“Weihnachten war doch wohl schon vorüber?”. Le traduzioni della particella modale epistemica wohl nelle versioni italiane della Metamorfosi di Franz Kafka

Abstract

This paper examines, quantitatively and qualitatively, the translation strategies adopted by the authors of fifteen Italian versions of Franz Kafka’s famous short story Die Verwandlung, published between 1934 and 2024, in order to render the epistemic modal particle wohl. In a first part, the German modal particles and their minor variant in Italian are presented. The subsequent analysis of the occurrences is accompanied by a brief illustration of the epistemic modality and by contrastive and translinguistic considerations, also on a diachronic scale. The third and fourth parts of the essay summarise the results, highlighting the most relevant aspects as a starting point for possible future research.