In Italian he says:
Ventrediddio, madonna lupa, mortediddio, schifosi bestemmiatori, maiali simoniaci, è questo il modo di trattare le cose di nostrosignore?
Bill Weaver tried to be as blasphemous as an English speaker can be, and translated this as:
God’s belly! By the Virgin! ’sdeath! Filthy blasphemers, simonist pigs! Is this any way to treat the things of our lord?
Not too bad, but Madonna lupa defines the Virgin Mary as a she-wolf. It does not mean anything but shows a typical Catholic eagerness to deal more than informally with holy things.
Spanish, Brazilian, French and Catalan translators had no problem in rendering Baudolino’s indignation:
Ventredieu, viergelouve, mordiou, rèpugnante sacrilèges, porcs de simoniaques, c’est la manière de traiter les choses de nostreseigneur? (Schifano)
Ventredediós, virgenloba, muertedediós, asquerosos blasfemadores, cerdos simoníacos, es ésta la manera de tratar las cosa de nuestroseñor? (Lozano)
Ventre de deus, mäe de deus, morete de deus, nojentos blasfemadores, porcos simoníacos, é este o modo de tratar las coisas de Nosso Senhor? (Lucchesi)
Pelventre dedéu, maredédeudellsops, perlamortededèu, blasfemadores fastigosos, porcos simoníacs, aquesta és manera de tractar les coses de nostre Senyor? (Arenas Noguera)
The German translator was instead extremely prudent and prudish:
Gottverfluchte Saubande, Lumpenpack, Hurenböcke, Himmelsakra, ist das die Art, wie man mit den Dingen unseres Herrn umgeht? (Kroeber)
Kroeber’s Baudolino does not mention either God or the Virgin. Instead he insults the crusaders by saying that they are a herd of pigs condemned by God, a bunch of dirty rags, goats and sons of bitches, and the only pseudo-blasphemy Baudolino utters is the only one that a furious German is allowed to utter, Himmelsakra – that is, Heavens and Sacrament (which is not so strong, in fact). Obviously the comic effect of Baudolino’s curses gets lost (since he is not uttering blasphemies in order to charge people with blasphemy) but it would have been impossible to do differently. This is another case in which the translator must accept a definite loss.
The problem of curses and four-letter words is a serious one. Once again Germans are more prudish than Spaniards, and obscenities have a different value and impact in different cultures. Here is an example from the Introduction (written in Baudolino’s language) and I apologise if British ears are offended by an expression that in Northern Italy is acceptable as an example of popular talk. In this passage I was describing the way in which the city of Tortona was destroyed by the army of Frederic Barbarossa and how much the people of Pavia were excited by razing a city to the ground:
et poi vedevo i derthonesi ke usivano tutti da la Città homini donne bambini et vetuli et si plangevano adosso mentre i alamanni li portavano via come se erano beeeccie o vero berbices et universa pecora et quelli di Papìa ke alé alé entravano a Turtona come matti con fasine et martelli et masse et piconi ke a loro sbatere giù una città dai fundament li faceva sborare.
To clarify the situation, here is Weaver’s translation:
And then I saw the Dhertonesi who were all coming out of the city men women and children and oldsters too and they were crying while the Alamans carried them away like they were becciee that is berbices and sheep everywhere and the people of Pavia who cheered and entered Turtona like lunnatics with faggots and hammers and clubs and picks because for them tearing down a city to the foundations was enough to make them come.
My text says that razing the city faceva sborare the people from Pavia, and faceva sborare means ‘made them ejaculate’ (but the popular expression is stronger than the Italian one). Weaver’s translation is correct. But even an inhabitant of the Bronx might say something like this, and perhaps I preferred something more ethnic.
Jean-Noel Schifano had no hesitations in translating it into French:
et puis je veoie li Derthonois ki sortoient toz de la Citet homes femes enfans et vielz et ploroient en lor nombril endementre que li alemans les emmenoient com se fussent breeebies oltrement dict des berbices et universa pecora et cil de Papiia ki aIe ale entroient a Turtona com fols aveques fagots et masses et mails et pics qu ’a eulx abatre une citet jouske dedens li fondacion les faisoient deschargier les coilles . . .
Lozano employs a Latinism not for demure reasons but, as she explained to me, because the correct expression in Spanish would be correrse, which primarily means to run, and in this context everybody is moving so fast that the readers could misunderstand the expression by taking it literally, thus losing its sexual connotation:
et dende veia los derthonesi ke eixian todos da la Cibtat, hornini donne ninnos et vetuli de los sos oios tan fuertermientre lorando et los alamanos ge los lleuauan como si fueran beejas o sea berbices et universa ovicula et aquellotros de Papia ke arre arre entrauan en Turtona como enaxenados con faxinas et martillos et mazas et picos ca a ellos derriuar una cibtat desde los fundamenta los fazia eiaculare.
