Translating a Non-Standard Variety of Russian Into Italian: The Case of the Odesan Language

This paper aims to illustrate how a non-standard Russian variety is translated into the Italian language, by analysing some literary works. The analysis focuses on the so-called ‘Odesa language,’ a contact variety of Russian that originated in the city of Odesa at the end of the 18th century. This variety of Russian spoken in Odesa differs from the other varieties of Russian, as it emerged in a multilingual and multicultural space and shows several influences and calques from the languages present in the city. The results of this contact are found at all linguistic levels and can be attributed mainly to the strong presence of Yiddish and Ukrainian substrates. Considering that the language of Odesa displays different non-standard features, it may be challenging for any translator to convey certain linguistic structures. Therefore, I suggest that a successful translating practice should acknowledge the influence of other languages and thus resort to a third language as a mediating language to translate from one language into another. Focusing on the literary works of Isaac Babel, in particularly on Odessa Stories, I will try to show how the linguistic features of the Odesan language are displayed in the Italian translation. In order to do this, I will use three different Italian editions of Odessa Stories, comparing them with the Russian one. Furthermore, I will try to figure out which Italian edition is more adherent to the Russian original and which conserves the non-standard nature and the typical grammatical constructions of the Odesa language.