The many Italian voices of Hans Christian Andersen. A target text-oriented study of three iconic translations of "Sneemanden"

Translated children’s literature has only recently found scholars that investigated translations as cultural products of specific historical periods, the pedagogical nature of translation addressing a young audience, the strategies adopted to make literary works travel among cultures. These aspects are considered in this paper, along with the figures creating translations for children: a mix of voices that tune in to the researcher’s ability to analyze the “contextual material” (Alvstad et al., 2017) and discover the different elements that contributed to the dissemination and rooting of specific translations. This work wishes to explore some iconic voices that translated Hans Christian Andersen’s series of the "Eventyr" in Italian, at the crossroads of translation studies and education. The research framework takes steps from the descriptive approach proposed by Gideon Toury (1995) and Andrew Chesterman (1997, 2009), where translators play a crucial role in the creation of translations as texts with their own creative and cultural background. Andersen’s fairy tales suit the research work on retranslation in children’s literature (Douglas & Cabaret, 2014), showing the plasticity of the language and the constant attraction that these tales exercise on the Italian public. Following a first selection of tales edited by Gnocchi in 1864, the remarkable work of Maria Pezzé Pascolato in 1904 established a new trend with her translation from the original Danish texts. Her trailblazing work set the mark for subsequent translations, especially for "Nuove novelle" by Mary Tibaldi Chiesa published in 1937, "Fiabe" by Alda Castagnoli Manghi and Marcella Rinaldi in 1954, and eventually "Fiabe e storie" celebrating 200 years from Andersen’s birth, retranslated by Bruno Berni (2005). These retranslations are constantly reprinted in different editorial forms, showing their success through time. Focusing on the story "Sneemanden" (The Snowman), the three target texts by Tibaldi Chiesa, Manghi and Rinaldi, and Berni will be analysed from a comparative and diachronic point of view to highlight how each translation contributed to the formation of young readers’ imagination in different time periods in Italy. The pedagogical approach can shed light on the language used to convey the feelings of love, yearning, despair for a different readership, and the different approach that translators adopted to maintain the fine balance between Andersen’s communicative craftmanship and the implied reader.