Once again the German translator could not be too daring, and translated as:
und dann sah ich die Tortonesen die aus der stadt herauskamen manner .frauen kinder und greise und alle weinten und klagten indes die alemannen sie wegfürten als warens schafe und andres schlachtvieh und die aus Pavia schrien Ali Ali und stürmeten nach Tortona hinein mit äxten und hämmern und keulen und piken denn eine stadt dem erdboden gleichzumachen daz war ihnen eine grôsze lust.
Eine grosze lust certainly evokes a sexual pleasure but is not as rude nor as immediate as sborare. For me, this was another radical loss, but if Kroeber had dared to use a stronger expression his readers would probably not have been convinced that Baudolino would speak in that manner.
Censorship by mutual consent
There are cases in which the loss is so unavoidable that the translator (and the author too) resign themselves to accepting a cut.
In my novels I frequently use unusual and obsolete terms and sometimes I play a game of accumulation, providing a sort of lexical Wunderkammer. In these situations, if, out of ten or twenty terms, one proves absolutely untranslatable, I authorise the translator to drop it: a catalogue is still a catalogue even if there are only eighteen terms instead of twenty.
Christopher Taylor2 meticulously analysed all the cases in which Weaver, translating Il nome della rosa, tried to find adequate equivalents for such plant names as viola, citiso, serpilla, giglio, ligustro, narciso, colocasia, acanto, malobatro, mirra and opobalsami. It was obviously easy to find violet, lily, narcissus, acanthus and myrrh. Weaver translated serpilla as thyme: serpilla is indeed a species of thyme but Taylor remarked that serpilla is more rare in Italian than thyme in English – even though admitting that it would be ‘fairly fatuous’ to argue this point and that, given the horticultural differences between English and Italian, thyme works pretty well.
The real drama started with citiso and colocasia, for which there are no corresponding English terms. Weaver translated citiso as cystus which keeps a Latin root and a botanical flavour, and colocasia as taro which is a little more generic but, according to Taylor, correct, even though the Italian sound is more evocative. As for opobalsami, the English equivalent would be balsams of Peru, but in the Middle Ages Peru wasn’t yet discovered. Weaver chose Mecca balsam.3 Taylor also complains that malobatro became mallow, once again using a current term instead of an archaic one that evokes biblical psalms. But, as the author, I remember having approved those ‘losses’.
In The Name of the Rose, in the chapter entitled ‘Third Day. Sext’, there are lists of rogues and lunatics wandering through various countries. The first catalogue reads:
Dal racconto che mi fece me lo vidi associato a quelle bande di vaganti che poi, negli anni che seguirono, sempre più vidi aggirarsi per l’Europa: falsi monaci, ciarlatani, giuntatori, arcatori, pezzenti e straccioni, lebbrosi e storpiati, ambulanti, girovaghi, cantastorie, chierici senza patria, studenti itineranti, bari, giocolieri, mercenari invalidi, giudei erranti, scampati dagli infedeli con lo spirito distrutto, folli, fuggitivi colpiti da bando, malfattori con le orecchi mozzate, sodomiti, e tra loro artigiani ambulanti, tessitori, calderai, seggiolai, arrotini, impagliatori, muratori, e ancora manigoldi di ogni risma, bari, birboni, baroni, bricconi, gaglioffi, guidoni, trucconi, calcanti, protobianti, paltonieri . . .
And so on through a whole page. On the following page there is another list of the same kind of fellows:
Accapponi, lotori, protomedici, pauperes verecundi, morghigeri, affamiglioli, crociarii, alacerbati, reliquiari, affarinati, palpatori, iucchi, spectini, cochini, admirati, appezzanti e attarantanti, acconi e admiracti, mutuatori, attremanti, cagnabaldi, falsibordoni, accadenti, alacrimanti e affarfanti . . .
It is ostentatiously erudite, perhaps, but I found all these names in the beautiful Il libro dei vagabondi by Piero Camporesi,4 and I wanted to elicit by accumulation the vision of a crowd of tramps that represented the primordial soup where many heretics and lumpen-revolutionaries of that century grew up. I was charmed by the sound of those names; I did not expect my readers to understand them but I hoped that through the overcrowding of unusual terms they would get the image of a situation of disorder and social fragmentation.
My translators in general rendered the first paragraph very well, using their national repertoires and being aware that what counted was not the absolute lexical faithfulness but rather the length and the incongruity of the list. I quote only Weaver’s translation:
From the story he told me,
