Heinz Riedt und Thomas Kolberger als Komplizen Italo Calvinos?. Die Deutschen Ubersetzungen der Phraseologismen im Roman Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno (1947)

This paper focuses on the way the idioms in Italo Calvino’s first novel (Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno, 1947) were translated in the two extant German editions of the book: Heinz Riedt’s (1965) and the one published in 1992 under the pen name of Thomas Kolberger. To this end, 122 differently translated phraseological units (including idioms, collocations and formulas) were singled out for comparison, resulting in 9 distinct typologies (i.e., phraseological types supported with examples). Typology includes criteria such as style switching, faithfulness to the original, choice of translation devices of wider (or narrower) meaning and so on. Finally, I discuss the extent to which Kolberger’s translation (as far as idioms are concerned) actually proved to be more faithful to the original than its 1965 predecessor.