Corso di Laurea magistrale (ordinamento ex D.M. 270/2004) in Interpretariato e traduzione editoriale, settoriale (Spagnolo-Inglese) Tesi di Laurea Outbound di Brad R. Torgersen: proposta di traduzione Relatore Prof.ssa Serena Cecco Laureando Valeria Pinna 839842 Anno Accademico 2012 / 2013 1 Abstract El género de ciencia ficción tuvo un gran éxito entre los años treinta y cincuenta de 1900. Desde aquella época, llamada Golden Age of Science Fiction, su popularidad, como subgénero literario, está gradualmente disminuyendo, sobre todo por la intervención del cine y de Internet. En este trabajo se propone la traducción del inglés al italiano del cuento breve Outbound del autor Brad R. Torgersen, una obra de ciencia y ficción que en 2010 recibió el premio Analog magazine 'AnLab' Readers' Choice Award. El trabajo se compone de tres partes: en la primera aparece una introducción, en la que se incluyen informaciones sobre el autor y sus otras obras, se presentan las razones de la elección de esta novela y se identifica la tipología textual del prototexto, describiendo los problemas principales de la traducción literaria y las características generales de los textos de ciencia ficción. En esta parte también se analiza el prototexto y sus características, desde el punto de vista estilístico, léxico y morfosintáctico. En la segunda parte se presenta el texto original y la propuesta de traducción. Finalmente, la última parte consta del comentario traductológico, en el que se analizan algunos ejemplos de los problemas de traducción que se han encontrado en el ámbito estilístico, léxico y morfosintáctico, y se comentan las soluciones adoptadas y los casos de variación entre el prototexto y el metatexto. En esta última parte se proponen algunas hipótesis sobre la traducción de los textos de ciencia ficción, en particular sobre el léxico específico de este género literario. 2 Index 1 Introduction .................................................................................................... 5 1.1 The Author .............................................................................................. 5 1.2 Outbound ................................................................................................ 5 1.3 Expressive texts and literary translation ................................................. 6 1.4 Science fiction ....................................................................................... 12 1.5 Analysis of the Source Text .................................................................. 16 1.5.1 Stylistic analysis .............................................................................. 19 1.5.2 Lexical analysis ............................................................................... 22 1.5.3 Morphosyntactic analysis ................................................................ 24 2 Outbound (English version) ......................................................................... 27 3 Outbound (Italian translation) ...................................................................... 64 4 Translation comment .................................................................................. 105 4.1 Stylistic problems ............................................................................... 105 4.1.1 Punctuation / pauses ...................................................................... 105 4.1.2 Metaphors ...................................................................................... 106 4.1.3 Different registers ......................................................................... 110 4.1.4 Onomatopoeias .............................................................................. 111 4.1.5 Expansion ...................................................................................... 112 4.2 Lexical problems ................................................................................. 114 4.2.1 The title ......................................................................................... 114 4.2.2 TransCom ...................................................................................... 115 4.2.3 Terms related to spaceships and space travel ................................ 115 4.2.4 Terms related to astronomy ........................................................... 121 4.2.5 Terms related to Information Technology .................................... 121 3 4.2.6 Terms related to other technologies .............................................. 125 4.2.7 Colloquial terms ............................................................................ 128 4.2.8 Other lexical problems .................................................................. 128 4.3 Morphosyntactic problems ................................................................. 130 4.3.1 Continuous form ........................................................................... 131 4.3.2 Past simple .................................................................................... 132 4.3.3 Would ............................................................................................ 134 4.3.4 Pluperfect ...................................................................................... 135 4.3.5 You ................................................................................................ 136 4.3.6 Theme/rheme ................................................................................ 138 4.3.7 Modulation .................................................................................... 139 4.3.8 Other changes ................................................................................ 140 4.4 Misprint ............................................................................................... 141 5 Glossary ...................................................................................................... 142 6 Bibliography ............................................................................................... 146 7 Sitography .................................................................................................. 148 4 1 Introduction 1.1 The Author In his short biography1, Brad R. Torgersen describes himself as a "healthcare computer geek by day, a United States Army Reserve Chief Warrant Officer on the weekend, and a Science Fiction and Fantasy writer by night". He was born in 1974 and currently lives in northern Utah. He was nominated in 2012 for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer in professional Science Fiction and Fantasy and his stories and collaborations appeared on the pages of several popular science-fiction publications, such as Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, ESLI, Nowa Fantastyka and other anthologies. His novelette "Outbound" (2010) acquired him the Analog magazine 'AnLab' Readers' Choice Award and was featured in the anthology Into the New Millennium: Trailblazing Tales From Analog Science Fiction and Fact, 2000 – 2010. The same year, his novelette "Exanatstasis" won the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. In 2011, his short story "Ray of Light" got him nominated for both the World Science Fiction Society Hugo Award and the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Award. 1.2 Outbound "Outbound" was first published in 2010 in the Analog Science Fiction and Fact Magazine, and was appreciated both by readers and other authors and professionals such as Dean Wesley Smith and Dr. Jonathan Vos Post.2 Other than Analog, it was re-published in the Russian magazine ESLI, in the anthology Into the New Millennium: Trailblazing Tales From Analog Science Fiction and Fact, 2000 – 2010, and it is now available both in Kindle and eBook format respectively in the Amazon and the Barnes and Nobles websites. The main objective of the translator in choosing this short story was to deal with the challenges posed by literary translation and particularly translation of the literary 1 Torgersen, B. T. (2011). Outbound. Silent Forge Press. 2 www.bradrtorgersen.com 5 genre of science fiction. Furthermore, because science fiction is not as popular a genre as others in Italy, I thought it would be interesting to translate a novelette written by one of the newest and promising authors of the genre. Before proceeding to the analysis of the text, it is important to first identify and examine its text type and genre in order to take into account the different problems of translation they imply. 1.3 Expressive texts and literary translation In translation studies, a significant problem has always been the criteria according to which the quality of a translation can be judged. Many theories have been suggested to answer this question, and most scholars seem to share the importance of the distinction of functions or text types, which has its basis on Buhler's functional theory of language. Christopher Taylor, in his book Language to language 3 , summarizes Buhler's three basic functions of languages as such: - The informative function, which provides information about the real world; - The expressive function, which provides an outlet for speakers and writers to express and exploit their creative skills; - The vocative function, which persuades or influences others. Amid these three functions, literary texts are generally thought to belong to the expressive function category. Newmark also refers to Buhler's functional theory, as adapted by Jackobson, to distinguish between text types: expressive, informative, vocative, aesthetic, phatic and metalingual. According to him, "the core