Red Pencil: Translating Historical Fiction
by Nico Lorenzutti
The Black Corsair by Emilio Salgari
Technological innovations give us greater access to historical novels written in an author’s native tongue. Translating those works into English, however, isn’t easy. A recent review of Oliver Pötzsch’s The Dark Monk, translated from the original German by Lee Chadeayne, demonstrates this: “The major fault. . . is the prose – … a book that ‘burns like the dickens,’ . . . and a woman who’s taunted as ‘Madame Smarty Pants.’ These are just a few examples of the rampant anachronism which, along with repetitive phrasing, plagues the novel and constantly pulls the reader out of period.”1 Since Nico Lorenzutti is adept at translating such novels, Cindy Vallar asked him to discuss the process in this issue’s Red Pencil.
Emilio Salgari (1862-1911) was an Italian adventure writer whose works have been enjoyed by readers for more than a century. During his lifetime, he wrote over 80 novels, 200 short stories, and countless articles. His works have been translated into nine languages and several have been adapted into comic books, TV miniseries, and feature films. He was knighted for his contribution to literature in 1898. Until the late 1950s, he was Italy’s bestselling author, and was especially popular in Spain and Latin America. Four of his novels were included in Julia Eccleshare’s 1001 Children’s Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up. To mark the 150th anniversary of his birth, the Italian government honored him with a commemorative postage stamp.
Like Jules Verne, his contemporary, Salgari’s novels are set in exotic locales and provide readers with detailed descriptions of the flora, fauna, and customs. His adventures include quests for lost treasures, stories of life at sea, and tales from the Wild West, Africa, India, and the Far East. He drew his heroes and heroines from a variety of cultures; and somewhat uniquely among adventure writers of his time, his women are strong and independent: they captained ships, fought in revolutions, and donned armour as warriors in the Crusades. He is most remembered, however, for his pirate tales.
Many modern writers from Italy, Spain, and Latin America first fell in love with stories and storytelling by reading Salgari’s adventures.
Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Pablo Neruda, Isabel Allende, Umberto Eco, and Arturo Perez Reverte read Salgari’s novels in their youth. Carlos Fuentes said that without Emilio Salgari, “there would be no Italian, French, Spanish, or Latin American Literature.”2
Reading Salgari’s adventures is a family tradition. My father and uncle read them during their childhoods, as did my cousins. My parents immigrated to Canada in the 1960s, but we visited our relatives in Italy every four years or so. We spoke Italian at home, and my grandmother often sent me books. When I was ten, I received Salgari’s novels that featured Sandokan, a Bornean pirate, and the Black Corsair, an Italian nobleman turned pirate. I was hooked immediately and reread them several times in my youth.
Since Salgari’s most popular works were long overdue for an English translation, I decided to translate them. I have no formal training in translation; my own process evolved as I went along. I choose a story and read it from cover to cover, translating it as I progress through the text. The first draft is a literal translation, just an attempt to get Salgari’s tale onto the page in English. Some passages are easy to translate, others require more work. I focus on understanding the story, instead of getting bogged down in finding the right words in a given section; I make a rough translation of the passage, highlight it, and return to it later. This often results in 300 pages with 50-80% highlighted text.
Once the first translation is complete, I begin the editing process. To focus on language, I find it best to edit chapters out of sequence, avoiding the trap of falling into the narrative as I edit. I try to complete an entire chapter before starting another, but if lines of dialogue or a descriptive paragraph give me particular problems, I just move on. To check for rhythm I read dialogue and paragraphs out loud, then the entire chapter once it’s completed. When I finish the translation, I read it again from cover to cover, checking for rhythm and repetitive words, then deliver a hard copy to my editor. She hasn’t read the story in the original Italian, so she has no preconceptions and can focus primarily on language. Once she returns the manuscript, I make the recommended changes then print out a hard copy and read it one last time. I always proofread a hard copy; it’s the best way to catch typos and other mistakes.
When I first started, my translations were literal, almost word for word. Respect for the author, his phrasing, his word choice. For my first translation of Salgari’s pirate classic The Tigers of Mompracem, I even researched 19th-century novels to create a true-to-the-era translation. What I ended up with was a manuscript with stilted prose that was rejected – for good reason – by every publisher I sent it to.
So I started again from scratch and did what I should have done from the beginning: read popular books in the genre and look at how other authors told these types of tales. I also took to heart these words written by Edith Grossman, the translator for Don Quixote and Love in the Time of Cholera:
“A translation can be faithful to tone, intention, and meaning, but it can rarely be faithful to words or syntax of the original language, for those characteristics are not transferable.”3 From this advice I developed two rules:
1. Write as if Salgari were writing his stories in English today.
2. Ideas are (mostly) sacred, words (mostly) are not.
Salgari’s writing is fast-paced, and to maintain that feeling I often have to shorten dialogue or make it less melodramatic, change the structure of a passage, and, what was at first almost sacrilegious to me, occasionally delete entire paragraphs. His early novels were serialized in newspapers, and like many Italian authors of his time, he was paid by the line and often padded his prose with “information dumps” of the places he described. When I consulted German, French, or Spanish translations, I often found these passages deleted or shortened, so I did the same in English.
I also have to think about how storytelling conventions have changed over the last century. One popular device employed by French and Italian authors in the 19th century is to have characters talk to themselves as they walk so the reader can follow their thoughts. Dumas does this often and so does Salgari. Nowadays it may seem odd to visualize a pirate plotting his revenge aloud as he walks through a jungle. To modernize this I often turn these passages into thoughts or prose.
