Italian allora, French alors : functions, convergences and divergences

Abstract The functions, convergences, and divergences of Italian allora and French alors are analyzed in two Italian texts (the Novellino, in Old Italian, and Paso Doble, in Modern Italian) and their French translations. The discourse marker is used differently in the two languages, and the contrastive analysis allows us to better assess those differences, by explicitly quantifying the degree of correspondence, omissions, and non-literal translations. Furthermore, our work confirms the existence of functions which may be identified as more central or more peripheral within a certain configuration, and emphasizes the existence of cross-language preferences for a more/less rich * Our thanks to Jonathan Hunt and to two anonymous referees for discussing a previous version. Though this paper is the product of collaborative research, § 1 is attributable to Carla Bazzanella, § 2.1 to Johanna Miecznikowski, § 2.2.1 to Cristina Bosco, § 2.2.2 to Alessandro Garcea, § 2.3 to Francesca Tini Brunozzi, and § 3 to Barbara Gili Fivela. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 6, 2007 9-30 Italian allora, French alors: Functions, convergences and divergences* Carla Bazzanella Università di Torino. Dip. di Filosofia v. S. Ottavio 20, 10124 Torino, Italy [email protected] Cristina Bosco Università di Torino. Dip. di Informatica c. Svizzera 185, 10149 Torino, Italy [email protected] Alessandro Garcea University of Toulouse 2. Département de Lettres Classiques 5 allées Antonio-Machado, 31058 Toulouse Cedex 9, France [email protected] Barbara Gili Fivela Università del Salento-Lecce. Dipartimento di Lingue e Letterature Straniere Via Taranto 35, 73100 - Lecce, Italy [email protected] Johanna Miecznikowski Università di Torino. Dip. di Filosofia v. S. Ottavio 20, 10124 Torino, Italy Johanna.Mieczniko[email protected] Francesca Tini Brunozzi Loquendo S.p.A. via Valdellatorre 4, 10149 Torino (Italy) [email protected] Cat.Jour.Ling. 6 001-172 18/10/07 10:36 Página 9 set of forms for expressing a particular function. The polyfunctionality and context-boundness which characterize discourse markers in general are held responsible for differences in translation, thus motivating the several shades of meaning which distinguish Italian allora (with regard both to Old and Modern Italian) from French alors. Key words: discourse markers, translation, polyfunctionality, context, allora, alors, Italian, French. 1. Translating discourse markers Within the theoretical framework outlined in Bazzanella (1995, 2006a), and on the basis of existing empirical studies of Italian allora and French alors (cf. section 2), we will approach allora/alors analyzing the functions, convergences, and divergences of the two cognates in two Italian texts (the Novellino, in Old Italian, and Paso Doble, in Modern Italian) and their French translations. We will not be dealing here with the general topic of translation, but only with some specific points related to the translation of discourse markers (DMs), a functional category (cf., inter alia, van Dijk 1979, Schiffrin 1987, Hansen 1998, Jucker and Ziv 1998, Pons Bordería 1998, Martín Zorraquino and Portolés 1999, Fischer 2000, 2006, Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen 2006). DMs, no more considered as a peripheral phenomenon, have increasingly been studied in recent years, and have contributed to the change of grammar paradigms towards pragmatics and interactional linguistics. Four features of DMs are generally agreed upon by scholars, though an unified treatment is still lacking. Let us start with the first two features: — their polyfunctionality, i.e. the fact that they operate on several levels simultaneously,1and — their relatedeness to the speech situation and not to the situation talked about, which corresponds to an extreme sensitiveness to the variation of both context and cotext. The close context-boundness and the polyfunctionality of DMs constitute, of course, a crucial problem for translation. Though the indeterminacy of translation 10 CatJL 6, 2007 C. Bazzanella; C. Bosco; A. Garcea; B. Gili; J. Miecznikowski; F. Tini 1. Kroon (1995: 43) distinguishes between two kinds of polyfunctionality (category-internal, i.e. “their apparent variety