The Land Ethic Reframed: An Eco-Translation Analysis of Peritextual Voices in the Italian Editions of Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac

This paper examines the paratextual reframing of conservation discourse in the three Italian editions of Aldo Leopold’s classical environmental work, A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There (1949). The aim is to reflect on the agency exercised by peritextual voices in the translation product (Jansen and Wegener 2013), in particular in relation to the attitude towards engagement or disengagement. The editions considered diverge in various important respects, starting with the title and the cover image, and are introduced by authors with quite different approaches and backgrounds: the secretary general of WWF Italy, a French academic and a contemporary Italian novelist. An analysis inspired by the principles of eco-translation, comparing the original and the most recent OUP editions with the Italian editions, will help to identify the different conservation discourses and voices instantiated by the book in the English-language and Italian cultural systems, and, consequently, at the pragmatic level, the different emotional reactions (Mackenzie and Alba-Juez 2019) evoked in the relevant target communities, particularly with regard to the possibility for environmental action.