Pischedda P. S. Empirical Research on the Translation of Sound Symbolism From English to Italian
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Transcript of Pischedda P. S. Empirical Research on the Translation of Sound Symbolism From English to Italian
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Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of
MA in Applied Translation Studies
The University of Leeds
Department of Modern Languages and Cultures
Centre for Translation Studies
Empirical Research on the Translation of Sound Symbolism from English to Italian
The case of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Date of Submission: 19th August 2011
Word Count: 10,980
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Abstract
The following dissertation shows the difficulties of the Italian language when translating
English onomatopoeia in books for young readers.
Whilst English shows a natural propensity in creating and using onomatopoeia in
everyday speech the Italian language struggles due to linguistic and cultural reasons.
The third and fourth books of the series for young adults, called Diary of a Wimpy Kid
and laid out as a diary written by the eleven-year-old Greg, has been taken as sources for
examples. The book contains both text and pictures, which include onomatopoeic sounds in them.
Each of the two English books have been analysed together with their Italian versions and the
strategies employed to translate onomatopoeia have been catalogued and used to create a survey
aimed at assessing how Italian born speakers perceived onomatopoeia in order to come up with
new translation strategies.
The results show that interjectional Italian sounds were preferred to the lexicalised ones,
which are more common in the English language. The respondents seemed to accept the
presence of retained English onomatopoeia and did not seem to realise that some onomatopoeia
is of English origin but believed it as being originally Italian, almost certainly due to their habit
of seeing and dealing with English onomatopoeia in comics and books. The Italian language has
been proven to share some of the problems detected by scholars for the linguistically similar
Spanish language. This shows that there are linguistic reasons for these problems in addition to
technical ones.
This dissertation is of empirical nature and aims to provide the readers with an overview
of the sound symbolism issue in Italian and offers new food for thought to scholars in the under-
researched fields of childrens literature and sound symbolism in translation.
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Table of Contents
Page
1. Introduction and Literature Review
1.1. Children's Literature in Translation 6
1.2. Picture Books: Defining the Genre 8
1.3. The Sound Symbolism Issue 10
1.4. The case of Italian and English onomatopoeia: a cross-linguistic and cultural
comparison 12
1.5. Diary of a Wimpy Kid author, readers, genre and sound symbolism 15
2. Justification for Research and Aims and Objectives 17
3. Analysis
3.1. Methodology 18
3.2. Results 20
3.3. Discussion 27
4. Survey
4.1. Methodology 33
4.2. Results 36
4.3. Discussion 54
4.4. Limitations 58
5. Summary of Overall Results, Conclusions and Recommendations 60
6. Bibliography 67
7. Appendix 65
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1. Literature Review 1.1. Children's Literature in Translation
Despite the fact that in the past few decades books have been written about childrens
literature in translation, OConnell indicates that, still, if compared to other areas of translation,
theorists, publishers and academic institutions have often underestimated this area (in Lathey,
2006: 15).
Klingberg (1986) was one of the first scholars to dedicate an entire edited book to the
issue of translated childrens books, confirming that this area could offer several interesting
starting points in research, such as the analysis of the problems of literal and interpretive
translation, special problems of certain languages and problems of texts of special kinds. A few
years later, Even-Zohar tried to place childrens literature in the literary system, stating that this
kind of literature was of particular interest due to its polysystemic implications, the fact that it
also involved other fields, like education, social studies or psychology. This peculiarity of
translating for children makes it one of those few fields where the translator almost feels forced
to focus on the target text and culture (Puurtinen, 1995: 60) rather than feeling obliged to stick to
the form of the source text. It is no wonder that Puurtinen (1995: 17) asks herself why childrens
literature in translation has caused such low interest among scholars, considering the numerous
functions it fulfils and the diverse cultural constraints under which it operates.
Before the 1990s not much attention was given to this kind of translation but things
started to change after two Finnish PhD students, Riitta Oittinen (1993) and Puurtinen (1995)
decided to study the subject, both of them bringing a new perspective to the field: Oittinen
analysed the relationship between text and illustrations in the literature for children, while
Puurtinen tried to investigate the field from a more descriptive point of view, describing how
childrens books should be developed in terms of terminology and illustrations. Going against
Slatyers theories, Puurtinen (2003: 226) also suggested that childrens literature in translation
implies the use of different strategies to those used for translating books for an adult audience.
Books written for young readers have, in fact, a twofold function: they not only aim to entertain
the reader but they also want to teach him something, they have an educational goal which
adults novels usually miss (Puurtinen, 2003: 227-9).
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In 2010 Lathey published a book on the role of the translator in childrens literature
where he tries to trace the role of the translator and the impact of translations on the history of
English-language childrens literature from the ninth century onwards. In 2006, Lathey
published a book on translation of childrens literature which, together with Van Coillie and
Verschuerens book (2006), represents and summarizes the most recent theories and opinions in
the field. Van Coillie and Verschuerens work is pivotal in establishing the importance of this
field of translation practice: it recognizes in fact the importance of the localization of childrens
books, and their missionary aspect: translating childrens books is a way to let young readers
get to places that they could never visit, people they could never encounter otherwise.
Trying to establish a report on the situation of Italian childrens literature in translation
would surely lead to disappointing results. Apart from a few theses available online, most of the
literature focuses on the characteristics of childrens literature rather than the strategies involved
during the translating process. Umberto Eco has always showed interest in the translation of
childrens literature and has dedicated some reflections to the translation of Italian Disney
comics (an academic essay 2003; also cf. 2008). In 2008, Zanettin has edited a book which
analyses the translation of comics and partly focuses on how Italian texts are translated for
children, too.
In summary, as suggested by Van Coillie (2006: vi), the approach to childrens literature
in translation has gone from a prescriptive one (how should you translate?) to a more descriptive
one (how do texts present themselves as translations?) and the material available in English
focuses on translations to and from lesser-used languages, in particular, Scandinavian languages
(Oittinen and Puurtinen) or Hebrew (Shavit). The strategy of cultural context adaptation, first
suggested by Klingberg (1986: 86) is still believed to be useful (Frimmelova, 2010: 30) and it is
taken as an umbrella term for a series of strategies aimed at moving the source text towards
the child reader (Lathey, 2006: 7). Since the young readers are not expected to have the same
world knowledge as an adult, the translator can be more flexible (Bell, 1985: 7) and help the
child reader by adapting and localising references coming directly from the source culture (see
names of people, places, food, dialects etc.).
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This research is based on the fact that both Lathey (2006: 11) and Oittinen (2008: 3)
stated that future areas of research should include analysis on the relationship between the verbal
and the visual in illustration and picture books (Lathey, 2006: 11 and Oittinen, 2008: 3). These
kinds of books are quite difficult to classify since they include different types of stimuli and
media and often address a broader audience. The next section will try to define this type of books
and explain in what ways they are crucial in the research on the translation of onomatopoeic
sounds.
1.2. Picture Books: Defining the Genre
Childrens literature is in general considered an interdisciplinary type of genre (Williams
et al., 2002: 12; OConnell, 2003: 228; Even-Zohar, 2004: 199; Frimmelova, 2010: 5), touching
on different sciences and fields, the main ones being education, psychology, literature and
pedagogy. When talking about picture books, Oittinen (1993: 37) suggests that the term receptor
should be used to define their readers. When browsing through a book with both text and
pictures, the receptor is, in this case, not only a reader or a listener, but an interpreter of
different stimuli which go beyond the simple text. As said by Pierce (in Oittinen, 2008: 6), words
in picture books can be seen as carrying not only a verbal meaning, but also a visual one,
since they usually have a particular shape, form, colour and position on the page (sometimes as
part of images) providing them with physical force (Zanettin, 2008: 13), again aiming at
striking the young readers imagination. In this respect, Umberto Eco proposed the term
intersystemic translation (in Zanettin, 2008: 10) which indicates the translation and rewriting of
texts in which different semiotic systems can be found. From a translators point of view these
texts clearly represent an interesting challenge and scholars have suggested that this area of study
still needs a lot of research (Lathey, 2006: 11; Gonzles Davies, 2008: 3).