of modal uses”), and the external one, the so-called cross-categorial polyfunctionality, i.e. “their property of having one or more uses that are commoner for other grammatical categories (e.g. adverbs or conjunctions)”; cf. also Bazzanella’s (2006: 456) distinction between paradigmatic (in absentia) and syntagmatic (in presentia) polyfunctionality. Table of Contents 1. Translating discourse markers 2. allora/alors 3. Over-/under-determination and overall configuration References Cat.Jour.Ling. 6 001-172 18/10/07 10:36 Página 10 in general has been stressed several times, both by linguists and philosophers, translating DMs appears to be particularly difficult, much more so than in the case of other parts of speech, since words used in a DM function are ‘indeterminate’ per se, and one can determine DMs only with regard to the specific usage in context (cf. Bazzanella and Morra 2000: 155).2In fact different functions, which correspond to different shades of meaning, can be ‘activated’ simultaneously by a particular DM in a given language, and the choice of an equivalent in the target language is unlikely to preserve all the different shades of meaning and all the different functions it conveys in the source context. Translators have set up different solutions to this problem, consciously or unconsciously. Literal translations are often rightly ignored, and functional correspondences are pursued. To quote an example, according to Bazzanella’s (1999) analysis of the Italian translation (by A. Micchettoni, Fratelli e Sorelle, published by Garzanti, Milan 1982) of well in an English literary text3(Brothers and Sisters, by Ivy Compton Burnett), in 49.5% of the cases there are 46 different functional correspondences. Among this wide variety of corresponding terms, some DMs are more common, such as ebbene, allora, be’, ma, ecco, while 27 occurrences of various DMs are used only once, and are highly context-specific. The third essential feature of DMs is that they do not affect the truth conditions of an utterance, in other words they do not add anything to the propositional content of an utterance. This feature is partly responsible for the long neglect of DMs in traditional grammar and is reflected in the frequent deletion of DMs in translations: e.g., more than one third (39%!) of the occurrences of well in the above-mentioned Italian translation are deleted. The fourth and last feature of DMs, related to their non-propositional nature, is that they serve to indicate the mood of a sentence, to express attitudes and emotions, and more generally to relate utterance to aspects of the speech situation. Within the framework developed by Bazzanella (2006a), these functions are seen as pertaining to three domains, i.e. interaction, text structure, and cognition. In recent years, much attention has been paid to this basic aspect of linguistic interaction in pragmatics and in interactional linguistics, a development that has increased the interest in DMs and has revealed the importance of translations that are sensitive to all facets of communication. In fact, translating DMs strongly posits the need for a careful functional correspondence: semantic equivalence is not crucial at all, but “a substantial amount of inferencing over and above their decoding” (Ariel 1998: 250) is required as a starting point for their interpretation and translation, which necessarily involves various levels and components of language use in its context. Italian allora, French alors: Functions, convergences and divergences CatJL 6, 2007 11 2. “The notion of context has long been recognized as central to pragmatic enquiry and to the study of translation and interpreting” (Baker 2006: 317). A recent issue of Journal of Pragmatics (2006, 38) is dedicated to the intersection of interests and challenges in these domains. With regard to the translation of DMs, cf., among others, Fischer (2000), Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen (2003, 2006), Cuenca (2004, forth). 