THINKING ITALIAN TRANSLATION 77

them to match TL conventions is unproblematic. Commercial considerations may also come into play: for instance, a publisher may be afraid that a text full of long paragraphs would not sell.

The English translation of Il Gattopardo is perhaps influenced by both sorts of consideration. For example, Chapter 5 of the ST is entitled thus: `Arrivo di padre Pirrone a S.ConoÐConversazione con gli amici e 1'erbuario -I guai familiari di un GesuitaÐRisoluzione dei guaiÐConversazione con l' `uom di onore'Ð Ritorno a Palermo' (Tomasi di Lampedusa, 1963a: 128). In the TT, the chapter is entitled simply `Father Pirrone Pays a Visit' (Tomasi di Lampedusa, 1963b: 154). And it is not uncommon in the same TT to find several short paragraphs corresponding to one longer one in the ST. In both respects, the effect of the changes is to deprive the TT of some of the self-consciously `archaic' feel of the ST. This may or may not be regrettable; but it does less damage than would wholesale interference with Tabucchi's paragraphs in Practical 6.1.

THE INTERTEXTUAL LEVEL

No text, and no part of any text, exists in total isolation from others. Even the most innovative texts and turns of phrase form part of a whole body of speaking and writing by which their originality or unoriginality is measured. We shall give the term intertextual level to the level of textual variables on which texts are viewed as bearing significant external relations to other texts in a given culture or cultures.

There are two main sorts of intertextual relation that particularly concern translators. The most common is that of genre membership. Genre as such is the subject of Chapter 11, but we do need to outline some of its implications here. An instruction manual, for example, will or will not be typical of a certain sort of instruction manual in the SL culture; a play will or will not be typical of a certain sort of play, and so on. Before translating an ST, then, the translator must judge how typical it is of its genre. If it is utterly typical of an established SL genre, it may be necessary to produce a similarly unoriginal TT. This will be relatively straightforward in the case of, say, scientific abstracts or thrillers. It can prove tricky where there is no TL genre corresponding to that of the ST. For instance, where are the poetic and musical counterparts in English to singers like Gino Paoli and Francesco de Gregori? And, whatever its genre, the more innovative the ST is, the more the translator may feel impelled to formulate a TT that is equally innovative in the TL. Alternatively, if accuracy of content is more important than considerations of style, it may be necessary to sacrifice the stylistic originality of the ST. This will usually be the case with scientific or technical texts.

A variation on genre membership is imitation, which may shade into parody. The translator must be alert to this, and also have a mastery of the TL style appropriate to the genre parodied. Umberto Eco's Diario minimo, for example, is a collection of short parodies of writers and journalists, both Italian and foreign.

78 DISCOURSE AND INTERTEXTUAL ISSUES

This poses such intricate problems as how to render into English an Italian parody of the French nouveau roman.

Parody brings us to the second category of intertextual relation, that of quotation or allusion. A text may directly quote from another. In such cases, the translator has to decide whether to borrow the standard TL translation of the quoted text. If it is very familiar in the TL culture, there will have to be special reasons for departing from it, as for instance with Dante's `Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate': the translator would seem to be making a special point if this appeared as `Give up all hope, you who come in' and not `Abandon all hope, ye who enter here'. But there will often be more than one TL version of the quotation. In translating the verse from Revelation in Practical 2.2, for example, the translator has either to choose an existing English translation (but which one?)Ðor to translate the Italian version (which may result in what looks to the TL reader like paraphrase). A relevant factor in the decision will be how standard the form of the ST quotation is.

Sometimes, an ST quotation that is full of resonances for the SL reader would be completely lost on the TL reader. In such cases, the translator may either leave it out altogether, or simply translate it literally, or, if it has an important function in the ST, use some form of compensation. It depends on what exactly the function is. Umberto Eco gives an example from the translation of his novel Il pendolo di Foucault, in which the characters constantly speak in literary quotations. A quotation from Leopardi's `L'infinito' (`al di la della siepe') is rendered with `Like Darien', an allusion to Keats: in context, it was vital to have a literary reference, but it did not matter if this was not to Leopardi or a hedge (Eco 1994:20).

Translation problems can become acute where ST intertextual features are more a matter of allusion than of simple quotation. The text in Practical 5.1, for instance, appears to contain an allusion to the beginning of T.S. Eliot's `The Wasteland': `April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain' (Eliot 1963: 63). The example bristles with problems. First, one has to spot the allusion in the first place. Second, this allusion is not to an Italian intertext, but to an English one; for those Italian readers who do spot it, therefore, it has a recherché and exotic flavour which it would not have in English. Third, Eliot's lines are themselves an allusion, to the start of Chaucer's `General Prologue': `Whan that Aprill with his showers soote / The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, / And bathed every veyne in swich licour / Of which vertu engendred is the flour' (Chaucer 1974:17)Ðan intertext likely to be lost on all but a few Italian readers, and even on most Englishspeakers. Before translating this text, the translator must decide what the function of the allusions is, and how important the intertextual considerations are relative to factors on other levels.

There is a further problem with allusions. An allusion is normally something deliberate, but we often see allusions where none was intended. An accidental allusion may be more accurately called an echo. Whatever one calls it, when