Journal of Italian Translation

Gaetano Cipolla
spaventare donne e bambini” and in Sicilian “senza fari scantari
fimmini e picciliddri”. The “ddri” ending of “picciliddri” identifies
the speaker as a person from the area of Agrigento where the
cacuminal sound of “ddu” as in “Turiddu” is pronounced as
“Turiddru”. “Accattarsene” might not be readily understood as
the equivalent of “comprarsene” if the context did not come to
clarify it. In Sicilian, of course, the verb “accattari” from “acheter”
commonly replaces the Italian “comprare.” The use of Italianized
Sicilian or Sicilianized Italian as the case may be, was originally
thought to be an impediment to non-Sicilians. In fact, in the first
edition of Il filo di turno, the editor at Mondadori required Camilleri
to add a glossary that would explain the Sicilian words to non-
Sicilian readers. This feature has been dropped from subsequent
books because it is in reality unnecessary for Italians. They can
understand the text because Camilleri has become more skilled in
placing them in a context that explains them better. Even if the
terms are not understood exactly, Italians have a good idea of the
possible meanings. At any rate, the presence of these words adds
a certain strangeness to the narrative that the translator cannot
ignore. The problem for non-Italians reading Camilleri in Italian is
probably insurmountable because those who have learned Italian
in school in a foreign country are notoriously poor at making connections
between words that vary even very slightly from the dictionary
meanings. Such people have difficulty equating “limosina”
with “elemosina” “paro” with “paio.”
Let us look at the paragraph in an attempt to discover whether
the use of Sicilian adds dimensions of meaning and style that must
be retained or somehow acknowledged by the translator.
The use of the form Calorio instead of Calogero has two purposes:
it identifies the locus of the action and it suggests that the
person has also been adopted as one of their own even though he
is a foreigner. We are in Sicily and specifically in a town of which
Saint Calogero is the Patron Saint. Vigàta is Camilleri’s fictional
town, but it could be anywhere from Sciacca to Porto Empedocle.
Saint Calogero, if I am not mistaken, is in fact the patron Saint of
Sciacca and a few other towns in the Agrigento province. So perhaps
a note should point this out. The term “paisi” is so close to
“paese” it does not need an explanation, but it begins a series of
interjections in Sicilian whose presence is highly subjective and
unpredictable. There are cases when the Sicilian term used does
not have an Italian counterpart and Camilleri uses it because the
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