The role of the translator is then to unlock the semiotic (Ippolito, 2008: 94) and
systemic complexity, in order to disentangle all the little signs given and try to recreate them in
the target language and culture with the main aim of firing the imagination of the young reader
and entertaining him. This dissertation aims to focus on one of these complexities, that is the
translation of onomatopoeic sounds present in some of these books. In particular, we will be
referring to a famous American series of books for YA (young adults - approximately 11-19
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years old) called The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, first published in 2007, which portrays the life of
an eleven year old undersized child named Greg living in the middle school world (BNStudio,
2008). The pictures of Greg would not have the same humoristic and fun effect without the
onomatopoeic sounds which accompany them. The onomatopoeic sounds, typical of comics
balloons (Kaindl, 1999: 274), are extremely dependant on both the visual and the textual. They,
in fact, not only refer to the actual action as displayed in the picture but also aim to explain and
enhance the texts expressivity through their shape, size and colour, requiring a high dose of
creativity (Oittinen, 2008a) and linguistic knowledge on the translators part and creating an even
stronger bond between text and pictures. Some research has been done on the linguistic nature of
these sounds but there is little work on how sound symbolism is translated (Kaindl, 1999: 285;
Bredin, 1996: 565-6) and, in particular, when dealing with translations for the English to Italian
language pair.
In the context of the general difficulties involved in translation of childrens literature, the
issue of onomatopoeic sounds adds another level of difficulty to the translators task, involving
the age-old linguistic and philosophical debate on the relationship between sound and meaning
and offering food for thought for recent research on translation for young readers which is
moving towards the empirical analysis of the reactions of the interpreting young reader to the
translated text (Oittinen, 1993: 37) and the creativity and inventiveness involved in the
translating process (Lathey, 2010: 199-200).
Before moving to the description of how onomatopoeic sounds are included in the Diary
of a Wimpy Kid series, it is worth giving a brief outline of the sound symbolism issue and how
this affects the translator when having to deal with English to Italian translations.
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1.3. The Sound Symbolism Issue
Sound symbolism is of branch of linguistics which studies the relationship between the
sound of an utterance and its meaning (Hinton, 1994: 1-2). There is still less agreement among
scholars on the classification of onomatopoeic sounds and there are still problems and
uncertainties when trying to define them (Bredin, 1996: 555; Sobkowiak: 1990, 15). For this
dissertation both the long established Hintons classification (1994) of verbal sound symbolism
and the more recent one compiled by Frewley (2003: 111-13) will be taken as a guideline. These
scholars differentiated five different types of sound symbolism, among which three are of verbal
nature:
1. Imitative sound symbolism (Hinton, 1994: 2): all the onomatopoeic words which represent environmental sounds, such as animal sounds, the noise of movements and every kind
of noise produced and heard by a human being. See BANG for a gunshot, VROOOM for a car,
and MIEOW for a cat. Often two classes of word are considered to be part of this category:
primary/interjectional onomatopoeia, also called mimesis by Frewley (2003: 111), which refers
to interjections, that is all those sounds which are not lexicalised in the language, and secondary
onomatopoeia, that is all the sounds which have been made into words (see the verbs to bang,
to gulp, to gasp, all having onomatopoeic origin).
2. Synesthetic sound symbolism (Hinton, 1994: 4). (Also called phenomime or phonesteme by Frewley, 2003: 111). This type of symbolism refers to the acoustic representation of non-
acoustic phenomena. This field has caused a lot of interest among scholars since in this case the
word is trying to emulate properties of objects such as size, shape or emotions which do not
clearly produce any sounds (Garcia de Diego, 1968: 21). See, for example, the Japanese word
doki doki () used to describe the pumping blood of the heart (Kanemitsu, 1997;
Thomas, 2004).
3. Conventional sound symbolism (Hinton, 1994: 5), also referred as secondary phonesteme by Frewley (2003: 112), deals with those clusters or phonemes which have proven to
carry a particular meaning. See the initial cluster gl- in English which is usually used to indicate
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reflected light (Lowrey et al., 2007; Magnus, 2010) or the Italian st- often used in words with
derogatory meaning, such as stronzo (idiot), stupido (stupid), strano (weird), stantio
(stale). Scholars have noticed that this category tends to be language specific, while the first
two seem to experience similarities across
languages (Hinton, 1994: 5).
Although onomatopoeia was
introduced to the masses through the
American comics (Raffaelli, 1997: 37), sound
symbolism is not only a matter of comic strips.
Sound symbolism is part of our everyday lives:
marketing companies carefully chose brand
name and slogans to be pleasant to hear (see
figure 1). When localising books and movies
the names of the characters are chosen to
please the readers and for centuries poets tried
to give words strength through the use of
onomatopoeic effects (Taylor, 1990: 149;
Barontini, 2009).
Considering all the research done on the arbitrariness/non-arbitrariness of onomatopoeia
and the different and conflicting ideas produced, it appears clear how the issue is relegated to a
mere philosophical than scientific domain. So, it follows that empirical research, as is the case
for this dissertation, should concentrate more on how each language deals with onomatopoeia
(and its translation) rather than the reasons why it does so.
Figure 1. Example of conventional sound symbolism in advertising.
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1.4. The case of Italian and English onomatopoeia: a cross-linguistic and cultural comparison
From a linguistic point of view, Italian and English are two extremely different languages,
and this is reflected in the way they treat and deal with onomatopoeic sounds. Since
onomatopoeic sounds are meant to imitate noises, they tend to be quite short and end in
consonant. The Italian language, due to Latin influences and its inflectional nature (Crystal, 2005:
368) (that is the fact the every word needs to be modified according to gender and number),
owns mainly multi-syllabic words ending in vowels. This represents the first hindrance on the
road to creating effective sound symbolism. The English language, instead, due to its Germanic
roots, owns several monosyllabic words, a fact that makes the English language naturally
inclined to create onomatopoeic sounds and use them with ease in everyday speech (Garcia de
Diego, 1968: 18; Allott, 1995). In order to create onomatopoeia which could sound and look
naturally Italian, one would need to use words ending in vowels. This is proven by the fact that
the few Italian poets, writers and cartoonists who
attempted to invent onomatopoeic sounds came out
with long, vowel-ending expressions. For instance,
the founder of the Italian futurist movement,
Marinetti, described the sound of a motorboat with
the following onomatopoeia: rrrrrrrpfapfa
pfapfapfapfapfapfa (Arcangeli, 2009) while the
famous post-war cartoonist Jacovitti liked to express
the noise of his falling characters with one of the
following onomatopoeic sounds: banghete, splaffete,
badabanghete, sdenghete or the use of bangtb instead
of bang when referring to gunshots (see figure 3).
The ease with which English speakers can create onomatopoeic sounds and the way these
naturally fit in the language implies that they can be easily used when speaking. This issue takes
us to another linguistic characteristic of the English language, that is the possibility of converting
word classes (Newmark, 1996). The noun slap, for example, can be converted to a verb by
Figure 2. Typical Jacovittis cartoon
with Italianised onomatopoeia
ending in a vowel. (Jacovitti, 1962).
