Tradurre il testo e... tradire il contesto

My focus in this paper is the epic Albanian poem "Lahuta e Malcís" (Gjergj Fishta, 1937) and its translation into German, Italian and English. I will analyse translations by three authors: Maximilian Lambertz (1958), Ernest Koliqi (1973) and Robert Elsie (2005). As a result, I will show how these three translations fail to fully convey certain aspects of Albanian culture to the German, Italian and English readers. In theoretical terms, I will briefly address the issue of how the translator should best preserve not only the meaning of the original text, but also the style in which the work is written.