86 THINKING ITALIAN TRANSLATION

PARTIALLY OVERLAPPING TRANSLATION

There is a third degree of semantic equivalence. Take the phrase `My niece's joke'. In the context of joking, `La battuta di mia nipote' is as close a literal rendering as possible. But the English does not specify the kind of joke, whereas the Italian TT specifies that it is a witty remark. That is, `battuta', as opposed to `scherzo' (practical joke) or `barzelletta' (funny story), is a particularization. Conversely, in the English phrase, the relationship between the speaker and the girl is specified unambiguously, whereas the Italian TT leaves it ambiguous: here, the TT generalizes, because `mia nipote' can mean either `my niece' or `my granddaughter'. This TT, then, combines particularization and generalization: it keeps the reference to a jest on the part of a junior female relative, but it adds a detail not found in the ST and it omits a detail that is given in the ST. This can be visualized as two partially overlapping circles, as in the figure opposite. The unshaded area, where the circles overlap, represents the material the ST and TT have in common. The shaded areas represent what is omitted and what is added in the TT. This is another category of degree in the translation of literal meaning. We shall call it partially overlapping translation, or partial overlap for short.

Partial overlap is almost unavoidable in whole sentences, common in phrases, and not infrequent even in single words. Take the word `professoressa'. If, in a given context, this is translated as `teacher' and not `lecturer', the TT certainly keeps the reference to someone who instructs. But it also particularizes, because it adds the specific detail that she works in a school and not a university; and at the same time it generalizes, because it omits the detail of her gender.