10.6092/issn.1974-4382/15558
As argued by Jean Boase-Beier (2006; 2011), who realized the first systematic studies on stylistic approaches to translation, Stylistics has had a relatively small role in translation theory. Yet, the study of style is one of the main linguistic tools scholars of Translation Studies are given to understand the “textual-conceptual functions” (Jeffries 2014) and to be able to recognize them in translation. That is, to be able to analyse (and explain) how linguistic resources are used to produce meanings and how these meanings are recontextualized through translation. Drawing on these premises, the article aims at presenting an overview on stylistic approaches to translation. In particular it aims at exploring the origins of the interaction between Stylistics and Translation Studies and looking at its current developments. In this perspective, narrowing the focus from a general introduction to Stylistics to the application of the stylistic framework to literary translation, the article highlights the necessity to reach a more organic synergy between Stylistics and Translation, the latter intended as both a theoretical discipline and a professional practice.&nbsp; Finally, a comparative linguistic analysis of textual excerpts taken from Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s novel Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun (2016) and from its Italian translation, Storie della mia città (2020), offers an insight on the interaction between Stylistics and translation, showing how their synergy can be used to unveil the social and political implications that sometimes are concealed in, or disguised through, the creation of a fictional world.
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Luisa Marino
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mediAzioni
Nigerian literature
Stylistic Approaches to Translation: an Overview
Text.Serial.Journal
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Articles
2022-09-22
2022-09-21
2022-09-22
2022-09-22
A220-A235
M
Luisa Marino
2022/09/22
10.6092/issn.1974-4382/15558
A220
Università degli Studi di Ferrara
1974-4382
Nigerian literature
en
A235
Stylistic Approaches to Translation: an Overview
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Updating Discourse/s on Method/s                                         mediAzioni 34 (2022)
                                                                               ISSN   1974-4382


STYLISTIC APPROACHES TO TRANSLATION: AN OVERVIEW
                                          LUISA MARINO
                                      UNIVERSITY OF FERRARA

luisa.marino@unife.it



Citation: Marino, Luisa (2022) “Stylistic Approaches to Translation: an Overview”, in
Lucia Abbamonte and Flavia Cavaliere (eds.) Updating Discourse/s on Method/s,
mediAzioni 34: A220-A235, https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1974-4382/15558, ISSN
1974-4382.



Abstract: As argued by Jean Boase-Beier (2006; 2011), who realized the first systematic
studies on stylistic approaches to translation, Stylistics has had a relatively small role in
translation theory. Yet, the study of style is one of the main linguistic tools scholars of
Translation Studies are given to understand the “textual-conceptual functions” (Jeffries
2014) and to be able to recognize them in translation. That is, to be able to analyse (and
explain) how linguistic resources are used to produce meanings and how these meanings
are recontextualized through translation. Drawing on these premises, the article aims at
presenting an overview on stylistic approaches to translation. In particular it aims at
exploring the origins of the interaction between Stylistics and Translation Studies and
looking at its current developments. In this perspective, narrowing the focus from a
general introduction to Stylistics to the application of the stylistic framework to literary
translation, the article highlights the necessity to reach a more organic synergy between
Stylistics and Translation, the latter intended as both a theoretical discipline and a
professional practice. Finally, a comparative linguistic analysis of textual excerpts taken
from Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s novel Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun (2016) and
from its Italian translation, Storie della mia città (2020), offers an insight on the
interaction between Stylistics and translation, showing how their synergy can be used
to unveil the social and political implications that sometimes are concealed in, or
disguised through, the creation of a fictional world.

Keywords: stylistics, translation studies, style, Sarah Ladipo Manyika, Nigerian
literature.




Copyright © 2022
The text in this work is licensed under CC-BY 4.0.                                        A220
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1. Stylistics and textual analysis

This article aims at offering an overview on the relationship(s) between Stylistics
and Translation Studies, exploring the possibility of applying the stylistic
framework to the practice of translation. Even though Stylistics can be a useful
tool for the analysis of any textual typology, the article is mainly concerned with
literary texts. Thus, the references to Translation Studies are to be intended, more
specifically, as references to Literary Translation Studies.
     Drawing on the necessity to speculate on theories and methods, the article
moves from a general presentation of Stylistics. Then it tries and explores the
role played by style in the process(es) of translation and the role played by
stylistic analyses in the translation practice. Even though the main focus of the
article remains theory, its final section is devoted to a brief presentation of a
case-study. The objective of the case-study is ‘suggesting’ how to bridge the gap
between translation theory and practice and encouraging further studies on the
application of the stylistic framework to the practice of (literary) translation.
     Through times, Stylistics has commonly been referred to as “the analysis of
the language of literary texts” (Mills 1995: 3), even though some scholars point
out that stylistic techniques can be used in the study of any kind of texts, not just
literary ones (see Simpson 1993; Verdonk 2002).
     What is central to the discipline is the emphasis on the language of the text,
and that is the reason why linguistic models are interrogated in order to
undertake stylistic analyses. Thus, the very concept of language raises the first
questions:
     - Is language to be intended as ‘just’ a tool to communicate with other people
and/or communities?
     - Is it a vehicle for new ideas to be spread or for old ideas to be revived and
re-discussed?
     -Is it as a site of negotiation of power relationships?
Stylistics scholars try to answer to these (and other) questions using different
models of language in their linguistic analyses.
     In her pivotal work1, Sara Mills (1995) highlights the centrality of an active
reader in the processes of textual interpretation. Readers are indeed not to be
intended as mere receivers of the (literary) text since the process of textual
interpretation is not a linear transaction between an author and a reader. Authors
and readers participate in a bidirectional relationship that is affected and
moulded by personal, socio-historical and political contingencies. If we think
about translators as readers par excellence of a (literary) text, Mills’ idea of an
active reader, that is a reader who “participate” in the process(es) of textual
interpretation, helps us think about translation as a positioned practice (Venuti
1995, 2000; Tymoczko 1995, 2010; Bassnett 2002, 2011; Bassnett and Lefevere
1998; Federici and Marino 2018). Yet, it is important to remember that textual

