What follows is no more than a bit of practical advice such as I would give you if you were doing your translation/thesis with me.

1. Start by hypothesizing a realistic professional scenario.
In other words consider what market your translation might have, who your possible readers might be and what adjustments you need to make to cater for these. One way to do this is to actually go into a large bookshops and pick out some exisiting Italian texts that more or less represent the sort of text you would ideallly like your translation to be, in the hypothetical context you have chosen. All these considerations should then be explained in your introduction/commento as it is these that will be the basis on which you make all your decisions and choices when translating.

2. When choosing a text to translate consider also whether it promises to be an interesting text to write your intorduction on. Without wishing to overstress the point, the more difficulties you have to face with your translation, the more you will be tested as a translator, the more you will have to discuss in your introduction, and the more opportunities you will have to show that you have an intelligent professional approach to translation problems.

3. Do some reading on translation before writing your introduction to "get into" the subject and the discourse. It doesn't matter whether what you read is strictly relevent to the specific subject, or genre, of your translation.

Reading List
What follows is a list of texts on translation all of which should be of some interest to you. It includes texts on the history of translation, with a mainly literary focus, as well as texts on translation for the media such as dubbing and subtitling. Most of them have been ordered for the library in Acqui.

		Ordered for the library in Acqui
Baccolini, Bollettieri Bosinelli & Gavioli (eds) (1994) Il doppiaggio: trasposizioni linguistiche e culturali, Bologna, CLUEB		Yes
Bassnett, Susan, & André Lefevere (eds), Translation, History, and Culture, (London: Pinter Publishers, 1990)		Yes
Bassnett, Susan, Translation Studies, (London: Routledge, 1991), revised edition		Yes
Bollettieri Bosinelli & Heiss (eds) (1996) Traduzione multimediale per il cinema, la televisione e la scena, Bologna CLUEB
Bollettieri Bosinelli, Heiss, Soffritti, Bernardini (eds) (2000) La traduzione multimediale: Quale traduzione per quale testo?, Bologna, CLUEB
Bussi & Kovarski (eds) (1996) Letteratura e cinema. La trasposizione, Bologna CLUEB		Yes
Bussi & Chiaro (eds) (?) Letteratura e cinema. Il remake, Bologna, CLUEB
DELISLE J. and WOODSWORTH, J., Translators through History, 1995, Benjamins		Yes
DRIES, Josephine (1995), Dubbing and Subtitling. Guidelines for Production and Distribution, St. Jerome		Yes
Even-Zohar, Itamar, Papers in Historical Poetics, Tel Aviv: The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, 1978.		Yes
Even-Zohar, Itamar, Polysystem Studies, Tel Aviv: The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, 1990.		Yes
Gambier, Yves (ed) Translating for the media, (papers from the International Conference "Languages & the media", Berlin, November 22-23, 1996), Turku, University of Turku, 1998		Yes
Gentzler, Edwin, Contemporary Translation Theories, Routledge, 1993.		Yes
HATIM, Basil, Communication Across Cultures, University of Exeter Press, 1997		Yes
HERMANS, T. (ed) (1985), The Manipulation of Literature, Croom Helm, London		Yes
HOLMES, J.S. (1988) Translated: Papers on Literary Translation and Translation Studies Amsterdam, Rodopi		Yes
Holmes, James S., José Lambert & Raymond Vanden Broeck (eds), Literature and Translation, Louvain: Acco, 1978		Yes
LEFEVERE, André, Translating Poetry: Seven Strategies and a Blueprint, Assen: Van Gorcum, 1975.		Yes
Lefevere, André, Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame, (London: Routledge, 1992)		Yes
Newmark, Peter, A Textbook of Translation, Prentice Hall, 1988.		Yes
Newmark, Peter, Approaches to Translation, Prentice Hall, 1988		Yes
Nida, E. & C. Taber, The Theory and Practice of Translation, Leiden: Brill, 1982.		Yes
NORD, Christiane, Translating as a Purposeful Activity, St Jerome, 1997		Yes
Pym, Anthony, Translation and Text Transfer: An Essay on the Principles of Intercultural Communications, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Land, 1992		Yes
SNELL-HORNBY, Mary, Translation Studies: An Integrated Approach, 1988/1995		Yes
STEINER, George, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation (London: Oxford University Press, 1975)		Yes
Toury, Gideon, Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond, Benjamins, 1996		Yes
Venuti, Lawrence, The Translator's Invisibility: A History of Translation, Routledge, 1995.		Yes
Vermeer, Hans J. (1996) A Scopos Theory of Translation, Heidelberg, TextconText-Verlag		Yes