3. As Mason (2006) rightly points out, “current studies of interpreting are based on a view of source texts and utterances as discrete entities with stable meanings that are encoded in textual material rather than negotiated in the course of interaction”. Cat.Jour.Ling. 6 001-172 18/10/07 10:36 Página 11 2. allora/alors 2.1. Functions of Italian allora and French alors Italian allora and French alors are etymologically closely related, both forms deriving from Latin illa hora (ablative) ‘at that time’.4 Both items in origin are adverbs with a predominantly temporal anaphorical meaning (cf. Zénone 1982 and Gerecht 1987 with regard to French; Bosco and Bazzanella 2005 with regard to Italian): they express (a) the simultaneity of a state/process B with a temporal reference point A specified in the previous context (ex. 1) or (b) the posteriority of an event B with regard to a state of affairs A specified in the previous context and considered of particular relevance for B, mostly in the sense that B is a consequence of – or a reaction to – A (ex. 2). In both cases, A as well as B are distant from the deictic centre – a reminiscence of the distal character of illa. (1) Usavansi allora le medaglie, in Firenze, che le due valevano uno danaio piccolo. (Novellino, novella 96) ‘In those days the Florentines used the medaglia as currency, two of which were worth a penny.’ (2) «[…] Pregoti che mi dichi come queste cose tu le sai». Allora il greco rispose: «Messere, io lo vi dirò. […]» (Novellino, novella 2) ‘«[…] I pray you tell me how you came to know all these things». Then the Greek replied, «Sire, I will tell you everything. […]»’ Subsequently, temporal adverbial allora/alors became less used and allora/alors was extended, instead, to a number of contexts in which it has come to fulfill new functions as a connective and a DM (cf. Bosco and Bazzanella 2005, Bazzanella et al. a, b, Hansen 1997). This diachronic process, which to date has only been partly analysed,5seems more advanced in French than in Italian (e.g. Mosegaard Hansen 1997 found only one instance of temporal alors of type (b) and no instance of the temporal use of type (a) in her spoken French corpus). 12 CatJL 6, 2007 C. Bazzanella; C. Bosco; A. Garcea; B. Gili; J. Miecznikowski; F. Tini 4. With regard to allora, existing etymological dictionaries (Battaglia 1961: 335, Cortellazzo and Zolli 1979: 41) suggest that it has developed out of Lat. ad illam horam ‘at that time’. Since that phrase is not attested either in classical or in medieval Latin texts, a derivation from the ablative form, such as has been proposed for French alors in the Trésor de la Langue Française (Imbs 1973: 607) seems more plausible. Illa hora (abl.) is well attested in Latin; in French, it gives rise to lors, whereas in Italian it has survived only within prepositional phrases – most prominently in allora, but also in other forms such as inlor(a), allo (Old Lombard). See von Wartburg (1952, vol. 4: 478). 5. Bosco and Bazzanella (2005) analyze semantic change on the basis of Old Italian and present-day Italian corpora as well as dictionaries, whereas Bazzanella et al. (forth. a, b) are corpus-based studies of allora in present-day spoken Italian. Hansen (1997) is concerned mainly with present-day spoken French, which she analyzes using spoken corpora; her diachronic argument is based on evidence from dictionaries. Cat.Jour.Ling. 6 001-172 18/10/07 10:36 Página 12 A first extension to be mentioned is the use in hypothetical constructions, well attested both in standard written Italian and French. In this co-text, allora/alors reinforces the implicational relationship expressed by the construction, i.e. it helps to signal that the apodosis B is true (only) in the specific mental space defined by the protasis A (cf. Dancygier and Sweetser 2005):6 (3) “Del resto”, aggiungeva, “nel caso di un black friday di solito sono gli ultimi assunti a essere licenziati. Se però dimostrano di avere ottimi skills e buona volontà, allora… (Paso doble, p. 25; see below § 2.) ‘“Besides”, he added, “in the case of a Black Friday, usually it is the people who have been taken on most recently who are laid off. But if they have very good skills and are eager to work, then…’ Allora/alors maintains an anaphorical meaning with clearly defined scope, and A and B still have the property of being distant from the deictic centre, albeit in the modal dimension rather than on the axis of time. Allora/alors is invariably placed at the beginning of the apodosis. Probably simultaneously and partly under the influence of the extension to hypothetical