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simply adding the particle to in front of it. The Italian language, again due to its inflectional
characteristics, needs to inflect the term when changing class, so the noun schiaffo (slap)
becomes schiaffeggiare (to slap). This characteristic of the English language implies that
English speakers can easily import onomatopoeic sounds into the language and use them in
everyday speech, by grammaticalizing (Valero Garces, 2008: 239) the onomatopoeic
representations and converting them without adding any suffix or endings. This implies that,
when reading a comic or a picture book, an English reader is visualizing onomatopoeic sounds
commonly used in speech, consequently making the whole reading experience more expressive
and familiar. GRADIT (De Mauro, 2000; in Gheno, 2011), one of the most renowned Italian
dictionaries, listed 250 Italian onomatopoeic words (primary and secondary type), while Taylor
(2006), in his dictionary of onomatopoeic expressions, counted more than 650 sound symbolisms
currently used by English speakers. The difference here is evident and speaks for itself.
The linguistic difficulty of the Italian language when creating onomatopoeic sounds has
led translators to leave the English onomatopoeia in place without localising it (Semprini, 2006:
42; Eco, 1994: 147). As a consequence, Italian readers of comics were provided with
onomatopoeia which was not included in their language and, several times, was not even
understandable. Adult readers of comics had to learn English onomatopoeia in order to easily
recognise its meaning. Children who had just entered the world of comic and picture books were
faced with foreign onomatopoeic sounds which they could not understand and which did not
sound and look familiar or as belonging to their mother tongue a fact that irreparably
jeopardised the comprehension of the target text and their reading experience (Abs in Castillo
Caellas, 1997). For all these reasons, we can see how problematic the matter is from a
translating, but also educational, point of view.
However, there are also non-linguistic reasons for the frequent usage of English
onomatopoeia - the American monopoly of the market of young readers literature (Thomas,
2004). The first comic to contain onomatopoeia was, in fact, the American comic book Tired
Tim in 1896 (Valero Garces, 2008: 238) and, since then, American comic books together with
their onomatopoeia became famous all over the world, allowing foreign readers to get used to
English sound symbolism (Valero Garces, 2008: 247) and accept it as a standard way of
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expressing the sounds contained in balloons. Note that in Italy, before the arrival of American
comic books, comics did not contain any onomatopoeic sounds (Eco, 2008). All of a sudden,
Italian readers were faced with a lot of booms, zips, and cracks, which sounded extremely
exotic and iconic. They gradually lost any connection with their English meaning since only a
few Italian people could realise that those forms were actually lexicalised expressions in another
language (Eco, 1994: 147).
But there is another more technical issue involved. Since onomatopoeia is usually
included in pictures, it can be tricky for publishers to change its actual layout in order to adapt it
for the target audience (Castillo Caellas,
1997; Thomas, 2004). Onomatopoeia is
often characterised by particular graphic
effects (colours, shapes, fonts) (see the
example in figure 3) aimed at giving
communicative strength (Zanettin, 1998)
to the words which make the graphic
adaptation (Ozumi, 2011) even more
challenging. Italian publishers, in order to
avoid spending money and possibly
ruining the aesthetic quality (Kaindl,
2009) of the pictures, usually prefer to
keep the English onomatopoeia intact.
Note that in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid this
problem is less applicable since the drawings
are graphically simpler than in comics and, therefore, the localisation of onomatopoeic sounds
and their insertion within the cartoon is technically less time-consuming or challenging.
Zanettin (1998) thinks that this technical problem is the main and only reason why
English onomatopoeia is not translated into Italian but, as I have already shown above, the
linguistic problems are also to be implicated.
Figure 3. English onomatopoeia in an Italian comic. Comic taken from the Italian version of Mickey Mouse comicbook, called Topolino. (Bosco, 2011: 26)
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1.5. Diary of a Wimpy Kid author, readers, genre and sound symbolism
Each of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid
books is laid out as a journal written by its
protagonist, Greg, who not only describes his
life with words but also uses drawings, balloons
and sound symbolism effects which accompany
the text and make it more expressive (see figure
4).
Given the spatial and time constraints
only two books have been analysed. I
collaborated myself on the translation into
Italian of the third book of the series so this was
a chance to go back to that experience and
analyse the difficulties and issues encountered
during the translation process. Note that when
referring to the Italian version of the books, the
term Diario di una Schiappa will be used for
practical reasons.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a book for a wide readership. Despite being specifically
addressed to middle school children, who can easily identify with the same-age protagonist, the
humour present in the text and pictures makes it enjoyable for both younger and older readers.
The author himself pointed out that he started writing the first book thinking it would be read by
adults who wanted to go back to their childhood and laugh at their unfortunate experiences
(Floridi, 2009) and that he still writes thinking about a possibly smaller but present share of adult
readers (S.D.P., 2011).
Figure 4. Kinney, 2009: 1.
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Despite its name, Diary of a Wimpy Kid is not a straightforward diary. It contains
images and the text is not divided into different days but, at the same time, it is not a comic
because it includes also chunks of text and the images themselves are not comic-like, except for
the frequent use of onomatopoeia and some rare speech balloons. It is not even an illustrated
book (William Kenower, 2009), since if we try to isolate the pictures, we cant grasp a coherent
storyline. The relationship between the text and the pictures acts as the hub in the wheel, making
this book really unique. Kinney stated the creation of the pictures comes even before creating the
actual plot for the book: he usually draws the pictures together with the jokes, and only
afterwards he does try to weave them into a story (William Kenower, 2009). We can understand
here the central role of the expressivity of the images
which help the text come alive and entertain the young
reader (Marc Martinez, 2011), avoiding the
presentation of a large chunk of text which might easily
bore him. Given all these characteristics, defining
Diary of a Wimpy Kid as a hybrid between a lot of
genres (comic, novel, diary, and journal) could be
limiting. Instead of trying to adapt an existing label,
Mitchell (cit. in Ippolito, 2008: 86) coined the term
imagetext which aims to create an all-embracing term
referring to all those books in which the
relationship between text and image is almost
indissoluble and this is exactly the case of
the book analysed here.
Since the pictures present in Diary of
a Wimpy Kid are not characterised by an
advanced graphic quality, the technical
problems usually involved when having to
localise onomatopoeia in comics are not
applicable. On one hand, this allows the translator to use his imagination in order to find the
most suitable onomatopoeia and strike the imagination of the target texts reader, but on the other,
Figure 5. Kinney, 2009a: 126.
Figure 6. Kinney, 2009 : 134.
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it brings up the issue of how these should be translated, making the process more challenging
and difficult.
Onomatopoeic sounds are extremely frequent in Jeff Kinneys pictures. A total of 108
onomatopoeic sounds have been counted in the two books taken in consideration for this analysis.
They are usually written in a small font without any particular graphic effects (see figure 5) apart
from a few cases when the sound is particularly resounding so it is written in bold with bigger
font (see figure 6).
2. Final Justification for Research, Aims and Objectives
To sum up, research suggests that the English language is more prone to create
onomatopoeic sounds and insert them into everyday language, due to both typological and
linguistic reasons. The Italian language, on the other hand, seems totally impaired and, despite a
few attempts at Italianizing onomatopoeia, most onomatopoeia present in Italian comic and
picture books is of English origin. The Italian readership has always been forced to get used to
it, or in the case of young readers, to remain totally ignorant towards the actual meaning of the
symbolic expression used.
As mentioned early in this dissertation, the child reader, due to his limited knowledge of
the world, should be guided through the translated text and often the translator needs to localise
the source text material more than he would do when translating for adults (Tortoriello, 2006 and
Frimmelova, 2010). This prevailing strategy seems frequently neglected when translating
onomatopoeia in comic and picture books. Although this is not done intentionally but because of
both technical and linguistic constraints, as shown above, it is worth trying to assess whether
there are ways in which to improve this stalled situation.
The fact that sound symbolism, as discussed beforehand, is an interdisciplinary field must
also be considered (Hinton, 1994: 11), and if added to the fact that it is often used in
interdisciplinary texts (Frimmelova, 2010: 5) such as young adult novels and comics, this makes
the translating task doubly challenging.
