SALESIAN
ITALIAN TO GLOBAL ENGLISH
(
Whether or not there is such a thing as global English is debatable, but the
intention here is to indicate what would be issues for the whole
English-speaking world, which after all is extensive and includes more than
mother-tongue speakers).
1. Orthographic issues (writing):
a)
Italian uses a particular kind of virgolette for indicating
spoken language, thus: <<Egli…>>.
English never uses these, only “He…”.
b)
Italian indicates that a passage continues, but is not being included by
[…]. English employs, instead, just
three dots … without the parentheses.
c)
Titles in Italian, if extending beyond a single word, normally
capitalize only the first word. English
capitalizes the noun phrases (and verbs, if any). Expect Atti
d)
Italian uses rather less capitalization of words generally, than does
English. It is acceptable to have
lower-case for salesiano in Italian, but English prefers Salesian.
2. Morphological issues (the smallest meaningful
units):
a)
Word formation.
i)The process that English has demonstrated over a
long period of time when it creates a compound noun, tends to be as
follows: (1) the two words are placed side by side but separate, as in wheel
barrow. (2) The next stage is a hyphen, wheel-barrow. The final stage is a single unit, wheelbarrow. One just has to have a sense of the effect
that each creates. The safest thing to
do, then, is step 1. To adopt step 3,
especially if knowingly coining a new term, is mistaken. I offer an example. The Italian incaricato can be glossed
by a single word, delegate. But
of course delegate is sometimes used in a slightly different sense in a
Salesian context, so a translator may not wish to use that. Incaricato then suggests a phrase with
at least two elements: in charge, or three elements, person in charge. These elements are best left separate. That way they are more acceptable and resist
use as a noun. To go to step 2 and coin in-charge
now suggests it is a noun. No such noun
exists in English. To attempt step 3
with Incharge is really going too far!
Another example calling on the same word formation issue is amorevolezza. Salesians have been attempting to translate
this adequately into English for 120 years or thereabouts. Kindness does not suffice. That might be dolcezza, bontà, but not
amorevolezza. Step 1, then is to
use two words as a loose compound: loving kindness. Step 2 is to hyphenate these: loving-kindness,
and step 3 is to write them together as lovingkindness. I believe that we have been using the two
elements to gloss amorevolezza for 20 years or more, long enough to
proceed to at least step 2. Step 3 would
not give offence (linguistically) either.
Italian too has compounds, but Salesian readers are
more likely to note compound adjectives (and be puzzled as to how to handle
them). educativo-pastorale is one
such, storico-politico another, economico-finanziario a
third. We can even expect a compound of
three or four elements (the example is a noun compound: educatori-padri-amici-fratelli). English only occasionally compounds
adjectives (socio-political…). We
would often separate them with a comma: historical, political reasons,
or with or, and, or even and/or if called for.
ii) Both Italian and English have what we call productive
affixes. This means that we can form
many words with them. An example of a
productive affix in Italian is –ità, a noun-forming affix. If there is a term significativo, then
I can easily have significatività.
Now we know that –ità is often –ity in English, however I
cannot in this instance create significativity. It is nonsense in English. English resists forming nouns from adjectives
– the process in English is more likely to allow one to form an adjective from
a noun. If I have contemplation,
then I can expect to have a contemplative person, and I may even use contemplative
as a noun and speak of a contemplative.
English on the other hand regards –er as a
productive affix. If I have the word vacation, then I may
create vacationer to suggest someone who does that.
3.
Lexical issues (choice of words):
There
are a number of these:
a)
Transliteration/false friends or faux amis – by which I mean that we
take an Italian word and use the closest English-looking word to translate it
with. I stress ‘English-looking’ because
it may look like English but it may not in fact be English. The first example that comes to mind is economo. Using the ‘person who does something’ affix –er,
I create economer. The problem is
that Salesians are the first to do this with this word. It sounds ok but nobody else has yet done
it. We are on our own!
b)
The Latinate form of Italian. For
Italian this is no problem. For good,
precise, crisp English it is a problem.
