What to look for in Italian to English translation
by Linda Makins M.A. M.C.I.L. M.I.T.I. January 2009
When approaching the job of translation between any language
pair, two main areas have to be addressed, the first of these is
purely linguistic and the second, less obvious, but equally vital,
is cultural.
To tackle the linguistic issues first, in the context of Italian
translation, we look first at overall text structure. While
wishing to avoid sweeping generalisations and, for the sake of
brevity, skating over the inevitable differences between different
text types, or genres, if words are the basic building blocks of
the construct that is a text, these are held together and arranged
in larger units: sentences and paragraphs. To extend the building
metaphor further, Italian displays much of the baroque while
English has more in common with modernism, if not occasionally
brutalism. In many Italian texts paragraphs can seem endless and
sentences can be incredibly complex with much use of the
semi-colon, something that is almost an endangered species in 21st
century English in all but the most literary of texts. Whole
sentences within sentences can appear in parenthesis and of course,
since Italian word order is so much more fluid than English, it can
take a while even to locate the subject of the sentence. The
intellectual demands Italian texts can make on their readers are
simply not acceptable in the fast-food world of English, and
translators who know their job spend much time chopping up and
rearranging these wonderfully convoluted confections, at times
resembling a plate of tangled spaghetti, into more digestible,
bite-size chunks that can be wolfed down on the run. A path through
such complexity often has to be beaten with very heavy use of
link-words that are superfluous once the shorter, simpler sentence
structure has been established, and serve only to clutter it
up.
To zoom in on word-level issues, because English has many
historical influences in common with Italian, 'false friends'
abound. For example, 'sensibile' in Italian has nothing to do with
comfy but unglamorous footwear, in modern English it translates as
'sensitive', as 'sensible' once did in Jane Austen's day.
Similarly, the Italian verb 'pretendere' still bears the meaning of
'have a claim on/aspire to' that it did in English in the era of
Bonnie Prince Charlie and there is no hint of the make-believe that
today's equivalent 'pretend' conveys. Then a cause of much mirth is
the use of 'suggestive' for 'suggestivo', frequently mistranslated
in travel-industry texts and applied to atmospheric historic, often
religious buildings, or picturesque natural landscapes, that have
absolutely no 'naughty bits' attached.
Many European governments and academic institutions lament that
insidious viral infection that is the English language creeping
into and polluting the 'purity' of their own languages, but what
many people fail to realise is that not only do these parasites
invade the host, they can also change their form and/or meaning in
the process. In Italian, 'un manager' implies a very senior
executive, and is never used for an office or shop manager with a
staff of two or three, 'un relax' is a noun and 'un babysitter' is
what the English-speaking world would refer to variously as a
nanny, childminder or au pair, never a bored teenager looking after
the kids for an occasional evening while the parents are out on the
town. Translators home in like heat-seeking missiles on English
words and phrases that pop up in Italian texts, as nine times of
ten, they need to be changed either for something entirely
different or used in a different grammatical context.
These linguistic issues obviously demonstrate that translators
are more than walking, talking dictionaries, and anyway the use of
bi-lingual dictionaries leads many an amateur up the garden path.
The person producing the translation absolutely must have an
in-depth and academically grounded knowledge of the source
language, its history, structure and the way this is changing with
use, all of which is equal to that of a native speaker. Even more
important however is the ability to be aware of such pitfalls and
to produce a translation that is in the right idiom for the
end-purpose of the text, so translators must be native-speakers of
the target text, or have used it habitually as their main language
for many years and, in both cases, actually have some writing
talent in that language.
This brings me neatly on to the cultural minefield. Modern
applied linguistic dogma states that the language/culture link is
not only indissoluble, but is an embodiment of the chicken/egg
conundrum. People create texts to be read, it could be argued that
even 'private' diaries are often designed with an eye to future
publication, as the diarist dreams of fame and fortune. The person
or people who have written a text want it to have a particular
impact on a particular audience but when the target audience
becomes a different language group inhabiting a different cultural
environment, what may have been a soundly constructed building,
perfectly in keeping with the original landscape, can become a
disastrous eyesore in the new one.
