Kenneth Grima was awarded the first PhD in Translation Studies from the University of Malta after successfully defending his thesis entitled ‘A Cultural Approach to the Literary Translation of Frank McCourt’s Memoir Angela’s Ashes into Maltese’.

This study involved the identification and descriptive analysis of the culture-specific elements around which the source-text is shaped, and how these influenced the target-text, composed within a bilingual setting, in the translation process.

This research showed that the number of extralinguistic cultural items present in the source-text outnumbered the intralinguistic cultural items. While the latter involved idiomatic and fixed expressions, slang terms, dialectal code-switching and interjections, the former included historical, political, historico- or politico-religious cultural references, proper names and Irish or non-Irish songs.

The study also helped to strengthen further not only the level of research in narrative translation studies in general, but also the research done in Maltese narrative literary translation from a cultural point of view, to analyse the ways in which various cultural elements found in the source-text affect the target-text during the translation process, an area of study which is still in its infancy locally.

This research was funded by the Maltese government under the Malta Government Scholarship Scheme (Doctoral Programme 2012).