It would be helpful to spend time with Salesian keywords and a thesaurus
and dictionary, and provide yourself with (or let Lexisdb do it for you!) a
list of glosses and synonyms for the ‘heaviest’ words, i.e. the most Latinate
forms. A possible example is consistenza
qualitativa e quantitativa. Each
word here has a minimum of four syllables.
There is little we can do about consistency – I cannot as yet
think of another anglo-saxon version which captures what we want to say. But instead of a noun with two adjectives, we
could try 3 nouns, as in consistency in number and quantity. This is sharper overall. Perhaps there are two other issues to
consider, though: (1) memorability.
Which phrase is more memorable? Quantitative
and qualitative consistency, or Consistency in number and quality?
(2) The use of two adjectives places the emphasis on the noun, consistency,
especially in a phrase in English where first position is the place for
emphasis, more so than in Italian. The
use of three nouns may weaken emphasis or even place undue emphasis on one of
the three – could a confrere take offence by thinking that the community is
consistent in number, but not in quality (because he is the weak element)? It might help to ‘hide’ quality in the
center of the phrase.
c)
Words with no single English equivalent:
mondializzazione is an example.
While it is true that the word is untranslatable, the concept is always
translatable, sometimes in a whole sentence.
Salesian usage appears not to distinguish between mondializzazione and
globalizzazione, whereas some authors do make a distinction, suggesting
that an example of the former is the UN (nation-states needing to work together
across the world) while an example of the latter is the internet (which has no
control and is not linked with any nation-state).
4. Syntax issues (phrase and sentence level).
Again
any number of issues here. I have
selected some of the most noticeable ones in our Salesian setting (which is
often a translation setting, where we want to express an idea that was first in
Italian).
a)
English genitive. All English
language-learners know of this phenomenon (the ‘s form of possession: John’s
coat instead of the coat of John).
Yet it is surprising how insidious is the effect of the normal Italian
form of genitive on us in the translation setting. In fact the Italian form, x di y,
doesn’t suggest only the English ‘s form. The phrase, place of retreat would
sound funny as retreat’s place!
But retreat place (in other words a compound where retreat
now has an adjectival function) would work.
Not all x di y phrases are the kind of genitive that can be
treated differently in English: purification of feelings has to be left
as is. The saving work of Jesus
Christ may be awkward as Jesus Christ’s saving work, because of the s-s
in the middle. But the rule of thumb is
to always translate the obvious type of x di y as y’s x.
b)
Phrase (and word) order. Most are
aware of the slight differences in word order between the two languages, but
less aware of the phrase order. Or
perhaps I should put this another way, because it may also come down to word
order. English has a more fixed and
rigid order than Italian. That’s the
issue, really. We want our subjects up
front (usually) with the verb immediately next, then adverbs. Italian may move the subject around because
it is contained in the verb. It also
seems to me that final position can be a stressed position for Italian more
than it is for English. Fra i
documenti disponibili, merita un cenno a parte la Positio (taken from
Fedrigotti on Cimatti). English would
prefer The Positio (s) warrants (v) special note amongst the
available documents (O).
It
is always good to keep in mind ‘real English’.
This term separates what people think form what people do. We can know the latter from a Concordance
program which builds up a corpus of English as it is used. The largest corpus in English is the Bank of
English with 300 million words! (I have a corpus of Salesian Italian with one
million words).
Real
English may prefer word order that people would tell you is wrong. An example is the so-called split infinitive,
where the infinitive form with to is interrupted by another word:
...the international community,
unwilling to directly confront the Bosnian Serbs.
We're going to now simply join
with them in their struggle.
These are both examples of real English: really,
just, actually, not, further, fully, even, finally, completely, ever are
the adverbs most likely to ‘split’ an infinitive.
