Journal of Italian Translation

22
Journal of Italian Translation
premier quart d’heure, ils le passèrent sans mot dire, dejà tout
pegueux de sueur. Puis ce fut Saro qui rompit le silence.
—Ce Pecorilla est un cornard, proclama-t-il.
—Un cornard de premiere grandeur, rajouta Pino.
And here is Sartarelli’s rendition:
Pino and Saro headed toward their assigned work sector, each
pushing his own cart. To get to the Pasture it took half an hour,
if one was slow of foot as they were. The first fifteen minutes
they spent without speaking, already sweaty and sticky. It was
Saro who broke the silence.
“That Pecorilla is a bastard,” he announced.
“A fucking bastard,” clarified Pino.
As you can see, neither translator has acknowledged the code-
switching or made an attempt to go beyond the surface meaning
of the words and even at that level one could be picky and find
unfelicitous renderings. Monsieur Quadruppani actually has Saro
and Pino pulling a two wheeled “carriole” behind them when they
are pushing it in front of them. “Carriole” is a Provençal word
described as having two wheels, thus not equivalent to the one-
wheel Italian “carriola” with which he probably wanted to mimick
Camilleri’s code-switching. In the process, however, he mistranslated
the sentence. One could argue minor points in both translations,
but let’s take one word that both translated in a similar fashion:
“mutàngheri” Surely it means more than “sans mot dire” and
“without speaking”. The word does not exist in Italian, but it’s
understood because of the context. In Sicilian it means more than
“taciturn,” “unspeaking,” it means an unwillingness to speak, a
sullenness brought about by being engrossed in one’s thoughts, by
mulling over things. It also means an inability to speak. Mutàngaru
in the region of Agrigento describes also a deaf-mute who cannot
speak clearly because he cannot hear. I would have said “brooding
silently,” or “in bleak silence” or “stubbornly silent” or something
like that. The word “ammuttando” is also more than “pushing”
or the French “pulling” because the Sicilian is more than
“spingere”. The word is strangely onomatopeic. I can’t seem to
pronounce it without moving my body forward, which is exactly
why Camilleri chose it. He wanted to convey the considerable en-