I recently read another novel by Sidney Sheldon that, once more, had many mistakes.
The Doomsday Conspiracy (ISBN 978-0-00-78375-2) is a nice
novel. I enjoyed reading it, but I can only wonder why editing
at Harper Collins lets so many mistakes through.
The first problem is on page 50: "Robert strapped himself in and
leaned back in his seat as the plane taxied down the runway. A
minute later, he felt the familiar pull of gravity".
Pull
of gravity? Please! Gravity has nothing to do with what happens when an airplane takes off. We feel pushed back
but, in reality, we are just trying to remain stationary. As
the airplane accelerates, the seat, which is part of it, pushes our
backside forward in order to takes us along. It is a similar
situation when a lift starts towards higher floors: we feel pushed
down because, in fact, the floor of the lift is pushing us
upward. And when we sit in a car and drive along a curve, we
feel thrown "outisde", but in fact it is the car door that is pushing our shoulder to keep us "inside".
Page 70: There is no "Lavesseralle" in Zurich and, even if it
existed, it would be written "Lavessner Allee".
Pages 87/88, talking about an alien space ship: "Our best guess is
that it uses monoatomic hydrogen in a closed loop so its waste
product is water that can be continually recycled into hydrogen for
power. With all that perpetual energy, it has a free ride in
interplanetary space". Goodness me! Even ignoring the
gobbledygook, this is utter nonsense. It is nothing else than a
modern version
of a "Perpetuum Mobile" (perpetual motion), which is a physical
impossibility but which many so-called scientists have tried to
achieve since the middle ages. In any case, the amount of energy
needed to break down water into hydrogen and oxygen is exactly the
same amount of energy obtained when obtaining water by burning
hydrogen in an atmosphere of pure oxygen. Nothing is left to accelerate
or slow down
the space ship. The term "monoatomic" is also
nonsensical. And, to top it off, Sheldon totally ignores the
oxygen part.
On page 93, Sheldon writes: "It's been proven over and over that
living plants have an intelligence". This is obviously not
true. According to Sheldon, the fact that carnivorous plants can trap
insects and others can attract them for pollination confirms their
intelligence!
In three occasions (pages 75, 81, and 106), while the protagonist is
in Switzerland, Marks (instead of Swiss Francs) are used as currency.
Page 122: "he strapped himself into his first-class seat on the
Swissair flight [Zurich to London]. As the plane rushed down the
runway, its huge Rolls-Royce engines ...". The novel was first
published in 1991, which means that it was written in 1990 or
1991. If I remember correctly, already by then, the best seats
you could get on intra-European flights were Business class, and not
on all fligts. But there is another problem: "huge Rolls-Royce
angines" suggests a wide-body airplane. At the time, the only short-
to medium-range wide-body operated by Swissair was the Airbus A310, for
which Rolls-Royce never delivered
engines! I know, most people wouldn't care about such
details, which don't affect the story, but I can't help noticing
them. It seems disrespectful towards the readers to make up stuff just
because it sounds good.
On page 206, a minor character states that in the
Italian city of Orvieto only one government television channel was
available. The statement contributes to moving the plot forward,
but it is wrong. For almost one decade before 1991, Italy already
had six television channels with full national coverage: three
public (RAI 1, RAI 2, and RAI 3) and three private (Canale 5, Italia
1, and Rete 4, owned by Berlusconi, who later became a controversial
prime minister). In addition to those major channels, there
were also many regional channels.
On page 209, is the first of the language-related errors that pepper many English novels. Sheldon writes:
"Vietato passare oltre i limiti". It was meant to indicate
"Forbidden Entry", but it is not correct Italian.
"Vietato oltrepassare i limiti" would be the correct sentence, but
the meaning would still be wrong. In Italian, it would be a
funny expression equivalent to "It is forbidden to exagerate"!
What is written on fences surrounding military installations is
usually "Limite invalicabile". In general, "Ingresso vietato"
is the expression used to signal that people should not enter a
private area.
On page 210, Sheldon mention a certain "Signora Fillipi". Pity
that "Fillipi" is a family name that doesn't exist in Italy.
"Filippi" would have been OK.
On pages 240/241, one of the characters appreciates Bahnhofstrasse,
the main shopping street in Zurich. According to Sheldon, you
can buy there "dresses and coats and shoes and lingerie and
jewellery and dishes and furniture and automobiles and books and
television sets and radios and toys and pianos". I'm not sure
about pianos, but I am certain that you cannot buy cars in
Bahnhofstrasse. My wife and I lived in Zurich for longer than
a decade and we agree on that.
On page 292 is another "pearl" of bad Italian. Somebody says "How
are you,
mio amico?" This is a straight translation
from English that doesn't work in Italian. In Italian, at
best, you would say "How are you,
amico mio?" But I
wouldn't use it and I doubt that any other Italian would.
