Journal of Italian Translation

38
Journal of Italian Translation
rent, shoppa shop, garbaciu garbage, groceria grocery store--the list could be
very long—and that carro does not mean cart, as in Italian, but automobile,
and fornitura does not mean supplies or fittings, but furniture. I never spoke
this dialect myself, but I needed to know it. My landlady spoke a mixture
of an Italian vernacular mixed with this Italian American dialect.
In all of these exchanges, losses and gains. I went to see American
movies, and they were no longer dubbed. Although this might seem a gain,
I perceived it as a loss. I could no longer lose myself in a movie. I couldn’t
understand what people were saying or follow the plot. And I was also
expected to read American and English books in the original, a long timeconsuming
process. What an innocent I had been abroad in my own country.
I had read English works in translation as if Alcott, Swift and
Shakespeare had written in Italian. I had watched American movies dubbed
in Italian and had asked no questions, seen no discrepancies. I never noticed
how the lips moved. Or whether the gestures did not go with the
words. What if cowboys spoke in long musical sentences instead of monosyllables?
I had never heard a cowboy speak English, neither in real life nor
in a movie. Didn’t know if he spoke a dialect, nor if there were dialects.
How was I supposed to know that certain taciturn, reticent types went
with certain landscapes? When I came to the States and told my new friends
about this wonderful western I had seen, which starred Alan Ladd against
the background of gorgeous mountain peaks, and they said, Shane, I did
not recognize the title. I wasn’t sure at first that I was getting through, but
even before I mentioned the Italian title--it had been translated into Il
Cavaliere della Valle Solitaria (The Horseman/ Knight of the Solitary Valley),
a title they found amusing because of its length-- I could see from the way
their eyes sparkled, the way they talked, that the film had been as moving
and attractive in English as it had been in Italian. In this case too, I had not
been much aware of the translation, neither of the movie nor of the title.
Still, the amazing thing is that the story, and in the case of Shane, the nobility
of the character and the strong theme came across despite the differences.
I had the same experience discussing the movie Julius Caesar, which I
had seen in Italian. The famous speeches and the key scenes had all come
across. The mediums in this famously well-acted and produced movie had
been the drama, the pictures, the force of the personalities brought to the
screen by the actors, with the language, even in Italian, acquiring authority
from them, aside from what the translator had been able to do, which I was
not in a position to judge. I was then the person for which translation is
meant. Perhaps this is a commonplace which we sometimes forget. We
translate for those who don’t know the language.
I am not now that ideal reader/viewer of Shakespeare in Italian. Some
excellent translations of Shakespeare in the romance languages don’t sound
anything like Shakespeare to me. But, then, how could they? Still, they bor-