Analysis by Margaret Petrarca

Translation

The source text, La vieille de la montagne (The old lady from the mountain), is an excerpt from Métro, Instantanés (Éditions du Rocher, 2007) by Leïla Sebbar. In this work, she describes some images and events that impressed her on the subway in Paris.

About the author

Leïla Sebbar is born in 1941, and she is a French-Algerian author. She spent her youth in Algeria before moving to France where she still lives. Even though her father was Algerian and she lived in the country for many years, she never learned to speak Arabic, that is why she writes in French. In her work, she often talks about the relationship between France and Algeria, dwelling also on the colonization years. In some way, she compares the two countries, showing their different cultures and languages. Many of her works also explore the situation of the second generation of Maghribi youth who is born and raised in France, but who has not totally integrated into French society. 

Source text (French)

Le vieille femme marche avec peine, sur le quai. On voit de loin les couleurs de la montagne kabyle. Le foulard acheté à Barbès, “fabriqué en Chine, 100% rayonne”, noir et rouge, une bande médiane frappée d’étoiles d’or autour de la main de Fatma, sertie d’arabesques dorées. Les marchands de tissu disparaissent l’un après l’autre avec la métamorphose du quartier, on ne retrouvera plus ces foulards ni les tissus de fête, ni la Fouta à rayures rouges, jaunes et noires que la vieille a serrée autour de ses reins, par-dessus la robe soyeuse d’un jaune éclatant.

A son front, des tatouages. Elle porte des chaussettes blanches et des chaussures de ville à la taille de son pied montagnard. Sa petite fille l’accompagne et la guide, comme un enfant conduit un aveugle, jean, tennis, blouson de cuir noir, elle lui parle doucement à l’oreille. Un jeune homme se lève, autour du cou, un keffieh noir et blanc, il prend la main de la vieille et l’aide à s’asseoir. Il lui dit quelques mots en kabyle en s’inclinant vers elle puis il s’en va avec la bénédiction de la vieille femme.

Target text (Italian)

Sulla banchina, l’anziana donna cammina con difficoltà. Perfino da lontano si vedono i colori della montagna cabila. Il foulard acquistato sul boulevard Barbès, “fabbricato in Cina, 100% rayon”, è rosso e nero, con una fascia centrale goffrata con stelle d’oro che circondano la mano di Fatima, impreziosita da arabeschi dorati. Con la metamorfosi del quartiere, i commercianti di tessuti spariscono uno dopo l’altro, e non ritroveremo più i foulard, né i tessuti a festa, né la fouta a righe rosse, gialle e nere che l’anziana donna porta stretta sui reni, al di sopra dell’abito di seta di un giallo acceso.

Ha la fronte tatuata. Porta calzini bianchi e scarpe da passeggio grandi quanto i suoi piedi montanari. Ad accompagnarla e a guidarla c’è la nipote, come un bambino che faccia strada a un cieco. Indossa un paio di jeans, scarpe da ginnastica, un chiodo nero, le parla all’orecchio con dolcezza. Un ragazzo, con una kefiah bianca e nera al collo, si alza, prende l’anziana per mano e l’aiuta a sedersi. Si china su di lei, le dice qualche parola in berbero, poi si allontana con la sua benedizione.

Analysis of the translation

Deleting the surplus

French and Italian are considered as close languages. While this is true in terms of lexicon, the French syntax and some grammatical aspects are way more redundant than the Italian ones. This is possible because French has many final silent letters that make the words shorter and lighter when pronounced. On the opposite, Italian words are longer and, therefore, heavier, especially in a long and complicated sentence. This is why when we are translating from French into Italian, we should try to remove as much as possessive adjectives and adverbs ending in –ment as possible:

• “serrée autour de ses reins” → “porta stretta sui reni”
• “A son front, des tatouages” → “Ha la fronte tatuata”
• “Sa petite fille” → “la nipote”

Possessive adjectives in Italian are infrequent, allowing the translator to use them to emphasize specific elements. For instance, at the end of the excerpt, I wrote “con la sua benedizione” adding a possessive adjective that is missing in the original, which, in turn, allowed me to omit the repetition of “la vieille femme”.

Regarding the adverbs ending in –ment, we have here only one example:

• “doucement” → “con dolcezza”

Another quite repetitive element in French is commas:

• “A son front, des tatouages” → “Ha la fronte tatuata”

In Italian, the use of a comma here would be perceived as recurring, obliging the reader to stop where it is not needed. That is why I deleted it, making the text fluent and pleasant to read.

