Domesticating or foreignizing texts? Case study : Niccolò Ammaniti's "Ti prendo e ti porto via" translated into English

Domesticating or foreignizing texts? Leaving the reader alone as much as possible and moving the writer toward the reader or leaving the writer alone as much as possible and moving the reader toward the writer? Is such a dichotomy always so definitely strict and rigid, and does one necessarily exclude the other? Translators do not always seem to be so rigorous in their choice. Steal You Away, the translation by Jonathan Hunt of Niccolò Ammaniti’s Ti prendo e ti porto via, is an example. On the one hand, the translator seems prone to foreignization in his choice not to transpose into English many of the cultural references present in the text which help the reader be virtually transported in the Italian (invented) village of Ischiano Scalo, where the story is set. Therefore, names of public places, of singers, of magazines, of TV shows, of food products are left unaltered in the translation. On the other hand, the translator often seems to be more willing to domesticate the text. This happens through the use of different translation strategies. References to the Italian culture are sometimes translated into English, sometimes they are simply generalized, sometimes they are substituted with a cultural reference which is more recognizable by the English reader, some other times they are simply omitted. Other translation strategies aimed at domesticating the text are also found at lexical and syntactic levels. Therefore, Steal You Away is a clear example of a fluent translation, which, however, seems to reflect the tendency of many translators not to follow a definite line of thought, and is consequently not easily definable either as a foreignized, or as a domesticated text.