1
  In Feminist Stylistics (1995), Sara Mills schematizes the role of the author and of the readers in
the “Conventional model of text” and in the “Feminist model of text”. Comparing the two models
she offers an overview on the elements that affect and mould the relationship between authors
and readers, that is between the context of production of a (literary) text and the context of
reception.
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interpretation for translation purposes does not depend entirely on readers (and
consequently on translators). This means that even though the figure of the
reader/interpreter is central in the dialectic process of textual elaboration and
reception, texts address readers. In other words, texts “invite” readers’
interpretations according to specific linguistic devices. This tendency to address
the reader, either directly or indirectly, is what Mills defines “dominant reading”;
that is, the presentation of “certain ways of interpretation as the most likely to
make sense of the text” (Mills 1995: 50). In contrast to what may be imagined,
the dominant reading does not correspond to the writer’s intentions (which
normally cannot be recovered) but to the position(s) a text offers to its readers
in a precise time, that is according to the social, cultural and economic scenario
of a precise historical moment. For example, a text which portrays women’s
associationism is more likely to be read, today, within the ideological framework
of feminism and women’s empowerment. That is both because of the ideologies
circulating nowadays and because of the availability of other texts and discourses
on women and female agency that reinforce these ideological positions.
     In a sense, the dominant reading suggests what are the most evident
“relations of struggle” (Fairclough 1989: 34) at issue in a text. That is, what are
the most evident power relations discussed by means of language, defined by
Paul Simpson as a “specific site for struggle” (1993: 5). The recognition of the
dominant reading and of the power relations displayed in a text is one of the first
steps of a translator’s preliminary work.
     Even though the concept of the dominant reading has been largely addressed
in literary theory (Mills 1995: 55), little has been written about its role in the
translation process(es). In the essay La voce del testo. L’arte e il mestiere di tradurre
(2012), Franca Cavagnoli points out how the dominant2 ‘guides’ the translator in
her/his process to achieve coherence in the target text without affecting the
intentions and the integrity of the source text. Therefore, Cavagnoli suggests that
when a translator starts to translate a text, s/he has to be aware of both the
implied reader and the implied focus of the final product. In other words, a
translator needs to know who s/he is translating for, and according to which
criteria.
     In this perspective, Franca Cavagnoli re-elaborates what Susan Bassnett and
Harish Trivedi claim in their Post-Colonial Translation (1999): translation acts
take place in socio-historical, cultural and political contexts that mould both
translation choices and the reception(s) of the translated product(s). In their
words: “translations are always embedded in cultural and political systems, and
in history [and] the strategies employed by translators reflect the context in
which the texts are produced” (1999: 24). Bassnett and Trivedi’s considerations
encourage the contemplation of translation as both a positioned practice and
product. The scholars maintain that translations do not exist in a vacuum but are
the result of choices made by translators according to their positioned reading(s)
of the source text and to the publishing practices of the target publishing


2
 For a deeper insight on the concept of the dominant please refer to Roman Jakobson, “The
Dominant” in K. Pomorska and S. Rudy, Language in Literature (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press: 1987), 41.
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scenario. In this way, the scholars point out how many variables can be involved
in the translation process(es) and how the perception of the translated text
changes if we look at it not just as the result of a set of linguistic correspondences
but as a new text for which the translator acts as a creative, interlinguistic and
intercultural mediator (Bassnett and Trivedi 1999; Popovič 2006; Ponzanesi
2014; Boase-Baier, Fawcett and Wilson 2014).


