Polonistica italiana e traduzione letteraria

Polish Studies in Italy and literary translation The article presents a commented review of activity related to translation carried out by Italian scholars of Polish Studies. Two categories of activity are distinguished: practice of translation, whose interest lays in its high hermeneutic potential, and research on translations, which can be divided into three subcategories depending on the directionality of the translation process – from Polish into Italian, from Italian into Polish and from other languages into Polish. Studies concerning translation theory are also mentioned. The review of Italian scholars’ production in all these categories and subcategories leads to the following conclusions: in the history of Polish studies in Italy we can recognize a theroretical-critical line carried out by translation scholars, and a practical line carried out by translating scholars; in this regard, in the last two decades we can observe on the one side a reinforcement of the practical line, with more and more scholars cultivating literary translation, and on the other side the occurrence of significant changes in the theoretical-critical line, with a growing percentage of case studies that take into account the Polish-Italian directionality (in the 20th century the Italian-Polish directionality prevailed) and the literature of the 20th century (differently from the past, when scholars were interested primarily on translations of Renaissance, Baroque and Enlightment literature), and especially for younger scholars theory of translation turns out to be more and more important both in practical and in research activity.