constructions, allora/alors has been extended to co-texts that lack the feature /distal/, developing speaker-related, textual and interaction-managing functions that are very frequent in present day spoken Italian and French. These functions may be seen as reinforcing two properties that are already present in the earlier temporal uses of the marker (Novellino dates from 1281 to 1300) and that are partly present in hypothetical constructions, depending on the exact nature of the conditional relation expressed by the construction. One set of functions is related to the consequential meaning present in the temporal use of type (b). A second set of functions, which we term correlative (cf. Bosco and Bazzanella 2005), is related to the (meta-)textual effect of foregrounding and change of perspective that characterises many instances of temporal allora/alors, again above all those of type (b). We will analyse both sets of functions in more detail in the remaining part of this section. In present-day Italian and French, the consequential meaning of allora/alors may be transposed to the epistemic domain, with a predominantly cognitive function (‘given A, I infer B’, cf. ex. 4, taken from the Ipar Corpus,7quoted in Bazzanella 2006b: 150), and to the domain of speech acts performed by the speaker, with a dominant interactional function (‘reacting to what happened immediately before (A), I perform speech act B’, cf. ex. 5, taken from Hansen 1997:183). As to the level of form, consequential allora/alors is prosodically integrated, and it is placed at the margins of the utterance, having lost part of the freedom of placement typical of its use as a time adverb. Italian allora, French alors: Functions, convergences and divergences CatJL 6, 2007 13 6. There is a specifically French collocation, i.e. ou alors (‘or’), which can probably be linked to the use of alors in hypothetical constructions, since disjunctive ou is semantically similar to a protasis of the type ‘if not’. 7. With regard to Ipar corpus, which will be available at [email protected], cf. Albano Leoni (2003), Albano Leoni and Giordano (2006). Cat.Jour.Ling. 6 001-172 18/10/07 10:36 Página 13 (4) <eh!> allora ce l’abbiamo uguale .: ‘<yeah!> that means we’ve got the same one’ (5) A. y a ton oncle? B. non A. alors pourquoi t’es éclatée? ‘A. Is your uncle there? B. No. A. Why did you laugh then?’ In utterance-final position produced with question intonation, non-temporal consequential allora/alors fulfils the additional pragmatic function of reinforcing the interrogative value of the utterance, whether it be on the epistemic level (expression of doubt and low speaker commitment, cf. Hansen 1997:182) or on the level of interaction (request for the interlocutor’s reaction, cf. Bazzanella et al. forth. a, cf. ex. 6, taken from C-Oral-Rom, inatla02, cf. Cresti and Moneglia 2005): (6) E adesso qui c’è un altro mandato / allora? ‘So here we have another writ / then?’ Another instance of interrogative consequential allora/alors is the question e allora?/et alors?, which is used as a back-channel to make the interlocutor advance in a narrative or an argumentation. As to correlative uses, we observe that already temporal allora/alors of type (b) often has a foregrounding function in narratives. Moreover, it is frequently used to report action sequences, in particular dialogues (cf. also § 2.2.2), which are characterized by changes of perspective between various protagonists of the narrative. Originally a mainly contextually induced side-effect, foregrounding and re-orientation have later become important functions of the marker allora/alors itself. This “metonymical” change in meaning (Hopper and Traugott 2003) has been accompanied by the “metaphorical” transposition of the relationship expressed by the marker from the content level to the textual level. As a consequence, the scope of allora/alors has become less clearly defined and more context-dependent than that of its non-correlative uses. Correlative allora/alors expresses the beginning of a new segment or sequence B, stressing B’s particular relevance relative to the way discourse and interaction have evolved up to the moment of the speech event (A), and fulfilling mainly textual and interactional functions. Syntactically, correlative allora/alors