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

17

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

18

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

19

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.

20

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

21

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

22

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

23

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

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.

25

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)

26

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).

27

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.)

28

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).

29

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).

30

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).

31

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

32

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.

33

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.

34

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.

35

3. Do you usually read comics now?

Figure 18.

4. What is your level of comprehension of the English language?

Figure 19.

36

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.

37

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.

38

7. Which onomatopoeic sound would you use to describe the abrupt movement of the blanket as shown in the image below?

Figure 22.

39

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.

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.

41

11. FLUSH reminds you of:

Figure 26.

12. WHEEZE reminds you of:

Figure 27.

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.

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.

44

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.

45

19. SQUISH reminds you of:

Figure 32.

20. SQUIRK reminds you of:

Figure 33.

46

21. ZOT ZOT reminds you of:

Figure 34.

22. TUG TUG reminds you of:

Figure 35.

47

23. ZING reminds you of:

Figure 36.

24. SMACK reminds you of:

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?

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:

50

Figure 39.

27. MUMBLE MUMBLE reminds you of:

28. PLUCK reminds you of: (multiple choice)

Figure 40.

51

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.

52

Figura 43.

31. With which of the following sounds would you describe a phone ringing? (Multiple choice)

Figure 44.

4.3 . Discussion

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

54

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.

55

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

56

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,

57

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

58

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

59

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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