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CREATING DYSTOPIA The invented dialect is central to the post-apocalyptic world of Russell Hoban's novel FEATURES The difficulty of Riddleyspeak, and the alienating 'otherness' of the characters' reality and thoughts, have widely been considered too big a challenge for English audiences. The novel was not a bestseller. When approaching the task of translating a book, the translator – and especially the editor – must consider its marketability. If the source text is not intuitive, or the reactions of the original audience are mixed, the translator could be required to create a product that is more saleable. But there are other considerations beside commercial ones. Firstly, it is clear that without Riddleyspeak the novel would lose its uniqueness. Secondly, Hoban knowingly decided to prioritise form over content, as did his editor, and the translator should consider the author's intention. Translation approach is linked to text type, with translation scholars categorising texts based on their function, form and content. According to Katarina Reiss, Riddley Walker is an expressive text because, much like poetry, it focuses on "the aesthetic dimension of language": rhythm, sound and form. 4 When translating such texts, the priority should be to preserve the aesthetic effect along with the relevant semantic content. This must be taken into account by the translator. Finally, it should be noted that one of the main themes of the sci-fi genre is the representation of the 'other'. Readers understand themselves better (as individuals and as humans) through the comparison with something – or someone – different to them; this contrast often creates a sense of alienation in the audience. Sci-fi authors often play with and modify language to enhance the 'otherness' of the realities they describe, and consequently amplify the sense of alienation among readers by design. George Orwell's 1984 and Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange are well-known examples. This practice can be linked to the concept of linguistic relativity (often used as a synonym for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis), and even to linguistic determinism, which states that "language determines the basic categories of thought and…, as a consequence, speakers of different languages think differently". 5 Although these theories have been criticised in recent years, they were fashionable in the 1980s and it is possible that Hoban was inspired by them. In any case, the alienation of the reader in sci-fi is sought-after, and can be obtained through language. Ultimately, I considered the text type, author's intention and conventions of the genre to be more relevant than the possible commercial considerations, and therefore focused on creating a target text that reproduces the characteristics of the original novel, including its language and the audience's reading experience. RECREATING AN INVENTED DIALECT Hoban's heavy phonetic manipulation of English is difficult to replicate in Italian, which has considerably less difference between spoken and written language. The preponderance of orality over written forms in Hoban's novel, and the similarities between Riddleyspeak and childhood/less educated speech and writing patterns, were fundamental in finding a solution. I decided to modify standard Italian using italiano popolare (lit. 'popular Italian') 6 as a starting point. Tullio De Mauro defined this as the language spoken by "low-class" speakers and illiterates, whose grasp of Italian is similar to Riddley Walker's command of English. This also fits with the oral nature of Riddleyspeak. I employed some of the phonetic and syntactic characteristics of italiano popolare in my translation. These include irregular word segmentation; orthographic mistakes such as the absence or misuse of 'h', 'q', apostrophes and accents; a lack of punctuation; and univerbation of articles, pronouns and prepositions. For example, 'my mynd stil running on the dogs' became la mia mente stancora pensando ai cani, with 'stil' (standard English 'is still') translated as stancora (standard Italian sta ancora). 'A clevver looking bloak' is rendered as 1 tipo colla faccia telligente ('a guy with a clever face'), where con la ('with a') becomes colla, which also means 'glue'. To reproduce the child-like element of the lexicon, I elided the first syllable from many of the polysyllabic Italian words – something Italian children do constantly. This procedure was adopted only where the syllable was unstressed and not essential to the word's meaning, and where the resulting word recalled a specific meaning. For example, attraverso ('through') became traverso (standard Italian 'oblique'), and abbastanza ('enough') was changed to bastanza (similar to basta; 'she/he stops'). As in the original, the vocabulary of the translation was reduced to a minimum. Moreover, in order to give the language an informal register, I used colloquial terms such as roba ('stuff') and tipo ('dude'). I also sought to replicate Hoban's use of the figure '1' in words (e.g. 'any1') by substituting all numbers present in the Italian words with cardinal numbers. 'Nine' is nove in Italian, so manovella ('crank') became ma9lla. Unlike 40 years ago, when the book was written, people today are used to contraction and number substitution in the language of electronic communication, so it is plausible that a language as economic as Riddleyspeak would use this writing device. Following the same principle, the names of some Italian consonants were substituted in all words: f (effe), h (acca), l (elle), m (emme), n (enne), r (erre), s (esse), z (zeta). Therefore essere ('to be') became sre (pronounced The similarities between Riddleyspeak and childhood speech was fundamental