Accepting losses
In one of my next essays I shall deal with the problem of adapting a translation to the receiving culture. There are cases in which, talented as they are, translators are obliged to work at a loss.
In the first chapter of my last novel, Baudolino, I invented a pseudo-medieval North Italian language, written by a quasi-illiterate boy of Piedmontese origin, in the twelfth century, an epoch for which we do not have written Italian documents, at least not for that northwest area. My purpose was not philological exactitude; I was inspired rather by memories of the local dialect I heard in my childhood. My text can be understood in Italy even by a Southerner, who smells a sort of Northern accent (and psychology). Naturally it will be appreciated more by a Northerner who finds in it a sort of familiar slang atmosphere.
These pages created many problems for my translators. In the same period in England, Middle English existed, but it was a language which would be absolutely incomprehensible for a contemporary English speaker. And Baudolino did not live in England. To opt for a more modern dialect would have obliged Bill Weaver to choose a given Anglo-Saxon area, with the risk of making Baudolino speak, let’s say, like Li’l Abner. In France there were already texts in langue d’oc and langue d’oil, and these two languages, especially the first one, were rather similar to the Northern Italian dialects. Thus Jean-Noel Schifano had the opportunity to experiment with a witty and erudite patchwork of both obsolete and still popular words and idioms. In Germany the twelfth century is the period of the Minnesänger, but even that German sounds very abstruse to modern German ears, and Burckhart Kroeber had to invent a balanced mixture of old and modern German. In Spain the twelfth century is the one of El cantar de mio Cid, and Helena Lozano found herself in the same situation as Schifano.
In all these cases it is impossible for the foreign reader to smell any original Northern Italian vernacular fragrance. In the hands of my translators the language of Baudolino became funny, full of linguistic inventions and new coinages, but it was no longer the language of a young and illiterate Piedmontese boy. And it was impossible for them to have done otherwise.
In the opening chapter Baudolino is afraid that somebody in the Imperial offices will realise that he has scratched and transformed the seminal work of the bishop Otto into a palimpsest in order to write his ungrammatical memoirs; then he cynically reflects that the court’s clerks would probably not pay any attention to the loss, as they are constantly writing and rewriting a lot of useless documents. To express his scepticism Baudolino uses an obscene expression, then cancels it, deciding to use another vernacular idiom:
ma forse non li importa a nessuno in chanceleria scrivono tutto anca quando non serve et ki li trova (questi folii) si li infila nel büs de kü non se ne fa negott . . .
My Spanish translator, Helena Lozano, wanted to render Baudolino’s language by an equally invented Spanish that could evoke the one of El cantar de mio Cid and Fazienda de Ultramar, an old text full of borrowed words.1 On the other hand, confronted with this passage, she also wanted to save some original sounds, without trying to reproduce them in a medieval Spanish. Thus she tried to reproduce the original flavour of the deleted expression, simply making the vulgar word ojete (arsehole) a little more archaic and cutting off kulo by an apocope:
Pero quiçab non le importa a nadie en chancellería eschrivont tot incluso quando non sirve et kien los encuentra [isti folii] se los mete en el ollete del ku non se faz negotium . . .
Another expression used by Baudolino is Fistiorbo che fatica skrivere mi fa già male tuti i diti. Baudolino is simply saying that his fingers are suffering from the unusual experience of writing: fistiorbo is a vernacular imprecation that means ‘may you become blind’. Lozano decided to Latinise this as fistiorbus ke cansedad eskrevir. She admits that fistiorbus may be incomprehensible to Spanish readers, but it was equally dull for a non-Piedmontese Italian reader.
It seems to me that analogous reflections have inspired the Catalan translator, Arenas Noguera, at least as far as the first passage is concerned:
mes potser no.l interessa negu a cancelleria scriuen tot ancar quan no vale e qu.ils trova (ests folii) se.ls fica forat del cul no.n fa res . . .
For fistiorbo the translator simply gave a literal translation, eu tornare orb. Schifano made an effort to invent a French equivalent:
mais il se peut k’a nulk importe en la cancellerie ils escrivent tout mesme quanto point ne sert et ke ki les trouve (les feuilles) kil se les enfile dans le pertuis du kü n’en fasse goute . . .
