6.1 Understanding Translation Through the Metaphor of Return in Diasporic Settings
This book has discussed a corpus of diasporic Italian-Canadian writing, and its translation into Italian, in relation to the concept of return. The corpus of writing taken into account included Nino Ricci’s Lives of the Saints trilogy (1990, 1993, 1997), Mary Melfi’s Italy Revisited. Conversations with My Mother (2009) and Frank Paci’s Italian Shoes (2002).
The discussion has moved from the idea of diaspora as theorised mainly by Brah (1996) and Gabaccia (2000), as a term that represents the idea of dispersion from a homeland and the longing to return to it, and, the notion of reattachment and reconstruction of home. This idea of reattachment has been discussed mainly in connection with translation, and the discussion has been anchored on the notion of written code-switching—that is, the insertion of Italian or Italian dialect words within the texts written in Canadian English. Code-switching is linked to translation because it symbolises the hybridity and the movement or switching between two or more codes, between two or more points of view or reference, and is often followed by translation, in order to help readers make sense of the text. Code-switching in this work has been understood as a pivotal fictional and translational linguistic tool in the construction of Italian-Canadian narratives. The movement of going back and forth between cultural references and values can be understood as a metaphor for return, a return however, that, as with the impossible returns portrayed in our corpus of Italian-Canadian narratives, never reaches a definite point but, rather, needs to depart again and again.
The discussion of code-switching alongside that of return, and in combination with the narratological concepts of focalisations, voice and plot, and with sociocultural understandings of narrative, showed the fundamental role played by code-switching in narrative construction, understood as the focal point around which a narrative spans, an idea clearly illustrated by the discussion of the finding of the textual analysis in Chapter 5. This analysis has allowed me to make sense of the various, complex aspects of the concept of return found in the corpus of texts, considered in narrative terms as a masterplot (Abbott 2008), and of the discourses surrounding the translations of these texts “framed” (using a narrative theory term, see Baker 2006) in terms of return. The most striking aspect of this research has been the realisation that the same elements referring to an idea of return found in the source texts also recurred in the translations and in the narratives surrounding the translations, although these elements were selected and combined in different ways according to the setting and the participants involved in the communication. This can be explained by the fact that in the specific diasporic writing presented—Italian-Canadian writing translated into Italian—one element of the equation, the adjective Italian, was already present in the source text as a sign of displacement, as a diasporic sign. The translation thus had to deal with something about itself, something representing the target culture, that had previously migrated and was now perceived as returning through translation.
It thus became very obvious that translation in this scenario is a feature of the source texts themselves as much as an operation of moving texts from one location to another, or to put it better, of recreating texts in different locations.
Pivotal elements of the recreations that emerged from the analysis are code-switched terms such as paesano (person from the same village), la bella figura (making a good impression) and la miseria (poverty). Paesano is an Italian term (but also a loan word in English) that refers to the hybrid diasporic identity of Italian-Canadians and invokes the reconstruction of the sense of paese (village/home) by the emigrants in Canada in order to face the sense of alienation brought about by emigration (Pitto 2013). This term, although referring mainly to first-generation emigrants, can also be extended to second-generation emigrants, like the writers analysed in this book, in the sense that these writers, despite the fact that they might not have migrated themselves, like Nino Ricci, still need to reconstruct a sense of what it means to be Italian in Canada, to find a sort of imagined paese , some points of reference, to curb the sense of alienation experienced as second-generation Italians. The term paesano discussed in Ricci’s trilogy (although also present in Paci’s and in Melfi’s work) was linked to the impossibility of returning home, as returning to a previous point in time is impossible, and every return is a new arrival. It was also linked to return as a fascination with origins and with the desire to return to a sense of wholeness lost. The same idea was found in the narratives circulating around the translation which framed these translations as a way of returning the emigrants to Italy, or better, to the paese (village). This is because these discourses are characterised by a strong regional element, given the constant connections maintained by the regions of provenance (through associations, clubs, etc.) with Italian emigrants since the 1970s (Tirabassi 2010). Moreover, translators and publishers, like Iacobucci and Cosmo Iannone Editore, have strong bonds with their regions of origin (which are also the regions of origin of the emigrants). Because of this, the translation of Italian-Canadian writing was framed within a narrative of return to origins (the regions of provenance) and restoration of origins. The notion of origins was hinted at by discourses that looked at the idea of translation as reinstating an original text and translation as unveiling an original language, Italian. These narratives echo considerations formulated around the other code-switched term la bella figura , which was discussed in relation to the protagonist of Paci’s novel, Mark. Through the discovery of beautiful Italy while visiting his relatives, the Italy of beautiful cities and the Italy of works of arts, Mark starts making sense of himself as a diasporic subject, and begins to revaluate and appreciate the Italy of la miseria , that is the peasants’ Italy and the Italy of his roots—an Italy that he had previously discarded out of shame for his parents’ humble origins. La bella figura also enters the discourses circulating in the translation’s paratexts, where Mark is described as reluctant to follow the Italian traditions, and in the extra focus given by the translation to Italy’s artistic beauty through the use of italics. In this sense, one could find not only an attempt to Italianise the emigrants, using the words of Lorriggio (2004), to annul their specificity, but also an attempt by the Italian publishers to make a good impression by capitalising on a concept that has made Italy known and famous abroad. If the translation is always born out of the needs of the target context, then conceiving of translation as a return of the emigrant plays a part in fulfilling those needs. This type of return through translation has been conceived as an act of restitution, in the same way that the Italian-Canadian authors analysed have conceived their writing as a way to give something back to their Italian parents. Such a restitution, for Italians, could be seen as an attempt to return some dignity to the topic of emigration, despised and ignored by Italian governments for decades. However, this restitution could also be conceived, I argue, as an important tool for self-knowledge, as a foundational mythological narrative. It could be considered a way of constituting social identity, borrowing a concept from narrative theory (Somers and Gibson 1994; Baker 2006, 2007, 2014), an idea confirmed in the words of translator Iacobucci, who states that Ricci’s trilogy could be read as a modern epic novel.
