Welten im Übergang und ihre Relikte. Interpretative Aspekte der deutschen Übersetzung von 'Horcynus Orca'

Horcynus Orca is the most famous novel by the Sicilian writer Stefano D’Arrigo. It was published in 1975, when Italian society had already transitioned from a traditional structure into a more modern one. However, the novel was conceived and written in the previous twenty years, during which the discussion of the transformation into the modernity was in full swing on the Italian cultural scene. Horcynus Orca thematises the psycho-social consequences of the breakdown of traditional society induced by the Second World War and the irruption of post-modernity. In 2015 a German translation of the novel was published, which is the only translation of Horcynus Horca into another language. The contribution analyses on the one hand the German version from the point of view of the translation techniques, i.e. the ability to render this very peculiar Italian text into German, and, on the other, from the interpretative perspective, i.e. whether or not the translation renders the cultural questions which the novel addressed and its literary solutions to them.