Ambiguità onomastica e traduzione. Il caso italiano di Emil und die Detektive di Erich Kästner

Abstract

The present paper examines the anthroponyms in Erich Kästner’s novel Emil und die Detektive focusing in particular on their translation into Italian. Comparing the novel with its several Italian translations and re-editions, it points out how proper names are constantly revisited or recreated in the target text, where each character tends to have many different names. The aim of this paper is to show that such an onomastic difference can be only partly related to the translator’s frame of reference (personal strategies, shifting methods and techniques in the way of adapting names to the target culture), as it has mostly to do with the translator’s difficulty to re-create proper names in the target language while at the same time preserving their ambiguous status of identity markers and narrative elements as well.