California Italian Studies

This essay draws on the author's personal experiences in translating two quotation-heavy volumes, Italo Calvino's Six Memos for the Next Millennium and Roberto Calasso's K., in order to raise and examine theoretical questions about context, intertextuality, and retranslation. Brock asks why a translator might choose to retranslate quoted passages that already exist in other translations and demonstrates that new contexts can justify retranslation.