Literary Texts Crossing-Over

A Translation Proposal of Suneeta Peres da Costa’s Saudade into Italian

Abstract

The article intends to present a discussion on the practice of translation of a novella written by a young Australian author of Goan origins: Saudade by Suneeta da Peres Costa. Being aware that the translation, editing and publication of a text by a less known author belonging to a far-away cultural context is not an easy task, we will show how it can be reframed into a target cultural, historical and social panorama avoiding domestication and emphasising the ‘unfamiliarity’ of some of its peculiar features intended as core elements to present alternative narrations of coloniality. The translation of a culturally and linguistically hybrid text demonstrates how literary translation can be considered as the result of a specialised domain for which the translator needs very specific competences. In fact, as the structure and lexical choices embed the chosen text in the so-called postcolonial context, it is rich in historical, geographical and linguistic intertextual references that are not easily recognizable and need a translator specialised in colonial histories in order to be conveniently conveyed as part of the nature of the text.