is always positioned at the beginning of B; it may be followed by a prosodic break. In both Italian and French, correlative allora/alors is used to signal the shift to a new topic (ex. 7) or to a subtopic, to introduce a parenthesis or a self-repair (sometimes with the prosodic contour of a hesitation marker, assuming a planning and turn-holding function), to signal a frame-break (e.g. a change of addressee), but 14 CatJL 6, 2007 C. Bazzanella; C. Bosco; A. Garcea; B. Gili; J. Miecznikowski; F. Tini Cat.Jour.Ling. 6 001-172 18/10/07 10:36 Página 14 also to introduce a new phase of activity or a new interactional sequence8– a use that is typically made by speakers with special rights as to interaction management, e.g. by moderators in a discussion (cf. Bazzanella et al. forth.a, Hansen 1997:172). (7) bene fratelli allora oggi c’è un episodio che è quello della cacciata dei mercanti dal tempio. (taken from Lip, fd14; cf. De Mauro, Mancini, Voghera 1993). ‘well brothers so today we have an episode which is that of the cleansing of the temple’ In French, correlative alors is developing new uses as a focus particle with reduced scope, the segment B being a constituent rather than an entire utterance (cf. Hansen 1997:181): (8) et il me semble que c’est dans celui-ci/ elle nous a/ sur des: des colonnes, y a vraiment, des cartouches, alors assez profonds avec des dessins, répétitifs … ‘and it seems to me that it is in this one/ she has/ on some: on some columns, there are really, some cartouches, I mean very deep ones with drawings on them, which are repeated…’ In Italian, on the other hand, we find an interrogative holophrastic use of allora (cf. 9, taken from C-Oral-Rom, itelpv13) – simple allora, as opposed to e allora, mentioned earlier – which may be seen to have a dominantly correlative and interaction-regulating function, requesting the hearer to introduce a new topic, often the first topic of the ongoing exchange (cf. Bazzanella et al. forth.a): (9) C. sì // Z. chi è / Christiano? C. oh zio // Z. oh// C. oh// Z. allora? ‘C. yes // Z. who is / Christiano? C. oh uncle // Z. oh// C. oh// Z. well?’ Italian allora, French alors: Functions, convergences and divergences CatJL 6, 2007 15 8. It is often placed at the beginning of a turn, a position where we find also other variants of nontemporal allora/alors, resulting in a particular frequency of the marker at turn-beginnings, at least in Italian (cf. Bazzanella et al. forth.a). Cat.Jour.Ling. 6 001-172 18/10/07 10:36 Página 15 2.2. A case study: allora in the Novellino and its French translation 2.2.1. The Novellino. We cite the Novellino from the Padua Corpus,9which is a raw corpus of texts written in the Florentine language. In particular, within the Padua Corpus, the Novellino is part of the OVI (Opera del vocabolario italiano; http://www.csovi.fi.cnr.it/) database, which includes 1,780 texts from the origins up to 1375, corresponding to 20,000,000 words.10 With regard to the Padua Corpus, a morphological and syntactic searching system is available (Gatto, i.e. Gestione automatizzata del tesoro delle origini; http://www.ovi.cnr.it/index.html), but an adequate tagging of the pragmatic functions is not yet available, because of the complexity of the task. Allora is commonly used in Old Italian;11 in the Novellino it occurs 90 times. These occurrences of allora can be distinguished according to whether they carry a temporal value or not; the temporal occurrences are by far more common (cf. ex. 2 above). 2.2.2. French translations of allora in the Novellino. The study of the French translations of allora in the Novellino helps us to answer to the following questions: 1) how Modern French alors corresponds to Old Italian allora. In other words, what is the relationship between the two Romance derivative forms of the same Latin expression in heterogeneous diachronic stages? 