2. Stylistics and Translation Studies

In 2006, Jean Boase-Beier has written extensively about the intersection between
Sylistics and Translation Studies, filling a gap in the study of style and translation.
In Stylistic Approaches to Translation (2006) she has pointed out the role style plays
in both translation theories and practice. In her perspective, style is not just one
of the core elements of textual interpretation, but also a key concept to approach
translation from both a theoretical and a practical point of view.
     As outlined by the previous paragraph, texts, intended as forms of language
in use, are “a part of, as well as a consequence of, social process” (Fowler et al.
2019 [1979]: 26). This implies that, while managing a text, translators need to
be aware of the fact that they are not just transferring sets of meanings from a
language and from a socio-cultural panorama to another; they are possibly
handling ideologies and power relationships, and they are repurposing them into
a different socio-cultural scenario through the use of an alien language.
     In her study of style and translation, Jean Boase-Beier explains how translation
process(es) cannot guarantee an exact correspondence between the style of the ST
and that of the TT. That because style itself is subject to interpretation, both in the
source and in the target text. Thus, she recognizes three degrees of linguistic
observation; in each of them style has a specific meaning:
     - the style of the ST depends on textual interpretation;
     - the style of the TT bears the marks of the translator;
     - the style of the TT depends on the interpretation(s) of its readers.
In other words, the style of the ST is not just a result of authorial choices; instead,
its perception depends on the translator’s interpretation. As argued by Lawrence
Venuti, the style of the target text is the result of a translator’s “decision process”
(1986: 182); meaning style transposition to another language is not just a
transfer. Translators are, in this perspective, authors in the second-degree. Last,
Sara Mills tackles the role of the addressee(s), explaining that the style of the TT
depends also on the interpretation(s) of its addressees, that is the “actual readers”
(1995: 23) of the (translated) text.
     These observations raise some questions:
     - in which ways does the style of the ST influence the translator’s
interpretation?
     - Which style do scholars address when they talk about the style of the TT?
     - What kind of style do readers of target texts interpret?
While the first two questions regard the description of the translation practice
and will be answered in the following sections through the help of a case-study,
the last one addresses the issue of reception, which is not the main focus of this
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article. Its focus, indeed, is not on the reader as ‘final receiver’ of the translation
product, but on the translator intended as both ‘provisional receiver’ of a textual
product in a source language and an ‘author in the second degree’ of a textual
product in a target language. As the case-study will show, this article addresses
translated texts as non-definitive products, highlighting the importance of final
readers in the operations of textual making sense, but without delving into book
market issues and the reception of texts intended as goods.
     The practice of translation has raised many questions along the years; the
very figure of the translator and her/his position in relation to that of the author
has been discussed and re-discussed as a controversial issue (Venuti 1986;
Maestri 2018: 1-12). In the past, translation was considered as a secondary
activity in which translators were not expected to manipulate the texts they were
working on, but to respect a criterion of “fidelity” which was rooted in what
Walter Benjamin called the ‘reine Sprache’, that is the ‘pure Language’. As
Umberto Eco explains in Dire quasi la stessa cosa. Esperienze di traduzione (2003:
345-351), Benjamin’s “reine Sprache” is not an actual language but rather a
metalanguage between a source text and a target text which functions as a
“tertium comparationis” (Eco 2003: 347). Since it is not possible to reproduce the
same exact meanings of a source text into a target language, the translator should
rely on the fact that every language reminds to a pure language, a reine Sprache,
in which all the single languages make sense in the same way. However, as the
following sections explain, new theorisations (Bassnett 2002; Bassnett and
Lefevere 1998; Gentzler 1993) about Translation Studies, and the contribution
of Cultural Studies in determining a new focus of Translation Studies on cultural
issues, have changed both translators’ attitude towards translation practice and
scholars’ approach to the discipline.
     Once established the concept of fidelity3 to the reine Sprache as antiquated,
Paul Ricœur retrieves the idea of fidelity in his study of translation as one of the
paradigms of human communication and linguistic and cultural
interrelationships (2001). He maintains that translation is always possible since
it is always possible finding a way to express a concept across languages and
cultures. The consequence is that the more distant the linguistic and cultural
landscape are, the more manipulated the source text will be, in order to
accommodate to an alien scenario. Thus, in the philosopher’s opinion, the only
kind of fidelity translators can rely on refers to the language capacity to convey
a meaning, or a set of meanings. In this perspective, translators have the role to


3
  For further references on the concept of fidelity see, among others: Walter Benjamin. “The Task
of the Translator. An introduction to the translation of Baudelaire’s Tableaux Parisiens”. Trans.
by Harry Zohn. In Lawrence Venuti (ed.) The Translation Studies Reader. (London and New York:
Routledge, 2000); John Cunnison Catford. A Linguistic Theory of Translation: An Essay in Applied
Linguistics. (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1965); George Steiner. After Babel: Aspects of
language and translation. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975); Jacque Derrida. “Des Tour de
Babel”. Tran. by Joseph F. Graham. In Joseph F Graham (ed.) Difference in Translation. (Ithaca
and London: Cornell University Press, 1985), 165 – 207; Amparo Hurtado Albir. La notion de
fidélité en traduction. (Paris: Didier Erudition, 1990); Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi. Post-
Colonial Translation. (London: Routledge, 1999). Hans J.Vermeer. “Skopos and Commission in
Translational Action”. Trans. by Andrew Chesterman. In Lawrence Venuti (ed.) The Translation
Studies Reader. (London and New York: Routledge, 2000).
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guarantee this passage, and in this stands their challenge and their ethics
(Ricoeur 2001).
    In this perspective, Lawrence Venuti (1986) argues that one of the greatest
injustices translators suffer is that to be alienated from their works. In fact, in
The Translator’s Invisibility he mentions readers, editors and publishers’ unfair
claim that a translation reads as the source text:

