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Anglistica 16. 1-2 (2012), 57-83 ISSN: 2035-
Emilia Di Martino
When the Same Book Speaks Two Different Languages.
Identity and Social Relationships across Cultures in the
Italian Translation of The Uncommon Reader
The common reader, as Dr. Johnson implies, differs from the critic and the scholar. He is worse educated, and nature has not gifted him so generously. He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others. Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader
Introduction
Building on previous work on the same topic, this paper aims to explore how Monica Pavani, a translator and poet from Ferrara, has dealt with the translation of style in The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett.^1 It provides wider background information as well as further evidence and stronger arguments in support of the translation analysis and criticism previously made available. Moreover, the analysis is presented in its completeness and in relation to the general architecture of both the source and the target text. The paper starts with an introduction aimed at identifying the theoretical framework in which the analysis is set: the approach is translator-centred and also stretches to tentatively explore the specific issues of both feminist intervention and literary sociolinguistics. Pavani has revealed, on different occasions, her habit of reflecting on the mental processes underlying both writing and translating, which makes her a particularly interesting subject for those who would like to delve into the intertwined issues of translation as a form of creative writing and the translator’s voice. Furthermore, not unlike many feminist and postmodern translators, when reflecting on her work Pavani also seems to look at translation as a form of écriture which extends and develops the source text. It was this aspect emerging from some of Pavani’s accounts of her translation work that elicited the need for an exploration of the issue of feminist intervention as well. However, despite the boldness of some choices linked to the sketching of possibly the three main characters in Bennett’s story (the Queen; Norman Seakins, the kitchen boy turned page; and Queenie, the British writer and journalist J.R. Ackerley’s dog), Pavani does not seem to take the re-writing aspect of translation to an extreme in this translation. She does not go so far as to attempt linguistic creation: the Queen’s use of both ‘one’ and ‘we’ and ‘I’ in the source text is reduced to an alternation between the simple majestic plural and the first person singular in the target text, which removes from the story the added comic effect of ‘royalese’, among other things; nor does she seem to have a hidden political agenda. On the other hand, she does not seem to refuse recourse to standardization, either: a normalization procedure seems at work in the most subversive area of Bennett’s writing, probably in an attempt to make a prototext
(^1) Emilia Di Martino, “ La sovrana lettrice e The Uncommon Reader : un approccio critico al testo tradotto”, in Flora De Giovanni, Bruna Di Sabato, eds., Tradurre in pratica (Napoli: ESI, 2010), 113-140; “Da TUR a Lsl : voci in transito”, in Oriana Palusci, ed., Female Voices across Languages (Trento: Tangram, 2011), 289-300.
The Italian Translation of The Uncommon Reader
- which may have otherwise sounded too crammed with gay references – more ‘palatable’ for the Italian reader. 2 All this goes (paradoxically) side by side with other assertions from Pavani which seem to betray, instead, a ‘passive’, receptive disposition to translation. The translator is probably just using here, as most expert translators do, a mixture of procedures and strategies. The result is a text that seems to lie in a moderate sphere of ‘creativity’^3 in terms of feminist intervention but in a bolder attempt at recreation in sociolinguistic terms.
