First of all we have to remember that in the episode of Anna Livia Joyce succeeded in mentioning eight hundred rivers (frequently concealing their names with a pun). This happens also in these lines: call a spate a spate suggests the colloquial invitation to talk plainly without any frills but also implies a fluvial connotation, in this case a flood of speech. Sharee unites share and the river Shari, ebro unites Hebrew and the Ebro, skol unites school and the river Skollis. To skip other references, like the one to the early Christian antiabecedarian heresy, for coxyt sake brings to mind the infernal river Cocytus and the Cox River as well as for God’s sake (and therefore an invocation, in this context, that is blasphemous).
Here we have three translations, the French one, Joyce’s Italian version and the most recent Italian one by Luigi Schenoni:6
Pousse le en franca lingua. Et appelle une crue une crue. Ne t’a-t-on pas instruit l’ébreu à l’escaule, espèce d’antibabébibobu? C’est tout pareil comme si par example je te prends subite par telekinesis et te proxénetise. Nom de flieuve, voilà ce qu’elle est? (French)
Dillo in lingua franca. E chiama piena piena. T’hanno mai imparato l’ebro all’iscuola, antebecedariana che sei? E’ proprio siccome circassi io a mal d’esempio da tamigiaturgia di prossenetarti a te. Ostrigotta, ora capesco. (Italian)
Diccelo in franca lingua. E d piena alla piena. Non ti hanno mai fatto sharivedere un ebro a skola, pezzo di antialfabetica. E’ proprio come se ora io adassi par exemplum fino alla commissione di controllo del porto e ti prossenetizzassi. Per amor del cogito, di questo si tratta? (Schenoni’s Italian)
I feel unable to identify all the allusions of the French text and I only remark that it tries to save some names of rivers and solves the last invocation with an allusion to blasphemy, where nom de flieuve evokes nom de dieu.
Schenoni, in order to express the play on words in call a spate a spate, follows the previous Joycean translation. To call a spade a spade is regularly translated in Italian as dire pane al pane (call bread bread): thus piena evokes pane and also correctly translates flood (and thus also spate). At the same time Schenoni recuperates some rivers that the original text mentions two pages later, namely, Pian Creek, Piana and Pienaars. He also saves the river Shari (Joyce loses it), along with Ebro and Skol, but misses the theological allusion of antiabecedarian, takes conservancy rather literally as ‘a commission authorised to supervise a forest, river or port’, and keeps Cocytus – with a witty reference to Descartes’s cogito but abandoning every blasphemous connotation.
Now, let’s see what Joyce did. Faced with the difficulty of rendering the allusions of the original, especially in the second part, he gives up with the original text (his own!) and tries unheard-of allusions, such as that Italian subjunctive cercassi (if I tried) which becomes circassi, and thus suggest circassian, and decides to recuperate (via thaumaturgy instead of telekinesis) another river mentioned elsewhere, the Thames (Tamigi in Italian). But this is not enough for Joyce as a re-creating translator. He is aware that the deep meaning of the passage, over and beyond the play of quotation and reference, is that of a perplexed and diabolic uncertainty in the face of the mysteries of a lingua franca that, like Finnegans Wake, derives from different languages and looks like a Babel-like disaster, a barbarian pidgin. Thus, after having evoked barbarians with circassian, Joyce does something more: he introduces as a closing phrase something that did not exist in English, that is, Ostrigotta, ora capesco.
Ostrigotta is a pun made by ostregheta (a prudent Venetian correction for the blasphemy ostia! – literally, by the host!), by ostrogoto, Ostrogothic, as a suggestion of incomprehensible barbarian languages (let’s remember that Finnegans Wake at one point defines itself as an Ostrogothic kakography), and Gott (God). Blasphemy uttered about an incomprehensible tongue. It would be natural to end with non capisco (I do not understand). But ostrigotta also suggests I got it, and Joyce writes ora capesco, which is a pun on capisco (I understand) and esco (I get out): Joyce gets out from his own linguistic labyrinth of the Finneganian meandertale.
Compared with the original, Joyce’s Italian translation says completely different things. Joyce, in rewriting his own text, felt the need to invent an expression like Ostrigotta, ora capesco. The real deep sense of Finnegans Wake for him was to show the possibilities of a language. In order to elicit such an effect, he did not care about problems of reference. He was sure of making a good translation of his own source text by saying something different.
