Translation Review - The University of Texas at Dallas

nal and the translation, we get a better idea of the polyphonicnature of this style and of its only partially successfulreconstruction in Italian.The first two pairs show a change of register: therather offhand and dismissive “all this” “coming from”an anthropologist (that is, issuing forth almostautonomously) becomes the more formal and respectful“tali affermazioni” that we hear “proffered” by theirauthor. Then we have an idiomatic expression that getsturned on its head in the translation. Geertz uses “strikesa chord” to indicate that Lévi-Strauss is in harmony withthe current intellectual climate, while “tocca un nervoscoperto” (hit a raw nerve) conjures up images of painand consequent aggressive reaction. We’ve gone fromthe concert hall to the dentist’s office. Later on in theparagraph, there are some other instances of at leastquestionable interpretation and rendering, which, thoughnot of major importance, tend to take the edge off of theoriginal: “disables” judgment becomes “doesn’t allow”rather than “rende incapace” or “sopprime” il giudizioor something similar; the transitive verbal phrase “distancingelsewhere” is changed to the reflexive “distanziarsi”;the verb “scegliere” is introduced before “theView from Afar” which also loses, like “The Future ofEthnocentrism” its initial capital letters, reducing the specificreference to the Lévi-Strauss book title to an indicationof a generic point of view.The translation runs into some major stumblingblocks, however, in trying to handle Geertz’s newlycoined adjectives and his deft manipulation of idiomaticexpressions and allusion as he drives home his critiqueof Lévi-Strauss and shades it with moral overtones. Heaccuses Lévi-Strauss of adopting (and proposing) a“relax-and-enjoy-it” approach, making an adjective outof an imperative borrowed from the lexicon of pop psychology,originally coined to bring emotional comfort tothe already rich and comfortable and assure them thatthey need not feel guilty about their economic and socialprivilege — the nominal forms, roughly speaking,referred to by the pronoun “it.” The accusation is considerablysoftened in the Italian by the use of the more formaland standard phrase, “approccio rilassato e compiacente,”which certainly renders the substance but not thestyle. Much the same thing occurs in the transformationof “we-are-we and they-are-they impermeabilité” into “iltipo di impermeabilité di identità,” though here the translatorwas confronted with the added difficulty of tryingto preserve the humor in Geertz’s heptameter sing-songrhyme of “we are we and they are they” with “impermeabilité.”But one wonders if a bit more of Geertz’s ironyand lightness might have come across with “una speciedi impermeabilité alla ‘noi siamo noi e loro sono loro’,”or something a little more innovative, at any rate, withrespect to the generic “tipo di.”A similar standardization of the idiomatic happenswith the translation of “arrogance made easy” into“segno di facile arroganza.” Here again, the Englishexpression is borrowed from low-brow commercialEnglish, those advertising slogans for cook books orhow-to-do-it manuals that make it easy to perform someostensibly difficult task — a quick Google search, forexample, came up with dozens of site names like“Prophecy Made Easy” and “Medieval DemographicsMade Easy.” Of course, for American readers, Geertz’sinsertion of this kind of language into an academic or atleast serious essay will raise a smile, but there is more toit than entertainment. The choice of arrogance as thething made easy and the instrumental meaning of thephrase itself sharpens Geertz’s attack by giving it a moraledge: the implication is that “The View From Afar” presentsa thesis elaborated in the service of cultural arrogance;not so much a “sign” of “easy arrogance” but aninstrument for justifying it.Finally, we come to the literary allusion to theAmerican novelist, Flannery O’Connor. Here, the translatordoes well to catch the double allusion to MartinLuther in Geertz’s characterization of O’Connor’s quip— her “irremovabilità luterana,” but Geertz adds at leastone more twist to the allusion by maintaining andexpanding on O’Connor’s deliberate grammatical distortion:“do as you done” is a parody of the ungrammaticaldialect spoken in O’Connor’s hometown of Millidgeville,in southeastern Georgia; her own special version of theproverb, “When in Rome do as the Romans do.” Geertzadds his own twist to O’Connor’s by referring to its“here-stand-I” honesty, reversing the syntax of theEnglish version of Luther’s “Here I stand, I can do noother” speech at the Diet of Worms. The Italian textmakes explicit Geertz’s implicit reference to Luther andrenders O’Connor’s quip in grammatically correct Italian(in the subjunctive no less). The association of Lévi-Strauss with O’Connor’s reference to her ignorant fellowtownsmen, whether it be a send-up or a proud defense, istotally absent.And now for a word of caution. A lengthy, detailedcritique of the translation of a single paragraph in a 225-page text unavoidably gives the impression that the critiquerbelieves the translation is a disaster. Nothing couldbe more off the mark. On the whole, I think the Italiantranslation of Available Light is fairly well done, espe-22 Translation Review