      a translation is judged acceptable […] when it reads fluently, when the
      absence of any awkward phrasings, unidiomatic constructions or confused
      meaning gives the appearance that the translation reflects the foreign
      author’s personality or intention or the essential meaning of the original text.
      What is so remarkable here is that both attitudes completely efface the
      translator’s crucial intervention in the text: the more “successful” the
      translation, the more invisible the translator, and the more visible the author
      or meaning of the original text (Venuti 1986: 179).

The translator’s invisibility, that is the translator’s scant recognition as an agent
of mediation who bears her/his own social, cultural, political and traditional
background and does her/his work according to these frameworks, is strictly
related to the desire of publishing, promoting, reading transparent works. Yet,
Sara Mills’ feminist model of text (1995: 23) has anticipated how much the quest
for transparency is an ineffective one, since any text originates from a texture of
relations which often are to be found outside the text itself, that is in its contexts
of production and reception. Drawing on Mills’ work, it seems clear how
opacity4, rather than transparency, is the principal characteristic of a text. In this
perspective, the translator works as a mediator between two kinds of opacities:
that of the source text, for a foreign readership, and that of the target text. Thus,
the role of the translator is not that to convert the opacity of the source text into
transparency. The translator’s role is recognizing an amount of productivity in
the opacity of the source text, interrogating this opacity and reframing it in the
hosting linguistic and cultural scenario.
     These observations bring into play Maria Tymoczko’s definition of
translation as refraction (1995: 12). The scholar uses the physics concept of
refraction to focus on the idea of multiplicity that translation carries with it. As
a wave passing from medium to another can change direction countless times,
similarly one source text can be translated into countless target texts, because
translation acts are not performed in a vacuum, but are the result of a set of
choices translators make according to their social, cultural, political and
geographical position, and according to their background of knowledge and
experience. The idea of translation as refraction problematizes, once again, the
role of context intended here as both the context of production of the target text
and that of its reception. In this perspective, translation cannot be considered as
an activity which has repercussions just on the linguistic or on the literary sides



4
 For a deeper insight on the concept of “transparency” and “opacity” refer to Poétique de la
Relation. Paris: Gallimard, 1990 and to Traité du Tout-Monde. Paris: Gallimard, 1997 by the
philosopher and writer Édouard Glissant.
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A226                                                                            MARINO



but also on the social constructions that are expressed through language and
conveyed across cultures thanks to translation practice.


