Translating Maori fiction and the writing of Witi Ihimaera into Italian

Abstract This article is dedicated to the contemporary Italian scholarly reception and translations of Witi Ihimaera’s fiction. It considers the ways in which Ihimaera’s work has been translated, published and reviewed in Italy from the 1970s to the present. The article addresses the impact of Ihimaera’s fiction in Italy, from the early and highly influential translations by Marinella Rocca Longo, to the 2003 Italian translation of The Whale Rider by Chiara Brovelli, appearing as La balena e la bambina (The Whale and the Young Girl). The discussion focuses on the issues raised by the Italian translations of Ihimaera’s short story ‘A Game of Cards’ and of The Whale Rider. A comparative analysis of four different Italian translations of Ihimaera’s short story reveals a number of strategies whose purpose was to make Maori words more accessible to a European audience. In the case of Ihimaera’s novel The Whale Rider, the Italian translation clearly resulted in a shift in genre, with the novel transformed into a children’s book. Moreover, an analysis of Brovelli’s misinterpretation of some Maori terms, replaced by target language equivalents, raises issues regarding the responsibilities of the translators of postcolonial texts, not only as agents of language transfer, but also as cultural interpreters.