Lost in Translation: the Italian rendering of UNICEF 'The state of the World's Children 2004' report

A close reading of the “State of the World’s Children 2004” Report, in English, reveals that what one would expect to be a neutral, impersonal representation of data - an official statement of facts - claiming for globality, in an informative language, is, instead, an ethically biased report. The parallel reading of its Italian translation, within an Applied Translation Studies framework, has shown that in the documents under investigation many different types of strategies, both covert and/or overt, are at work. Their supposed neutrality is denied on the grounds of targeted options which, ranging from lexico-grammatical and textual choices up to discoursal ones, contribute altogether to the ideological and social connotation of the texts. In addition to the usual findings of Translation Comparative Studies in the lexico-grammar domain (such as Dislocation/Disruption; Inversion/Loss; Equation/Substitution; Divergence/Convergence; Amplification/Reduction ; Diffusion/Simplification), what comes into the foreground is how the Target Text tends to neutralize many metaphoric expressions of the Source Text and often uses, instead of visual images, more abstract language. The consistent process of implicitation that the TT has undergone reaches its climax in a repeated series of omissions, not only of single words, but, surprisingly enough, of whole sentences. Such changes do not appear to be textually motivated, and entail loss of meaning. The translator’s stancetaking, considered in the light of the Appraisal framework, significantly differs from the authorial one: the systematic comparison of the two texts highlights very different levels of commitment, involving content itself and, consequently, the ideological value of the text – adhering to a possibly deliberate choice. As a matter of fact, the ST is decidedly a function-oriented text (information/charity), whose pragmatical implicatures and compassion moves (aimed at involving the reader in ethical and charity enterprises) seem to be ‘softened’ in the TT. While greater visibility for the general reader – and involvement – is the dominating mood of the ST, the TT appears to be a ‘refracted text' where the originally intended social meaning and ideological implications of the ST are altered, owing to ‘dis-aligned’ quality of the translation. We will discuss the extent of these phenomena and the ethical implications of this ‘politically incorrect’ rendering.