Translating Poetics of Place, Memory and Identity: An Exploration of Ignazio Buttitta’s Sicilian Dialect Poetry in English

Abstract

The thesis explores a selection of Ignazio Buttitta's Sicilian dialect poems in English translation, presenting the process of translation as a means of understanding the text as a linguistic (and therefore linguistically representative) message, a cultural embodiment (and spatially situated) embodiment of topoi, and an ideological (politically active) tool for the preservation of identity. Three folios of translations have as their focus these angles of investigation respectively, prefaced by an exploration of the polycentric Italian linguistic context and discussion of the terms 'language' and 'dialect'. The research addresses individual linguistic choice, initially through attempts to mirror the style and impact in English, moving on to address culturally representative translation practices and, finally, the subjective persona of the poet and translator within the translations. The poems traverse Buttitta's lifetime of writing, addressing the influence of a sense of fading or threatened identity, which impinged upon regional culture and local means of expression; I look at collective memory, preservation of memory and place through language as a form of repository, acknowledging the onus on translation into a lingua franca. This leads to an in-depth repositioning of the visibility of translational processes and decision-making, foregrouding the translator's textual encounters in order to maximize understanding of the workings of language in transfer. The underlying drive of the research is to uncover a poetics of place and memory of which dialect is singularly depictive and, in so doing, to examine multifaceted approaches that seek to transfer such linguistic, cultural and ideological significance in English translation.