3. (Re)Shaping Translation/(Re)Shaping through translation

Between the 1970s and the 1980s, the rise of Polysystem Theory, the shift from
linguistic to descriptive approaches and the application of Polysystem Theory in
the field of translation (Even-Zohar 1990; Baker 1998; Venuti 2000) led
translation scholars to discuss the role of the receiving culture while dealing with
translation as both a process and a product (Marino forthcoming).
     In this regard, Maria Tymoczko (2010) suggests that the focus had gradually
moved from “how to translate per se toward larger ethical and political
perspectives on the activity of translating” (2010: 5) to the role and the functions
of translation products in relation to the power mechanisms of the receiving
contexts and to the agency of the translator intended as intercultural mediator. In
this light, translation is to be intended as a highly transformative process and as a
social practice (Venuti 1986: 185). That because the distance between two or more
languages, cultures and social, traditional, economic landscapes is rendered
productive through several practices of transformation in which the dialectic
relationship between the polysemy of the source context of production and that of
the target context of production engenders new meanings. Because this
“transformative labor” (Venuti 1986: 187) is shaped by and affects the ways in
which individuals and communities perceive themselves and interact with each
other, translation is a social practice. It is a form of change and transformation,
and for this reason it plays a central role in defining and redefining the cultural
and social institutions that shape human life (Venuti 2019).
     Yet, since all translations come from interpretative acts, the act of translating
entails both ethical responsibilities and political commitment (Ricoeur 2001;
Venuti 2019; Tymoczko 2010) that oblige scholars to look at translated texts as
both creative and social objects. In this sense, the concepts of ‘centrality’ and
‘marginality’ used by Itamar Even-Zohar in The Position of Translated Literature
within the Literary Polysystem (1990) and the concepts of ‘power’ and ‘activism’
used by Maria Tymoczko in Translation, Resistance, Activism: An Overview (2010)
offer an insight into the investigation of representation, intended as both a cross-
cultural and a cross-linguistic practice. On the one hand, Even-Zohar’s concepts
encourage “a speculation about the role of (translated) literature in de-centring,
or (re)shaping” (Marino forthcoming) the aspect of the literary polysystems that
host translated works. On the other hand, Maria Tymoczko focuses on the role
of ideology and on the social issues/constraints that affect translation process(es)
as well as the final products of the translation process(es).
     Translators, who create a bidirectional relationship between two or more
languages and cultures, enable the circulation of ‘foreign voices’, yet they are
not the only responsible for the image, the weight and the role an author, or
even an entire literary genre, acquire in the receiving panorama. There are many
other aspects related to the book industry, to market rules, to the role of literary
festivals, to the role of education, that could not be addressed in this article but
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play a substantial role in determining, affecting or obstructing the transmission
of different identities, intended as one of the most evident results of the
translation process(es) (Summers 2013; Ponzanesi 2014; Marino 2017).
Nevertheless, as André Lefevere (1992) points out, translations are usually the
only chance, for readers who cannot read foreign languages, to be confronted
with foreign texts/narratives. Lefevere’s claim recalls the idea of translation as a
social practice found above. Enabling the circulation of foreign texts in their
mother-tongues, translators do not ‘simply’ give voice to foreign authors; they
encourage linguistic and (socio-)cultural dynamism. Bassnett and Trivedi’s
definition of translation as “locational disrupture” (1999: 12) helps probably
clarify the statement above: more than an interlingual transfer, translation
causes a shift among linguistic, cultural, social and political scenarios. This
brings to a (re)negotiation of both the equilibrium of the source and of the target
contexts. Both of them are affected by translation, meaning neither of them
remains static, immutable (Bassnett 2014; Sontag 2004).
    As the following section shows, creating a synergy between Stylistics and
Translation Studies means approaching the translation process(es) with an
increased awareness of what it means dealing with linguistic constructs which
encode cultural, social and political meanings that need to be decoded and
reframed in order to be conveyed. Indeed, using Stylistics as an epistemological
tool to engage with textual interpretation means approaching translation as a
place of struggle where cultural, social and political issues are discussed and re-
signified through language reframing.


4. Working Stylistics and Translation Studies together: a case-study

Drawing on the theoretical premises presented in the previous sections, this
section is devoted to the presentation of a case-study that aims at offering a much
deeper insight on how Stylistics and Translation Studies can be worked together,
contributing to the realization of the translation project.
     Thanks to selected excerpts taken from Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s novel Like a
Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun (Cassava Republic Press, 2016) and from its
Italian translation Storie della mia città (Frassinelli, 2020) this section is intended
to show what role style can play in textual interpretation, intended as the
preliminary step to translation process(es). Moreover, a comparative analysis of
the extracts of both the source and the target text is intended to demonstrate
how the study of style, connected to the study of the social, cultural and political
specificities of a text can give translators the instruments to interpret both the
linguistic and the non-linguistic aspects of the text they are about to translate.
     In Noaki Sakai’s words: translation is a process of “social transformation
where new power relations are produced” (2009: 87). This means that
translation is a liminal practice, it takes place on borders, on margins. Finding
themselves in the interstitial spaces between two (or more) linguistic, cultural,
political and social landscapes, translators question the concept of
borders/margins as they come across differences, gaps, lacunae that need to be

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interpreted, discussed, negotiated in order to be reframed into another linguistic
and cultural scenario5.
     In some sense, Sarah Ladipo Manyika moves on margins and plays with them
in Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun. Probably because of her diasporic life
and travel experiences6, Sarah Ladipo Manyika has grown accustomed to the idea
of margins reshaping identities, that is the reason why she struggles not to be
“labelled” according to a nationality. Thus, while she is sometimes defined as Afro-
American, Nigerian-born, American, British, African she does not want to be
framed, as much as she does not want to be exoticized. In this regard, she claims:
“I’m an African writer and a British writer and an American writer and a global
writer and a female writer and a black writer and a serious writer and a silly writer
and … All this to say that my being African is a salient part of my identity but
only one part” (Tapureta 2016). Ladipo Manyika writes out of the Western literary
canon and seems to have no interest in being legitimized by it. To a Western gaze
she writes from the margins, that is far from the canons of central/Western
literatures. Moreover, the plot of Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun revolves
around the character of Morayo, an old woman of Nigerian origins who lives in
San Francisco. Morayo is a retired teacher of literature who wears eccentric dresses
and drives a very old car. Portraying the life of an old woman (an immigrant)
Sarah Ladipo Manyika offers a counter-narration of femaleness/womanness in
American phallocentric society. Writing a Vollendungsroman/Reifungsroman7
(Cavigioli 2005: 138), that is a story about ripeness, maturity, senility, without
indulging in piety, the author ‘re-discusses’ the margins of man-centred societies,
problematizing the role and the weight aging women have in the (American)
society. In order to do so, Ladipo Manyika dedicates several pages to Morayo’s
body, not just to her physical description, but also to what she ‘does’ with her
body. (For example, Morayo seduces, gives herself pleasure). In these ways, she
deconstructs, through the use of irony, clichés and gender stereotypes, as the
textual examples show further on in this section.
     The considerations above function as a preparatory work, that is they prepare
the translator to textual interpretation and allow her/him to read the text
suspiciously, that is conscious of the power relationships that may be hidden
through language (Simpson 1993; Mills 1995; Verdonk 2002). In other words, the

