30.

Holmes, the founder of translation studies as a discipline, has proposed a very efficient model to describe the translator's choiceswithin the framework of her own/other's dialectics. Holmes holds that the translator operates in three areas: the linguistic context, the literary intertext, and the socio-cultural situation. In these three spheres, the translator may opt for a greater or lesser preservation of the other's element in the translated text, which is visualized along two axes: exoticizing versus naturalizing, and historicizing versus modernizing: In other words, in Holmes's view, there is a diachronic axis, along which the chronological, historical distance between prototext and metatext is measured. Along this axis, the translator can opt for the preservation of the historical element (historicizing) or for its adaptation to the times of the metatext (modernizing). Moreover, there is a synchronic axis, along which the cultural differences are measured against one another, not concerning the single historical periods, but as they occurred in different areas. Along this axis, the translator can opt for the preservation of the other's element (exoticizing) or for its adaptation to the receiving culture (naturalizing or, better, familiarization, domestication). 31. Peirce's works were published mostly after his death. This is one of the reasons why, nearly a century after, his thought has still, in part, to be explored. In Peirce's opinion, a sign, or representamen, is something that stands for something else in some aspects or capacity and that addresses someone, i.e. creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign or a more developed sign -. In other words, there is a triad sign-object-interpretant, where "interpretant" stands for the mental image that a sign produces within us. The "translatability" notion, in Peircean terms, sheds a very original light on the subject, particularly because the sense of the translating act varies in time, space, culture: it is conditioned by the linguistic, cultural, and historical context in which it is received. From Piercean view it is obvious that everything that, in a translator, produces an interpretant is translatable. In other words, any sign is, in some way, translatable. Translatability is another way to define the parameter of the difference between two cultures in a given time and from a given point of view. 32. Translatability problems are often originated by cultural differences. In cultures where there is snow six months of the year, there are many verbs to express this phenomenon (" to snow") and many nouns to express "snow", depending on the quality of the snow: icy, wet, friable, etc. In countries like Italy or France, there are qualities and varieties of cheese and wine that, elsewhere, could be simply unimaginable, and so can be untranslatable. The translator must know very well, not only the language, but also, more importantly, the culture of the prototext. It is necessary to distinguish realia from common words, and keep in mind that, what in the prototext may pass absolutely unobserved, in the metatext can have a strong exotic connotation. It is crucial, as we have often said, to analyze the dominants of the text to be translated. The translator must focus on the translatability of the dominants of a given text for a given audience. Subdominants, to be placed hierarchically in order of importance within the given context, can even be translated without/outside the text, in the critical apparatus or metatext: footnotes, endnotes, chronology, notes on the author, reviews, encyclopedic items, maps, glossaries, and so on.