Les Damnés de la terre di Frantz Fanon: la traduzione di Cignetti cinquant’anni dopo

• Main Author: Chiara Lusetti
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: LED - Edizioni Universitarie di Lettere Economia Diritto 2020-01-01
• Series: Lingue Culture Mediazioni
• Subjects: frantz fanon; french language; italian language; retranslation; translation; ingua francese; lingua italiana; ritraduzione; traduzione
• Online Access: https://www.ledonline.it/index.php/LCM-Journal/article/view/1829

This essay analyzes the Italian translation of Les Damnés de la terre by Frantz Fanon, published by Einaudi in 1962, almost at the same time as the French text, and work of Carlo Cignetti. The analysis strives to highlight the need for a retranslation of the essay. After a brief introduction of the topic of retranslation and a presentation of the corpus, generally regarded as a manifesto of the anticolonial and student movements of the sixties and a milestone of Post-Colonial Studies, the essay focuses on the linguistic issues of Cignetti’s translation. These stem from two phenomena that involve both the lexicon and the syntax used: (1) an overuse of calques from the French version and (2) a translation that ennobles the text, leading to its premature aging.