2) how the correspondences and the discrepancies between allora and alors (see § 2.1) are related to the pattern of a specific text type (for the principle that establishes a ‘bond’ between text types – or subtypes – and DM cf. Kroon 1994, Garcea and Bazzanella 1999). We should first stress that the Novellino is a prototypic example of a narrative text where different states of affairs (irrespective of the differences between actions, processes, situations, events, etc.) follow each other in sequences that are chronologically ordered by a narrator and can be focalised in different ways. Since chronological order is also a subcategory of the additive relations of textual coherence (cf. e.g. Mann and Thompson 1986; Sanders, Spooren and Noordman 1992), the temporal references have not only a propositional but also a metatextual (structuring) function, i.e. they highlight single discourse units (cf. on Latin texts Garcea 1998, van Gils 2003). In the Novellino12 allora commonly has this function, which 16 CatJL 6, 2007 C. Bazzanella; C. Bosco; A. Garcea; B. Gili; J. Miecznikowski; F. Tini 9. Cf. Italant (Per una grammatica dell’italiano Antico), the forthcoming project for a grammatical description of old Italian, directed by Lorenzo Renzi and based on Padua Corpus (cf. Renzi and Bisetto 2000, Renzi 2002). The printed version of the Novellino referred to by the Italant project is the following: Novellino (Il), sec. XIII u. v. (Guido Favati ed., Genova, Bozzi, 1970). 10. The project includes, as well as the corpus, the old Italian vocabulary TLIO (Tesoro della lingua italiana delle origini) built using the OVI corpus. It currently includes around 9,000 items, but only 2,500 of them can be accessed by users. 11. For an analysis of the uses of allora in both Modern and Old Italian, cf. Bosco and Bazzanella 2005. 12. We quote from the electronic text of Italant, but we compared this version with the edition Le cento novelle antiche o libro di novelle e di bel parlar gentile detto anche Novellino, ed. Letterio Cat.Jour.Ling. 6 001-172 18/10/07 10:36 Página 16 is also wholly expressed by the Modern French alors, as will be clear from many of the following examples. This systematic correspondence is attested in 62 out of 8913 cases, i.e. 69,6%. In such a highly widespread use, allora/alors seems to be losing the propositional value of the temporal adverb; it rather becomes a DM of simple metatextual junction, as this example on Alexander the Great shows: (10) Alexandro allora si volse {Alexandre øse tourna} inverso i suoi baroni e disse: «Dov’è chi mi domandava ch’io li donasse?». Allora fu tramesso {ø On dépêcha} per lo cavaliere ch’ addomandava il dono. Lo cavaliere venne, et Alexandro parlò e disse … Lo cavaliere rispuose … Allora Alexandro sorrise {ø Alexandre sourit}, e comandò che lli fossero dati duemila marchi d’ariento. (novella 3) ‘Alexander then turned toward his barons and said, “Where is he who asked gifts of me?” Then the knight who had requested gifts was sent for. The knight came and Alexander spoke and said … The knight answered … Then Alexander smiled and commanded that he be given two thousand silver marks.’ As the same (10) shows, when its role is external to the propositional content, allora is sometimes ignored by the French translator: on the whole this kind of ‘zero-translation’ is relatively frequent, since it is chosen in 16 out of 89 cases, i.e. 17,9%, but this result is less significant than the case of well in Brothers and Sisters, see section 1. A similar phenomenon of ‘under-determination’ (cf. Bazzanella and Morra 2000) can be observed when allora is translated by the conjunction et (1 out of 89 cases): (11) «Madonna, sì come poco v’è caluto di costui, che mostravate di tanto amarlo, così vi carebbe vie meno di me». Allora si partì da llei {et il se départit d’elle}, et andossi per li fatti suoi; et ella rimase colla vergogna. (novella 59, adaptation of the tale of the widow of Ephesus, found in Petronius’ Satyricon) ‘“My lady, how little time it took for the great love you showed for this man to subside; it would take even less for your love for me to dwindle”. Then he left her and went about his business, while she remained greatly ashamed.’ The cases of allora having a prevalently temporal value (or at least those considered predominantly temporal by the translator) are more complex. As Modern Italian allora, French alors: Functions, convergences and divergences CatJL 6, 2007 17 di Francia, Torino, UTET, 1945, which was used by the French translator Charles-Albert Cingria, Le Novellino. Les cents nouvelles antiques ou le livre du beau parler gentil, Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 2004. We have also taken into account the more recent Novellino e Conti del Duecento, ed. Sebastiano Lo Nigro, Torino, UTET, 1983. English translations come from The Novellino or One Hundred Ancient Tales, ed. and transl. by Joseph P. Consoli, New York/London, Garland Publishing, 1997. 