Translation Review - The University of Texas at Dallas

da fuori non si vede niente, però ad avvicinarsi, / se sipotesse, / dapprincipio si sentirebbe un brontolamento /come quando bombardavano verso marina, / poi, a farsipiú sotto, sull’orlo, / io dico che deve venir fuori un fracasso,/ un diavolerio, che per non assordarsi / uno ècostretto a mettersi le dita nelle orecchie,There’s got to be a placewhere all the noises in the world end up,in the sky, way up, who knows, or down towardsthe bottom,but it’s got to be far, so far no one can get there,a basin, or a pond, but immense, a sea,which from far off you can’t see a thing, butgetting closer,if you could,the first thing you’d hear would be rumblinglike when they were bombing near the coast,then it shifting down lower, right at the shore,I’m saying, there’s got to be a crashing,a din, so that in order not to go deaf,you’ve got to stick your fingers, tight, into yourears,Many of the words in E’ malàn characterize or namekinds of noises: hubbub, ruckus, din, racket. In the originalthese words have a jagged sound, which even thepoet’s own Italian translation does not replicate. Aurally,some of these words have become smoothed out in theItalian and are somehow more generic. The words indialect are somehow noiser. In the Italian, they are lessnasal, less gutteral, and to be proncounced, they demandless of the body — the mouth, throat, windpipe and lips:batibói (crashing) becomes fracasso (pg. 118, l. 11);gluriòun (hubbub) becomes putiferio (p. 118, l.16); boba(ruckus) becomes baccano (p. 118, l. 20); buliròun(pandemonium) becomes pandimonio (page 119, l. 5);battasò (brouhaha) becomes baraonda (p. 118, l. 6 );santéssum (curses) becomes imprecazioni (p. 120, l.18).In translating I tried to capture some of thedialect’s jaggedness. So for gloriòun, I opted for“hubub,” which seemed to have a similar muttering qualitywhere the sound is swallowed at the end. For battasò,I opted for “brouhaha,” which seemed to retrieve someof the jaggedness of the original, as opposed to baraonda,which seemed more rolling.The accumulation of clipped sounds in Baldini’sdialect helps give this poem a quickness, as if words arenot being wasted. These lines from the end of the poemsuggest how the words compare to the standard Italian:“u t vén in amént, t si tè, cla vólta” (p. 122, l. 5) becomesin Italian: “ti viene in mente, sei tu, quella volta.”In the orignial, there is an abundance of “s” and “z”sounds, which reinforces the sense of the noisy andcacophonous. There is barely a line that does not containthe buzzing or whispering sounds of an “s” or “z’ at leastonce. This adds to the sense of an insistent dissonanceand a sense of agitation. Consider a line that has six ofthese sounds: “zchéurs in piaza, saràc, sbadài, biastéimi,(p. 120, l. 5) (all that discoursing in the piazza, the spitting,yawning, cursing.) Proper names in the poem have“s” and “z” sounds: Luisín, Tosi, Tisbe, Vizénz, Teresa,Gero dla Zopa. Wherever possible I tried to reinforcethese sounds.Even as the narrator finds this din unbearable, he canbear the silence less. He cannot keep his ears plugged upfor long; the absence of sound makes him jittery. He isdrawn to this noise and he begins to recognize familiarsounds:you’ve got to stay calm, keep following it,and then you realize it’s not just a ruckus,it’s like in sleep, when you’re feverishin the bed upstairs,you’re hearing those women downstairs chattingaway,you don’t understand a thing, but you recognizethe voices,it’s the same thing there,it’s pandemonium, it seems like they’re all mixedup in it,a brouhaha, a street-bazaar,but then instead you start to hear something,a door that’s slamming, an outburst of laughter,a flock of pigeons taking off,a woman in house-shoeswho’s running down a staircase,it seems like nothing at all,but being right there gives you goose bumps,and you start enjoying it, you close your eyes,you play with the fingerin each ear, it’s like an instrument, (pp. 118-119;ll. 19-21, ll. 1-15)With the next line begins a listing of noises, and itis here where we can see an astounding example ofBaldini’s images accumulating:you start hearing everything,keys being fumbled into the keyhole,Translation Review 35