Adding what is missing

Noun phrases sound more natural in French than they do in Italian. Leïla Sebbar particularly appreciates this type of sentences, so that even in such a short excerpt we can find many of them:

• “Le foulard acheté à Barbès, “fabriqué en Chine, 100% rayonne”, noir et rouge, une bande médiane frappée d’étoiles d’or autour de la main de Fatma, sertie d’arabesques dorées” → “Il foulard acquistato sul boulevard Barbès, “fabbricato in Cina, splendente al 100%”, è rosso e nero, con una fascia centrale goffrata con stelle d’oro che circondano la mano di Fatima, impreziosita da arabeschi dorati”
• “A son front, des tatouages” → “Ha la fronte tatuata”
• “jean, tennis, blouson de cuir noir” → “Indossa un paio di jeans, scarpe da ginnastica, un chiodo nero”

Without the main verb, these sentences would have made no sense in Italian, but in order to create meaningful sentences I also needed to change some of the elements. In the first one, I deliberately added two verbs, lengthening the resulting sentence. The image of the foulard in the source text is immediately visible in our minds. In order to recreate an immediate image of the foulard in the Italian text, I had to add something that helps us depict it in front of our mind's eyes. In the second sentence, I deleted the comma and reconsidered its structure, adding a verb and changing the noun “tatouages” into a past participle “tatuata”. In the last sentence, I added a verb, and I also created two sentences where in the source text there was only one.

Adapting the syntax

What really changes between French and Italian is the syntax. Italian has less syntactic rules than French, meaning that its syntax is more accommodating and gives the translator the chance to play with it, whereas the French syntax is less accommodating and also a bit pretentious if compared to Italian. It goes without saying then, that when translating from French into Italian we need to adapt the syntax, eliminating its pomposity, and recreating a style that boosts or decreases the fit of the sentence accordingly with the source text:

• “Le vieille femme marche avec peine, sur le quai” → “Sulla banchina, l’anziana donna cammina con difficoltà”
• “Les marchands de tissu disparaissent l’un après l’autre avec la métamorphose du quartier” → “Con la metamorfosi del quartiere, i commercianti di tessuti spariscono uno dopo l’altro”
• “Sa petite fille l’accompagne et la guide” → “Ad accompagnarla e a guidarla c’è la nipote”
• “Il lui dit quelques mots en kabyle en s’inclinant vers elle puis il s’en va avec la bénédiction de la vieille femme” → “Si china su di lei, le dice qualche parola in berbero, poi si allontana con la sua benedizione”

What I did was mostly reversing the elements of the sentences, in order to recreate the right fit that otherwise would have been flat and monotonous.

Domestication and foreignization strategies

This excerpt is twice as estranging for the Italian reader as it is based in Paris but represents Algerian immigrants of different generations who live in the French capital city. The author is writing about what she sees in the subway of Paris day after day. Here, we understand that we have faced with Berber people thanks to their clothes. The old lady is wearing traditional Berber clothes, from the foulard to the silk dress, to the colors she is wearing and to the tattoos on her forehead. Nevertheless, she is wearing white socks and walking shoes that probably help her walking in the big crowded city. Her granddaughter is wearing Western clothes, whereas we don’t know what the young man is wearing except for his black and white keffiyeh around his neck. Two Algerian generations are facing each other, making themselves recognizable by their pieces of clothing and their language. Giving the context, I adopted both domestication and foreignization strategies. The source text was intended for French-speaking readers and it was published in France. This means that the reader of the source text allegedly knows Paris, but they might be less familiar with the Berber culture. That is why I decided to opt for a domesticating process by adding “boulevard” to Barbès, which is a boulevard in the 18th arrondissement of Paris. In fact, by only saying “Barbès”, the Italian reader might have wondered where the story is set. Paris, though, is not at issue here: the reader needs to save energies for the Berber aspects of the text. In fact, when it came to Berber realia, I opted for a foreignization of the translation. We can see that with the words “fouta” and “kefiah”. The “fouta” is a piece of thin patterned cotton or linen fabric used in some Mediterranean countries. The “kefiah” (keffiyeh) is a traditional Arabian headdress used nowadays as a fashion square scarf. If I wanted to domesticate these two elements, I could have translated them as “patterned linen fabric” and “square scarf”, but the estranging sense of the source text would have been missing. The Berber elements are deeply present in the original and they make the strength and the beauty of the text. Domesticating them would have erased the peculiar characteristics and identity of the writer’s style, impressed by three characters who not only remind her somehow of her origins, but who also blend into the Western city becoming an integral part of it at a point where the French history cannot be separated from the history of Maghreb, and especially Algeria.