Dear All,

The English expression “when the boot is on the other foot” refers to a situation that is now the opposite to what it was before (often as a result of power reversal), but a kinder idiom urges us to place ourselves  “in someone else’s shoes”. The new Ratio Fundamentalis for the Salesian Congregation, to be discussed and finally approved in the upcoming summer session of the General Council and formally promulgated subsequent to that approval, reminds me of both expressions. Let me explain.

Perhaps for the first time in the history of the Congregation, a major document has been initially and substantially written in a language other than Italian. That is not to say that Salesians and Salesian Family members from other languages and cultures worldwide have not had major import into its contents in their own language because they have. Nevertheless, writing a major document in its initial draft in English is quite clearly a case of the “boot being on the other foot” for the Salesian Congregation. 

The reality today, according to statistics produced by Bro. Marco Bay, is that English is spoken, especially in formation settings, by up to 50% of the Congregation, even if it is not the mother tongue of many of that 50%. And the other 50% do not all speak Italian. So to have a major document written in English (not translated into it) is indeed a novelty.

But this has consequences, and so at a certain point, during debate at General Council level on the Ratio, which has reached at least 30 progressive drafts along the way, non-mother tongue English speakers had certain difficulties with it: I am not referring to its ‘substance’ per se, but to how they felt about what they were reading. Of course they were reading an early draft, and even if the document might be written in English, the ‘editio typica’ for ultimate approval needs to be (and is now) in Italian. So it is at this point, especially for us translators, that we need to place ourselves in the others’ shoes. 

Just through sheer experience over many years of dealing with the two languages, English and Italian, I will place myself in the shoes of a reader for whom English is not the mother tongue, even though that reader may be quite capable of reading and understanding English. I will try to name what such a reader might have been thinking (although obviously I wasn’t there, but was told about it), and this ‘naming’ is something we as translators need to do with any language pair we happen to be dealing with, because understanding reporting style, authorial stance, subjectivity/objectivity, the resources a language offers for all these, and the fact that different languages have different kinds of resources... have to be part of the translator’s toolkit.

The first reaction might have been a purely visual one, before really reading any of the words at all. The reader would have noted:

  • a lack of colons, even of semicolons which Italian makes a lot of use of, where the English writer would use a full stop instead,
  • no caporali («...»), 
  • and possibly would have been horrified by some rather short sentences, so
  • the punctuation overall would have appeared far too standardised and restrictive (too many full stops!). Italian, but not only that language, is much freer in this regard and happy to cobble together three, four or more sentences just with a semicolon or two, a dash here and there, even just a comma at times. Full stops are for the end of paragraphs!

Once the reader began to read the contents, the first reaction above would now have been multiplied by other factors. Let’s begin with verbs:

  • Verbs that report something, not that too many of these could be expected in a non-narrative text like a Ratio, but this new Ratio has set out to be rather more narrative than ‘academic’ in its style. So yes, reporting verbs there will be. There have been many studies on this which lead to the same conclusion: when they see an English text repeating a generic kind of verb like ‘said’ or ‘tell’, a good number of European language translators (not just the Romance ones, but we can include Czech, Hungarian...), will translate it with more specific reporting verbs, never repeating the same one. Just look at any Italian ANS news item for proof of this: you will hardly ever find ‘dice’ (in its various moods and tenses) but in a single news item you might find some or all of ‘ripete’, ‘aggiunge’, ‘esclama’, ‘esprime’, ‘pronuncia’, ‘manifesta’,‘espone’, ‘racconta’, ‘narra’, ‘afferma’, ‘sostiene’, ‘riporta’... 
    • The lack of an English equivalent of these verbs could imply a lack of stylistic naturalness in the text. 
    • But, and I think this is important, it might also suggest poverty of content (even though this is not the case) because each of those verbs would have added extra information, suggesting an author behind it with a viewpoint!
  • Mood problems! The reader we are talking about would see a lack of ‘mood’ (subjunctive, conditional). English has almost lost the subjunctive except in some formal cases and people tend not to recognise it (‘God save the king’ is subjunctive not imperative!). Italian uses the congiuntivo frequently to express wish, hope, possibility... And while there might be the occasional ‘would’, signalling the conditional (often called a mood, though technically not so) in English, our reader would immediately feel the lack of this very expressive mood in Italian, Spanish, French... It is a resource they make constant use of and is quite recognisable... to sound polite and occasionally ‘dreamy’, to add a layer of speculation.
    • So imagine the effect on a Spanish or Italian speaker reading an English text that makes little use of subjunctive and conditional: expression feels too abrupt, less nuanced...

We can now move on to nouns, and noun phrases. You see, a text in English will have lots of verbs. We like saying things in verbs and in the Subject-Verb-Object order by preference. Some other languages prefer to say things with nouns and noun-like expressions masquerading as verbs. It is called ‘nominalisation’. Italian is one of those languages.

  • Nominalisation is one of the main differences between Italian and English, so while the English language consultant was busy removing this feature where possible as the text was being compiled (e.g. instead of saying ‘x was the initiator of ’ [a nominalisation] he preferred ‘x initiated‘) the non-English reader was subtly feeling the absence of nominalisations (which for him gives a text more solidity)!
    • The effect of this absence could suggest to such a reader that the text is less formal, maybe too personal and too ‘thin’ overall.
  • Non-repetition: In the world I come from, the Rector Major is the Rector Major every time, though of course I will make due reference to him as the cardinal he now is. And for me a Salesian is a Salesian. But if I place myself in the shoes of the other, the Rector Major will also be the X (I would say 10th) Successor of Don Bosco, the Major Superior of the Congregation, the Titular Archbishop of Urtona, and all within a sentence or two, though recently I found all of these in a single sentence. The Salesian will be a son of Don Bosco, or a ‘religious’.
    • In other words, if our reader found the name of a person or place repeated several times in a paragraph or section, and not creatively varied somehow, it would just add to what he already felt with repeated verbs like ‘said’ or ‘tell’: a lack of natural and creative style.

There is more, but too much for an email. Let me step back into the ‘boot on the other foot’ idiom, because just imagine the challenge now when this key text needed to be translated from English into Italian and then later will be translated into, Spanish, French, Portuguese..., almost certainly from the ‘editio typica’ (but the English will remain English. It will not be back translated!!) and all those factors above will need to be ‘counteracted’ for the text to work properly in those languages. Will that begin to change the meaning? The age-old question of translation, really, when you think about it! And no, I think ‘meaning’ will be safe, because I believe in what good Salesian translators in those languages can and will do and I believe in the Councillor responsible for this particular text who can wear both boots and shoes equally well! He will keep a very close eye on what is happening in that regard.

The Best Practice is a little insight into this kind of process. And by the way, thanks to those who pointed out to me that the Best Practices suddenly jumped from 14 to 16! So to resolve that problem, I am calling this one 15, but next week’s will be 17 and then we are back on track! Sorry about that.

Some of you will be very keen to get your hands on the new Ratio for translation into your local language. You could let me know of your interest in this, and when it becomes possible I will ensure you get the text in good time. It runs to about 340 A4 pages (that also includes appendices of which there are many).

---------------

best_practice_15-linguistic-check.docx

 

  • ?
    vaclav 2024.05.25 18:11
    Good to keep connected many Salesian Family translators with their relevant doubts, experiences, wisdom and needs! KEEP ON!

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