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164 The Translator’s Invisibilityorecchio Dyckens”/“very little, just enough to attain a rudimentaryunderstanding of Shakespeare and Byron and to translate Dickens byear” (ibid.:34). Tarchetti’s translation of Shelley’s tale confirms, on thecontrary, that he had an excellent reading knowledge of English. Allthe same, this does not necessarily disprove Farina’s assertion that“non parlava inglese affatto e sarebbe stato imbarazzato a sostenereuna conversazione”/“he did not speak English at all and would havebeen embarrassed to sustain a conversation” (ibid.). Farina notes thatthe registration for the course netted “una retata magnifica”/“amagnificent haul” (ibid.:35), but Tarchetti gave much fewer than fortylessons:quando il professore non seppe più che cosa insegnare ai suoiscolari, lessero insieme Shakespeare e Byron e fumarono le sigaretteche Iginio preparava sul tavolino all’ora della lezione.when the professor no longer knew what to teach his pupils,together they read Shakespeare and Byron and smoked thecigarettes Iginio put out on the desk when the lesson began.(ibid.:36)This teaching scam was probably more profitable than Tarchetti’splagiarism. Yet since translation was poorly remunerated innineteenth-century Italy, with payment usually taking the form ofbooks as well as money, his implicit claim that his text was his creationwould have earned him a higher fee than if he had published it as atranslation (Berengo 1980:340–346). A financial motive may alsoexplain the curious retitling and reprinting of the text when he tookover the editorship of the Emporio pittoresco. The different title and hissignature claimed that it was his original tale being published for thefirst time.Because the legal status of translation was just beginning to bedefined in 1865, Tarchetti’s plagiarism did not in fact constitute acopyright infringement which resulted in a financial loss for Shelley’sestate and her English publisher. By the early nineteenth century,many countries had developed copyright statutes which gave theauthor exclusive control over the reproduction of her text for life andbeyond. But international copyright conventions were slow to emerge,and translation rights were not always reserved for the author. In1853, for example, a federal court in the United States held that aGerman translation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) which had not been