This paper discusses the translation into Italian of Merde Happens, a novel by Stephen Clarke, an English author who has lived and worked in France for over a decade. This novel is relevant to intercultural communication because it satirizes three nations and cultures at the same time: French, English and US American. Irony based on national stereotypes is usually considered to be very difficult to translate, and this sometimes discourages publishers to the point that very valuable fictional products end up not being translated. Our aim is to show that a novel like Clarke’s can (and indeed, should) be translated: we argue that playing on national stereotypes and laughing about them can be one of the most effective ways of fighting prejudice, and we show that this can be achieved in translation through a careful balance of foreignizing and domesticating choices.

Keywords

: Stephen Clarke, translation, intercultural humour, national stereotypes, diatopic varieties, culture bound terms.