Likewise, for fistiorbo he finds a satisfactory popular French expression, morsoeil. Weaver (as we shall see in a later essay) modernises and domesticates: fistiorbo becomes Jesù, which certainly functions as an expression of disappointment, but gives up any attempt to suggest the original regional atmosphere. For the first passage he employs an equally vulgar contemporary English expression (with some reticence):
but maybe nobody cares in the chancellery they write and write even when there is no need and whoever finds them (these pages) can shove them up his . . . wont do anything about them.
The German translator, Kroeber, uses a similar method to Weaver for fistiorbo (which becomes a duly Germanised verflixt swêr – something like ‘it’s terribly difficult’), but does the opposite with the first passage, respecting the original expression:
aber villeicht merkets ja kainer in der kanzlei wo sie allweil irgentwas schreiben auch wanns niëmanden nutzen tuot und wer diese bögen findet si li infila nel büs del kü denkt sie villeicht weitewr darbei . . .
Even in the following chapters, where I have adopted current Italian, when Baudolino talks with his fellow citizens, vernacular expressions are frequently used. I knew that many of the subtleties would only be appreciated by readers from the same area, but I thought that readers of different regions would catch at least a certain regional flavour. Besides it is still a typical habit of Northern Italians, when they use a vernacular expression, to translate it into Italian immediately after, so as to reinforce their statement, so to speak, with the authority of a more cultivated language. So I did this in my conversations. However, this represented a challenge for my translators: if they wanted to save the double play between vernacular expressions and their immediate translation, they had to find a dialect equivalent in their own language – but in doing this they would have de-Italianised Baudolino’s language. These are situations in which a loss is unavoidable.
Here is a passage from chapter 13 where I thought of the dialect idiom squatagnè cme’n babi, which means more or less to squash someone or something with one’s foot like a toad. However, following another vernacular habit, the character was first transforming the expression into a dog-Italian, then he translated it in correct Italian:
Si, ma poi arriva il Barbarossa e vi squatagna come un babio, ovverosia vi spiaccica come un rospo.
Some translators gave up with the play on dialect-translation and used an idiom popular in their own language:
Siì, peró després arribarà Barba-roja i us esclafarà com si res. (Noguera)
Yes, but then Barbarossa comes along and squashes you like a bug. (Weaver)
Ja, aber dann kommt der Barbarossa und zertritt euch wie eine Kröte. (Kroeber)
Lozano, taking advantage of the fact that the expression was immediately translated, tried a new coinage, that is, she used the original expression by adapting it to the phonetic characteristics of Castillan. Schifano reinforced the vernacular tone of the utterance by transporting everything into a French area:
Sí, pero luego llega el Barbarroja y os escuataña como a un babio, o hablando propiamente, os revienta como a un sapo. (Lozano)
Oui, mais ensuite arrive le Barberousse et il vous réduit à une vesse de conil, autrement dit il vous souffle comme un pet de lapin. (Schifano)
It is interesting to notice that the translators who eliminated the play between vernacular and translation produced a shorter sentence than the original one.
It is impossible to analyse the various bravura pieces devised by my translators for every language, and I would rather like to deal with another phenomenon, the case of profanities and vulgar expressions. There are languages (and cultures) in which it is customary frequently to name God, the Virgin and all the saints by associating their name with vulgar expressions (usually this happens in Catholic countries like Italy and Spain); others that are pretty indulgent with curses related to sexual and scatological affairs; and others that are definitely more demure or at least extremely thrifty in mentioning Our Lord and His saints. Thus an exclamation that in Italian can sound acceptable (at most very rude but not unusual) in German would sound intolerably blasphemous. You probably remember that in Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry there is a female character who repeats fucking every minute; well, a German lady would never do so, at least not with the same nonchalant frequency.
In the second chapter of my novel (once the vernacular introduction has ended, but popular characters still speak in a popular way) Baudolino, on his horse, enters the Church of St Sophia in Constantinople, and, to express his indignation for the simoniac behaviour of the crusaders who are pillaging the altar cloths and holy vessels, shouts some horrible profanities. The effect, at least in
