Staff in the Department of Italian

Go to the MLAC staff pages.

Dr Federico Federici, Dott. in lingue e lett. straniere (Rome 'La Sapienza', Italy), PhD (Leeds, UK)

Senior Lecturer in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures

Telephone: +44 (0) 191 33 43425

Fax: +44 (0) 191 33 43421

Room number: A13, Elvet Riverside I

Contact Dr Federico Federici (email at f.m.federici@durham.ac.uk)

Research interests

• Italo Calvino as a writer, translator, and essayist
• reception of Italian texts and audiovisuals in translation
• ideology of translation
• teaching translation in H.E.
• 20th century and 21st century Italian authors

I graduated in English and French literature at the University "La Sapienza" in Rome, where I developed an interest in the narrative potential of language varieties and their challenges for translators. I completed my postgraduate education in the UK, first conducting research at the University of Reading, then becoming a doctoral researcher at the University of Leeds. In 2007 I was awarded my doctorate, with a thesis investigating the influence of creative translation on Italo Calvino's style and reflections on the evolution of the Italian language. I joined the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at Durham in September 2006.

I work on contemporary Italian literature, with an emphasis on Italo Calvino; my research extends to 20th and 21st-century writers, especially on authors interested in experiments with language and with comic literature. My research interests include four further areas: ideology of translation, creative translation, reception of Italian texts and audiovisuals in translation, and training of culturally aware translators. I am currently writing and conducing research focused on the linguistic, cultural, and social role and status of translators as unofficial diplomats in 17th-century Italy. Having worked as a free-lance translator since 2001, I enjoy translating from French and English, as well as translating 17th-century Italian manuscripts into English.

I am currently supervising doctoral students working on translation pedagogy, on translation of opera for all audiences, on translation of non-politically correct discourse. I am also involved in the co-supervision of projects focussing on self-translation from Chinese-English, literary translation in Hong Kong, and eye-tracking based studies on translation revision. I am part of a team supervising one MA by research studying BSL interpreters in the gay deaf community.

I am able to and interested in supervising PhD researchers interested in contemporary Italian Literature (Italo Calvino, writers of comic literature, non-Italian writers who use Italian in their stories), sociolinguistic aspects of Italian language (including teaching of Italian as a lingua-cultural system), and research in ideology of translation, reception and perception of translation, and translation and censorship.

I am the Director of the MA in Translation Studies, member of the EMT Board, and I also teach in this MA. I am co-convenor of the Translation Linguistics research group.

In 2006-2007, I started the Durham Translation Research Seminars. Since 2009, as part of my interests in audiovisuals, I have organized the NICE Italian Film Week at Durham.

Research Groups

Culture and Difference
Literature/History/Theory
Translation/Linguistics/Pedagogy
Visual and Performance

Indicators of Esteem

2011: EMT Network Board member:
2009: Academic Member of AHRC Peer Review College :
2008: External examiner: MSc in Scientific, Technical and Medical Translation with Translation Technology, Imperial College London
2008: External PhD examiner: Alma Mater Studiorum, Bologna University, Forlì campus, Italy
2008: Reader : Romance Studies Journal
2007: Member of Editorial Board, InTRAlinea:
2007: Referee/reviewer: Special Issue of Textus (Tilgher, Genoa)

Selected Publications

Books: authored

2009 Translation as Stylistic Evolution: Italo Calvino Creative Translator of Raymond Queneau, Rodopi, XVI, 302 pp.
2003 Insider or Outsider? - Roddy Doyle: voce, ironia, linguaggio di una comunità irlandese, Simonelli Editore, 195 pp.

Books: edited

2011 Translating Dialects and Languages of Minorities, Peter Lang, XII, 245 pp pp.
2009 Translating Regionalised Voices in Audiovisuals, Aracne, 306 pp.
2006 (co-edited with Armstrong, Nigel) Translating voices, translating regions. Proceedings of the International conference, Aracne, 428 pp.

Essays in edited volumes

2011 'Silenced images: the case of Viva Zapatero!', in Wilson, Rita. & Maher, Brigid. (eds.), Words, Images and Performances in Translation, Continuum.
2010 'Assessing Translation Skills: Reflective Practice on Linguistic and Cultural Awareness', in Pellatt, V., Griffiths, K. & Wu, S-C. (eds.), Teaching and Testing Interpreting and Translating, Peter Lang, pp. 171-192
2010 'Legitimisation of Texts: Translations in Italian Media during the Calipari Case', in Bassnett, Susan & Schäffner, Christina (eds.), Political Discourse, Media and Translation, Cambridge Scholars Press, pp. 117-142
2006 'Translatability, dialect, and Internationalization: Calvino between Theory and Practice', in Federici, Federico. & Armstrong, Nigel. (eds.), Translating Voices, Translating Regions, Aracne, pp. 254-270
2004 'Breaches in Translation: Queneau’s French versus Calvino’s Italian', in Guy-Murrell, Catherine., Wilson, Colette. & Young, Morag. (eds.), Reading and Writing La Rupture: Essays in French Studies II, 2001 Group, pp. 97-112

Journal papers: academic

2011 ''The Calipari Case: Political Machinations and Journalistic Manipulations’', Journal of Siberian University - Humanities and Social Sciences 4, pp. 1394-1409
2007 'Italo Calvino comincia a tradurre Raymond Queneau: la traduzione creativa di un incipit', The Italianist 27, pp. 80-98
2001 'L'anticajje de Roma: Belli, Stendhal e P. B. Shelley', Dialettando.com pp.

Journal papers: professional

2009 'Adventures of a narrator: Italo Calvino's scriptwriting', ISLG Bullettin pp. 30-37

Translated: Chapter in Edited Book

2012 (co-authored with Somaini, Francesco) (trans.). 'The collapse of city-states and the role of urban centres in the new political geography of Renaissance Italy '. In The Italian Renaissance State. Gamberini, Andrea & Lazzarini, Isabella (ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 239-260
2011 (co-authored with Briguglia, Caterina) (trans.). 'Comparing two polysystems: The cases of Spanish and Catalan versions of Andrea Camilleri's Il cane di terracotta '. In Translating Dialects and Languages of Minorities. Challenges and Solutions. Federici, Federico M. (ed.). Peter Lang. pp. 109-125

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