5
   In the postcolonial discourse, Homi Bhabha uses the terminology of translation to address
postcolonial migration. In that perspective, translation worked as a metaphor for interlingual and
intercultural encounter: the contact between the migrant and the hosting communities takes place
in a third space, or an in-between place, where meanings are remediated, reshaped and negotiated,
originating a hybrid culture/language. Further references about the concept of in-betweenness and
cultural translation can be found in Bhabha 1994; Trivedi 2007 and Bassnett 2014.
6
  She was born in Nigeria in 1968, not many years after Nigeria’s independence from the British
rule (1960) and during the civil wars which broke out after the declaration of independence
(Nigerian Civil War or Biafran War, 1967-1970). She was raised in Nigeria but then travelled
with her family in Kenya and finally in Britain, where she studied at the University of
Birmingham. She kept travelling after the degree, she moved in France and in the US, where she
received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. After that, she settled in California
where she taught literature at the San Francisco State University.
7
   The term was coined by literary critic Constance Rook (see Cavigioli 2005 for further
references) as opposed to Bildungsroman. While the term Bildungsroman refers to coming-of-age
novels/stories, the term Vollendungsroman or Reifungsroman refers to senility, to late life and its
accomplishments/challenges.
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context of production of a text is as important as its co-text in textual interpretation
since it helps translators interrogate the text properly and thoroughly.
     It may be useful remarking, at this point, that the observation and the
comments that follow, about the translation choices operated by the Italian
translator Annarita Briganti, are not to be intended as critiques to her work. Their
main goal is showing how a theoretical apparatus realized intertwining Stylistics
and Translation Studies can be used in the practice of translation. In this
perspective, it may be important also remembering that translation practices do
not originate definitive products. On the contrary, translation products are
provisional artifacts, their unicity depends on the translator’s interpretation(s),
and yet their temporariness depends on the fact that any source text can be subject
to continuous re-interpretations. Indeed, translations originate from reading
processes and from processes of textual interpretations. Yet, in turn, textual
interpretations are affected by the translator’s socio-cultural background, by the
context in which the text has been produced and by the context in which it is
received and interpreted. For this reason, the same text could be translated and
repurposed infinite times across time and space, and according to the changing of
its interpreter/translator.
     The extract that follows is taken from the initial part of the book, in which
readers can follow the main character in one of her walks around the city and read
and feel what happens to her since the focalization is internal.

Table 1. First textual excerpt and translation.
   Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the                  Storie della mia città
                    Sun
                (pp. 16-17)                                    (pp. 22-23)

 ‘You look awesome,’ says a stranger,           “Sta benissimo”, dice un estraneo,
 startling me from my thoughts.                 distogliendomi dai miei pensieri.
 ‘Well, so do you,’ I smile, noting the man’s   “Anche lei”, sorrido, notando la manicure
 carefully       manicured        lime-green    dell’uomo, un verde acido. Mi piace il
 fingernails. I enjoy this sort of attention    modo in cui gli uomini di San Francisco
 from San Francisco’s gentlemen. It’s one       curano il loro aspetto. È una delle cose
 of the things that I love about the city.      che amo della città. E poiché gli uomini si
 And because of men like this, men not          curano così tanto, uomini non attratti
 sexually attracted to women, I find this       dalle donne, trovo questa città più gentile
 city gentler than most. And what’s more,       della maggior parte delle città. Inoltre,
 here in San Francisco, both men and            qui a San Francisco uomini e donne
 women seem to admire my sense of style.        sembrano apprezzare il mio senso dello
 Whereas if I were back in London or            stile. Sebbene, se tornassi a Londra o in
 certain parts of New York, where buba          alcune zone di New York, dove buba e gele
 and gele are commonplace, I know that I        sono all’ordine del giorno, so che non
 wouldn’t turn heads, not at this age at        farei girare la testa; non alla mia età,
 least. And back in Nigeria, where so many      comunque. E, se tornassi in Nigeria, dove
 are dressed like me, I wouldn’t draw any       la maggior parte delle persone sono
 attention at all.                              vestite    come    me,     non     attirerei
                                                l’attenzione.




