Author: thomas

In questo breve articolo vorrei mettere a confronto alcuni termini francesi in un triangolo linguistico: francese, italiano e inglese.

Vorrei dunque cercare di far luce su alcuni termini che secondo alcuni dizionari e opere di consultazione non sempre sono vere parole francesi.

Partirei con chiffonnier. Questo termine che descrive un piccolo mobile appare sia in italiano che in inglese. Tuttavia in italiano sembra esistere una variante al femminile, chiffonnière. Boch asserisce che si tratta di un italianismo. Alcuni dizionari (Treccani e Zingarelli) la riportano ma la etichettano come parola antica o rara. Opterei per mantenere l’originale maschile. Da notare che in America del Nord, per chiffonnier si intende un mobile più grande a volte provvisto di specchi.

Un altro termine che vale la pena rivedere è bohémien . In italiano sembra prevalere il senso di un artista libero e anticonformista (e forse squattrinato). In francese però, il termine è sinonimo di zingaro o vagabondo. L’inglese propende per il significato italiano seppure Merriam Webster riporti anche il senso di Romani, ossia rom o gitano.

Alcune parole italiane hanno l’aspetto francese ma non hanno nulla a che vedere in quanto sono degli pseudocalchi: pan carré (pain de mie, sliced bread) ne è un esempio. Così come frappè, che sembra essere una troncatura di frappé par la gelée. Termine non usato in francese se non, forse, per riferirsi al lait frappé (termine franco-canadese per tradurre milkshake) oppure allo champagne frappé, pratica tra l’altro non consigliabile. Ma qui divaghiamo. Va detto che, in inglese, frappé è un termine regionale del New England per descrivere appunto il lait frappé mischiato al gelato e che tra l’altro ha dato origine al neologismo sincretico frappuccino (frappè e cappuccino), originario per l’appunto del Massachusetts. Insomma, i francesi questo frappè non sembrano conoscerlo proprio.

Décolletage fornisce un ultimo esempio di francesismo storpiato. Stranamente in inglese questo termine è sinonimo di décolleté quando usato come sostantivo. In francese, invece, questo senso del termine sta al massimo a indicare l’azione di tagliare la stoffa di un abito per metterne a nudo il collo. Non quindi l’effetto sortito da un abito con una scollatura evidente.

Occhio quindi a non scollarsi troppo dal significato originale dei termini francesi per non attrarre la stessa attenzione di un abito troppo décolleté.

In linguistica e in ambito traduttologico, il campo degli esonimi e degli endonimi è irto di insidie non sempre di facile soluzione.

Ad esempio, in italiano si sente spesso parlare di Maurizio al plurale come se fosse un arcipelago. In realtà si tratta di un’isola e come in francese (ile Maurice) anche in italiano la denominazione corretta è isola di Maurizio (oppure, anglicizzando, isola di Mauritius).

Un caso simile si riscontra con Barbados. Anch’essa un’isola unica. Quindi al singolare.

Analogamente, lo stesso errore si verifica per un altro angolo idilliaco dell’Atlantico: Bermuda. Purtroppo spesso si sente parlare del leggendario ‘Triangolo delle Bermuda’ Ecco, anche qui sarebbe più corretto dire ‘Triangolo delle Bermude’. Il Bermuda è un territorio il cui arcipelago va reso al plurale in ‘ le Bermude’.

Un caso a parte andrebbe dedicato a Venezuela. Maschile o femminile? In italiano sembra prevalere il maschile seppure dizionari storici italiano-spagnolo, come il famoso Ambruzzi dichiarino che sia femminile sia in spagnolo che in italiano. Non essendo un nome di paese autoctono come ad esempio Canada, Panama, Nicaragua o Guatemala (tutti maschili), Venezuela dovrebbe logicamente essere declinato al femminile in quanto la sua etimo proviene da un vezzeggiativo di Venezia, dichiaratamente femminile. D’altronde se Colombia e Argentina sono nomi non autoctoni femminili, non si capisce perché Venezuela devii nell’uso da questa regola.

