Comparing Translations of Dante’s Commedia

Abstract

This essay examines the translations of the title of Dante’s magnum opus, the Commedia, as well as its canticle titles, across languages worldwide. This fills a gap in the secondary literature, which up until now has not examined this topic on a global scale. Rather than focusing on close textual analysis, this piece distantly reads the translation history of the title and canticle titles within different linguistic, cultural, historical and religious contexts. This essay thus shows how translators render specific concepts such as Commedia, Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso, often in non-Catholic and non-Christian societies. The results reveal how translations of the title (and canticle titles) are problematic, each in their own way. Translations of the title Commedia, for example, are difficult everywhere, because of the idiosyncratic usage of the term by Dante. Translations of the canticle title Purgatorio are problematic in non-Catholic societies in general, lacking such a religious concept. Meanwhile translations of the canticle titles Inferno and Paradiso are particularly challenging in non-monotheistic religious societies, which don’t have such eternal afterlives for individuals. In all these cases, though, this has not stopped translators from translating Dante’s text.