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.

Il prefisso van in danese deriva da o comunque è imparentato con l’antico nordico vanr, che significa ‘mancante’. Utile ricordare anche la parentela con il latino vanus per chi volesse trovare un collegamento, magari come aiuto mnemonico, con le lingue neolatine. Il danese ha creato dunque varie parole con questo prefisso conferendo un’accezione negativa o privativa. Ecco alcuni esempi: et vanartet barn (bambino/a maleducato/a o pestifero/a); vanfør (letteralemente che non è in grado di andare, quindi sciancato o invalido); vanheld (malasorte, parola un po’ antiquata, oggi soppiantata da uheld); vanhellige (profanare, dissacrare); vanry (cattiva reputazione, ad esempio bringe nogen i vanry, ossia gettare qualcuno in discredito); vanskabt (deforme); vanrøgte (mandare in malore); vansire (sfregiare, sfigurare); vantrives (crescere male, non trovare terreno fertile); vantro (mancanza di fede); vanvid (follia, delirio, pazzia); vanvare (specie nella frase af vanvare, per sbaglio).

Vanvare [ˈvanˌvɑːɑ] non va confuso con l’italiano vanvera, con cui non spartisce alcunché. Mentre infatti vanvera in italiano sembrerebbe derivare da fanfera di origine onomatopeica, vanvare in danese deriva da ‘vare’ , usato solo nell’espressione ‘tage vare på’ , che significa ‘fare attenzione’. Un falso amico di cui diffidare dunque. Questo meramente lessicale; altri falsi amici, ben più tangibili e dalle fattezze umanoidi, vanno invece tenuti a debita distanza.

One of my earliest memories as a toddler is a much smaller version of me watching my grandfather pottering around in his dark and dusty workshop in a small village in the Dolomites. My grandfather, whom I’m told I resemble a great deal, passed away when I was still a toddler. It was perhaps because of his passing and because the workshop was barely lit that I would seldom venture alone into that room afterward.

Yet it was a fascinating place. Filled with old tools, wickerwork and junk that could hardly be discerned, the workshop piqued my curiosity and fired up my imagination. My buoyant hopes of finding some precious trove of toys left behind by my older cousins would fly in the face of my fear of mice and other formidable creatures that supposedly inhabited that room, but were invariably wrecked by the discovery of more outdated contraptions.

Many decades have passed since that day in the workshop when my grandfather skillfully repaired a wooden toy for my sister as I watched on, crouching in awe.

For some inexplicable reason, however, that dank room stuck with me over the years and, by some irrational association, has come to stand for some of the unused and obsolescent words found in my Zingarelli Italian dictionary. Verbal tools that seem to have lost their role in the language. Some are beautiful, but are not easily handled by somewhat disdainful Italian speakers because they are perceived either as obsolete or obscure in meaning.

Leafing through a Zingarelli dictionary ( I have two, one published in 1954 and one dating from 2004), one has the feeling of visiting a cemetery. Dotted with daggers, which look awfully like crosses, the pages label the words quite judgmentally, deciding which ones ought to be used and which ones are best left in their lexical graves. But are words really ever dead? Can they be brought back to life?

I have therefore taken it upon myself to compare my two editions of the Zingarelli dictionary to see which words have been lost over a fifty-year span. Here are a few examples from the letter M: maccianghero; magaluffo; manzana; magogo; mostrice; mitera; marisco; melope; misperare; murcido. Interestingly, some of these words could still be used today. For instance, murcido, meaning slothful, has since fallen by the wayside for reasons we are not privy to. It’s not difficult to pronounce and, as an adjective, I’m sure it could creep back into the language quite effortlessly.

The same fate has befallen my grandfather’s workshop tools, left gathering dust for decades. They’re still there, though. Still in the same place he left them before he died. And I suppose they could still be used if anyone cared to.

I recently had to translate a piece about Rovigo, a lovely town by the Po River not too far from Venice. The text featured the name of a 16th-century landmark building known in Italian as Chiesa della Beata Vergine del Soccorso, not exactly a sobriquet that easily trips off your tongue if you’re asking for directions, but still a celestial label nonetheless. Ought it be translated? If only for the sake of any befuddled tourists chancing upon this majestically octagonal piece of architecture?

Because it is descriptive and not a household name in English-speaking countries, or a name whose meaning could easily be inferred (e.g. Arc de Triomphe), I chose to pursue the matter further.