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As regards the macro-textual aspects of the extract, here the protagonist de-
centres and re-centres the reader’s point of view and invites her/him to re-think
her/his idea of senility and aging women. With sentences like: “here in San
Francisco, both men and women seem to admire my sense of style”; “if I were
back in London or certain parts of New York, where buba and gele are
commonplace, I know that I wouldn’t turn heads, not at this age at least”; “back
in Nigeria, where so many are dressed like me, I wouldn’t draw any attention at
all” the author gives visibility to Morayo’s body, describing her aspect but also
her eccentricity and joie de vivre. Morayo loves admiring gazes despite her age,
and she is very honest about it. Giving Morayo’s body space and attention, Sarah
Ladipo Manyika invites a discussion about the racialized female body and about
a female body who is growing old. She counter-narrates senility through the
narration of a body that still stands for itself.
     Language has to serve the writer’s purpose. That is the reason why the source
text has a colloquial register and a syntactic structure that reminds of spoken
language. The author tries to reproduce the idea of a person who speaks for
oneself. Reading this extract, readers are literally into the protagonist’s mind and
have access to her thoughts in the very moment in which they are produced. For
this reason, in the ST many sentences start with the conjunction “and”. The
frequent full stops are the equivalent of pauses in spoken language, while the
conjunction at the beginning of some sentences gives the idea of a thought flow
and it also gives a quick rhythm to the text. The Italian translator has not
preserved all of the “and” conjunctions the writer put at the beginning of some
sentences. From a syntactic point of view, it is quite uncommon in Italian using
the conjunction “and” to start a sentence after a full stop. Thus, it is normally
avoided, unless it is a specific stylistic choice. In this case, the translator
reproduces the syntactic structure of the ST two out of three times (E poiché gli
uomini si curano così tanto…; E, se tornassi in Nigeria…), while she decides to
render the third case: “And what’s more, here in San Francisco…” with “Inoltre
[Moreover], qui a San Francisco”.
     In the first excerpt, two culture-bound terms are also present: buba and gele.
They are two Yoruba words that indicate, respectively, a type of blouse and a
very specific type of headdress. The writer chooses not to highlight their presence
in the ST. Differently, the translator uses italics to signal the presence of
untranslated terms in the target text (TT) but the two words are not further
explained, neither with a footnote, nor in a glossary at the end of the book.
Thanks to the context, Italian readers who are not familiar with Nigerian culture
manage to understand buba and gele have something to do with clothes, thus it
is not a real obstacle to the comprehension of the text as a whole. Yet, in this
case, the translator challenges readers to be active and to search for the words
themselves if they want to know more about their meanings. It is also interesting
the attitude of the writer in this sense. It may be true that an English-speaking
reader could probably be more familiar with words coming from the Yoruba
culture because of England colonial history and because of migration phenomena
towards the ex-mother-country soon after decolonization. Yet, what is interesting
is that not signalling the presence of Yoruba words within the English text the
writer is (consciously or not) performing a political act. She is contaminating the
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STYLISTIC APPROACHES TO TRANSLATION                                                      A231


language that was first imposed to Nigerian people (English) with one of the
most spoken national languages of the country. In this perspective, Ladipo
Manyika is showing that the deconstruction of colonial practice(s) is done also
through language.
    Speaking about the capacity language has to deconstruct (or reinforce)
power mechanisms, clichés and social roles (like gender ones), the following
excerpt portrays Morayo during a moment of self-pleasure.

Table 2. Second textual excerpt and translation.
  Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the                    Storie della mia città
                   Sun
                 (p. 24)                                        (pp. 33-34)

 Standing by the sink in tadasana, I gaze       Stando al lavello nella posizione tadasana,
 across the city, I think of Mrs Manstey in     faccio vagare lo sguardo sulla città. Penso
 her solitary New York apartment. And           alla signora Manstey nel suo solitario
 then as a neighbour’s washing machine          appartamento di New York. Poi la
 thumps to the end of a spin cycle, I hear      lavatrice del vicino fa un rumore sordo
 the noise again; only this time the sound      alla fine di un ciclo di lavaggio. Sento un
 is unmistakable. I’m surprised at first, not   altro rumore: solo che stavolta è
 in the noticing of it but in the wave of       inconfondibile. Sono sorpresa, non per il
 desire that grips my body as I put down        fatto di notarlo, ma dall’ondata di
 my green Harrods mug and step quietly          desiderio che invade il mio corpo quando
 out of the kitchen into the living room.       metto giù la tazza di Harrods verde e mi
 The whimpering has grown louder, as            sposto lentamente in soggiorno. I gemiti
 does the quickening thud that gives            sono diventati più alti, così come il
 rhythm to the couple’s lovemaking in the       rumore crescente che dà il ritmo alla
 apartment next door. I make my way to          coppia di amanti nell’appartamento
 the couch where I lie on the futon,            vicino. Mi siedo sul divano, mi stendo sul
 smiling as I sweep around my mind for a        futon, sorridendo mentre penso con chi
 suitable person with whom to enjoy this        potrei condividere questo inaspettato
 unexpected surge of feeling. It’s Dawud        aumento del mio desiderio. Dawud mi
 that joins me first, smelling of falafel and   viene in mente per primo, odore di falafel
 lilac as we lie together, legs intertwined.    e lillà mentre siamo stesi insieme, le
 I kick a cushion out of the way and then       nostre gambe sovrapposte. Sposto un
 it’s the neighbour that takes Dawud’s          cuscino con un calcio e il vicino prende il
 place, his calloused hands gently cupping      posto di Dawud, le sue mani callose che
 my breasts as he massages my nipples.          stringono il mio seno mentre mi
 But soon, inevitably, it’s Antonio whose       massaggia, dolcemente, i capezzoli. Ma
 fingers slip between my thighs, his breath     presto, inevitabilmente, sono le dita di
 tickling my neck. I close my eyes now as       Antonio che scivolano tra le mie cosce, il
 I whisper his name and then, letting go, I     suo respiro che mi fa il solletico sul collo.
 abandon him for the warmth that my             Chiudo gli occhi mentre sussurro il suo
 touch has kindled.                             nome, poi, lasciandolo andare, lo
                                                abbandono per il calore provocato dal mio
                                                stesso tocco.


