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.

Eccoci ritrovati con il nostro caro amico Peder Laale, non proprio in forma essendo morto ormai da oltre 600 anni, ma pur sempre fonte di grande ispirazione in materia di proverbi e detti più o meno antichi.

Tra questi, nel suo Gammeldanske Ordsprog ci ha lasciato il detto ‘Kildegangen kande kommer ofte sønderbrudt hjem’ (o più precisamente riportata ‘kildegangen kande kommer ofte brudden hiem’) ovvero ‘L’ anfora torna spesso rotta dalla fonte’, con il significato che spesso l’incuria o un’ azione rischiosa ha un esito negativo.

Dall’anfora si passa poi alla ‘krukke’ ossia ‘brocca’ o ‘vaso’, e qui le cose diventano più interessanti. Ritroviamo infatti lo stesso proverbio di prima nella forma ‘Krukken går så længe til vands at den kommer hankeløs hjem’, letteralmente, ‘la brocca si avvicina tanto all’acqua che torna senza manici’, o traducendolo in italiano con un altro proverbio ‘Tanto va la gatta al lardo che ci lascia lo zampino’.

‘Krukke’ è una parola che ha tra l’altro dato vita alla metafora ‘små krukker har også ører’, ossia ‘i bambini hanno l’orecchio fino’. Stranamente però, in danese il sostantivo ‘krukke’, oltre a significare ‘brocca’ o ‘vaso’ , indica anche una persona affettata e poco naturale, specie come aggettivo ‘krukket’, o nelle accezioni di ‘skabekrukke’, un posatore o commediante o, se riferito a un bambino, smorfiosetto.

Interessante notare dunque l’uso danese di ‘krukke’ per creare sostantivi che denotano qualcosa di posticcio, come appunto ‘skabbekrukke’. Come mai quindi i cocci vengono traslati per generare simili metafore? Viene in mente l’holberghiano Den politiske kandestøber, che letteralmente significa ‘Lo stagnino politicante’, ovvero un politicante da tavolino, una persona che si spaccia per qualcosa che non è. ‘Kandestøber’ contiene il termine ‘kande’ (caraffa) e ‘støbe’ (fondere). Per associazione verrebbe da pensare che ci sia una traccia lasciata da Holberg nella psiche danese, ma in realtà l’espressione ‘krukke’ sembra derivare dal carattere intrinseco di un vaso o di una brocca, ossia grande di forma e spesso adorna, ma completamente vuota al suo interno.

As I was reading (and watching) the news earlier this morning, I chanced upon a clip concerning the current deputy PM of Italy on an official visit to DC. Seemingly unsure as to where he and his entourage were headed, the deputy PM blurted out the typical Italian expression Non facciamoci riconoscere.

This is an interesting expression both because it opens a window on the Italian psyche and, perhaps partly because of this, it does not lend itself to a direct translation in English.

The underlying implication in Non facciamoci riconoscere belies the idea that the average Italian is not exactly a stickler for propriety and rules and that the outside world is likely aware of this fact. Admonishing fellow Italians not to stand out in the crowd for their bad behavior is therefore seen as a collegial effort to rein in the typically Italian zest for ‘creativity’ in doing things the ‘Italian’ way.

As is often the case with my approach to idiomatic usage across languages, I have asked friends and colleagues to see if they could come up with an equivalent expression in their own languages. Most hesitated at first (which tends to be a sign that the usage is fairly culture-specific) before providing their answers. My Swedish-speaking friend, for instance, immediately sensed the Italianness of this expression, but offered skämma ut sig, which incorporates the idea of ‘shame’ and ‘disgrace’ as in Vi får inte skämma ut oss, which could be rendered in English as We must not disgrace ourselves. A bit too formal, methinks, for our Non facciamoci riconoscere. The English version, that is.

Interestingly, Russian has веди себя культурно literally meaning ‘behave culturally’, which is often used as a command to behave politely or decently. Again, semantically related, but not quite the same.

Which leaves us to an array of possible translations, including phrasal verbs (which come in handy at times when translating idiomatic phrases). The Brits have the wonderful show someone up, in the sense of ‘far fare una brutta figura’ , which incidentally lacks the restrictive connotation Americans have bestowed on this useful phrasal verb, i.e., to make someone feel embarrassed by upstaging them or doing something better than them.

Similarly, in the UK and Australia, and possibly in other English-speaking countries as well, the expression let the side down, a sports-related idiom, includes the idea of inclusiveness, thus making it a good candidate. Other sports idioms – quite abundant in US English – all seem to evoke embarrassment, although it’s the cause of the embarrassment that differs. Goal-oriented cultures like the US often seems to stress the idea of failing to achieve a goal or carry out a task (drop the ball; screw up) or being a loser (last man out), rather than focusing on the very Italian idea of ‘bella figura’ or lack thereof.

Of course the idea of losing face is a universal concept that can be found in many other languages, but the Italian non farsi riconoscere still betrays the sense that a certain reputation precedes Italians when they travel abroad. So don’t let the side down, you guys!

Aunque parecidos, el italiano y el castellano son dos idiomas extremamente distintos. Por supuesto los italianos pueden entender el sentido general de un mensaje en castellano y creo que los hispanohablantes también tienen un relativo fácil acceso al italiano. Sobre todo cuando el registro linguistico es formal.

Muchos conocen las discrepancias lexicales entre los dos idiomas y los falsos amigos que siempre están al acecho. Sin embargo, soy de la opinión de que los modismos son el ambito que, más que nada, puede crear dificultades verdaderas en la comprensión intercultural.

Es suficiente hojear un diccionario de modismos para enterarse de la variedad de expresiones utilizadas en España y Latinoamérica que no existen en italiano. Vamos a ver algunos ejemplos para ilustrar lo que quiero demostrar.

Pelar la pava, meter la cuchara, ponerse hecho un basilisco, no todo el monte es orégano, éramos pocos y parió la abuela, estar como unas castañuelas , me cae gordo.

Incluso cuando una persona de habla italiana consigue entender el significado de cada palabra quedaría desconcertada de todos modos. Por ejemplo, un italiano comprende perfectamente que pelar la pava se refiere a ‘pelare una pavona’ o otro pájaro, en este caso una ‘tacchina’. Pero qué quiere decir esto en italiano? Lo mismo se pasa con ‘non tutto il monte è origano’, quizá en italiano traducido por ‘non tutto è rosa e fiori’.

Claro. Italia y España también comparten una muchedumbre de metáforas y imágenes, pero los peligros de los falsos amigos y de la diferente cultura que ha generado los modismos anteriormente mencionados necesitan un estudio de todo menos superficial.

Una palabrita tan utilizada en ambos lados del Mediterráneo como católico podría causar asombro en Italia si pronunciada en una frase como ‘Hoy no estoy muy católico’. Hasta llegar a ser prohibida en la Ciudad del Vaticano supongo.