Questions of Ideology and Degrees of Mediation in Translation

In this article the author analyses a translation assignment completed by a class of advanced students of translation in a Faculty for Translators and Interpreters in Italy. The students were asked to analyse and translate into Italian an article from The Economist. The text is a complex, ideologically charged discussion of management practices in post-apartheid South Africa, which displays the use of irony in an extremely subtle way. The aim of the task was to demonstrate to the class that the degree of intervention of the translator is a delicate subject, particularly in the translation of ideologically charged texts.