To cover everything relevant, in this context, to the
differences between Italian and English would take a book, so here
are just a few obvious and fundamental examples. Firstly,
formality: in common with most European languages Italian has both
a polite and an informal 'you', something that English has lacked
for several centuries, you address the policeman who has just
stopped you for speeding as 'you' just as you do your own family
and friends. This produces a greater cultural gulf between the
formal and informal implying that, in general, Italian business
communications are couched in more formal language overall, with
more complex salutations and sign-off phrases. Not only does it
take a lot longer to get on first-name terms in the Italian
corporate world, but there is widespread use of all sorts of
professional titles as forms of address: 'ingegneure' (engineer)
'avvocato' (lawyer), 'architetto' etc. whereas the only one in
common use in English is 'Dr.'. On the subject of the Italian
'dottore' (male) and dottoressa (female), this does not necessarily
equate to a medical doctor or a person with a PhD, but is
frequently used by anyone with a bachelor's degree. These are
issues that competent translators have to know so as not to risk
misleading the English language readers.
Another cultural difference that has its roots in a language
with masculine and feminine nouns, is the issue of sexism in
language. With a few exceptions, the feminine version of
professional titles in English, such as manageress, authoress, and
horrors like 'lady doctor' are thankfully defunct, a professional
is a professional regardless of her or his gender, easily
accomplished as our grammar does not demand this distinction. This
extends to things like the use of 'lui' the masculine pronoun, he,
or 'l'uomo' (man), that it is still perfectly acceptable to apply
to members of the human race in general in Italy but strictly
non-PC in English. Failure to understand this cultural divide can
cause a badly translated text to cause offence, not usually the
desired outcome.
Differences in formality extend to differences in directness in
texts destined for corporate websites and CVs. UK, US and other
English language groups are more in-your-face, company executives
wishing to put across how wonderful their outfit is will speak
directly to their audience, addressing them as 'you' and of course
referring all the time to the company itself as 'we/us/our
products'. Italian on the other hand tends to use the third person
'it', creating an immediate distance, which if translated as such
robs even the most purple prose of its impact. Similarly, Italian
CVs are still invariably written in the third person: 'he/she' has
done this that and the other, rather than the egoistical 'I',
implying that I'm the best thing that could ever happen to your
company, by establishing a personal relationship immediately. These
sort of texts are like shop windows, so poor translations are the
equivalent of turning the display lights off or covering the window
with a thick layer of grime!
On a technical note, this lack of directness in Italian carried
over into English can actually prove hazardous. For example, in a
technical manual for a piece of equipment or machinery, the direct
imperatives 'do this', or more importantly, 'don't do that', are
the convention in English, so a rather formal passive 'this should
(not) be done' can send the signal that plugging the machine into
the wrong mains power may not necessarily be lethal to the machine
or the operator.
Finally, translators have to know when to adapt cultural
references for the new audience. Specific religious metaphors
familiar to almost all in a country that is still largely Catholic,
by tradition if not necessarily by practice, can be mystifying to
more multi-ethnic target groups. Philosophy, classical mythology
and indeed Latin and Greek, are routinely studied in a large swathe
of Italy's more academic secondary schools, not the case in most
Anglophone countries, so those sort of allusions have to go.
Translation customers absolutely must be secure in the knowledge
that the person handling their precious text, that they may
themselves have sweated long and hard over to get just right for
their own compatriots, has the skills knowledge and creativity to
treat it with equal care and respect. A text contains messages, it
is a communicative medium and, in order to get those vital messages
across, clearly, unequivocally and make the right impression on the
readers, only a translator with a full, up-to-date knowledge of,
and empathy for, those readers' own culture and their expectations
of the text in question will do!