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22 Journal of Italian Translation
Stefano Boselli
23
Only the more recent translators opted for “bitches” (Mu226, G77).
These more graphic choices are similar to exclamations and
interjections, as they may help to convey intensity of emotion. But
emphasis can also be mental and serve the purpose of directing
performers to a specific meaning and, consequently, intonation.
Pirandello did not make use of special typefaces, so that what we
find, in all translations but Livingston’s, is the most visible veil of
the interpretive process. May, Bentley, and Murray employed italics,
Gatti-Doyle boldface. But where Murray emphasized only two
words (“His living room” 223; “How do you eat them” 229) and
Gatti-Doyle four (“full of itself, we can” 76; “may I?” 78; “How do
you eat them?” 79), May and Bentley italicized as many as twentyone
and twenty-six respectively. Here are those relative to the first
half of the play, with a little accompanying context:
M: I do know (6); very much like to be; how hard it works (8);
they see . . . Nothing! (10)
B: what I’d have done? (62); I feel sure; with such agility; that’s
just thrown in; I seem to be; I’d like to be (63); if they knew; my
way in; it’s your air, the air of your life (64); he’s hugging; how
impassive (65)
Apart from very rare coincidences not included here, the emphasized
words do not correspond, which effectively shows the
diversity of filters of two equally prepared translators in their additional
role of pre-production directors.
But the translator’s role as director does not end here: another
place where it can have a measurable effect is stage directions. Even
though they represent the strongest residue of the author’s presence
within the dramatic text, stage directions have no poetic function.
Rather, they are a series of instructions whose chief value lies in
clarifying the context of the action. This referential function allows
the translator complete freedom from the original, provided that
the facts are properly clarified. 15 However, precision is not always
guaranteed, and stage effect may either suffer or, possibly, gain.
In the following example, Livingston postpones the stage direction:
in Pirandello, the Man with the Flower has some time, after he
gets up, to move to the street lamp and then calmly call the customer
to the same spot; in the translation he has less time and needs to yell
at the other in order to hasten his movement:
P: Ora io, (si alzerà) caro signore, ecco... venga qua... (572)
L: Now, I, my dear sir–look! (He gets up). Just step this way!
(120)
In another instance, at the end of the play, Bentley’s character
cannibalizes part of the stage direction (“Poi”), so that the final line
comes to have a more dramatic sense. In Pirandello it is a simple
good-bye (“Riderà. Poi: Buona notte, caro signore” 574) but in Bentley’s
“(He laughs.) Then: Good night!” (70), “then” turns into a spoken
line, subsumes the entire previous speech, and it means: “after
the number of blades in the tuft I asked you to pick has equaled the
number of days left for me to live, then it’s darkness for good.”
A common trait of all translated stage directions without exception
is a lack of clarity in terms of left and right. These are important
since they are not equivalent. At least in the Western theatre, owing
to the regular direction of reading, the left indicates something new
entering the range of awareness, whereas the right indicates something
already known. 16 In Italy, dramatists write from the audience’s
perspective and here Pirandello places the interlocutors on the left
for most of the dialogue. Only at the end, following the conventional
direction from left to right, does the Man with the Flower invite the
other under the light of the street-lamp to the right. However, in
British and American theatre directions are relative to the actor’s
point of view, so that Pirandello’s left corresponds to stage-right.
Therefore, Zatlin suggests, “[p]art of the task of the translator in
cases like this is to turn right into left and left into right – without
comment” (68). But in our case, unbeknownst to translators and
performers, we have a version in the negative in which directions
are reversed, which may impact the naturalness of the progression
by showing a movement “against the current.”
Stage directions can be explicit or implicit, embedded in the
spoken lines. In the latter case, they convey information about the
world of the play. In the example below, when the Customer refers
to the people awaiting him, the last part of the sentence lends itself
to various interpretations, but only in the translations. Livingston
generalizes completely, apparently severing the relationship between
the customer’s family and the other women; conversely, May intensifies
that connection (“bosom”); but Bentley adds ambiguity and
implies that the Customer has other female lovers:
P: E mia moglie? Ah sì! E le mie figliuole? E tutte le loro