Translation, adaptation, and surtitling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest into Italian

This work explores how translation, adaptation, and surtitling interact under the constraints of live performance and the technical limitations of audiovisual translation. To this end, it examines Alessandro Serra’s Italian translation (in collaboration with Donata Feroldi) and his stage adaptation of The Tempest. It compares the translated text first with Agostino Lombardo’s earlier version and subsequently with Serra’s own adaptation to highlight key divergences. Serra’s stage adaptation is also analysed alongside the Italian surtitled version and Max Padeilhan’s English surtitles. Special attention is given to Serra’s use of linguistic variation, particularly the Neapolitan dialect for Trinculo and Stephano. Since the English surtitles cannot fully reproduce the dialectal richness and phonetic texture of Serra’s “(tr)adaptation”, they attempt to compensate for this loss by emphasising differences in register. All in all, the study highlights the challenges of conveying linguistic and cultural nuances in theatre translation.