Sicilia: Translation proposal in Asturian and translationological comment

Abstract

La Sicilia is a 19th-century Sicilian legend which was collected and published by the Sicilian humanist Giuseppe Pitrè in Fiabe e leggende popolari siciliane in 1888. In it, the mythical origin of the name of the southernmost island of Italy is told. In this paper, we propose a translation of the story into Asturian and analyse the challenges that have emerged throughout the process. In this way, we seek to give continuity to the work begun by Pelayo Martínez-Olay (2021) with the translation of another legend by the same author, in which he studied the Sicilian periphrastic system in contrastive key with the Asturian language. We, however, offer a different study, not only focusing on grammatical elements, but also on cul- tural figures of the Sicilian region that appear, to varying extents, as characters or narrative elements in the legend. Although we are dealing with two structurally related languages (both Romance languages), the geographical distance and the absence of a good cultural exchange between them make it dificult for the target reader to know the Sicilian culture, so our objec- tive is twofold: on the one hand, to delve deeper into the most problematic points that arise throughout the translation process, and on the other, to make Sicilian culture accessible to new readers, so that it may be appreciated and shared beyond its borders. To achieve this, we employ a methodology based on the communicative model, which focuses the importance of the process on the text already in the target language, that is, Asturian. Before reaching the commentary of the translation, we describe the methodological framework we are going to follow and the main sources on which we base our decisions; next, we analyse the history and characteristics of the Sicilian language and then compare these features with the Asturian language; then, we do a preliminary analysis of the text to find the potentially problematic elements during the translation process; afterwards, we present both texts (the original and the translated one) and the traductological commentary, where we will focus on three specific elements: false friends, proper names (and their relation to Sicilian culture) and paremiological units. Finally, we offer our conclusions and bibliographical references.