Contrastive topics and practicals: Introduction

The next four chapters deal with topics from the `contrastive linguistics' of Italian and English. Each chapter is self-contained, and can be used as the basis of a practical at whatever stage of the course seems most useful. There are two aims in these chapters. The first is to focus attention on some of the structural differences between Italian and English which most commonly offer obstacles to literal translation. The second is to increase awareness of the range of options open to translators confronted with these constructions.

There are very many such systematic discrepancies between Italian and English usage. Many have already been encountered in practicals, usually where grammatical transposition or compensation has been necessary. The choice of just four contrastive topics for special attention is therefore rather arbitrary. We have chosen four of the most common sources of translation difficulties, and illustrated each with a variety of exercises. Chapter 16 focuses on nominalization Ðthat is, expressions which consist of a noun or have a noun as their nucleus and which, in either the same language or another one, could be replaced by a different part of speech. On a related topic, Chapter 17 deals with some of the more problematic types of determinerÐarticles, demonstratives, possessives, relatives and quantifiers. Chapter 18 deals with problems posed by differences between Italian and English in respect of adverbial expressions. Finally, in Chapter 19, we look at some of the biggest differences between how the two languages express condition and future in the past.

The contrastive exercises differ in two ways from the other practicals. First, students will often be translating individual sentences taken out of context. This is so that attention can be focused on the contrastive problems themselvesÐ problems which, in textual context, can be masked or blurred by considerations of style or genre. Obviously, we are not suggesting that context is after all not as important as we have insisted. On the contrary, where context and register are significant factors, attention is drawn to this fact. However, the aim in these chapters is to help the student develop a comprehensive contrastive awareness of available options in translation. The availability of potential options can only be properly assessed by taking sentences out of context.

Second, in the contrastive chapters the direction of translation is sometimes reversed, to translating from English into Italian. This is in order to bring into the

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open certain possibilities in English which it is easy to overlook when translating from Italian. For some Italian sentences, it is possible to translate into English without significant grammatical transposition, but at the cost of significant translation loss in terms of idiomaticity or register. Many of the English STs in the contrastive chapters contain constructions which cannot pass into Italian without grammatical transposition. These are instances of precisely those idiomatic English constructions which it is easiest to overlook when translating an Italian ST containing constructions which can be replicated in English. Our hope is that, having stumbled over these constructions as obstacles in translation into Italian, students will remain aware of their existence as options in translating from Italian.

16

Contrastive topic and practical: Nominalization

This chapter constitutes the material for all or part of a practical. It focuses on translation issues raised by nominal expressions. A nominal expression either consists of a noun or has a noun as its nucleus. Here are some examples, each with an alternative avoiding use of a noun:

We shall use the term nominalization to denote the use of a nominal expression which, in the same language or another, could be replaced by an expression not containing a noun. Italian often uses nominal expressions where English would not. An English TT that matches an Italian ST noun for noun tends to read unidiomatically, having a static and abstract quality at odds with the Englishspeaker's habitual way of expressing the world. Whether such exoticism is or is not desirable depends, of course, on the purpose of the TT. Our aim here is simply to show that nominalization can have implications for idiomaticity, register and genre.

We can start the discussion with a sentence from the pharmacological text in Chapter 12 (p. 130):

La coltura di questo parassita, di recente introduzione, si presta allo studio di nuovi farmaci e per il confronto con quelli esistenti.

The expressions in italics are examples of nominalization. Here is a `technical' TT, observing TL conventions for scientific and technical texts:

Recently introduced methods for the culture of this parasite are useful in the study of new medicines and in their comparison with existing ones.

The nominalizations give the technical TT similar compactness and impersonality to the ST. These are absent from this more conversational version:

THINKING ITALIAN TRANSLATION 155

Scientists have recently introduced methods for growing this parasite that are useful if you want to study new medicines and compare them with ones that already exist.

In this TT, turning `introduzione' into an active verb has required adding an agent, `scientist'. This personalization could be avoided with a passive, although the result is awkward to read:

Methods for growing this parasite that are useful if you want to study new medicines and compare them with ones that already exist have recently been introduced.

The TT can also be made slightly less conversational by avoiding `you'. Here are permutations of a few possibilities, which it is useful to compare in class discussion:

¼if one wants to study new medicines¼

¼for those who want/need to study new medicines¼

¼for specialists/researchers/anyone/someone studying new medicines¼

Despite the differences in register and message content, these variants do all have one thing in common: all are particularizations, in that they add details that are, at most, implicit in the STÐperson, time, and sometimes modality (`want to', `need to'). In fact, transposing a nominal expression into a verbal one almost inevitably results in either particularizing translation or partially overlapping translation with a strongly particularizing bias. This is often a significant consideration in translation. The issue can generally be avoided if the ST nominalization is copied in the TT, as in the `technical' TT above, in rendering `coltura' as `culture', `studio' as `study' and `confronto' as `comparison'. But if a decision is taken not to render noun with noun, particularization is often inevitable. For instance, `di recente introduzione' gives no indication of who introduced the new methods. Rendering it with a verb forces the translator to narrow the focus from the general abstraction `introduction' to a particular act performed by a particular someone. At this point, an element of surmise comes in: was it one person or more? were they researchers or technicians? pharmacologists? biochemists? bacteriologists? Sometimes, the context gives the answer; sometimes the translator will know, or be able to find out, from other sources. Often, the particularization will not matter; but particularization there will usually be.