If narrating senility and aging female bodies may mean narrating women’s
experiences ‘by subtraction’ (an aging (female) body loses beauty, health, sexual
appetite, etc…) (Cavigioli 2005; Melon et al. 2012; Ricaldone 2017), Sarah Ladipo
Manyika continues to pursue the objective of shifting the narration of senility from
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the margins to the centre. She tries to deconstruct the (Western?) canonic idea of
an old woman showing how much life can an aging body emanate. At the same
time, she challenges the taboo of senile sexuality, using a very ‘imaginative’
language. Readers are able to visualize the scene, because, in this case, sentences
are longer than the ones in the previous example, and because of the use of
numerous progressive verbs (noticing, whimpering, quickening, lovemaking,
smelling, cupping, tickling, letting go). On the one hand, longer sentences enable
the writer to indulge on details. On the other hand, progressive verbs contribute
to create a rhythm that reproduces the atmosphere of the self-pleasuring. Indeed,
the way in which the verbs are arranged throughout the text (the rhythm is
ascending from “noticing” to “tickling” and then descending from “tickling” to
“letting go”) tries to reproduce the intensity of the sexual act onto the page.
     In Italian the text loses a great part of its rhythm because the translator has to
adapt the English syntax to the syntactic structure of a Romanic language. It is not
possible for the Italian translator to maintain the progressive verbs, so she opts
either for transforming them into nouns (gemiti; rumore crescente; amanti; odore)
or for finding verbs or verbal phrases that reproduce the same effect (stringono,
mi fa il solletico, lasciandolo andare). Last, it is worth noticing how the Italian
translator chose to retain the borrowing tadasana (Sanskrit for ‘Mountain Pose’, a
basic pose in Yoga) without signalling its presence with italics (as for buba and
gele in Table 1). One of the most immediate consequences of this choice is the
reception of the two Yoruba words as ‘exotic elements’, in Italian. On the contrary,
the same stress is not given to the Yoga position. The word futon, instead, is used
in both the source and the target language as part of the lexicon.
     Even though two examples are not sufficient to show to what extent a
cooperation between Stylistics and Translation Studies can both facilitate the
translation practice and bring to the realization of a more accurate translation
product, they have nonetheless offered an insight on how a solid theoretical
background knowledge can help a literary translator in the translation practice.
5. Closing remarks

The article has provided a general overview on the role of style in textual
analysis, then it has presented what kind of interconnections can be created
between Stylistics and Translation Studies and how these interconnections can
help translators in the translation practice and in the preliminary work of textual
interpretation. Focusing on the translator’s agency, intended as an interlinguistic
and intercultural mediator, the article has mentioned the role of translators in
unveiling and re-purposing the power mechanisms encoded through language.
Finally, a case study has shown how a theoretical apparatus, born intertwining
the two methodological frameworks of Stylistics and Translation Studies, can be
used to approach the translation practice.
    Even though literary translation is not considered a specialised kind of
translation, the article has highlighted the importance, for a translator, to acquire
the right competences to interrogate a source text before trying to re-frame it
into another language and social, political and cultural panorama (Federici and
Marino 2018). A literary translator needs to be conscious of the fact that the
translator her/himself is not a neutral medium/intermediary, but her/his own
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STYLISTIC APPROACHES TO TRANSLATION                                             A233


interpretations are mediated by their own ideology and point of view (Simpson
1993) and affect her/his work. Stylistics gives translators useful instruments to
think about themselves as lenses through which source texts are refracted into
target contexts: even though the source image can never be identical to the target
one, they are mutually connected.
    If studies on Stylistics applied to Translation Studies are relatively recent and
scant (Boase-Beier 2006; 2011), delving deeper into this field could be an
occasion to improve both Critical Translation Studies and the practice of
translation, bridging the gap between theory and practice. Furthermore,
developing linguistic models to interrogate ideology and point of view in literary
texts (and in literary texts in translation) could also be a way to improve the
teaching of translation, combining the accuracy of the linguistic method with the
idea of translation as a handicraft activity.


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