Studies in the history and criticism of translation in Italy have not been complemented by a systematic analysis of works translated in the 1800s; however, the availability of bibliographical surveys is a prerequisite for compiling corpora suitable for analysing a large amount of homogeneous documents, especially when the aim is to study the specific features of translated Italian. This gap is even more surprising as the 19th century marks a turning point in translation practice, with the technological progress in the publishing sector helping to meet the needs of the booming cultural market and establishing the novel as the dominant literary genre in Europe. Furthermore, this trend proceeded in parallel with Italy’s difficult transition towards political, linguistic and cultural unity. This article illustrates the preliminary results of a survey conducted on the Catalogo dei libri italiani dell’Ottocento (CLIO) for the 1880-1889 period. The distribution of translations was assessed in terms of language pairs, geographical circulation and genres. Although data need to be cross-checked with other bibliographical data banks and additional surveys in individual libraries, this approach may be implemented to investigate different aspects of translation practice in the 1800s.
