Language Variation and Translation: a Theoretical Overview

The aim of this paper is to describe some of the most common and ef-fective strategies identified by language theorists and translators with reference to language variation phenomena.Language variation is a feature strictly correlated to the same nature of languages, which in-cludes several notions (i.e. register, dialect, genre, style) that often over-lap in their definitions, representing theoretical aspects of crucial im-portance in the context of language studies, particularly within the field of translation. Indeed, the ability of recognising language varia-tion phenomena in a source language and of rendering them into the most adequate versions of a target language, is one of the major is-sues for translators, which requires a comprehensive and methodical linguistic awareness to face these important linguistic phenomena, both in specialist languages and literary fields. The following sections will be therefore dedicated to the description of some of the most com-mon and effective strategies identified by language theorists, and thor-oughly employed by translators, with reference to language variation, in order to suggest a clear overview and methodological approach through which prospective and novice translators could refer to.