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The Representation of Central-Southern Italian Dialects and African-American Vernacular English in Translation: Issues of Cultural Transfers and National Identity

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The Representation of Central-Southern Italian Dialects and African-American Vernacular English in Translation: Issues of Cultural Transfers and National Identity THE REPRESENTATION OF CENTRAL-SOUTHERN ITALIAN DIALECTS AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN VERNACULAR ENGLISH IN TRANSLATION: ISSUES OF CULTURAL TRANSFERS AND NATIONAL IDENTITY A thesis submitted to Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Adriana Di Biase August, 2015 © Copyright by Adriana Di Biase 2015 All Rights Reserved ii Dissertation written by Adriana Di Biase Ph.D., Kent State University – Kent, United States, 2015 M.A., Università degli Studi di Bari “Aldo Moro” – Bari, Italy, 2008 M.A., Scuola Superiore per Interpreti e Traduttori, Gregorio VII – Rome, Italy, 2002 B.A., Università degli Studi “Gabriele D’Annunzio” – Chieti-Pescara, Italy, 2000 Approved by ______________________________, Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Françoise Massardier-Kenney ______________________________, Members, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Brian J. Baer ______________________________, Carol Maier ______________________________, Gene R. Pendleton ______________________________, Babacar M’Baye Accepted by ______________________________, Chair, Modern and Classical Language Studies Keiran J. Dunne ______________________________, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences James L. Blank iii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................................... vii LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................................... viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................................... xiii ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................. xv CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 2 Research Hypotheses .................................................................................................................. 5 Research Significance ................................................................................................................. 6 Research Method ........................................................................................................................ 7 Reference Texts ........................................................................................................................ 10 Overview of this Project ........................................................................................................... 12 CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW ...................................................................................... 14 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 14 1.1 Definitions ....................................................................................................................... 16 1.2 Social and Regional Dialects .......................................................................................... 18 1.3 Dialects and Standard Languages ................................................................................... 19 2. Dialects in Italy ..................................................................................................................... 22 2.1 Evolution of Standard Language and Dialects throughout the Centuries ....................... 22 2.2 The Main Classifications of Italian Dialects ................................................................... 26 2.3 The Main Characteristics of Central-Southern Dialects ................................................. 30 3.Dialects in the USA ............................................................................................................... 32 iii 3.1 Development and Evolution of American Dialects ........................................................ 32 3.2 African American Vernacular English (AAVE) ............................................................. 34 3.3 The Main Characteristics of AAVE ................................................................................ 37 4. Dialects in Literature ............................................................................................................. 40 4.1. Reasons for Dialect Use in Literature ............................................................................ 43 5. Dialects in Translation .......................................................................................................... 46 5.1 Possible Strategies for Translating Dialect ..................................................................... 47 6. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 49 CHAPTER 3. METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................ 51 1. Methodological Approach: Corpus Linguistics .................................................................... 52 1.1. Corpus Linguistics ......................................................................................................... 52 1.2 Corpus Linguistics in Translation Studies ...................................................................... 54 1.3 Corpus Design ................................................................................................................. 56 2. Tools ..................................................................................................................................... 60 3. Preliminary Analysis ............................................................................................................. 61 3.1 Optical Character Recognition ........................................................................................ 61 3.2 Corpus Annotation .......................................................................................................... 62 3.3 Alignment ....................................................................................................................... 67 3.4 Data Retrieval ................................................................................................................. 68 CHAPTER 4. SYNCHRONIC ANALYSIS: RESULTS ............................................................. 69 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 69 2. Results: English/Italian Direction ......................................................................................... 71 2.1 Dialect ............................................................................................................................. 73 iv 2.2 Standard Language .......................................................................................................... 79 2.3 Colloquialisms ................................................................................................................ 81 3. Results: Italian / English Direction ....................................................................................... 85 3.1 Dialect ............................................................................................................................. 86 3.2 Standard Language .......................................................................................................... 91 3.3 Regionalisms ................................................................................................................... 92 3.4 Dialect Accompanied by its Translation in Standard Source Language ......................... 96 CHAPTER 5. DIACHRONIC ANALYSIS: RESULTS .............................................................. 98 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 98 2. Result: 1940s – 1950s ......................................................................................................... 100 2.1 Dialect ........................................................................................................................... 100 2.2 Standard Language ........................................................................................................ 106 2.3 Regionalism .................................................................................................................. 109 3. Results: 1990s – 2000s ........................................................................................................ 110 3.1 Dialect ........................................................................................................................... 112 3.2 Standard Language ........................................................................................................ 116 3.3 Colloquialism ................................................................................................................ 118 3.4 Dialect + Standard Language ........................................................................................ 119 CHAPTER 6. DISCUSSION ...................................................................................................... 122 1. Strategies to Translate Dialect ............................................................................................ 123 1.1 Fewer Traces of Dialect in the TTs ..............................................................................
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