Not being on a first-name basis with anything remotely liturgical, biblical or religious at large, I immediately went online to see what my options were. And boy, was I deluged with some interesting turns of phrases. Here’s what I found:

• Temple of the Blessed Virgin of Assistance
• Temple of the Blessed Virgin of the Rescue
• Temple of the Blessed Virgin of Help
• Temple of the Blessed Virgin of Succour

Needless to say, none of these struck me as appropriate though I had found them on fairly specific websites relating to the subject matter. I eventually opted for the rovigotourism. com website, which translates it – it seems to me more aptly – as ‘Virgin of Relief’. I then cross-checked my references by typing in the Spanish equivalent Virgen del Socorro to see what that would lead me to. And sure enough, I found it again in a 1914 book by Ralph Emerson Twitchell titled The Spanish Archives of New Mexico.

Interestingly, as I was researching this particular piece of information, I noticed that more recent publications may tend to preserve the original name, i.e., Virgen del Socorro. Which brings up the question: should place-names and proper names be translated?

Translating place names and buildings is a tricky subject. Much depends on the language combination, how close two given cultures are to one another and to what extent they have influenced one another. Language proximity is a factor as is the nature of the text that is being translated. For instance, it is a good idea and for titles of paintings or longer descriptives names to be offered in translation to foreign patrons and visitors alike. And it’s all the more important to do so if they’re urgently seeking relief from a higher being.

It always strikes me as odd when a language lacks words for fairly general concepts. Even more so when the culture it refers to has a lexical arsenal at its disposal to describe a myriad objects and ideas relating to the very same domain.

Indeed, Italian is notoriously prolific when it comes to naming concepts and things concerning the sacred and the religious sphere. It is therefore surprising to realize that no single word exists to describe ‘mourner’ in all its facets. Thus, a sentence like Few mourners attended the funeral will likely need to be rendered as C’era poca gente al funerale, losing the idea of grief in the process. To be sure, corteo funebre (a collective noun like cortege) can sometimes stand in for ‘mourners’ within the context of a funeral. However, things can get trickier when English mentions individual mourners. As I research Google Books, a few examples mention ‘scattered mourners’. How could this be translated into Italian? Some might think that dolenti (a term that can be found in dictionaries) could work just fine like its Spanish or Portuguese cognates (dolientes and doentes, respectively). In fact, current usage seems to restrict this word to a few – mostly obsolescent – cases. Carlo Rossetti in his groundbreaking I tranelli dell’inglese (originally published in 1936) dismisses the use of dolenti in favor of i parenti del defunto or i familiari del defunto. However, that does not cover the broader meaning of ‘mourners’. Cordogliante is another word that crops up. But how widespread and frequent is it?

Which leads us to yet another more interesting question: why does Italian have a very specific word for ‘hired mourner’ (prefica) but not for ordinary mourner? Admittedly, professional mourners were fairly common in some Mediterranean and Asian countries, so it stands to reason that Italian has absorbed the term. Prefica is a lovely word, despite the dubious nature of the job implied, though, it, too, is becoming obsolescent as the funeral lament industry has been experiencing a downward trend recently.

We are thus left with the question of how to best translate ‘mourner’ in its broader meaning of ‘sufferer’. Imagine translating ‘forgotten mourners’, ‘black-clad mourners’, or ‘fellow mourners’ into Italian. Circumlocutions requiring ‘chi è in lutto’, ‘chi soffre’, ‘persone in lutto’, ‘chi ha perso una persona cara’ or suchlike phrases can sometimes fit the bill, but is it perhaps time to either dust off an old-fashioned expression like dolente (which might ruffle some feathers) or coin a new word. Any suggestions?

Il portoghese non è una delle mie lingue di lavoro anche se ai tempi dell’Università l’ho studiata con interesse e curiosità e ricordo già allora di vari momenti imbarazzanti intercorsi con i docenti portoghesi causati da insidiosi ‘falsos amigos’ tra l’italiano e questa sua lingua sorella. Non da ultimo l’esordio di una lettrice universitaria che al momento di presentarsi si diede della ‘mignotta’ tout court. Noi studenti rimanemmo momentaneamente impietriti prima di capire che la povera insegnante intendeva ‘minhota’ in portoghese ovviamente, ossia del Minho.

Ieri sera stavo guardando un episodio di un famoso viaggiatore brasiliano che, esplorando i quattro angoli della terra, dispensa ottimi consigli di viaggio in posti incantevoli, quando ad un tratto, si ferma per rispondere a domande postate da alcuni spettatori, tra cui la seguente Já transou no avião?, seguita da un mio momento di transitoria perplessità.

