Literal Translation? No, thank you!, ilazed, italian, italian language

“Literal Translation? No, thank you!” translated by Alanna Quintyne

In this article, I am going to talk about a common mistake usually made by English and Spanish speakers. The mistake I am talking about is translating a particular kind of English sentence literally with the consequence of having pretty strange sentences.

If you want to discover this kind of sentence, keep reading! :)

Anyone who has taken even a single course in translation knows how important it is to express concepts by translating them from one language to another as naturally as possible, without forcing it or making it clear that the original sentence actually comes from another language.

I had wanted to write an article on this topic for a while, but I always refrained from doing so believing that it would come out too technical and have little to do with the spoken language.

It is clear that if you are reading this it means that I have changed my mind. This happened after hearing on the news a phrase of the famous director Woody Allen translated more or less like this:

“È la prima volta qui lavorando!”

(referring to the Scala in Milan), which in English should be: “It‘s the first time here working.”

Theoretically, we could consider this a perfect translation: every English word has its corresponding in Italian. But as an Italian and an Italian teacher, I felt a sharp pain in my ears the moment I heard it.

Let’s avoid literal translation

In Italian this translation is strange, there is something wrong with it, and although I could gloss over such an error made by a foreign student, it is really unthinkable to accept it from an Italian. This translation is a clear calque from English, that is, a construction that sticks too closely to the English language and is far from the Italian construction.

Beware, however, as translator Federica Aceto says not all claques are evil, and the calque is sometimes a key element in the evolution of a language.

Translation Examples

Let us now try other similar examples from my lessons with my students and try to find the best translation.

I saw her eating pizza
There were people working

Also, in these cases what you need to do is to avoid translating these sentences letter by letter in order to make the sentence more Italian. Pretend for a moment that you are Italian and try to identify the most natural solution, the one that sounds best.

If I told you Ho visto lei mangiando la pizza or c’erano persone lavorando, what would you think? I am sure that even though you will have no idea why, you will find something strange! You would probably say to me: I don’t know… but that phrase sounds wrong!

But is there really such a thing as a perfect translation?

Well, perfect is a strong word, but there are other methods we can use to get away from literal translation while still conveying the same message. Let’s see how:

L’ho vista mangiare la pizza,
L’ho vista che mangiava la pizza o ancora
l’ho vista mentre mangiava la pizza.

All of these are good alternatives and more acceptable translations in Italian for “I saw her eating pizza”.

C’erano persone che lavoravano, another easy and fluent solution for “there were people working”!

As for Woody Allen’s sentence, we also have a more appropriate solution, namely, “È la prima volta che lavoro qui”.

Conclusion

The world of languages and translation is really very vast and complicated. It is very easy to fall into error and make a literal translation, especially if we do not have a guide ready to correct us. This does not mean that it is impossible to learn a language well as a self-taught person. It does mean, however, that we need to be more careful and receptive, especially when we read and listen.

When we have to translate from one language to another, our aim is to eliminate any unnaturalness and try to make our speech as fluent and close to that of native speakers.