Edited by Adriana Şerban and Kelly Kar Yue Chan
[Benjamins Translation Library 153] 2020
► pp. 337–357
Following up my research on multilingualism in opera production, reception and translation, this paper goes further into the relationship between translation and linguistically heterogeneous libretti, now focusing on the texts themselves. Plurilingual operas encourage reflection on how important it is to understand the semantic content of the various languages in order to grasp the comunicative value and / or enjoy these works; the advisability of neutralising the verbal diversity – integral to their meaning – in the translation process must be questioned too. The paper also analyses the translation strategies used in subtitling and CD inserts for some multilingual libretti, which show varying functions and degrees of heteroglossia, in order to observe whether those textual features determine translation choices as much as the translation mode.