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The main aims of this dissertation are as follows:
1. Discover what strategies are used when translating onomatopoeia in the third and fourth books of the young adults series Diary of a Wimpy Kid into Italian.
2. Which type of onomatopoeia tends to be adapted more frequently? The interjectional or the lexicalised one? Why?
3. In what cases has the onomatopoeia been left intact? In which cases has it been localised? 4. Recent surveys showed that in the majority of translations of comics in the past 15 years
English onomatopoeia has retained, mostly due to the production-related problems
(Kaindl, 2009: 275; Valero Garces, 2008: 247). Diary of a Wimpy Kid has proven to be
a melting pot of different types of text, an imagetext. Does its special status influence
the translation of sound symbolism? In what ways?
After gathering information of the different strategies used in the two books through an
in-depth and systematic analysis, a list of questions will be created which will form a survey that
will be run in order to assess if the translations used in the Italian version of the books are
successful and, consequently, suggest new strategies and improvements, and answer the above
mentioned questions.
3. Analysis
In this section the strategies used in the third and fourth book of the Diary of a Wimpy
Kid series will be listed and analysed in order to answer some of questions outlined in the
previous section.
3.1. Methodology
As shown by some of the available research papers on the translation of onomatopoeic
sounds in Spanish (Valero Garces, 2008), Japanese (Ozumi, 2011; Inose, 2011) and Swedish
(Flyxe, 2002) the best way to assess how onomatopoeic sounds are translated is to catalogue
them. In order to analyse how the sound symbolism has been translated in the third and fourth
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books of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, a list of all the sounds together with their translation
has been created and, consequently, the different strategies used have been detected. The
onomatopoeic sounds have been catalogued according to their type (interjection or lexicalised) in
order to check which of the two was more translated and in which cases. In order to check
whether a sound was of interjectional nature or not the Oxford English Dictionary has been used
as a reference (http://oxforddictionaries.com/).
The theory that Italian language has difficulty creating and translating English
onomatopoeia is confirmed by the fact that Spanish, a language typologically close to Italian
(Crystal, 2005: 368), experiences the same problems, as shown in the numerous research papers
available (Garcia de Diego, 1968; Valero Garces, 2008; Castillo Caellas, 1997; Martinez
Fuentes, 2003; Gasca, 2004). Due to the limited (possibly non-existent) material available
concerning the translation problems of onomatopoeia from English into Italian, except for brief
scattered mentions (see Eco, 1994, Zanettin, 1998 and Semprini, 2006), we will often be
referring to the research papers available for the Spanish language for methodology and analysis
support, taking advantage of the closeness of the two languages.
Some of the strategies detected by Delabastia in his research (in Klaus Kaindl, 2009: 275)
on the translation of subtitles in films have been used and slightly adapted for this case study.
Despite the fact that Delabastias research was referring to a filmic media, he suggested that the
strategies could be applicable to all texts where pictorial features are present.
The following are the translation strategies identified (in Klaus Kaindl, 2009: 275):
Repetitio (Repetition): onomatopoeia has been left intact.
Deletio (Deletion): onomatopoeia has been removed from the picture.
Adiectio (Addition): onomatopoeia has been left but spelling/phonetic changes have
been applied. Eg. the English beep, becomes bip in Italian, with the aim of achieving
the same pronunciation.
Partial Substitutio (Partial Substitution): onomatopoeia has been localised and the
same class of onomatopoeia has been used. Eg. In the English source text the lexicalised
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onomatopoeia crawl crawl has been translated with the Italian lexicalised
onomatopoeia striscia striscia (direct translation of crawl crawl).
Total Substitutio (Total substitution): onomatopoeia has been localised but a different
type of onomatopoeia has been used. Eg. The English lexicalised onomatopoeia poke
poke has been translated into Italian with the primary onomatopoeia tunk tunk.
3.2. Results
Each of the following tables show the results of the preliminary analysis of the translation
of onomatopoeic sounds divided according to the strategy used.
Repetitio (repetition)
Table 1 is the list of all the terms that have been left intact in the Italian translation. The
second column indicates if the English term is an interjection or a lexicalised form.
Table 1.
English and Italian Type
Bink Bonk
Interjections
Doink
Bap Cloink
Squork
Vrmmmm
Zzzzzzzz
Hop Hop
Lexicalised
Whirrrrrr
Pant Pant
Pat Pat
Gasp
Sniff
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Snap Snap
Lexicalised
Honk
Splat
Snap
Flash
Click
Pluck
Chomp Gobble Slurp
Dump
Screech
Gasp
Click
Beep
Bump
Zip
Pant Pant
Zap Zap
Hop
Squish
Slap
Zing
Sniff Sniff
Deletio (deletion)
In the two books only in two cases was the onomatopoeia removed from the Italian
version of the picture, respectively a honk to indicate the sound of a horn and a tug tug to
indicate the insistent tapping on someones shoulder.
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Adiectio (addition)
Table 2 shows the onomatopoeic sounds which undergone a spelling/phonetic change,
either involving the substitution of a vowel or a consonant, in order to be adapted for the Italian
readership.
Table 2.
EN IT Type
Thunk Bump Tunk Bump Consonant
Thwunk Tunk
Splash Sploosh Splish Splash
Vowel Clunk Clank
Beep Boop Beep Bip Bip Bip
Beep Beep Bip Bip
Partial subsitutio (partial substitution)
The following table shows those cases in which the Italian onomatopoeia was translated
into Italian with the same type of onomatopoeia, indicated in the third column.
Table 3.
EN IT Type
Fwoosh Wuuush
Slork Slork Slurp Slurp
Whap Sbang
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Zow Zot Zot
Interjection
Clonk Sbam
Doink Ding
Thwap Slash
Slork Slork Slap Slap
Wham Wham Bam Bam
Ding Dong Dling Dlong
Kick Calcio
Lexicalised
Tweet Fischio
Push Spinta
Trip Cadi
Clang Sbang
Yank Strapp
Dig Scava
Shake Shake Scuoti Scuoti
Dump Gi
Twirl Giro
Clink Cin Cin
Drop Lascia
Toss Butta
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Suck Suck Ciuccia Ciuccia
Lexicalised
Blush Arrossisce
Yank Tira
Scoot Scoot Striscia Striscia
Punch Pacca
Shake Shake Scuoti Scuoti
Crawl Crawl Striscia Striscia
Wag Wag Scodinzola Scodinzola
Dig Dig Dig Gratta Gratta Gratta
Wriggle Squirm Scuoti Scuoti
Shove Spinta
Toss Lancia
Total Subsitutio (total substitution)
Table 4 shows those onomatopoeic sounds which were translated using a different type of
onomatopoeia in the Italian version. All the examples found were translating a lexicalised
English onomatopoeia into an Italian interjection, with no cases the other way detected.
Table 4.
EN IT
Chew Chew Cric Croc
Punch Punch Bonk Bonk
Chatter Chatter Brrrrrr
Wheeze Pant Pant
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Snore Zzzz
Smack Clap
Punch Bonk
Snip Zac Zac
Ring Drin
Blink Blink Gasp
Tweet Cip Cip
Snork Acc
Smooch Smack
Snap Clic
Poke Poke Tunk Tunk
Swerve Skreech
Flush Swish
Bark Bau Bau
Whimper Whimper Mhhhhh
Squirt Sguish
Wriggle Squirm Strush Strush
Scream Aaaaaargh
Screech Aaaaargh
Zap Stac
Lick Lap
Shudder Brrrrr
Wheeze Uff Uff
Table 5 shows how often each of the strategies was used. For repetition and partial
substitution the table specifies if the English onomatopoeia was an interjection (ie. primary type)
or a lexicalised form. For total substitution the table indicates how many onomatopoeic sounds
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24
were translated for each combination, from interjection to lexicalised form (int to lex) or vice
versa (lex to int). For addiction the table specifies if the spelling/phonetic change involved a
consonant or a vowel.
