Specialized Translators at work during the Risorgimento: the Biblioteca dell'Economista and the English-Italian translations (1851-1867).

Abstract

During the Risorgimento, with the establishment of the Italian state and its liberal institutions, Political Economy became a subject of particular interest in many cultural and political environments all over the country. Considered the best discipline to cope with the new political situation, its study was promoted by a network of social institutions and individuals whose purpose of spreading an interest in economics led to the publication of a large number of informative texts such as books and book series, handbooks, encyclopaedias and specialized dictionaries. Between 1850 and 1860 Francesco Ferrara, the Sicilian economist, edited the Biblioteca dell’Economista (BE), a collection of economic treatises that Ferrara and his assistants translated from French, German and English into Italian to spread interest in economics as an international science. Research on these texts has been mainly carried out by economic historians who have analysed the gradual systematization of economic science, and the typology of texts through which Political Economy was spread in Italy and abroad (Bianchiniet al. 1996; Barucci 2009; Augello & Guidi 2007). On the other hand, since the 1980s economists and applied linguists have carried out research on economic discourse with a multiplicity of approaches covering all the varieties of economic writing (McCloskey 1985; Bazerman 1988; Dudley-Evans & Henderson 1990; Swales 1990; Henderson et al. 1993; Gotti 2003; Hyland &Bondi2006). Taking the economic and linguistic literature on the subject into account, the paper deals with the BE as an early corpus of specialized translation and considers the different text-types included in it and the influence of English on the early evolution of the Italian language of economics. Parts I and II deal with the assumptions which led to the creation of the BE and the role it played in the promotion of English economic texts in Italy under the leadership of Francesco Ferrara (1851-1868). Part III gives an overview of the translation work and shows how this important venture could be exploited for linguistic, translational and contrastive research. Part IV analyses some translations from English into Italian and points out the translation strategies used by Ferrara and his assistants to introduce the new theories among Italian readers. Part V deals with the critical debate on the language of economics in the years of the BE and with Ferrara’s contribution to the development of the Italian language of economics. A bibliographical list of all the BE translations from English into Italian is be appended to the paper.