Transar è un verbo che in Brasile non ha nulla a vedere con transare, verbo che i burocrati italiani amano usare al posto di transigere e che deriva per retroformazione da transazione. Non mi addentro nella diatriba tra puristi e descrittivisti, ma vale la pena segnalare che transar in Brasile significa sia ‘negoziare’ che, informalmente, ‘avere rapporti sessuali’. La seconda accezione tra l’altro appare molto diffusa.

Oltre ai classici branco, bizarro, caldo, golfinho e lixo, sarà dunque bene inserire anche questo verbo nella lista dei falsi amici per non incorrere in fraintendimenti imbarazzanti.

These seven little guys offer interesting clues to the way various languages have come up with different names for each and every one of them, providing interesting insights into whether or not – or to what degree – the sound symbolism (also known as phonosemantics or phonoesthesia), which is unique to each language, has been taken into account.

In the original Märchen by the Brothers Grimm, the dwarfs did feature in the story but remained nameless. If the information I have gathered is correct, the dwarfs were first named individually in a 1912 Broadway play as Blick, Flick, Glick, Snick, Plick, Whick and Quee.

While the first six names present the same short vowel giving the idea of someone small, brisk and swift (which the Disney characters don’t necessarily embody), Quee‘s longer vowel (presumably the odd man out, i.e., Dopey) conveys sluggishness and possibly childlike cuteness.

Disney’s 1937 version upsets the monotone by attaching instead a quality to each character. That being said, onomatopoeias are still at work with the grating ‘gr-‘ sound in Grumpy or the mellifluous diphthong in Dopey.

Let’s see what strategies other languages have resorted to in a bid to translate the names of the seven dwarfs. French has seemingly- and plainly – emulated English in its attempt to attach a personal trait to each character except for Atchoum, which is onomatopoeic.

Quite interestingly, Italian does not make use of any onomatopoeias, though the sound symbolism is brought forth by the very repetition of the round ‘o‘ sound which may reflect the chubby, roundish appearance of some of the dwarfs. Italian children would probably need to be taught about the meaning of Eolo (Aeolus, the mythological keeper of the winds, i.e., Sneezy) and I suspect the exact meaning of Gongolo (from the verb gongolare) would be a fuzzy notion to most young Italian speakers. And while Treccani features a highly elaborate explanation of the origin of this word, I believe its sound may in fact conjure up the gurgling sound babies make as they are being happily nursed. That’s at least my take on it.

In addition, I think Italian has outdone the other Romance languages by avoiding using ‘timido’ when translating ‘Bashful’. Mammolo has a softer sound to it with the three bilabials and the round vowels reflect that, too. While most Italian-speaking children will instantly think of ‘mamma’ or ‘mama’s boy’, the name actually refers to ‘viola mammola’ (shrinking violet).

Unlike English or Italian, neither Spanish nor Portuguese (with the odd Dengoso in its Brazilian variant, which is closer in meaning to ‘coy’ or even ‘squeamish’ than ‘bashful’) seem to have bothered to maintain a certain assonance in choosing the names for the dwarfs.

By contrast, I quite like the way Swedish and Dutch have been more resourceful, coming up with repeated patterns and diminutives. In Dutch, there are four names ending in -el and two in -je/ie

• Bloosje: Bashful (‘Blushy’)
• Doc: Doc
• Dommel: Sleepy
• Giechel: Happy
• Grumpie: Grumpy
• Niezel: Sneezy
• Stoetel: Dopey

Swedish has rhyming (and fanciful) names (but for Prosit): Butter, Trötter , Prosit, Glader, Blyger, Toker and Kloker, whereas Danish, for instance, has Brille, Søvnig, Flovmand, Prosit, Gnavpot, Lystig, og Dumpe. By retrieving a less commonly used suffix, Swedish has thus succeeded in providing plenty of room for word play and rhymes.

Phonetic symbolism is a potent tool for writers and should not be overlooked by translators since sounds convey symbolic ideas beyond the meaning of the words they generate. Sounds learned and mimicked at a very young age can stir deeply entrenched emotions within us, yet we can also take a liking to foreign sounds and decide which sounds, words or names are more or less appealing to us. So, while Gongolo or Bashful hit close to home and Happy or Feliz sound kind of flattish to me, I’m instinctively taken by the Dutch Bloosje, but remain tone-deaf to the French Simplet.

As a final experiment, you may want to try and come up with two names for these two sets of pictures. You might be in for a nice surprise.