Table 5.
total Interjection lexicalised
31.48% repetition Repetition 34 6 28
% 31.48% 17.65% 82.35%
interjection lexicalised
66.67% adaptation
Partial Substitution 39 10 29
% 36.11% 25.64% 74.36%
int to lex lex to int
Total Substitution 27 0 27
% 25.00% 0.00% 100.00%
consonant vowel
Addition 6 2 4
% 5.56% 33.33% 66.67%
Deletion 2 1.85% deletion
Total 108
Since partial substitution, total substitution and addition are all a kind of adaptation of
the source text, they have been grouped together in the last column, which shows that in 67% of
cases the source term has undergone an adaptation. The strategy of repetition comes second with
31%, followed by deletion which was used overall only twice in the two books.
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3.3. Discussion
The analysis showed, overall, a high level of adaptation. As seen in table 5, out of 108
onomatopoeic sounds present in both books, 66.67% underwent some degree of adaptation,
either a substitution or an addiction, showing that the translator was aware of the issue and tried
to adapt the onomatopoeic sounds where possible. Again, this is probably also due to the graphic
simplicity of the pictures which allow more freedom on the translators part. So, the example of
the Diary of a Wimpy Kid seems to distance itself from the translation of comics, in which the
English onomatopoeia is usually retained. The most used strategy appears to be partial
substitution, 39 times out of 108, with a total of 36%, closely followed by repetition (31%) and
total substitution (25%). This shows the effort made by the translators to adapt the onomatopoeic
sound for the younger audience. In all cases when total substitution is used English lexicalised
onomatopoeia is translated with a primary one in Italian. This confirms the difficulties
experienced by the Italian language when having to lexicalise onomatopoeia. Table 6 shows
some explanatory examples of this kind of strategy:
Table 6.
EN IT
poke poke tunk tunk
snip zac zac
slap thumb
shudder brrrrr
scream aaaaargh
wriggle squirm strush strush (from the verb strusciare,
to wriggle)
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The first thing that attracts one's attention is the interjectional nature of the Italian
onomatopoeia (see brrrr, zzzz, aaargh, mmmmmhh) that shows, again, the predominant presence
of primary onomatopoeia in the language.
Another phenomenon, also cited by Valero Garces (2008), is that when having to
translate a less well-known onomatopoeia, translators tend to choose common expressions taken
directly from English rather than the target language. See for example the use of gasp for
blink, 'slap' for 'slork', pant pant for wheeze (compare figure 8 and 9), clap for smack
and thumb for slap.
These phenomena confirm the major influence of English onomatopoeia on the development of
non-English sound symbolism - to the point that translators unconsciously do not seem to realise
that that onomatopoeia is actually of English origin and, instead, see it as belonging to the target
language (Valero Garces, 2008: 247). Linked to this, Ozumi (2011) stated that in the 48% of
cases when translating from Japanese into Italian, onomatopoeic sounds coming from the
English language are preferred to Italian ones.
snore zzzzzz
whimper whimper mmmmmh
Figure 9. WHEEZE. English version (Kinney, 2009: 45). Figure 8. PANT PANT. Italian version (Kinney, 2010: 45).
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Although a heavy reliance on the English source text has been noticed, in Diario di una
Schiappa we can still find a few traces of great attempts at Italianising English secondary
onomatopoeia, particularly when partial subsitutio is employed. See the following examples in
table 7:
Table 7.
In the above cases every Italian translation reflects the English source term, for which
either its direct translation or a synonym has been chosen. Verbs are usually in the imperative or
the second person singular form. The use of this kind of Italianised onomatopoeia, although
representing quite a clever and original attempt, might make some Italian readers turn up their
nose and the same issue has been noticed by Castillo Canellas (1997) for the Spanish language.
The main problem here is that the equivalent Italian translation does not sound as
EN IT Gloss
Shake Shake Scuoti Scuoti shake shake
(imperative)
Suck Suck Ciuccia Ciuccia suck suck
(imperative)
Blush Arrossisce (he/she)
blushes
Scoot Scoot Striscia Striscia (it) scoots
Toss Lancia toss
(imperative)
Wag Wag Scodinzola
Scodinzola
(it) wags wags
Yank Strap Strap Part of the verb
to yank
(strappare)
Dig Dig Dig Gratta Gratta
Gratta
scratch scratch
scratch (imp.)
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onomatopoeically strong as the English one, again for the same linguistic reasons outlined
beforehand: that English secondary onomatopoeias are short and end in consonants, while the
Italian equivalents are long, end in vowels and need to be inflected, with the result of making
them lose any onomatopoeic semblance. In a couple of cases we can see the effort made by the
translator to make some Italian verbs onomatopoeic by cutting off their suffix. See strap for
yank, which comes from the verb strappare (to yank) or strush strush for wriggle, which
comes from the verb strusciare (to rub oneself against someone or something) (see figures 10
and 11). This kind of onomatopoeia seems difficult to be classified: it is not completely an
interjection because it comes from an actual verb, but it is not completely a lexicalised
onomatopoeia because the original term has lost its suffix. From now on, I will be referring to
these examples as semi-lexicalised onomatopoeia.
Repetition is used for simpler onomatopoeia which is easily understandable and for those
expressions which have entered the Italian language thanks to American comics, such as slap,
gasp, pant, bonk,
snap, click, zip. Bear
in mind that these sounds,
although easily
understandable by young
readers, they are due to
their highly onomatopoeic
connotation and frequent
use in comics, still remain
English words and require an effort from the Italian readers part in order to be fully understood.
Figure 10. English version (Kinney, 2009: 143). Figure 11. Italian version (Kinney, 2011: 143).
Figure 12. DOINK. Example of repetitio of a nasal + velar stop cluster (Kinney, 2009: 150).
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Valero Garces (2008) noticed that English onomatopoeia is usually preserved when there
are machinery sounds. What can be noticed in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid is that repetitio tends
to be used for sudden and loud sounds, partially confirming Valero Garces findings since
machinery sounds fall into this category. Apart from the usual well-known onomatopoeia (see
pant, sniff, clap, clic(k), clap), all the other repetitions involve a sound referring to a sudden
movement or a hit on the ground such as hop, screech, bump, dump and the
onomatopoeias ending with a nasal + velar stop cluster which usually indicate the sound of a
bouncing object (Oswalt, 1994: 304), from the first creation, boing, to its derivatives, boink,
bink, bonk, bong, doink, doing and cloink. (see figure 12). This is probably due to the
fact that onomatopoeia referring to loud sounds is also the most known and most used in comics
and picture books, and also because its onomatopoeic nature is easily graspable, thanks to the
presence of stop sounds, which have proven to be the most common phonemes used in
onomatopoeia (Attridge, 2007).
During the analysis I
have noticed a few translating
slips which deserve a little
attention and have been
inserted in the following
survey to be tested: in order to
express the licking of a dog the
onomatopoeia lick is used in
English and strangely the
Italian translation is lap.
Lick could have been left also
considering that the Italian for lick, leccare, is phonetically similar to its English counterpart.
Also, in a few cases the English lexicalised onomatopoeia has been left intact although it is
hardly understandable by an Italian young reader, see chomp gobble to indicate a dog greedily
eating (see figure 13) or pluck to indicate the plucking of an object from somebody elses
hands. For the first case a gnam gnam could have been used, which is the Italian equivalent of
Figure 13. Example of incorrect repetitio (Kinney, 2011: 90).
