can also irreparably harm it” (1991:126).
5. Dialect
In Merriam Webster Online Dictionary dialect is defined as:
− a regional variety of language distinguished by features of vocabulary,
grammar, and pronunciation from other regional varieties and constituting
together with them a single language and
− a variety of language whose identity is fixed by a factor other than geography.
Speaking on dialect, Luigi Bonaffini (1997) notes that it is the abnormality and
the departure from a well-defined linguistic standard. Dialect is the language of
concreteness and difference, and therefore offers a greater potential for individual
creativity. The strength of dialect, in fact, lies in its essential ‘otherness’, in its
position of eccentricity with respect to the national language, in its different
history, predominantly oral.
Through dialect, the individual represents not only the places and events of
his memory, but also a conception of the world closer to his own personal
experience. To contemporary men and women in danger of being swallowed up
and obliterated by postindustrial society, dialect can offer the support of a culture
which, while threatened with obliteration, is radically different from the dominant
culture. Dialect, then, is the linguistic testimony of a cultural heritage, of a
collective patrimony and an anthropological condition condemned to extinction.
De Benedetti has called dialect ‘the painful conscience of history’ because only
dialect, as opposed to the language of the ruling class, can bear witness to the
injustices of history and give voice to the excluded and the oppressed.
In many parts of the world, dialect is understood not as a simple divergence
from the national standard, but an autonomous linguistic system, historically
determined through well-known mechanisms. Yet, the fact remains that dialect is
by nature a distinct and marginal language with respect to a standard language,
and all speakers of dialect consider it such, that is, they are conscious of speaking
a language which in some way is in opposition to another, more widespread and
important, even if they are in a totally dialect-speaking setting, where the
opposition is only virtual.
6. Strategies applied for the translation of dialect
It has been shown earlier that dialect is by nature a distinct and marginal language
with respect to a standard language. This means that the translation of dialect