This particularization is not confined to the subject of the verb. Supposing the verb of our ST sentence were in a different tense: `si prestava/sarebbe prestata', etc. The verb `introduce' would then have to be in the appropriate TL tense: `had introduced/have or had introduced', etc.

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In comparing the pairs of TTs, most English-speakers will feel that there is a difference in register between the alternatives. But there may also be another difference. In the second example, certainly, the adverb `agitatedly' is arguably more dynamic and concrete than `in agitation', in so far as it invites the reader to picture her behaving in an agitated wayÐlooking distraught, fidgeting, breathing unevenly, etc. It is like an excerpt from a film. In contrast, the version with a noun expresses more of a detached discernment and definition of what is involved: `agitation' is an abstraction, more an inference from how she was behaving than a description of it. The distinction is a fine one, and some people will be more sensitive to it than others. Nevertheless, a whole TT can be affected by how the translator renders the many such expressions as:

Nor must it be forgotten that the choice is often not purely one of register, but has semantic implications as well. This is clear in the last example, where in many contexts there will be a significant difference between the two TL possibilities.

An expanded form of this structure, and just as common, is preposition+noun +adjective. Here again, English often has a choice between this and a structure that is usually denied to Italian, this time adverb+adjective:

Here again, there is more than just a difference in register between the alternative TTs. Take the second example, from a text on a piano sonata. Leaving aside the question of what `invenzione' means, `of painful sweetness' is not just more donnish, it is also more abstract and static. As in the `agitation' example, the sweetness is a quality that has been intellectually inferred from the physical experience of hearing the musicÐthe listener has analysed the experience, discerned sweetness in it, and then discerned pain in the sweetness. In `painfully sweet', the sweetness is described as actively hurting the listener. Whereas the adverb expresses an immediacy of sensation, the nominalization implies that one has stood back from one's reactions, assessed them and allotted them to a category. (This may be why nominal expressions so often strike Englishspeakers as academic or even pedantic.)

In translating preposition+noun+adjective, there are more registers open to the English-speaker than to the Italian-speaker: it is unlikely that the Italian author

THINKING ITALIAN TRANSLATION 161

would have written `un'invenzione melodica dolorosamente dolce'! The main deciding factors in choosing the TL register will be genre and context. And, as the musical example shows, translators should always remember that even elementary syntax is a relevant contextual factor: `invention of painful sweetness' is in fact ambiguous, but `painfully sweet invention' would not be.

Two more examples of this same structure show another possibility open to the translator, that of using one adverb to qualify another, in juxtaposition:

Whereas English readily juxtaposes adverbs ending in -ly, Italian rarely if ever does it with adverbs in -mente. In the second example, there is again a choice between keeping the ST nominalization and using the two adverbs; and again, the deciding factor is probably that of genre: `He plays with amazing delicacy' would be completely unexceptionable in a critical review or a lecture.

There are two lessons for translators in these adverbial examples. First, the grammatical transpositions are likely to affect register. In English, nounbased adverbial phrases can sound formal or pretentious. But because the structures do exist in English, it is easy to produce TT expressions calqued on ST expressions of this type. The result is often a TT that is more formal or pompous than the ST, where these structures are unexceptional, stylistically unmarked, and do not strike SL readers as formal. Second, it seems almost inevitable that these transpositions will entail partially overlapping translation, with explicit things being left to inference and implicit things being made explicit. A decision has to be made in each case as to whether the translation loss entailed needs to be compensated for.

Sometimes, an Italian nominal structure lends itself to more than one possible grammatical transposition. Here is an example from Practical 7, followed by the published TT and then by an alternative:

Le due classi, dei pessimisti e degli ottimisti, non sono peraltro così ben distinte: non già perché gli agnostici siano molti, ma perché i più, senza memoria né coerenza, oscillano fra le due posizioni-limite, a seconda dell'interlocutore e del momento.

The two classes of pessimists and optimists are not so clearly defined, however, not because there are many agnostics, but because the majority, without memory or coherence, drift between the two extremes, according to the moment and the mood of the person they happen to meet.

And yet the two types, the pessimists and the optimists, are not so very different: not so much because a lot of us are agnostic about it, but rather because, forgetfully and inconsistently, most swing between the two extremes, depending on whom they are talking to and when.