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the English nom nom or sbaf, the first half of the verb sbafare (to gobble up), while for the
second case the verb prendi, (you) pick, could have been used.
Ozumi (2011), while researching the translation of Japanese comics into Italian, states
that a low level of omission is usually detected, and the same can be noticed for the Diary of a
Wimpy Kid. In the two books, only in two cases has the onomatopoeia been completely omitted.
Another frequent phenomenon, particularly linked to the strategy of adiectio (ie.
phonetic/spelling changes), is the tendency to adapt those onomatopoeias which contain clusters
not perceived as Italian, such as 'th', 'sh', 'wh' or 'ck' . Therefore, 'thunk' becomes 'tunk', whump
turns into bump (see figures 14 and 15 above), 'whap' becomes 'sbang', 'thwunk' turns into
'tunk', 'click' appears as 'clic' and wham becomes bam. This strategy shows again the effort
made by the translator to make the onomatopoeic sounds as 'visually' familiar as possible to the
young readers. After consideration of the results of the analysis some hypotheses surrounding
the translation of English onomatopoeia to Italian have been created which helped create the
questions for the following survey. The hypotheses are as follows:
1. The Italian readership is not expected to tolerate a lot of English onomatopoeia. 2. Italian onomatopoeia is frequently of interjectional nature.
Figure 14. THUNK WHUMP. English version (Kinney, 2009a: 27).
Figure 15. TUNK BUMP. Italian version (Kinney, 2011: 27).
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3. Semi-lexicalised onomatopoeia is used to try and make Italian onomatopoeia more expressive.
4. There is a tendency to adapt English sound which contains clusters not perceived as Italian, probably because these are considered to be annoying for the non-English mother tongue
readers.
5. When having to translate a less well-known onomatopoeia, translators tend to choose common expressions taken directly from English rather than the target language and
unconsciously do not seem to realise that that onomatopoeia is actually of English origin, as
do the readers (Valero Garces, 2008).
6. Since repetition is often used (31.48%), it seems that translators are expecting certain phonemes and consonant or vowel clusters to be cross-linguistically expressive.
These hypotheses will be tested in the second part of this dissertation using a survey which
helped assess their validity.
4. Survey
4.1. Methodology
Following the previous analysis, a survey has been created to assess the efficacy of the
strategies used, their success in delivering the correct meaning of the onomatopoeia and to check
whether there is a correspondence in the perception of Italian and English onomatopoeic sounds.
The empirical nature of this research implied the compulsory use of a survey to support
the findings of the preliminary analysis and verify their validity. The survey has been created
using the site kwiksurveys.com which allows the creation and distribution of surveys. The
survey consisted of 31 questions - the first 5 questions aimed at collecting general information
about the respondents (such as age and level of English). The rest of the queries provided an
onomatopoeic sound which the respondents were asked to evaluate and decide what feeling or
action it reminded them of. Only 2 questions were open, in which case respondents were asked to
write what kind of feeling the onomatopoeia reminded them of. The rest of the questionnaire was
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made up of close questions, with usually 2 or 3 options available. The proposed answers were
automatically randomized by the system. In order to compile the survey, Migliardi (2008) and
Baileys (1994) research on how to create questionnaires have been used, to ensure consistency
and use a clear methodology.
In section 1 of the Appendix you can find the Italian version of the survey as provided to
respondents.
The survey was distributed using a permanent link, available from the 15th to the 22nd of
July 2011 and sent to the respondents through e-mail invitations. The system saved peoples IP
address and each person was allowed to click on the link only once. Approximately 150 people
were invited to fill out the survey and 106 of them agreed to.
A convenience sample from among the authors group of friends and contacts was chosen,
who were all Italian mother tongues, coming from different social and geographic backgrounds
with an age ranging from 15 to 30+ years old. Bilingual people have not been invited to complete
the survey; aiming to preserve impartiality and avoid any influence from other languages
(particularly English). Almost half of them were aged among 22 to 24 and more than half of
them had a good or excellent level of English.
One may argue that, since Diary of a Wimpy kid is addressed to a young adult audience
(approximately 11-19 years old) only respondent with that age should have been selected. Piaget
(2002; in Allot, 1995) showed that, since the age of eleven, children start to understand the
difference between signified and signifier and realise that the names of objects are often arbitrary
and, therefore, can tell the difference between a word which is onomatopoeic and one that is not.
This does not change throughout their life. What can modify their perception is, instead, the
influence of other languages. So, as far as this research is concerned, the key variable was not the
age of the respondents but, at the utmost, their English level. It should also be remembered that
Kinney himself stated that he also writes for an adult audience.
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Each hypothesis as presented in section 4.3 was tested in the survey through a series of
question types, as follows:
Hypotheses 1, 2 and 3. Respondents were provided with a picture taken from one of the
two Diary of a Wimpy Kid books and were asked to select the best sound to describe the on-
going action. For each image three different sounds were suggested: an Italian interjection, an
Italian lexicalised onomatopoeia and, finally, an English lexicalised expression (questions 6 to 8
in appendix, section 1).
Hypothesis 4. The survey provided English onomatopoeia containing typically English
clusters (th, wh, sh etc.). Respondents were asked to choose from a list the action or feelings
that the sound made them think of. This was to check whether the presence of typically English
clusters jeopardized the comprehension of the onomatopoeic sound (questions 9 to 14 in
appendix, section 1).
Hypothesis 5. Respondents were asked to define with their own words two English
lexicalised onomatopoeic sounds and state whether they thought they come from English or
Italian (questions 15 to 17 in appendix, section 1).
Hypothesis 6. Questions 18 to 24 were aimed at assessing the expressive values
(Dogana, 1994: 131) of different phonemes and clusters in order to check their possible cross-
linguistic validity. Respondents were asked to describe an onomatopoeic sound which contained
phonemes or clusters which were retained in the Italian translation by the translator, to check
whether the meaning was interpreted correctly.
Apart from checking the validity of the hypotheses, a few questions (25 to 31) were
dedicated to assess the efficacy of some translations present in Diario di una Schiappa. The
respondents were asked to guess the meaning of some English lexicalised onomatopoeia which
was used in the Italian version of the books and which might have been problematic to
understand, mainly because less-commonly known English lexicalised onomatopoeia was
retained in the Italian version.
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4.2. Results
General questions (1 to 5).
The following questions were aimed at collecting general information about the sample.
1. To which age group do you belong?
Figure 16.
2. Did you use to read comics when you were little?
Figure 17.
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3. Do you usually read comics now?
Figure 18.
4. What is your level of comprehension of the English language?
Figure 19.
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5. Before reading the introduction to this survey, were you aware of what onomatopoeia was?
Figure 20.
The majority of the sample (48%) was aged between 22 and 24 and most of them (57%)
stated they used to read comics when they were little and a part of them often still reads them
now (21%). 78% of the respondents had a medium or high level of English. The majority (91%)
were aware of the meaning of the word onomatopoeia.
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Hypothesis 1, 2 and 3 (questions 6 to 8)
The following questions were aimed at discovering if Italian mother tongues preferred
interjectional onomatopoeia as showed by the preliminary analysis.
6. Which onomatopoeia would you prefer to describe a trip?
Figure 21.
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7. Which onomatopoeic sound would you use to describe the abrupt movement of the blanket as shown in the image below?
Figure 22.
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8. Which onomatopoeia would you use to describe a dog is eating the cake on the table?
Figure 23.
In all three questions the interjectional option was the most favoured, both by people with
a low and a high level of English. The semi-lexicalised options seemed, overall, the least
favourite.
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40
Hypothesis 4 (questions 9 to 14)
The following questions were aimed at assessing if the presence of typically English
clusters (th, wh, sh) could jeopardize the understanding of the onomatopoeic sound.
