Abstract: The concept of orthonymy and the genetic dossier of Bouvard et Pécuchet are the starting point to consider five Italian translations of the “horticultural episode” in chapter II. This paper aims to show the way causal links are handled and to explore how translators, from Claudio De Mohr (1927) to Ernesto Ferrero (2001), very often choose to translate a transitional phase of the text that Flaubert, in the successive re-writing of this passage, dismisses.
