Dr Marco Sonzogni

Senior Lecturer,
School of Languages and Cultures

Qualification

BA Pavia, MA NUI, PhD Dublin, MA Victoria, MLitt Auckland

Profile

I have been educated at Università degli Studi di Pavia (Almo Collegio Borromeo), University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, Victoria University of Wellington and The University of Auckland. I am a widely published academic and an award-winning editor, poet and literary translator. I have given conference papers, seminars and lectures at various universities, centres and institutions in Australia, France, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Switzerland, the UK. and the US. Many of my scholarly and creative projects have received internal and external funding. I serve on the School Research Committee and the Faculty Research Committee and I am the School Postgraduate Coordinator. Also, I am the current Director of the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation (2011-2013).

Current research projects

I am currently researching the concept and applications of intersemiotic translation as well as traditional and innovative approaches to literary translation and in particular to poetry translation. Some of the projects I have recently completed include a study of book cover design as intersemiotic translation (based on Umberto Eco’s bestseller The Name of the Rose) and a scholarly edition of Samuel Beckett’s 1930 translations of Italian Literature. My long-term project is the annotated Italian translation of Seamus Heaney’s Opened Ground. Poems 1966-1996.

Research Supervision

I welcome research proposals in Literary Translation Studies, Italian Studies and Comparative Studies. 

Currently has students working on

Literary Translation Studies (Textual Studies and Translation Studies; East-European Jewish Literature: Issues of Identity and Translatability; Intersemiotic Translation: Mathematics and Literature).

Major achievements

Over the last couple of years I have been the recipient of two translation awards – the Looren Translation Grant and the Pro Helvetia Translation Grant – in recognition of published translations as well as on the merits of an ongoing translation projects (Oliver Scharpf, Alberto Nessi, Pietro de Marchi).  

Teaching interests

The Theory and Practice of Literary Translation; Italian Poetry; Italian Fiction; History of the Italian Language; Aphoristic Writing; Comparative Literature.

Selected publications

Forthcoming 2011

Anonymous. I nomi della lepre (Les noms de un levre en englais/The Names of the Hare in English) Oxford: Bodlein Library MS Digby 86, folio 186 r-v). Mendrisio: Josef Weiss Edizioni, 2011.

I. Brandeis. Selected Writings. Edited by M. Sonzogni and G. Talbot. Leicester: Troubador, 2011.

M. Sonzogni. Re-covered Rose. A Case-Study of Book Covers as Intersemiotic Translation. Amsterdam and New York: John Benjamins, ca 120pp (under contract; forthcoming).

A. Nessi. A broken life. Selected Poems (1969-2009). Translated and introduced by M. Sonzogni. Montreal: Guernica Editions, 2011.

G. Contini. Due lettere a Clizia. A cura e con una nota di M. Sonzogni. Balerna: Edizioni Ulivo, 2010, 8pp.

Published (2009-2011)

M. Sonzogni. ‘Un’“apparizione meravigliosa, quasi inverosimile”: tracce di musa nei versi di In un giardino 'italiano’, in Studi d’italianistica nell’Africa australe, 24(1) (2011), pp. 58-82.

M. Sonzogni. Alibi. Poesie e prose poetiche (2000-2010). Novi Ligure: Edizioni Joker, 54pp.

This Way. Covering/Uncovering Tadeusz Borowski’s This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. Edited by M. Sonzogni. Wellington: Dunmore Publishing, 2011, 144pp. 

M. Sonzogni. Una parola. Mendrisio: Josef Weiss Edizioni, 8pp.

M. Sonzogni. All Black. Balerna: Edizioni Ulivo, 2010, 8pp.

O. Scharpf. Uppercuts. Selected poems (1999-2007). Translated and introduced by M. Sonzogni. Montreal: Guernica Editions, 2010, 80pp.

S. Beckett. “Secret transfusions”: translations from Italian (1930). Edited, introduced and annotated by M. Sonzogni. Montreal: Guernica Editions, 2010, 104pp.

Lost in Translation. Edited and introduced by M. Sonzogni. Auckland: Random House, 2010 (Waitangi Day), 250pp.

M. Sonzogni. ‘The colour of politics and the politics of translation: shades of black in Finnegans Wake’, in La Libellula, 1 (2009), pp. 201-217.

M. Sonzogni. Due parole. Mendrisio: Josef Weiss Edizioni, 2009, 8pp.

P. Robinson. "The look of goodbye: the poetry of Peter Robinson". Traduzione e cura di M. Sonzogni, in Journal of Italian Translation, 2 (2009), pp. 2-7.

M.L. Spaziani. Tell the oak tree to grow faster. Selected Aphorisms. Translated by M. Sonzogni and B. Lowe. Foreword by M.L. Spaziani. Afterword by G. Ruozzi. Montreal: Guernica Editions, 2009, 60pp.