13. We must consider 89 instead of 90 occurrences because in one case the French translator (like the English one) chooses a version of the text with et instead of allora: El Re cioè il Soldano disse {et le roi, c’est-à-dire le Soudan, dit} (novel 76 on Richard I, King of England, called Lion-Hearted) = And the king, that is the Sultan, said. Cat.Jour.Ling. 6 001-172 18/10/07 10:36 Página 17 semaine - , Ø on comprends dans quelle directions le vent tourne depuis un certain temps. [pag. 40]) ‘If you thought that this is the way things worked worldwide – not to mention the South African miners or the little girls who made toys in Thailand earning about three dollars a week – well, then you understood how the wind had been blowing for the last few years.’ (27) Presi a svegliarmi ogni mattina alle quattro. Sul pavimento tenevo tre sveglie: una vicino al divano letto, l’altra sotto il tavolo, la terza poco distante dal lavandino. Per spegnere la prima mi bastava allungare una mano. Poi attaccava a suonare la seconda e allora dovevo sporgermi tutto fuori dalle coperte. [pag. 19] (Le deuxième se mettait alors à sonner, et Ø il me fallait sortir presque entièrement du lit pour l’atteindre. [pag. 16]) ‘I got into the habit of waking up at four every morning. On the floor I had three alarm clocks: one close to the sofa bed, another one under the table, the third one near the sink. In order to turn the first one off, I only had to reach out. Then the second one would ring, and Ø I had to get nearly right out of bed to turn it off.’ In Paso Doble, allora frequently has interactional functions, especially in its consequential uses operating on speech acts (cf., respectively, ex. 23 above, and 28 to follow): (28) «Sono passato a ritirare quel corso di informatica». «Vado a prenderglielo subito». Cercai e cercai e cercai. Niente da fare. Non disponevamo di nessun Super Cobol Tre Punto Quattro. Perché non mi aveva detto che sarebbero passati a prenderlo? Di solito la gente che telefonava poi non passava mai. «Allora, c’è o non c’è questo corso?» [pag. 34] (- Alors, voulez trouver ou non ce cours? [pag. 36]) ‘«I came to pick up that computer science course». «I’ll go and get it for you straight away». I searched and searched and searched. But it was no good. We didn’t have any copies of Super Cobol Tre Punto Quattro. Why hadn’t he told me that they would come round to pick it up? Usually the people who phoned up never actually turned up. «Well, have you got this course or haven’t you?»’ 24 CatJL 6, 2007 C. Bazzanella; C. Bosco; A. Garcea; B. Gili; J. Miecznikowski; F. Tini Cat.Jour.Ling. 6 001-172 18/10/07 10:36 Página 24 3. Over-/under-determination and overall configuration The examples discussed in the previous sections clearly show that translating a DM may cause trouble because of the variety of functions it may play, and that underand over-determination are resorted to. The cases of underand over-determination may be summed up as follows: Table 1. Underand over-determination in the Novellino and in Paso Doble. Novellino Paso Doble Total occurrences 89 (100%) 20 (100%) Cases of under-determination omissions of allora22 17 (19,1%) 3 (15%) Cases of over-determination allora > et ensuite, de nouveau, aussitôt, à ce moment, à cet instant donc, on le pense bien, ah! Mais 10 (8,9 %) 1 (5%) Let us consider under-determination first. Clear examples are cases of omissions,23 where the DM is given no translation in the French versions of both Novellino and Paso Doble. In the former translation this happens in 17 out of 89 instances (19,1%) – see ex. 10; in the latter, in 3 out of 20 cases (15%) – see ex. (25-27). The examples that receive no translation in the Novellino appear to mainly correspond to instances of allora showing a meta-textual function. In Paso Doble, two out of the three instances of allora receiving no translation shows a temporal value in Italian, possibly confirming the greater importance that the temporal value has in Italian than in French (see § 2.1). A certain degree of under-determination may also be