La Picciridduna and the Little Lady. Post-apocalyptic Sicily in Niccolò Ammaniti's Anna and in English translation

Considering the close relationship between language and culture, it is an indubitable fact that translation from one language to another cannot be performed successfully without knowledge of the two cultures involved. However, what do we mean exactly by culture? The concept of culture is universal, though it is used with different nuances of meaning in various disciplines, e.g. anthropology, political sciences, sociology, literary studies etc. In this paper the concept of culture will be used following Newmark’s definition, as he emphasises the relation between culture and language, which is of extreme importance. Newmark defines culture as “the way of life and its manifestations that are peculiar to a community that uses a particular language as its means of expression” (1988:94), consequently acknowledging the fact that each language group has its own culturally specific features. One manifestation of culture in language is the usage of words and phrases that refer to cultural entities. The aim of this paper is to analyse the translation of culture specific references from Italian into English, taking as a case study the book Anna (2015) by Niccolò Ammaniti.