Scarica In country by Bobbie Ann Mason e più Tesine universitarie in PDF di Lingua Inglese solo su Docsity! In Country by Bobbie Ann Mason “In Country” is a novel written by the American writer Bobbie Ann Mason in 1985. It is the story of Sam Hughes, a girl who lost her father when she was still a baby during the early days of the Vietnam War. Driven by curiosity, Sam begins to question her mother about her father and she is given a diary he had kept while in Vietnam. July 6. Marched all day. I was on point again. Getting used to it, the way you hold your rifle just so, so that you're always on the ready. Thinking about rabbit hunting. Miss those fall days. July 7. C-rats, ham and lima beans coming out of ears and butt. We've all got diarrhea. Cut trees, waded swamp. We need rain but my feet stay wet. Hot Shot in a rage. He works us like a team of dogs, but we're one fine team. Dug in late, overslept watch. Slept like a baby. July 8. Useless, day, holed up, waiting. Hot Shot says it won't be long. Still got the scours. July 9. Ambushed. It was over in two seconds but seemed like two hours. My knees still shaking. Bobby G. got hit in the leg but not bad. Doc patched him up. We got two V.C. I think one of 'em's mine, but Jim C. claimed it too. The text is a diary-like account written by a man during the years spent in the Vietnam war at the beginning of the second half of the 20th century. The style of the extract is simple and informal, given by the fact that the soldier might have been writing the diary with the awareness that nobody or maybe just his family was going to read it; the colloquial register and the use of short sentences is something that should not be altered in the Italian translation. Nevertheless, it is almost impossible to preserve the same concision of the English passage when translated into Italian. The choice of American slang words, such as butt, conforms with the informality of the text. In terms of syntax, some interesting remarks can be made: the lack of numerous personal pronouns before the verb and of auxiliaries (e.g. marched, thinking, miss, my knees still shaking); the choice of using abbreviations and verb contractions (e.g. you're, C-rats, one of 'em's, Doc); the employ of phrasal verbs (e.g. holed up, patched up). At the beginning of every short paragraph the date is indicated. The translator must consider that in English the names of months always begin with capital letters and they are commonly written before the number word, but it is not the same in Italian. From a lexical point of view, it is interesting to note that the text provides some expressions belonging to the military jargon (e.g. on point, on the ready, dug in). Italian would adopt an imperfect pensavo for the continuous thinking about. The idiomatic sentence coming out of ears (literally uscire fuori dalle orecchie) does not have an Italian equivalent, therefore it could present some difficulties in the translation process. One solution can be to replace the entire sentence with an Italian expression that suggests the same meaning, such as abbiamo mangiato come maiali. Moreover, the sentence we need rain but my feet stay wet implies that it hasn't been raining for a while, and in the Italian version would be more correct