I learned a new word earlier today as I was watching a short documentary on Queen Ingrid of Denmark. The reason I was watching this documentary was to glean more details about Queen Ingrid’s natural flair for speaking various languages fluently. Which, incidentally, would be worth looking into.

The word that caught my attention was landplane, which refers to the Armstrong Whitworth Argosy aircraft carrying Princess Ingrid on her visit to her grandfather, Prince Arthur Duke of Connaught back in 1932. Landplane is an unusual word to the ears of a 21st-century speaker. However, when put into context, one can quickly realize that seaplanes were quite commonplace in those days. Hence the distinction.

Today landplane can hardly be found in dictionaries and should not be confused with a land plane, as pictured below.

It has recently come to my attention how certain companies seem to either be utterly oblivious to the meaning behind their chosen brand names or feel quite nonchalant about it.

In Italy, for instance, a fairly recent Vodafone spinoff was branded ‘Ho’. Needless to say that, when I switched to this new low-cost phone company and had to relay my new number at work, my British and American coworkers let out a sonorous guffaw. I suppose even its very own brand name must be low-rent in order for it to be financially viable.

That being said, it’s quite mystifying that at no stage in the decision-making process did anyone in the boardroom ever bother to check what this word might mean in other languages. Mind you, to the best of my knowledge, ‘ho’ does not have any particular meaning in Italian, either.

Another example of ill-conceived name is the pet food brand name BARF, which apparently stands for ‘Biologically Appropriate Raw Food’, but which has a sickening ring to it to most American ears. Surprisingly, though, this company is based in Minnesota. Go figure.

I came across scads of similarly ridiculous examples while researching this topic. Some verged on the offensive, others on the insensitive, but they all seemed to share a blatant disregard for the basic rules of brand naming. A constant reminder that language is powerful and that choosing the wrong name may even put you out of business.

Hvis du er interesseret i at forbedre dit dansk og at gennemskue mange sproglige diagnoser og problematikker om det danske sprog, så bliver du nødt til at læse Jørn Lunds underholdende og indsigtsfulde bøger.

Til Lunds mange titler medregnes de følgende:

Lunds bøger er et væld af ressourcer og skulle værdsættes af oversættere der arbejder fra dansk fordi de formidler oplysninger som almindelige ordbøger normalvis ikke rækker til. Fra hvem Storm P. var til hvordan dansk udtale har udviklet sig i de sidste årtier. Nødvendige redskaber til at hjælpe ikke kun oversættere, men også til alle, som er interesseret i det danske sprog og kultur.

Language shapes culture and – contrariwise – culture shapes language. Although this may sound like a cliché, translators are often faced with imbecilically clichéd words that are just the brainchild of imbecilic behaviors in society. Mind you, a word in itself is never imbecilic, but it has the power to call forth the most invidious emotions in a churlish translator like me.

This is the case with the Italian word furbetti, which can certainly drive an otherwise unruffled translator into a frenzied spate of choleric outbursts. Furbetti is so ingrained in Italian culture and media that Italian readers may have been numbed by its widespread use across various collocational patterns. These include: i furbetti del cartellino; i furbetti del reddito di cittadinanza; i furbetti del quartierino; i furbetti delle targhe estere; i furbetti della tassa di soggiorno, etc.

As a catchall, i furbetti are those who seemingly find all sorts of loopholes to advance in life by outsmarting the system without having to shoulder the burden other law-abiding citizens are normally expected to. Examples could range from jumping the line at a ticket booth to dodging taxes. A federal or national crime in most countries.

It is thus most infuriating that the Italian media often resort to this cutsey patootsey term to label what other languages would simply identify as crime-prone individuals to put it mildly. Outright criminals in my book.

The same term furbetto can be used in Italian to describe a naughty child, what the English would call a cheeky monkey and the Americans a little brat. A birbante is another word used in this way. So how can such a harmless term of endearment be used so frequently and nonchalantly to refer to criminal, or in any case, offending, behaviors?