found in examples where the French translation does not fully express the function communicated by the Italian DM. For instance, example (11) shows et as a translation of the DM, thus lacking some of the various functions which characterize allora in the original version, e.g. the meta-textual function expressed through the chronologically ordered sequence. Instances of over-determination occur in 1 out of 20 cases (5%) in Paso doble, and in 10 out of 89 cases (8.9%) in the Novellino, especially in relation to the temporal/meta-textual value of allora. As clearly pointed out in section 2.2.2, the translator exploits more specific temporal adverbs in French, making values such as posteriority or punctuality explicit. Using et ensuite or à ce moment to translate allora – see ex. (12) and (15), (16) – clearly over-determines the DM value. In the Italian allora, French alors: Functions, convergences and divergences CatJL 6, 2007 25 22. One of these omissions corresponds to: allora > et (see ex. 11, § 2.2.1). 23. According to many translation corpora referred to by Cuenca (forth), the omission of well can be observed in all cases and it is frequent in many translation corpora: Catalan (35% and 46% in three different studies), Italian (39%), Spanish (25%), Swedish (18.68%), Dutch (6.8%). Cat.Jour.Ling. 6 001-172 18/10/07 10:36 Página 25 case of example (14), the over-determination is particularly strong. In fact, aussitôt as a translation of allora overstates a particular component of the temporal function found in Italian. As previously stated, allora is used for specifying temporal aspects, coherently with its original semantic value. Nevertheless, it is usually not employed to refer to an immediately following event as aussitôt clearly does. We have also pointed out some instances of over-determination (see § 2.2.2. and 2.3., and table 1 above) in relation to the argumentative function of allora in the translation of both Novellino and Paso Doble. In the texts we considered, cases of allora showing a consequential value are translated by donc – see ex. (18) and (19) - c’est donc – see ex. (26) – or even with Ah! Mais – the only example is in the Novellino, see ex. (21). To conclude, a number of pragmatic functions have been identified as co-existing in relation to allora (Bazzanella et al., forth a). In fact, the DM may play a significant role in conversations because of its interactional functions (e.g., for turntaking), and in any type of text also because of its meta-textual function (e.g., for introducing new topics) and its cognitive function (e.g., for expressing inferences). Interestingly, many of the functions co-exist in the same occurrence of allora (as often happens with other DMs, cf. Bazzanella 2006a), although the degree to which they influence the global interpretation of the DM may vary. Depending on the specific configuration selected within a certain context (e.g., type of text, role of the speaker), some functions may be primarily involved in determining the DM interpretation, while other functions may be involved only secondarily. In other words, all the functions co-exist, to a certain extent, but depending on the configuration that is activated, some will more powerfully participate in determining the DM interpretation (Bazzanella et al., forth.b). The DM interpretation is particularly important in the case of translation, as it may influence the choice of the corresponding form in the translated text. As we observed for the French translation of allora, in the case of predominant temporal value, the translator often uses words offering a richer description. Thus the contrastive analysis shows the importance of both the configuration that is activated in the original context and the degree of correspondence in the way different languages express that configuration. The discussion of the main features of allora in Italian and alors in French has showed that it is used differently in the two languages; the contrastive analysis performed on the Italian and the French version of the Novellino and Paso Doble allowed us to assess those differences more effectively, by explicitly quantifying the degree of correspondence and the number of omissions and non-literal translations. 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