Kateb Yacine en Italie: réception de son oeuvre entre traductions et aspects éditoriaux

Our study focuses on the reception and Italian translation of Kateb Yacine’s French-language texts. We have found that this revolutionary author was translated into Italian at a very late stage, and only partially, and solely from the French language. His work has received very little critical attention, despite the enthusiasm with which two Italian publishing houses and the three translators embarked on the initiative of making him known to the Italian public. In fact, the Italian versions were commissioned by two Milanese publishing houses, conscious of the fact that they were proposing something new in the Italian publishing landscape, and keen to present the Algerian author and his work in a meticulously crafted peritextual apparatus. The translators’ competence and knowledge of the author and his literary and cultural context are reflected in an approach to the texts that succeeds in rendering the writing style of the Katebian texts, which leaves one wondering why these translations have not received much attention and prompting one to look for reasons other than their quality. Our contribution, therefore, intends to analyse two translations by looking at their paratexts, which illustrate the “mediating” character between two cultures.