Lastly, I have to meet reader expectations of what characters sound like. Like Robert Louis Stevenson, Salgari created his own pirate language, but expressions like “Mille squali!” (A thousand sharks), or “Corpo d’un barile sfondato” (Body of a broken barrel) have no meaning in English. I replace these with expressions of similar meanings drawn from popular sources, such as the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films or the pirate novels of Rafael Sabatini.
Below is an example of a passage translated from The Black Corsair, considered Salgari’s masterpiece. The story follows the adventures of Emilio di Roccanera, an Italian nobleman who becomes a pirate to avenge the murder of his brothers. His foe: an old Flemish army officer named Van Guld, now the Governor of Maracaibo. To help him in his quest, the Black Corsair enlists the greatest pirates of his time: L’Ollonais, Michael the Basque, and a young Welshman named Henry Morgan.
In this passage, the Black Corsair has returned from Maracaibo where he retrieved his brother’s body from the gallows. As he prepares to bury his brother at sea, he swears an oath that will define his vengeance and change his life forever.
The original Italian
«Uomini del mare!…» gridò, «uditemi!… Io giuro su Dio, su queste onde che ci sono fedeli compagne e sulla mia anima, che io non avrò bene sulla terra, finché non avrò vendicato i fratelli miei, spenti da Wan Guld. Che le folgori incendino la mia nave; che le onde m’inghiottano assieme a voi; che i due Corsari che dormono sotto queste acque, negli abissi del Gran Golfo, mi maledicano; che la mia anima sia dannata in eterno, se io non ucciderò Wan Guld e sterminerò tutta la sua famiglia come egli ha distrutto la mia!…Uomini del mare!… Mi avete udito?…»
Literal translation
“Men of the sea!” he shouted, “Hear me! I swear upon God, upon these waters that are our faithful companions, and upon my soul, that I will not have pleasure upon this Earth until I have avenged my brothers, slain by Van Guld. May lightning set fire to my ship, the waves swallow us all, the two Corsairs now sleeping in the depths of the great Gulf curse me, may my soul be damned for all eternity, if I do not kill Van Guld and destroy his family as he has destroyed mine!… Men of the sea!… Have you heard me?”
My translation
“Brethren of the Coast!” he shouted, “Heed me! The last of my brothers lies there before you, killed by Governor Van Guld. The wretch has destroyed my family, and I swear upon God and upon my soul that I will not rest until I have killed him and all those that bear his name! May this ship be burned to ash, may she disappear beneath the waves, may my soul be damned and my brothers curse me for all eternity if I do not make it so! Brethren of the Coast! Do you bear witness to my vow?”
The Italian passage follows this structure:
1. the Corsair swears to avenge his brothers;
2. he describes the punishment for failure;
3. he vows to destroy Van Guld and his entire family; and
4. he asks his men to bear witness.
To improve the flow I changed the order so that:
1. the Corsair vows to kill Van Guld and his family to avenge his brothers;
2. he describes the punishment for failure; and
3. he requests his men to bear witness.
I found some language modification to be necessary. To my ear, “Brethren of the Coast” was a better form of address than “men of the sea” for this solemn occasion, the words displaying respect for his men as well as familiarity. “Heed me” is truer to the era than “hear me.” “Burned to ash” is a harsher punishment than “set fire by lightning” and probably reflects what the Corsair meant. “Slain” is more eloquent than “killed,” however, the Corsair’s brother was hanged, so the word does not seem wholly appropriate. I repeated the word killed to emphasize his belief in eye-for-an-eye justice. I also found several words to be superfluous and dropped them. The last line “Do you bear witness to my vow?” captures the essence of what Salgari is saying with “Have you heard me?,” but presents it in a fashion more in keeping with the tone and style of the speech. The preamble – the last of my brothers lies there before you – is my own fabrication. It acknowledges the body and the Corsair’s family, and sets the tone for the speech. He had a third brother killed by Van Guld that the reader is not yet aware of, yet the Corsair’s words acknowledge him without giving anything away.
I try to avoid anachronistic language. Sandokan would never say something like “Bring it” while fighting his enemies in 19th-century Borneo, even though that may be the literal translation. To get a feel for appropriate language for the Sandokan novels I read James Brooke’s diary. For the Black Corsair series, I watched the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies and Errol Flynn’s old swashbucklers and read Alexandre Exquemelin’s The Buccaneers of America, a book Salgari used as one of his main sources.
My greatest difficulty is finding the right word. There’s more to translating than just swapping words from one language to another. I wish it were that easy. Sometimes chapters can take a few hours, sometimes sentences can take days. Walking away from the computer usually helps me the most; I often get inspiration while working in my garden, running on the treadmill, even washing dishes. The old writer’s maxim, always keep a pen and paper at hand, is definitely worth following.
There is more research involved in the translation of these novels than I had previously imagined. Salgari brought the world to his readers, and having never left Italy, he used the best information he could find: the travel and scientific journals of his time. His information is usually correct, but I have had to correct small errors from time to time. The Internet has definitely made it easier to check facts, and with Project Gutenberg and Google Books, I often find his original sources online.
For more information about Emilio Salgari or to read sample chapters from the Black Corsair or Sandokan series, visit www.rohpress.com.
Notes:
1. This review appears in HNR Issue 61 (August 2012) or on the website at https://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/the-dark-monk/
2. The Paris Review, Vol. 81, Winter 1981.
3. From a speech delivered at the 2003 PEN Tribute to Gabriel García Márquez. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Grossman
About the contributor: NICO LORENZUTTI is a TESOL Teacher Trainer at Chonnam National University in Gwangju, South Korea. He has translated six of Salgari’s novels for ROH Press and is currently working on The Queen of the Caribbean, the sequel to The Black Corsair.
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Published in Historical Novels Review | Issue 64, May 2013
