Gianni Celati and the art of translation

Abstract

This editorial posits the significance of the idea and of the practice of translation in Gianni Celati’s works and poetics, and contends the need for novel reading of his oeuvre moving from this assumption. After introducing the state of the arts on Celati and translation, and explaining the scope of the volume, the essay positions Celati’s notion of translation in line with the “cultural turn” in Translation Studies, and in dialogue with current translation theories. We contend that Celati understands translation as a vital means of cultural transmission, occurring through an ongoing dialogue with a text and with the linguistic traditions to which it belongs. This dialogue takes the form of “a continuum of practices” (Polezzi 2022) which can potentially produce unexpected ricochet effects on the original text and its culture. For Celati this emerges in the primacy that he affords the sound, voice and rhythm, and in his effort to establish a resonance with the original text, and in rewriting translation as a “parlamento”, a concert of
voices, and as an ongoing, perfectible, affective practice.