Translating Poetry and Identity: The Case Study of Moniza Alvi

This work is centred on contemporary poet Moniza Alvi. Her compositions display a great variety of themes, including natural sceneries as well as historical events (see her collection At the Time of Partition, 2013) and violence (see her collection Europa, 2008). Surrealism is also heavily employed by this author, as it can be noticed in her collections Souls (2002) and How the Stone Found Its Voice (2005). She can be regarded as a peculiar voice of Postcolonialism in literature too. Her mother is English and the poet grows up in Hatfield, but her father is from Pakistan. While she never really feels different growing up, she soon realizes that she cannot fit in just one country and she starts her journey to discover her fatherland. She has to negotiate a third, in-between space, as it is defined by Homi Bhabha. Thus, her experience is completely different from that of first generation immigrants, but she can still speak to many whose origins are mixed, having families from different countries. For all these reasons her voice deserves to be heard by more people, including the Italian readership. In this work, poems from different collections by this author are selected and then translated. The first part provides the reader with the results of the preliminary phase of the translator’s work, the documentation about the sender. Alvi’s biography is included in order to better understand her background. There is also a theoretical discussion about the matter of the definition of identity when it is hybrid like hers, with contributions by critics like Shehata, Renns and Bhabha, for example. The issues of mixed couples, how they are viewed in the recent past and how they are represented today are also discussed, since they are relevant to Alvi’s journey of exploration of her own self. Then, the poems selected to be translated are analysed, as well as the collections which they are contained in, in order to understand the messages the author wants to communicate and the linguistic means she uses to do so. Finally, a comment about the translations is included too. The common stereotypical beliefs according to which poetry cannot be translated or it can only be translated by fellow poets are debunked. Then, the various issues encountered by the translator are listed and discussed. Culture-specific terms or figures of sound are good examples. Lastly, the strategies chosen by the translator are explained and her choices justified, thanks to both theoretical and practical advice by experts such as Bassnett, Morini and Diadori, for example.