Journal of Italian Translation

Gaetano Cipolla
bare minimum and often dropping it altogether. In the Forma
dell’acqua for example, in the last few chapters, except for one or
two words, Camilleri uses standard Italian, almost as if he forgot
to throw in a few of his trademark words or perhaps because he
wanted to develop his detective conclusions and the words would
have been a distraction.
When I learned that Stephen Sartarelli had translated La forma
dell’acqua I bought a copy to see how he had solved the problems
discussed above. And I must say, he solved the problem by completely
ignoring it. In all fairness to him, I think Sartarelli did a
creditable job. His translation is highly readable, accurate in terms
of the content of Camilleri’s text. He captures Camilleri’s irony
fairly well and I did not find any factual misreadings of the text.
Nevertheless, Sartarelli’s English text is monolingual, with one exception
where he translates some Sicilian dialogue with American
slang or colloquialism. But the code-switching that we have talking
about is completely ignored. And I must say that the French
translator who addressed the problem and claimed that he would
occasionally intersperse his translation with Francitan terms, that
is, a kind of modern provençal, if I understand it correctly, to provide
a similar code-switching as Camilleri, does not seem to do
much of it, although my French is probably not good enoug to
spot the code-switching. Allow me a brief comparison between
the three texts:
Pino e Saro si avviarono verso il posto di lavoro ammuttando
ognuno il proprio carrello. Per arrivare alla mànnara ci voleva
quasi una mezzorata di strada se fatta a pedi lento come loro
stavano facendo. Il primo quarto d’ora se lo passarono
mutàngheri, già sudati e impiccicaticci. Poi fu Saro a rompere il
silenzio.
“Questo Pecorilla è un cornuto” proclamò.
“Un grandissimo cornuto” rinforzò Pino.
I have added the italics to the words that represent
Camilleri’s code-switching. Here is the French translation:
Pino et Saro se dirigèrent vers leur lieu de travail en tirant
chacun sa carriole. Pour arriver au Bercail, il fallait une demi-
heure de route, quand on la suivait à pas lents comme eux. Le
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