ricromano
10-31-2009, 04:03 PM
Given an Italian with an average knowledge of English, is it possible an impeccable translation of a 360 pages novel? By impeccable, I mean indiscernible from a text written by someone whose mother tongue is English.
I add one page to know the verdict I would be very grateful for.
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In the end I had reached myself those forty years and over, when time begins to tighten stingy rather than offering itself eternal. In the morning now, I did’t pry much into the mirror, not to see my face more and more blotted out: puffy the eyes, gray streaked the temples, the pallor of those who don’t see much the sun. The tongue moreover, it felt in my mouth like a foreign body, flavored by more cigarettes than I dared to count. Utterly futile fancying to cut out smoking, as I wouldn’t consider doing it straight away but tomorrow maybe, or even better, further in time.
"How have I dwindled so much ..." I went on repeating for too long, before throwing my weary limbs under the shower. Then, somehow, I shaved, gussied up to the point of choosing a tie to match the socks, gathered my breath and was ready to enter the fray: in front of me another rotten day around Rome, in search of the mythical pile.
"Giuliana..." I sighted that name in the last weeks, as I was invoking the Madonna of the frustrated.
"What?" Considerate as ever in his bar full of smells and noises, Italo awakened my mind brutalized by the usual sleep backlog and twenty years of conscious parasitism. "Did you say anything? The usual squirt in your coffee, perhaps?"
Frenetic his activism as he cleared the counter from cups and glasses, vigorously scrubbing a rag here an there, as if he had to set for twelve. A ritual all that fuss, to prepare the idle conversation in which I let him involve me every day, to re-establish a contact with the outside world.
"No, no, please!" Firm my refusal. "Not today." A stomach pumping would be needed, rather than a coffee fixing.
"Yeah!" He had taken off. "Much better a light breakfast, in the morning. In your position, besides... You see people, you manage important things, you are never at rest..." He called important, the things I did.
"At rest? No, thanks..." I gave way to some verbiage myself, trying to flake off from an abulia that wilted me to a state of autism. "If I think it over, I don’t get out of bed."
"What?! And I? What should I say? At least, you have a good life. You know the big shots, the Undersecretaries, the Ministers... You even know the hot female dancers of State Television."
"The big shots I know..." a bit of mockery in my tone "monotony is all I know. You see one of them and you have seen the all lot."
I add one page to know the verdict I would be very grateful for.
----------
In the end I had reached myself those forty years and over, when time begins to tighten stingy rather than offering itself eternal. In the morning now, I did’t pry much into the mirror, not to see my face more and more blotted out: puffy the eyes, gray streaked the temples, the pallor of those who don’t see much the sun. The tongue moreover, it felt in my mouth like a foreign body, flavored by more cigarettes than I dared to count. Utterly futile fancying to cut out smoking, as I wouldn’t consider doing it straight away but tomorrow maybe, or even better, further in time.
"How have I dwindled so much ..." I went on repeating for too long, before throwing my weary limbs under the shower. Then, somehow, I shaved, gussied up to the point of choosing a tie to match the socks, gathered my breath and was ready to enter the fray: in front of me another rotten day around Rome, in search of the mythical pile.
"Giuliana..." I sighted that name in the last weeks, as I was invoking the Madonna of the frustrated.
"What?" Considerate as ever in his bar full of smells and noises, Italo awakened my mind brutalized by the usual sleep backlog and twenty years of conscious parasitism. "Did you say anything? The usual squirt in your coffee, perhaps?"
Frenetic his activism as he cleared the counter from cups and glasses, vigorously scrubbing a rag here an there, as if he had to set for twelve. A ritual all that fuss, to prepare the idle conversation in which I let him involve me every day, to re-establish a contact with the outside world.
"No, no, please!" Firm my refusal. "Not today." A stomach pumping would be needed, rather than a coffee fixing.
"Yeah!" He had taken off. "Much better a light breakfast, in the morning. In your position, besides... You see people, you manage important things, you are never at rest..." He called important, the things I did.
"At rest? No, thanks..." I gave way to some verbiage myself, trying to flake off from an abulia that wilted me to a state of autism. "If I think it over, I don’t get out of bed."
"What?! And I? What should I say? At least, you have a good life. You know the big shots, the Undersecretaries, the Ministers... You even know the hot female dancers of State Television."
"The big shots I know..." a bit of mockery in my tone "monotony is all I know. You see one of them and you have seen the all lot."