5. Discourse issues – the effect of the whole on
the listener, reader.
Each
of the items already dealt with has its effect on the overall discourse; the
more of them that appear in a single item, the more foreign the English will
sound (if the Italian features are constantly intruding).
a) Sentence length. The KISS principle in English versus the KILC
in Italian (keep it simple stupid, versus keep it long and complex – or
complete). As a rule of thumb, any
English sentence over 20 words is moving towards KILC. The example which most demonstrates this
issue could be as follows:
ITALIAN
(Motto)
educatori-padri-amici-fratelli
che si assumano le scontro proprie responsibilità, offrano ai giovani, senza
ammiccamenti e permissività complici, certezze luminose polarizzanti le loro
fresche energie, siano capaci di interpretare i bisogni giovanili difficilmente
esprimibile da arte di chi li vive sulla
propria pelle, li accompagnino nella non facile ricerca delle risposte alle
domande fondamentali nella vita, non si ritengano possessori e interpreti unici
del sistema, riducano la propria funzione predominante – quella concepita da
Don Bosco in ambienti di collegio oggi immaginabili – per educarsi mentre
educano, sia sul facile terreno del confronto che su quello infido, ma non meno
efficace, dell’eventuale.
Even
if we count the first item as one compound word we have 99 words in this
sentence! In terms of English it is
extreme and untranslatable.
There
are some five verbs (and two come after a negative) with the same subject (the
compound). English requires that the
subject of a verb be constantly referred to either by use of the actual word,
or a pronoun. The idea in parenthesis –
quella concepita…- would deserve a sentence on its own. I could suggest a translation with five
sentences over 3 paragraphs, but even that would break the ‘20’ rule! It would begin Educators of all kinds, be
they parents, teachers, relatives or friends, wanting to shoulder their often
conflicting responsibilities, must provide clear and unambiguous guidelines for
young people. This to adequately direct
their strong youthful energy…
b)
on the basis of KISS/KILC, English regards as bad style what Italian regards as
the need for completeness. English calls
it tautology.
He
declined to accept our offer is a tautology in English, because if he declined he
already did not accept: He declined
our offer. The addition of adverbs,
adverbial phrases, adjectives to a passage is regarded as tautological style in
English if overdone. In Italian it is a
form of essential expressiveness.
c)
Nominalisation is a discourse issue because it affects the
interpretation of a passage. If I speak
of decision and solutions I may say something like The decision was taken and a
solution found. We may give a more
dynamic and person-responsible feel by saying He decided to…and is managing
the situation.
_____________________
I am endeavouring, through Lexisdb, to tackle
many of these issues for Salesian Italian into English, but also try to include
regional differences, rather than staying with the vague term Global
English. Here are just some of the
Lexisdb issues dealt with:
POI
– before we put it into an English initialism, we need to know the precise term
in Italian. We thought we did in GC25
but the most recent ACTS (an authoritative record) speaks of Progetto Operativo
Ispettoriale instead of Orgnaico.
NAMES
OF REGIONS: these are largely unclear at Province level in English if the
Province Yearbooks are a guide to go by.
TERMS
FROM OTHER LANGUAGES: English has
already produced two (DBI and DBN).
Swahili has given us Harambèe. What of Spanish, French….?
‘HEAVY’
FORMS: one of these is dealt with above.
WORDS
WITH OTHER ENGLISH MEANINGS: ‘casa’ is one.
NEOLOGISMS
that only Salesians have invented in English:
Procure, Economer to name two.
NEOLOGISMS
that are relatively recent even in Italian: animazione, educomunicazione
TERMS
that have widened out in Salesian semantic history: sistema is one. DB widened out ‘onesto cittadino e buon
cristiano’ in his own lifetime.
TERMS
USED LOOSELY at all levels: dicastero…
TERMS
WHOSE HISTORY we can still learn much about: assistance…, the word pia