9. THWUNK reminds you of:
Figure 24.
10. WHIRRRRR reminds you of:
Figure 25.
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11. FLUSH reminds you of:
Figure 26.
12. WHEEZE reminds you of:
Figure 27.
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42
13. TWIRL reminds you of:
Figure 28.
14. THUMP reminds you of:
In all cases except for wheeze the meaning of the English onomatopoeia was correctly spotted.
Figure 29.
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43
Hypothesis 5 (questions 15 to 17)
Hypothesis 5 aimed to prove the familiarity of Italian mother tongues with two
onomatopoeic sounds frequently found in Italian comics (PANT and GASP) and to see whether
these are well-known enough to be considered of Italian origin.
15. Could you describe what the onomatopoeic sound PANT PANT makes you think about?
16. What about GASP?
Questions 19 and 20 were open questions. The answers as provided by the respondents
are available in the section 2 of the Appendix. 16 out of 24 people with a low level of English
did not manage to guess the right meaning of pant. Gasp, instead, was understandable by
almost all of them.
17. Do you think PANT and GASP come from English or Italian?
The majority of people with a high level of English correctly stated that both PANT and
GASP come from the English language. People with a low level of English provided mixed
Figure 30.
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answers, with the majority of them stating they did not know the right answer.
Hypothesis 6 (questions 18 to 24)
Hypothesis 6 stated that there seemed to be some values linked to certain clusters or
phonemes which could be considered valid in different linguistic environments. The following
questions provided the respondents with onomatopoeia which was retained in the Italian
version. Readers were expected to understand it without the need for localisation, implying that
both Italian and English cultures linked it to the same values.
18. UFF UFF reminds you of:
Figure 31.
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45
19. SQUISH reminds you of:
Figure 32.
20. SQUIRK reminds you of:
Figure 33.
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46
21. ZOT ZOT reminds you of:
Figure 34.
22. TUG TUG reminds you of:
Figure 35.
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47
23. ZING reminds you of:
Figure 36.
24. SMACK reminds you of:
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48
Figure 37.
Testing of the efficacy of the translation of onomatopoeic sounds in Il Diario di
una Schiappa.
25. SLAP makes you think about which action?
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49
Figure 38.
In this case there was a visible difference between the perception of the onomatopoeia
SLAP between people with low and proficient English.
26. CHATTER CHATTER reminds you of:
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50
Figure 39.
27. MUMBLE MUMBLE reminds you of:
28. PLUCK reminds you of: (multiple choice)
Figure 40.
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29. With which of the following onomatopoeic sounds would you describe a dog licking the hand of his owner? (multiple choice)
30. STRUSH STRUSH reminds you of:
Figure 41.
Figure 42.
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Figura 43.
31. With which of the following sounds would you describe a phone ringing? (Multiple choice)
Figure 44.
4.3 . Discussion
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53
Following on from the survey it was found that 82% of the 106 respondents said they
used to read comics when they were little, and approximately 50% still reads them now. 91% of
respondents said they knew the meaning of onomatopoeia before doing the survey, which
shows that people were aware of its existence.
In Diario di una Schiappa a lexicalised Italian translation was given for the pictures
queried in questions 6 and 7 (respectively cadi! and strapp), while the picture in question 8
was left intact (chomp gobble chomp). These translation choices do not seem to mirror
peoples preferences. In all three cases, respondents, both the ones with a high and a low level of
English, have preferred an Italian interjection option (ops, gnam sbaf, vraam) to an Italian
semi-lexicalised or English lexicalised one, with an average of 60-70%.
Hypothesis 1 and 2, therefore, appear to be supported: Italian mother tongues seem to
prefer Italian onomatopoeic sounds to English ones. Moreover, the preference for interjectional
sounds is confirmed, while hypothesis 3, which stated that semi-lexicalised onomatopoeia is
used in order to make the picture more expressive, do not seem to be effective also considering
that the semi-lexicalised options were in the majority of cases the less preferred ones. In
summary, Italian mother tongues do not seem to appreciate the attempt at trying to create
lexicalised or semi-lexicalised versions of the English onomatopoeia and prefer the more
expressive Italian interjections.
In all cases but one (wheeze) the meaning of the onomatopoeic sound containing
typically English clusters was understood. Research has proven that the so called poorly
resolvable onsets (Rhodes, 1994: 282) such as th or wh usually refer to slowly increasing
noises. They often, in fact, end with unvoiced stop sounds such as /p/, /t/ or /k/, as if they are
representing the climax of the noise (see thump and thunk). So, although Italian born speaker
are not familiar with the th onset, this does not seem to represent an obstacle to the
understanding of the onomatopoeia and, therefore, the translator could choose not to adapt it by
removing the h. The repeated consonant /r/ in whirrrr seems to have the same effect of
turbulence in 93% of the respondents (question 10). The /-(r)l/ word-final cluster, typical of the
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English language and usually referring to roundness (Crystal, 2007: 250), has been linked to a
trottola, a spinning top, by 87.5% of respondents with a low level of English (question 13).
The wheeze sound, instead, which in English comics usually refers to a situation involving
fatigue, has been labelled by 70% of the respondents with a situation involving riposo, rest
(question 12). This is probably caused by the fact that wheeze is a lexicalised onomatopoeia
and, therefore, less interjectional. This choice was definitely unexpected, also considering that
Dogana (1994: 149-50) showed that the vowels /i/ and /e/ are usually perceived as being acute
and high-pitched and they usually refer to the action of whistling and wheezing in Italian, too.
The reason might be found in the presence of the final consonant z which is often perceived as
being light, soft and sweet (Dogana, 1994: 227) and might have influenced the choice. So, if
we exclude the wheeze case, there seem to be consistency in the linking of meaning to
particular clusters and sounds, both in English and Italian. Hypothesis 4 is, therefore,
contradicted. It stated that Italian respondents were expected to be annoyed by the presence of
typically English clusters, due to the fact that the translators localised them but, instead, the
respondents linked the English onomatopoeia to the right meaning in the majority of the cases so
it means that the presence of English clusters do not jeopardise the understanding of the
onomatopoeic sound. Hypothesis 6, instead, is confirmed since it seems that some features of
phonetic symbolism are cross-linguistically valid (see the /-(r)l/ case, for example), as proven
by the extensive bibliography available on the issue (Brown et al. 1955: 388; De Vito et al., 1972;
Lloyd, 2009).
When having to define the meaning of the English lexicalised onomatopoeic sounds pant
and gasp, 16 out of 24 people with a low level of English did not manage to guess the right
meaning of pant. Gasp, instead, was understandable by the majority of them. When asked to
state the origin of the two sounds, 50% of them rightly stated that they were of English origin
and 15% did not know, while the rest thought that at least one of the two, if not both, were of
Italian origin. This shows that, at least partially, there are Italian mother tongues who perceive
these sounds as being Italian or who are not sure about their origin, so hypothesis 5 is partially
confirmed: as noticed by Valero Garces (2008) for the Spanish language, non-English mother
tongues do not seem to be 100% sure of the origin of some commonly used English
onomatopoeia.
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The smooth value given to the fricative phoneme /sh/, or [], has been confirmed by the
fact that 98% of respondents linked the word squish to the adjective liscio, smooth, in
question 25. Dogana (1994: 233) for the Italian language and Oswalt (1994: 298) for the English
language confirmed this. When substituting the final fricative sound /sh/ with the vibrant +
unvoiced stop cluster /rk/ (question 26), the meaning linked to the onomatopoeia totally changed.
