It is very annoying how even the most
famous authors who write in English think they can get away with
wrong sentences in other languages. Italian, my native language, is
almost always abused. Perhaps the authors arrogantly think that they
write in any language. Or perhaps they only care about English
readers. It is as if many English authors, whether they are from the
US, the UK, or Australia, thought that English is the only language
worth knowing (and respecting).
I just finished reading Tell Me Your
Dreams, by Sydney Sheldon and, once more, I discovered that
Italian was butchered (and, actually, German as well).
It’s a pity, because Tell Me Your
Dreams is an interesting story and, in general, well written.
OK. Let’s go through this Calvary...
On Page 26, “Fra Bartolomeo” is
misspelled “Fra Bartolommeo”. It’s a typo, like the one on
page 337, where “doz-” appears at the end of a line but “en”
is missing from the beginning of the next one. And yet, it is
probably not a chance that the incorrect spelling appears in an
Italian name.
On page 27/28, Sheldon writes: “And
then she thought, Non faccia, lo stupido. Maybe in another
lifetime, creep” [Italics in the original]. Sheldon managed to
make two mistakes in four words. The first mistake is that there
shouldn’t be a comma between “faccia” and “stupido” and the
second one is that “faccia” should really be “fare”. The
sentence means “don’t be stupid”, although the literal,
word-by-word translation from the Italian would be “don’t do the
stupid” (which proves that literal translations don’t work!). In
English, you wouldn’t dream of placing a comma between “don’t
be” and “stupid”, and the same applies to Italian. The second
mistake has to do with formal vs. informal addressing: the present
subjunctive (“faccia”) would be correct when addressing a person
formally, but you wouldn’t do that when addressing a “creep”.
For addressing somebody informally in a negative sentence, the
infinitive (“fare”) is the correct form.
On page 47, Sheldon writes “I feel
dispiace – sorry for her” [his Italics]. The Italian
translation of “sorry” is “dispiaciuta”, which is the past
participle (feminine) of the verb “dispiacere”, while “dispiace”
is a form of the present tense. That said, no Italian would say “mi
sento dispiaciuta per lei”, which is the correct literal
translation of “I feel sorry for her” (a better expression would
be “mi dispiace per lei”), but the mixed expression “I feel
dispiaciuta – sorry for her” would have been OK.
On page 87, to the question “How was
Quebec?”, Alette replies “va bene” [Italics in the
original]. In Italian, “va bene” could have been an answer to the
question “come va?” (the Italian equivalent of the Australian
“How are you going?” and the American “How are you doing?”).
But as an answer to “How was Quebec?”, “va bene” is
nonsensical. Perhaps Sheldon wanted to translate “it’s OK”.
Then, he should have written “non male” (“not bad”) or
“bella” (“beautiful”).
On page 91, in all capitals, Sheldon
writes the following sentences with an orgy of mistakes:
Serial killer loose...
Quatres hommes brutalement tués et
castrés...
Wir suchen für ein Mann der
castriert seine Hopfer...
Maniac di homicidal sullo spree
crespo di uccisióne.
The French line is the translation of
“Four men brutally killed and castrated”, but “Quatres”
should have been “Quatre”.
The German line is the translation of
“We are looking for a man who castrates his victims”, but the
correct German would have been “Wir suchen einen Mann, der seine
Opfer kastriert”. If I have counted them correctly, the sentence as
written by Sheldon contains six mistakes. Let’s see:
- The verb “suchen” requires a direct object, not an indirect object with the preposition “für”;
- “ein” should have been “einen” because “ein” is used with a subject, not with a direct masculine object like in the sentence (i.e., “ein” is the Nominative form while “einen” is the Accusative);
- there should be a comma between the principal and the dependent clauses;
- in a dependent clause, the verb goes at the end;
- the German word for “victims” is “Opfer”, not “Hopfer”;
- the verb “kastrieren” is spelled with a “k”, not with a “c”.
Note that German nouns should be
written with a capital first letter, but Sheldom (prudently!) wrote
in all caps. Otherwise, I’m confident that he would have managed
to cram into the sentence one or two additional mistakes.
I’m not sure about the language of
the last sentence, but I fear that it was meant to be Italian,
because I recognise the three words “sullo” (“on the”), “di”
(“of”), and “uccisione” (“killing”, although it should be
written without any accent). Perhaps “Maniac di homicidal” was
meant to be “Maniaco omicida”. The word “spree” seems to be
taken directly from English (like in “shopping spree”). The
adjective “crespo” means “frizz”, and I cannot really imagine
what Sheldon meant with it.
Painful...
On page 276, the word “trovo” is
spelled “travo”, and the word “pazzo” should have been plural
(“i.e., “pazzi”).
Finally, on page 328, the “sweetest”
mistake of all: Ashley replies to “My pleasure, luv” with
“Minièra anche” [author’s Italics]. This is a real
pearl, worthy of Google Translate at its worst. It baffled me for a
second, until I imagined that in English the appropriate reply would
have been “Mine too”. As it happens, if you forget that “mine”
is in this case is a pronoun and translate it into Italian as a noun
(i.e., the place where minerals are extracted), you get... “miniera”!
The correct literal translations would have been “Anche il mio”
(masculine, because “pleasure” translates to “piacere”, which
is masculine).
This is gross!
Just for fun, I typed “mine too”
into Google Translate and got “anche la mia”, which is the
feminine form of “anche il mio”. One could only speculate on why
Google assumed that the object referred to by the pronoun “mine”
was feminine, but this “gender stuff” is difficult for English
speakers... :-)
For your reference, here are the links
to all past “Authors’ Mistakes” articles:
Lee Child: Die Trying
Colin Forbes: Double Jeopardy
Akiva Goldsman: Lost in Space
Vince Flynn: Extreme Measures
M. Messenger Davies & N. Mosdell: Practical Research Methods for Media and Cultural Studies
Michael Crichton & Richard Preston: Micro
Lee Child: The Visitor
Graham Tattersall: Geekspeak
Graham Tattersall: Geekspeak (addendum)
Donna Leon: A Noble Radiance
007 Tomorrow Never Dies
Vince Flynn: American Assassin
Brian Green: The Fabric of the Cosmos
John Stack: Master of Rome
Dean Crawford: Apocalypse
Daniel Silva: The Fallen Angel
Tom Clancy: Locked On
Peter David: After Earth
Colin Forbes: Double Jeopardy
Akiva Goldsman: Lost in Space
Vince Flynn: Extreme Measures
M. Messenger Davies & N. Mosdell: Practical Research Methods for Media and Cultural Studies
Michael Crichton & Richard Preston: Micro
Lee Child: The Visitor
Graham Tattersall: Geekspeak
Graham Tattersall: Geekspeak (addendum)
Donna Leon: A Noble Radiance
007 Tomorrow Never Dies
Vince Flynn: American Assassin
Brian Green: The Fabric of the Cosmos
John Stack: Master of Rome
Dean Crawford: Apocalypse
Daniel Silva: The Fallen Angel
Tom Clancy: Locked On
Peter David: After Earth