It has always baffled me that the media seem to encourage this behavior or deflate the seriousness of the charges by letting these offenders get off lightly and by camouflaging the truth with what is tantamount to a verbal pat on the shoulder.

Language is a powerful tool that permeates the mind – oftentimes surreptitiously. Translation – precisely through the lack of direct equivalents in other languages – can shine a light on these aberrant and abhorrent practices and call writers and linguists to task when tongue-in-cheek is uncalled-for.

The churlish translator is therefore hopeful that the baby talk will be thrown out with the bathwater once and for all to make room for adult talk.

I must confess – in camera caritatis – that my Latin is but a dim memory gathering dust somewhere in a cupboard in my mind. However, I have been noticing diverging patterns in the use of Latin expressions in various European languages. When it comes to Italian and English, it is indeed surprising to see how commonly heard or read Latin phrases used in English are simply not used in Italian. And vice versa.

To begin with, in camera caritatis, which is virtually unknown in everyday English, seems to be used quite frequently by Italians. English would say something like ‘between you and me’ or ‘between you, me and the fencepost/gatepost/bedpost’.

Here are a few more that are used in Italian but cannot be kept in English translation:

• errata corrige. Usually ‘correction’ in newspapers. Possibly just ‘errata’ in printed works.
• ex novo. From scratch.
• excursus. This also exists in English but in my experience only in formal writing. Italians tend to use it in conversation.
• ictus. A stroke. Ictus in English is only used in poetry or music – methinks.
• incipit. This is frequently used in Italian to describe the beginning or opening of a book/story. While the word is found in English dictionaries, it seems to me it is quite rare.
• in primis. First and foremost
• iter. Recurrent in Italian. Procedure in English.
• nulla osta. A type of document akin to security clearance or authorization.
• pro capite. Per head
• post mortem. Used as an adverb in Italian, e.g. ‘un’onorificenza post mortem’. In English it’s one word and is synonymous with autopsy.
• tot. Un tot. A tot? No. A certain amount.
• idem. Only used in bibliographies in English. ‘Ditto’ or ‘the same’ is what is used to mean ‘idem’ in spoken English.
• lapsus. ‘Ho avuto un lapsus’ means ‘I blanked it out’. A lapsus can also be a slip of the tongue/pen.

And some English ones that Italian does not seem to resort to.

• ad lib. Used primarily as a verb. ‘Improvvisare’ is what Italians would say.
• bona fide. ‘Vero, genuino. Con le qualifiche e credenziali in regola’.
• affidavit. ‘Atto notorio’. Perhaps ‘Documento giurato’.

Of course the list could go on and on, but suffice it to say that Latin is a source of qui pro quo (in the Italian sense of the phrase, that is). So fortitudine et prudentia to all fellow translators!

Jeg var i en antikvariatboghandel i Oslo for et par uger siden da jeg snublede over en gammel leksikografisk perle: en dansk-norsk ordbog fra 1908. Forfatteren, Steinar Schjøtt (1844-1920), skriver at: “Den paatænkte ordbog skulde være til hjælp for landsmaalsforfattere…ogsaa for dem, der paa skolen væsentlig har lært landsmaal, behøves en ordbog, ved hjælp af hvilken de kan læse den dansk-norske og danske litteratur”.

Det er faktisk interessant at Schjøtt ville hjælpe sine landsmænd med sproget. Og det er lige så interessant at se og opdage at landsmål (nynorsk fra 1929) har et rig ordforråd.

Allerede inden århundredeskiftet betragtes dansk-norsk (eller norsk-dansk) som en dansk variant:

Det er dermed helt forståeligt at nogle nordmænd stræbte efter sproglig og kulturel uafhængighed i denne periode. Men hvem var Steinar Schjøtts egentlig?

Schjøtt var filolog, journalist, oversætter og forfatter af lærebøger og ordbøger. Han skrev Norigs Soga , som blev den første bestseller på landsmål. Fra 1899 arbejdede han med Dansk-Norsk Ordbog som udkom i 1909, måske sit mesterværk. Et mesterværk der endnu kan skabe opmærksomhed og vække interesse hos leksikografer, oversættere og hos alle der er fascineret af den mangesidige sproghistorie i Norge.

