The unique morphosyntactic features of the German Berichtete Rede, also called
“free subjunctive indirect discourse”, give us the opportunity to reflect on the
potentialities and the limits of the Italian language. After a brief overview of
the most common strategies used by translators when rendering the German
Berichtete Rede into Italian, we will focus on the use of the Imperfetto as an alternative
strategy. The use of this verb tense allows us to investigate some reported
speech forms with a double approach. On a theoretical and descriptive level, we
will try to shed light on similarities and differences between the Berichtete Rede
structure in the source text and its output as a Discorso Indiretto Libero (free indirect
discourse). As a consequence, we will deal with the difficulty of placing the
translated passages on the continuum of reported speech forms. On a practical
level, we will discuss whether the Imperfetto can be used as a translation strategy
for the German subjunctive mood (Konjunktiv), which is the main morphological
feature of Berichtete Rede. The analysis is based on literary texts by the Austrian
writer Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989).