This is not an example to hold up in a translators’ school, and I would not propose it as a paramount case of fair negotiation. It shows, however, to what extent the principle of equal reference can be violated for the sake of a deeply equivalent translation.
Another case of rewriting is instanced by my translation of the Exercices de style by Queneau, where I was frequently obliged not to translate, but rather (once I understood what kind of word game the author was playing), to try playing the same game, following the same rules, in another language.
The exercises started from a basic text:
Dans l’S, à une heure d’affluence. Un type dans les vingt-six ans, chapeau mou avec cordon remplaçant le ruban, cou trop long comme si on lui avait tiré dessus. Les gens descendent. Le type en question s’irrite contre un voison. Il lui reproche de le bousculer chaque fois qu’il passe quelqu’un. Ton pleurnichard qui se veut méchant. Comme il voit une place libre, se précipite dessus.
Deux heures plus tard, je le rencontre Cour de Rome, devant la gare Saint-Lazare. Il est avec un camarade qui lui dit: ‘Tu devrais faire mettre un bouton supplémentaire à ton pardessus.’ Il lui montre où (à l’échancrure) et pourquoi.
On the line S bus, at rush hour. A guy about twenty-six years old, wearing a soft hat with a cord instead of a ribbon, too long a neck, as though somebody had pulled it. People get off. The guy gets annoyed with a fellow passenger. Complains that he’s pushing him every time someone goes by. A wimp who wants to be a tough guy. As soon as he sees a free seat, he makes a dive for it.
Two hours later, I see him again at the Cour de Rome, outside the Gare Saint-Lazare. He’s with a friend who’s telling him: ‘You ought to get an extra button put on your coat.’ He explains where (near the lapels) and why.7
That’s all. But Queneau succeeds in retelling the same story through a hundred variations on the same theme.
Some exercises are clearly concerned with content (the basic text is modified by litotes, in the form of a prediction, a dream, a press release, etc.) and can be translated more or less literally. Others are concerned with expression (there are word games of anagrams, permutations by an increasing number of letters, lipograms, onomatopoeia, syncope, metathesis), etc. There was nothing else for it but to rewrite.
Queneau’s exercises also include references to poetic forms: where the original text told the story in alexandrines, for example, in parodistic reference to the French literary tradition, I took the liberty of telling the same story with an equally parodistic reference to one of Leopardi’s cantos. In one variation the French text was using pseudo-Anglicisms:
Un dai vers middai, je tèque le beusse et je sie un jeugne manne avec une grète nèque et un hatte avec une quainnde de lèsse tresses. Soudainement ce jeugne manne bi-queumze crézé et acquiouse un respectable seur de lui trider sur les toses. Puis il reunna vers un site eunoccupé.
A une lète aoure je le sie égaine; il vouoquait eupe et daoune devant le Ceinte Lazare stécheunne. Un beau lui guivait un advice à propos de beutone.
To translate French Anglicisms into Italian Anglicisms is not so difficult, provided one does not translate literally but rather tries to imagine how an Italian would speak in garbled English:
Un dèi, veso middèi, ho takato il bus and ho seen un yungo manno co uno greit necco e un hatto con una ropa texturata. Molto quicko questo yungo manno becoma crazo e acchiusa un molto respettabile sir di smashargli i fitti. Den quello runna tovardo un anocchiupato sitto.
Leiter lo vedo againo che ualcava alla steiscione Seintlàsar con uno friendo che gli ghiva suggestioni sopro un bàtton del cot.
Another exercise was entitled Italianismes, that is, it was written in a sort of garbled French in Italian style:
Oune giorne en pleiné merigge, ié saille sulla plata-forme d’oune otobousse et là quel ouome ié vidis? ié vidis oune djiovanouome au longué col avé de la treccie otour du cappel. Et le dittò djiovanouome au longuer col avé de la treccie outour du cappel. Et lé ditto djiovaneouome aoltragge ouno pouovre ouome à qui il rimproveravait de lui pester les pieds et il ne lui pestarait noullément les pieds, mai quand il vidit oune sedie vouote, il corrit por sedersi là.
One cannot translate dog-Italian into dog-Italian and I was obliged to shift to an Italian drenched with Gallicisms. This was the result:
Allora, und jorno verso mesojorno egli mi è arrivato di rencontrare su la bagnola de la linea Es un signor molto marante con un cappello tutt’affatto extraordinario, enturato da una fisella