Uno dei termini italiani da me imparati di recente è ‘pluriboll’ (bubble wrap in inglese). Questo termine che avevo inizialmente sentito solo a voce, e il cui significato avevo intuito solo dal contesto, sembra esistere con ortografie diverse. Non appare in nessuno dei miei dizionari ad eccezione del Grande Dizionario Italiano dell’Uso di De Mauro, dove viene registrato con la grafia, a mio parere logica, pluriboll e nella variante poliboll. Insomma ‘boll’ come ‘bolla’, essendo il termine italiano e non come Wikipedia sostiene erroneamente essere un termine inglese. Nulla a che vedere dunque con ‘ball’ con il significato inglese di ‘palla’. In fondo si tratta giustamente di bolle d’aria e non di palle. A supporto di questa tesi ne dà ulteriore prova un sinonimo ricorrente in questo tipo di industria: millebolle.

Eppure sui siti italiani che producono o vendono tale articolo, la grafia che sembra essersi diffusa maggiormente è proprio pluriball. Come traduttore mi devo però dissociare in quanto la parola non ha alcun rapporto con l’inglese.

Il bubble wrap è invece nato come marchio registrato nel New Jersey nel 1960 ed è tuttora il termine usato per designare questo materiale plastico per imballaggi nella stragrande maggioranza dei paesi di lingua inglese.

Ricapitolando quindi, opterei per pluriboll con la ‘o’ traducendo dall’inglese.

Part of the joy of being a translator is coming across deliciously juicy words that are seemingly alike in two given languages. At first glance, that is. An experienced translator usually knows how to navigate the sea of Latinate false cognates and lexis, though the color spectrum is at times less than discernible.

I was recently translating an unauthored art-related piece from English into Italian and the writer went out of his/her way to find appropriate words to describe colors. One of these colors was damson, a purplish hue whose name stems from the plum by the same name. The skin of a Damson plum (archaically a damascene, meaning from Damascus) is in fact dark blue or indigo. In Italian, prugna is often used to describe a shade of purple. But is it the same color?

Judging by the pictures, they do not seem to conjure up the same shade of purple: damson seems to be a cooler shade than prugna. To make matters worse, Italian has two adjectives (or demonyms) derived from Damascus: damaschino and damasceno. An educated guess, to stick closer to the English damson, would be to opt for damaschino since the type of plum is usually called prugna or susina damaschina. This despite the fact that damaschino in Italian also refers to a type of white grape. But let’s not get embroiled in it. On the other hand, damasceno in Italian only seems to collocate primarily with a kind of rose, the beautiful rosa damascena (Damask rose). We can thus safely rule it out since its color is usually pink or red.

Besides being damson, the lips described in the piece also happened to be sumptuous. While this is a possible collocation in English, labbra sontuose simply won’t fly in Italian since sontuoso (or suntuoso) usually collocates with decor, buildings or furnishings.

So what would be a good collocation in Italian? Because ‘sumptuous’ implies lusciousness and something that is appealing to the senses, perhaps labbra carnose or labbra turgide could do the trick.

Also, damson lips seems to occur rather frequently in literature, but a similar search in Italian does not seem to generate any results. However, a few examples using labbra color prugna do exist.

In the final analysis, should translators go for precision or collocational usage? It probably depends on the type of text and target readership involved. I tend to like precision. So what if most readers need to stop and look up a word they have not encountered before? However, would labbra color prugna damaschina work? Is it too long or contrived? Another strategy would be to just leave prugna for the sake of brevity or opt for a different word that may be closer in shade. In this case, indaco, indigo, might do the job.

Translators are often bound to hit a chromatic snag. When it comes to translating colors, specific shades are often perceived differently by creative writers and copywriters alike. The onslaught of marketed goods online keeps compounding matters by using colors imprecisely. When a picture is incorporated into the text, things are somewhat smoothed over, but in the absence of any photographic support, translators will need to look at strategies to circumvent the problem.