Looking back at the country of la miseria , depicted clearly in Melfi’s work, at the conditions of poverty that caused (and still cause) millions of Italians to emigrate, Italians should become more aware of Italy’s post-colonial past and better learn how to live with current immigrants in Italy. Most importantly, this backward look should teach Italians how to make sense of the loss experienced by many Italian villages as a result of emigration. Discourses about return, after all, become especially prominent in moments of crisis, as stated by Taddeo (2010) and Pitto (2013).
Given these considerations, we can thus say that the return to origins is linked to this attempt to reconstruct the past from the relics, according to Teti (2011, 2017), a term we have mentioned many times when discussing the power of relics in Paci’s novel. Despite the fact that such discourses might unveil an attempt to assimilate the emigrants within the periphery of Italy as a nation state, there are also attempts at infusing the locality with mobility, as amply discussed in Chapter 5. Moreover, although returns are impossible, the narratives underpinning the translations of Italian-Canadian writing insist on the possibilities of such returns, returns seen as occasions for initiating new dialogues.
In Teti’s words, “the returns of the emigrants are symbolic, immaterial, mental and affirm the productivity of the encounter between cultures”, and “the people who stay, need to be perceived as interlocutors, the other facet of the emigrants” (Teti 2013, xiii, xiv).
This statement highlights the importance for those who are not migrants in Italy of becoming migrants while remaining at home, of adopting the migrant’s “perspective from a distance” to better cope with their lives, as translator Mangione (2018) affirms—who lives in the USA. Any reconstitution of home must be done “by envisioning it from a distance”, as migrants do, to borrow the words of Jennifer Burns (2013, 130).
To conclude, the Italian and Italian-Canadian narratives of translation as return analysed in this book point to the circularity between emigrant and immigrant cultures, a concept stressed by translators and publishers alike (Mangione 2018; Lombardi 2018). We have witnessed such circularity in the circulations of similar conceptual images between Italy and Canada—that act as traces, in Derrida’s terms (1985). These conceptual images are activated both by source texts (the products of previous translations) and by the translations of these source texts, and have the potential to produce other traces. This circularity thus justifies the idea, discussed in the Introduction, of considering the translation of Italian-Canadian writing as part of the bigger umbrella of Italian migrant writing, with the intention of expanding the Italian literary canon, rather than limiting Italian-Canadian writing within nationalistic confines.
6.2 Future Research Trajectories
This book has offered a contribution to studies on the concept of return in diasporic writing and can be considered an addition to works on the subject, such as that of Taddeo (2010) on the concept of return in Italian and non-Italian literature, or as a more general contribution to studies of Italian and not Italian migrant writing. It is also a book that aims to offer a more general contribution to studies of translation and migration (see Inghilleri 2017; Polezzi 2012; Cronin 2000, 2003) and to studies of narrative theory and translation, in the footsteps of Baker’s (2006, 2007, 2014) work on the sociology and the political importance of translation, but with a more specific focus on diasporic writing.
This book has also offered a contribution to studies of written code-switching. More work remains to be done in this area, however, as the number of studies of oral code-switching by far exceeds that on written texts (see Sebba et al. 2012). One major finding of this study is that code-switching can be analysed as a narratological tool in the construction of an identity narrative. It might be productive to investigate further which other textual elements can be analysed as features of focalisation, voice and plot, or even which other textual elements can be considered pivotal in the construction of diasporic narratives. I believe that a close textual/linguistic analysis of diasporic writing can only enrich our understanding of its sociological importance, rather than diminish it, as this book has tried to demonstrate.
Another fruitful line of enquiry would be to apply and test the model of analysis devised in this book to the investigation of the translation of other Italian-Canadian literary works to see what other factors affect their translation.
More work waits to be done in order to confirm and expand the findings of this work in relation, specifically, to publishing house policies, to readership constraints and, most importantly, to the contribution of the rediscovery of Italian emigration for Italy’s self-representation, to use Polezzi’s expression (2000, 46). That is, for the construction of an Italian public identity narrative that can face the new challenges posed by the migratory phenomena into this country. The model of analysis tested in this book could also be tested on other diasporic writing in order to reveal whether it can be expanded and improved.
Equally rewarding would be further elaboration on theories of narrative and translation in diasporic scenarios in general and, more specifically, on narratological theories that take into account translation as one of the main features of narrative construction. An understanding of narrative in this way would be more likely to provide interesting insights into the analysis of diasporic situations, since it incorporates concepts such as mobility, dislocation and the idea of otherness within itself. Such an understanding of narrative could explain what makes translation and narrative unattainable but, at the same time, worth telling and worth translating, as shown by the analysis of our corpus of writing.