No(i)rthern Ireland: Crime fiction and the northern-irish scene. Proposed translation into italian of two short stories from "belfast noir"

The present thesis aims at proving the importance of cultural and literary contexts in the practice of translation: I shall show that, in the case of Northern Irish crime fiction, knowledge of both Northern Irish history and culture as well as of the genre of crime fiction are essential prerequisites for the production of a “responsible” translation. I will therefore offer a brief overview of the history of crime and detective fiction and its main subgenres; some of the most important authors and works will be presented as well, in an analysis that goes from the early years of the genre to the second half of the 20th century. I will then move the focus to Northern Ireland, its culture and its history, and particular attention will be paid to fiction writing in Ireland and Northern Ireland, with a focus on the peculiar phenomenon of “Troubles Trash”. I will tackle the topic of Northern Irish literature and present the contemporary scene of Northern Irish crime fiction; the volume from which the texts for the translation have been taken will be presented, namely Belfast Noir. Subsequently the focus will move on the theoretical framework within which the translations were produced: I will present a literary review of the most significative developments in Translation Studies, with particular attention to the “cultural turn” that has characterised this subject since the 1960s. I will then highlight the phenomenon of “realia” in translation and analyse the approaches of different scholars to the translation of culture-bound references. The final part represents the culmination and practical application of all that was presented in the previous sections: I will discuss the translation of culture-bound references according to the strategies presented in Chapter 4, referring to the proposed translations of two stories. Such analysis aims to show that not only expert linguistic knowledge, but also cultural awareness and a wide literary background are needed in order to make conscious choices in translation.

On The Timing of Default Losses: When and Why?

At the light of what happened in 2010 and 2011, a lot of European countries founded themselves in a difficult position where all the credit rating agencies were downgrading debt states. Problem of solvency and guarantees on the states' bond were perceived as too risky for a Monetary Union as Europe is. Fear of a contagion from Greece as well was threatening the other countries as Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland; while Germany and France asked for a division between risky and riskless bond in order to feel more safe. Our paper gets inspiration by Roch and Uhlig (2011), it refers to the Argentinian case examined by Arellano (2008) and examine possible interventions as monetization or bailout as proposed by Cole and Kehoe (2000). We propose a model in which a state defaults and cannot repay a fraction of the old bond; but contrary to Roch and Uhlig that where considering a one-time cost of default we consider default as an accumulation of losses, perceived as unpaid fractions of the old debts. Our contributions to literature is that default immediately imply that economy faces a bad period and, accumulating losses, government will be worse-off. We studied a function for this accumulation of debt period by period, in order to get an idea of the magnitude of this waste of resources that economy will face when experiences a default. Our thesis is that bailouts just postpone the day of reckoning (Roch, Uhlig); so it's better to default before accumulate a lot of debts. What Europe need now is the introduction of new reforms in a controlled default where the Eurozone will be saved in its whole integrity and a state could fail with the future promise of a resurrection. As experience show us, governments are not interested into reducing debts since there are ECB interventions. That clearly create a distortion between countries in the same monetary union, giving to the states just an illusion about their future debtor position.