The word squirk has been linked to the adjective coarse by the 85% of the respondents,
proving again the hard, abrupt and noisy characteristics linked to the vibrant r (Dogana, 1994:
262) and stops (Oswalt, 1994: 300). This confirms hypothesis 6, which stated that some
phonemes and clusters seemed to have cross-linguistic validity. It must be borne in mind, though,
that in some cases, although the values linked to some phonemes would suggest certain
characteristics, other linguistic factors lead people to link them to unexpected meanings. An
example of this is the onomatopoeia smack which technically should refer to hitting, slamming
sounds (Rhodes, 1994: 285) due to the presence of the final stop. Nevertheless, in Italian smack
is often linked to the sound of kissing (smooch in English). The survey proved that the positive
value is given priority and 95% of respondents linked it to love rather than hate (question 30).
This proves that, although the value given to phonemes is present, sometimes it is influenced by
other language or cultural specific factors, which can totally change the meaning of
onomatopoeic sounds.
To sum up, all hypotheses apart the number 3 and number 4 have been confirmed. The
analysis will now move to those questions which were not aimed at proving the hypotheses but
tried to check the correctness or not of some translating strategies as detected in Diario di una
Schiappa.
Questions 21 and 22 aimed to check the efficacy of the translation of two onomatopoeic
sounds which I was not really sure of since they did not sound Italian enough: tug tug for the
persistent tapping on someones back and zot zot for two people fleeing away. My doubts were
proven groundless, considering that both sounds were linked to their supposed meaning by the
majority of respondents. The monosyllabic and short nature of the two sounds might help link
them to quick actions like tapping or running away. Also, as stated by DeVito et al. (1972) and
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Frawley (2003: 12), the reduplication of onomatopoeia has proven to help it be more expressive
and immediate and has been noticed in several Asian and African languages (Childs, 1994: 185
and Hamano, 1994: 148-9).
Questions 25 to 28 tested the meaning of other English lexicalised onomatopoeia which
was expected to cause some more understanding problems to an Italian readership: slap,
chatter chatter, 'mumble mumble and pluck. In 'Diario di una Schiappa', pluck, slap, and
mumble mumble were left intact, while chatter chatter' was substituted with brrrrrr,
following the usual interjectional trend as mentioned in the previous section. Although 'slap'
might sound quite interjectional and, therefore, one might argue it should not represent a problem
for an Italian readership, we need to consider the fact that the cluster /s/ + liquid consonant is, in
Italian (and in Spanish, too) (Garcia de Diego, 1968: 602), usually linked to viscous objects and
the action of licking rather than to hitting sounds. The result of the survey confirmed this theory:
67% of respondents with a low English level linked the term to the action of licking rather than
slapping. This is also confirmed by question 29, in which slap was chosen by 63% of the
respondents with a low level of English as the best onomatopoeia to describe a dog licking the
hand of its owner. A solution could be to use the semi-lexicalised onomatopoeia 'schiaf' which
comes from the noun 'schiaffo (a slap), also considering that it was successfully and
extensively used by the cartoonist Jacovitti (in Eco, 2008). In the case of chatter chatter and
mumble mumble, the second one is widely known in Italian thanks to American comics (Eco,
2008), and the survey proved this with respectively 87% (low English) and 95% (proficient
English) of respondents linking it to an action of thinking. The second one, instead, was rightly
substituted in 'Diario di una Schiappa' with the interjection 'brrrr'. The survey confirmed the
validity of the strategy, since only 55% of the respondents linked the expression to the adjective
cold. In the case of pluck - this is again a lexicalised onomatopoeia whose onomatopoeic
characteristic is strongly linked to the actual word and, therefore, can be difficult to understand
by people who do not speak the language. This is confirmed by the fact that the majority of the
respondents (65% against 34%) did not link the term to an action of plucking but to an action
of hitting or throwing, relying probably on the presence of the initial and final stops (/p/__/k/).
In this case, therefore, the onomatopoeia should not have been left intact but should have been
substituted with a different sound, perhaps the verb prendi ((you) grab) could have worked,
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even though the first questions of the survey proved that this strategy is not appreciated much by
Italian mother tongues.
Finally, question 31 asked the respondents to choose which onomatopoeia they would
use for a phone ringing. The question was included after noticing that in the third book of the
series the onomatopoeia beep was used, while in the fourth the short version bip was
preferred. The second strategy is expected to be more appropriate because in beep the English
spelling is used and Italian mother tongues do not necessarily know that ee in English has to be
read has [i:] and not [:]. Moreover, the sound [b:p] might remind them more of a sheep
bleating (Abbott, 2004). Nevertheless, the survey showed that both strategies are acceptable, as
long as the vowel is prolonged; beep and biiip were, in fact, both preferred by the 43% of
respondents to their shortened versions, bip (12%) and bep (1%). The preference for the
lengthened versions might be explained with the fact that lengthening has been proven to carry
more onomatopoeic connotations if compared to their non-lengthened counterparts (Childs, 2004:
186), particularly when referring to lasting sounds.
4.4. Limitations
It must be borne in mind that the survey did have a few limitations. A broader and more
mixed range of respondents should have been used, instead of using a convenience sample as is
the case for the current project. Finally, bear in that so many questions have not been answered
and the results found should be supported by a more in depth analysis which may need more than
three months (as it is currently the case) to give definite results. Also remember that this
dissertation is going to analyse only one side of the sound symbolism issue and it should not be
seen as exhaustive and all-embracing but as a description of a localized phenomenon.
Nevertheless the findings of this research can and will be useful also for other types of similar
research.
5. Summary of Overall Results, Conclusions and Final Recommendations
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The analysis and the results confirmed that the translator of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid
series was aware of the need to localise the onomatopoeic sounds for the younger readership,
following the suggestion of a few scholars (Lathey, 2008; Oittinen, 2008; Frimmelova, 2010)
who stressed the importance of adaptation strategies when dealing with texts addressed to young
readers. The strategies used proved not to have always been correct more interjectional
onomatopoeia should have been used, considering the poor success of semi-lexicalised and
lexicalised onomatopoeia in the survey.
The official Italian translator of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Mrs Rossella Bernascone is
a very highly regarded and well-known translator. These errors demonstrate the general lack of
supporting evidence and guidance available to Italian translators of onomatopoeia.
The difficulty of the Italian language when creating onomatopoeic sounds and its reliance
on English onomatopoeia was confirmed: lexicalised Italian onomatopoeia is rarely used, while
the interjectional type is preferred. English onomatopoeia is still widely used and typically
English spelling does not seem to be considered annoying by Italian mother tongues. It is either
retained from the English version or used to translate less common English onomatopoeia.
English onomatopoeia is so rooted that, in a few cases, Italian people do not seem to realise it is
actually of English origin.
Finally, cross linguistic validity for some clusters and phonemes has been confirmed,
supporting those scholars who had already suggested this. Nevertheless, the values linked to
phonemes and clusters has shown to be influenced also by other cultural and linguistic factors
which can lead different languages to link the same cluster to different situations, feelings, or
noises (see, for example, the case of smack or slap as outlined in the previous discussion). So,
although their cross-linguistic validity is confirmed, it should not be considered an absolute rule.
For future research, the use of semi-lexicalised and lexicalised onomatopoeia should be
further analysed and the efficacy of the interjectional onomatopoeia should be checked, possibly
through the analysis of other types of books for children such as comics for young readers,
picture books or other types of imagetexts. Attention should also be given to the strategies used
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by the few Italian writers who tried to Italianise onomatopoeia, such as Jacovitti or Renzi, and
check whether their invented onomatopoeic sounds could be considered effective through
questions in a similar survey. A bigger project would include using other tools to assess the
efficacy of certain sounds, through for example the use of eye trackers which would be able to
detect where the attention of the reader goes in the picture with and without the onomatopoeic
sound. A catalogue of all Italian onomatopoeia could be created, along with a glossary, a project
which I personally aim to realise through the enrolment in a doctoral degree.
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