On page 305 there are two further expressions of bad Italian. The first one is the exclamation
"
Cacatura!". I understand that Sheldon wanted to
translate "Shit!", but, at best, he should have used "Merda!",
because "Cacatura!" is an almost never used word that means either "fly
escrement" or the act of defecating. In any case, "merda" is somewhat
old fashion. I would have written the almost universal term
"cazzo", which means "cock" (in the sense of "penis") and is used to
express shock or strong disappointment. Some people liberally
sprinkle "cazzo" in many sentences, like some English speakers do
with "fuck".
The second mistake on page 305 is "Andate al dietro, subito".
In Italian, that sentence doesn't mean anything. Sheldon
wanted to translate "Go to the back, quickly", but he should have
written "Andate sul retro, presto".
Page 312: "Twenty minutes later they had reached Tor di Ounto,
Rome's red light district, populated by whores and pimps. They drove
down Passeggiata Archeologica...". Now, in Rome there is no
red-light district and no quarter or suburb called "Tor di
Ounto" (mistake repeated on page 345). There is a quarter (and also
an adjacent suburb)
called "Tor di Quinto", which makes me think that "Tor di Ounto" is
the result of a double typo. I'm not sure whether there are many
prostitutes in
Tor di Quinto. Perhaps, Sheldon wanted to avoid the risk of being
sued by some of the 27,000 people who live in Tor di Quinto for
denigrating their suburb. But he didn't have any problem in saying the
same about the Passeggiata Archeologica. There are several areas of
Rome where prostitutes "roam", and
the Passeggiata Archeologica is indeed one of them (another
well-known place for prostitutes is the area adjacent to the Terme
di Caracalla), but it is located between Aventino and Celio, far
away from Tor di Quinto.
On page 314, Sheldon introduces a new female character named
Pier. Well, I'm sorry, but Pier doesn't exist in Italian.
With so many Italian names, I wonder why Sheldon had to invent
something so wrong...
On page 323, Pier says: "Cacchio!" That's not realistic
because Pier, being born in the late 1960s, would never think of
saying that word. "Cacchio" is an old-fashion euphemism for "Cazzo".
It is a bit like in English saying "shoot" instead of "shit".
I don't think that anybody used it after the 1960s.
On page 339, referring to a man and a woman travelling together,
Sheldom writes: "They had been driving in silence for the last half
an hour, each preoccupied with his own thoughts". But one of
them was a woman. Therefore, "his" is not appropriate.
He could have said "They had been driving in silence for the last
half an hour, preoccupied with their own thoughts".
On page 349, the Italian name "Dell'Ovo" is broken at the end of a line
as "Dell'" and "Ovo". This is not acceptable in Italian. The name should
have been broken as "Del-" and "l'Ovo". Perhaps, I'm being a bit too
demanding here, but when writing foreign terms, I believe it would be
best to respect the foreign grammar.
On page 366, somebody receives an unexpected visitor. While standing naked at the open door, he says to the visitor: "
Che Cosa?
What the hell are you doing up so early?" Beh, "Che cosa?" is not
right. No Italian would ever say it. Perhaps Sheldon tried to
translate "What?". He could have asked "Che vuoi?" ("What do you
want?") or "Che c'è?" ("What's up?").
On page 368, Sheldon uses the word "
Orologia", which doesn't exist in Italian. He should have written "Orologeria".
On page 387, Sheldon states something that is wrong in more than one
way. When referring to Civitavecchia, on the coast of mainland Italy,
he writes: "The port is one of the busiest in Europe, servicing all
sea-going traffic to and from Rome and Sardinia". Now, the traffic
going through Civitavecchia is a small fraction of what goes through
major European ports like Hamburg, Bremen, and Amsterdam. But there is
another problem: the awkward expression "to and from Rome and Sardinia"
literally means "to Rome and Sardinia and from Rome and Sardinia" (or,
if you prefer, "to and from Rome and to and from Sardinia"), which is
clearly impossible. He certainly meant to say "between Rome and
Sardinia".
On page 392, Sheldon writes: "one of the most famous palindromes was
supposedly said by Napoleon: 'Able was I ere I saw Elba'". Give me
break! Napoleon was perhaps the most French person of the times. He
certainly didn't invent any palindrome in English. Somebody else did.
Perhaps, I should stop reading Sheldon's books. It takes me too much
time to list his mistakes in this blog! But I still have one of his
novels in my bookshelf: "The best laid plans". MMmmm... What are "laid
plans"? He should have inserted a hyphen between "best" and "laid" to
avoid the ambiguity. Perhaps, he felt that a title like "The best-laid
plans" would have been uncool...
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
Máire
Messenger Davies & Nick 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
Douglas
Preston: Impact
Brian
Christian: The Most Human Human
Donna
Leon: Fatal Remedies
Sidney
Sheldon: Tell Me Your Dreams
David Baldacci: Zero Day
