Syntax as Style

Two thirds into Fabio Lastrucci’s summer alienation story, and boy is this a workoout.
And one of a completely different genre.

Fact is, Lastrucci’s prose is a clear example of what’s been described as “syntax as style”.

It’s not just what he writes – it’s the way he writes it, the order in which he lays the words on the page that is significant, more, decisive to the development of the story.
It would be extremely easy to translate Fabio’s story in the standard, direct way – focusing on getting the meaning across and good riddance.
But that would be just part of the story, and the end result would be lame, incomplete, faulty.

Hence, the problem – replicating as faithfully as possible the author’s phrase construction, without sliding into the sort of English Tarzan used to speak in Johnny Weissmuller movies.
Preserving both grammar and syntax.

This sort of considerations and concerns forced me to scrap my first attempt at translating the opening of the story – and that’s how I’m proceeding now: first I do gramatically sound, concise translations, then I scrap them and do a rewrite mimicking Lastrucci’s phrase construction.

Does it work?
It seems so.
And the story’s so fun, reading and writing it twice is no great effort.

Absolutely Fabio

Wonders of the web.

I never met Fabio Lastrucci personally.
We exchanged a few mails, or comments on on-line forums, but we never occupied contiguous spaces.
And yet here I am translating his “Nella Stagione Arsa” - In the Scorched Season.

Pure unadulterated fantastic fiction, perfectly written.

Going through his opening passage is like phisically visiting the places he describes – not only Fabio has been able to tap into that pool of shared youthful memories we all share, but he’s been able to conjure them on the page through language and tempo.

The story will catch a few readers by surprise – the revelation of the narrator’s true identity, his musings and experiences…

But after all, isn’t that the reason why we read imaginative fiction?
To be surprised?

Darkness according to Consolata

I’m one third through Consolata Lanza’s short story.

It translates like a breeze – despite a few curves that I’ll have to fine-tune later, like Consolata’s habit of slipping the odd regionalism in her otherwise crisp-clear Italian.

The story is a happily nasty number, as I already mentioned.
The author herself has placed a lengthy post on her blog, about the necessity of goin all the way through where violence is concerned, if violence is what the story needs.
Consolata’s fictional world is one in which bad stuff happens to bad people, so that we can be both horrified at what happens, but at the same time go “There, you bought it, creep!”

And creep’s the word.

The twist is this lady’s profoundly Piedmontese sensibility towards petty badness.
With an attention to etiquette details that feels like an update of Austen, miss Lanza’s world is full of petty villains – libidinous teachers, doped-out students, giggly chicks, less than honest workers.
We are not dealing with “Evil!”, but with stupidity, bad manners, lack of intelligence.

Compared to the cosmic horror of thelikes of Lovecraft, what the author offers us is much scarier as it’s much more commonplace, and very low-key.

Slow going, but going

Problems continue – in particular my day life interfering with my nightlife.

But things are slowly moving.

Clad in Steel and Thunder is past its first revision, and boy, it does read nice.
Curiously enough, through the first revision a lot of clutter went, making the English text more compact and streamlined than the original – while all the meat’s still there.

Now, on to other things.

Northern Dream – local flavor

One arm badly injured, so my translating work is slowing down but not stopping.
I’ve made a commitment.
And what the heck – this is fun.

One of the things that make translating Max Soumaré’s stuff fun is his penchant for peppering the text with Japanese words.
Now, as he’s telling a story set in Japanes, it is pretty obvious some Japanese names should come up, but there’s more than that.
Max uses well-placed Japanese words to give the reader an extra portion of local flavor, deepening the sense of place.

It is the sort of quick-and-dirty technique that can turn easily into a cheap trick, a gimmick.
Authorial discipline must be applied – in cartloads – not to overdue the thing.
Max is a pro because he knows when enough is enough, and being a good translator, he uses the Japanese to convey in a single word those multiple, multi-layered meanings that cannot be summed up in as briefly in Italian, or in English.

The translation must of course adapt to this technique, somehow supporting it, and letting the phrases unfurl so that the single exotic word causes the expected vibrations.
It’s tricky, but that’s why it is fun.

On the down side, this practice sometimes requires notes – something I normally accept only from Jack Vance in fiction.
But then again, there are ways to sidestep the need for notes – a good witty afterword, for instance.
We’ll see….

The way I do it

Writing styles, translating styles.
I just found out my friend Massimo Soumaré (more on him as his story comes up for translation), usually does a paper review of the pieces he has to translate – marking out in pencil words or phrases that need particular attention or care.
Of course, he normally translates from Japanese, so I guess some dynamics are different.

I normally work directly on file.
I do not use any hip translator helper – like memories for oft-used words or stuff.
I just make a copy of the original and replace the text as I read it on the screen, one phrase at the time.
Working like this makes for fast going – hands on my keyboard, I am actually reading and writing the same page, instead of jumping between an open book, say, and the computer screen (sometimes I have to work like that and it is pretty uncomfortable – and very bad for the book spine and pages).
This technique also has a strange effect on names – which act like some kind of hardpoints in the page.
The temptation to let them be altogether, and work around them is strong, but often, shifting from the Italian structure to the English or vice-versa the whole sentence has to be completely rewritten and rearranged on the page.

To make a weird simile, it’s like the page was a wooden board with lines and lines of holes – one line per line of text. Some holes are occupied by peg-like names, dates and other elements that do not change, do not need translation. Each phrase is like a piece of string connecting those pegs.
The game is changing the old string with the new one, moving the pegs around as needed.

Which probably does not make sense at all, but at least I’ve invented some strange boardgame to use in a future story.

7000 words – Chapter Five

Chapter Four was fast, much faster than anticipated, but it will need revising.
The text is ok, but something came up as I was translating, and I want to follow it up.
I’m working on Brock’s speaking patterns, to make him sound more German, but I don’t want to end up using the usual accent cliches. Something pretty good can be achieved by using slightly longer words than usual, and arranging the words in a slightly unusual, old-fashioned order, so that they still read all right but sound… foreign.

Cheap tricks.

In the meantime, on to chapter five.
Casale Monferrato has just revolted and a band of Flemish mercenaries are trying tomake themselves scarce with a minimum of fuss.
The last pieces of the puzzle fall into place – courtesy of Leonardo da Vinci, who comes center stage but remains incognito.
Leonardo also serves as sort of a clear-headed anchor in this whole story.
Which is pretty needed, considering that the moral compass of the narrative is debatable and the ethics of most of the characters are uncertain.

By the weekend, this story will be translated, and I’ll send it along to the proofreaders.