Theoretical framework
Traditional conceptions of gender roles have characterised the discussion on translation up until the 1970s, viewing it as a passive, essentially reproductive (and therefore feminine) practice. Deconstructionism and post-structuralism, instead, particularly through Barthes’ reader empowerment^4 and Derrida’s idea of différance ,^5 have brought about the erosion of authority and theorised a textual relativism which has seen the author disappear along with the subject, thus granting the translator more freedom of action within the text, and even the power of creation when following the project of questioning master-narratives and challenging status quo truths. In its attempt to explore and contribute to the issue of translation practice and the translator’s own perception of this practice, this paper sets itself amongst those contemporary theoretical approaches which are usually referred to as translator-centred due to their being focused on the translator’s subjective response to the source text and which are, most importantly, based on the assumption that translation is a form of creative writing. 6 It does so by addressing the issue of style across languages which, set against a background of literary sociolinguistics, specifically means here (1) analyzing variation within a specific character’s language use; (2) examining the issue of language choice in terms of community-belonging. Furthermore, this paper also touches on the issue of feminist intervention or, to paraphrase von Flotow’s words, the feminist belief that the translation of a line like “Ce soir j’entre dans l’histoire sans relever ma jupe” 7 as “this evening I’m entering history without opening my legs” (rather than “this evening I’m entering history without pulling up my skirt”) is not only “acceptable”, but even “desirable”.^8 Commenting on her ‘womanhandled’^9 translation of Lise Gauvin’s Lettres d’une autre , Lotbinière-Harwood confesses, for example:
[m]y translation practice is a political activity aimed at making language speak for women. So my signature on a translation means: this translation has used every possible translation strategy to make the feminine visible in language. Because making the feminine visible in language means making women seen and heard in the real world. Which is what feminism is all about.^10
(^2) The recent fierce criticism of The Sims by some Italian politicians due to the videogame featuring gay families (Marco Pasqua, “Attacco al videogioco con le famiglie gay ‘Minaccia l’educazione dei bambini’”, La Repubblica , 14 May 2011) is but the latest evidence of at least part of the country’s attitude to sexual diversity. (^3) The term is bracketed because, despite the translator’s creative attitude to her work, her intervention is not one of creation from scratch. (^4) Roland Barthes, Image Music Text , trans. by Stephen Heath (London: Fontana Press, 1977). (^5) Jacques Derrida, “Des Tours de Babel”, trans. by J. F. Graham, in John Biguenet, Rainer Schulte, eds., Theories of Translation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 218-227. (^6) Susan Petrilli, “Traduzione e semiosi: considerazioni introduttive”, Athanor , 10. (1999-2000), 9-21; Susan Bassnett and Peter Bush, The Translator as Writer (London: Continuum, 2006); Manuela Pertenghella and Eugenia Loffredo, eds., Translation and Creativity (London: Continuum, 2006). (^7) Nicole Brossard, France Théoret et al., La Nef des sorcières (Montréal: Quinze, 1976). (^8) Luise von Flotow, “Feminist Translation: Contexts, Practices and Theories”, TTR: Traduction, Terminologie, Redaction , 4.2 (1991), 69-84. (^9) Barbara Godard, “Theorizing Feminist Discourse/ Translation”, in Susan Bassnett
The Italian Translation of The Uncommon Reader
Translators, she says, feel the need to step out of their heads, or in her own words, “accantonare la propria pelle” (put their own skin to one side) , which – she clarifies
- does not mean entering someone else’s, but rather letting, as written above, the author’s voices/words/images/landscapes enter you. This is a very feminine metaphor, which Pavani further describes as a condition of total, absolute focus on the other’s voice, a condition which translating shares with the writing of poetry, in Pavani’s opinion. Stepping outside of the self and letting the other in does not mean appropriating the author you are translating, nor does it equal self-denial or personal annihilation. 15 The following paragraphs will try to show how this process of openly confessed écriture works in practical terms, counterbalanced as it is by an equally admitted ‘passive’ predisposition to translation, in the context of La sovrana lettrice/The Uncommon Reader. In particular, focus will be on the boldness of some choices linked to the sketching of the three main characters in the story as well as on the normalisation of Bennett’s writing in some points and on the loss of its intertextuality, in the attempt to offer a general account of the overall architecture of the target text.
The Uncommon Reader
One day the Queen bumps into a ginger-haired kitchen boy, Norman Seakins, at the City of Westminster travelling library which happens to be parked outside the kitchen at Buckingham Palace. The young man was taking out a book by Cecil Beaton, while Her Majesty was just chasing after her dogs – a pack of corgis who were refusing to come in and were barking sharply at the large van – and had only entered the bookmobile to apologise for the noise, but felt obliged to borrow a book once in. She selects a novel, a random volume of Ivy Compton-Burnett’s, intending to return it the following week. She finds the book quite a hard read, but returning it the following week, she feels obliged to take out another book_. The Pursuit of Love_ by Nancy Mitford proves to be extremely inspiring, infecting the Queen with an inexplicable urge to read and read, to make up for time lost. Palace life changes. The more the Queen expands her reading under the direction of Norman, whom she has discovered is a far more accomplished reader than she is and has therefore turned into her literary advisor and companion, the more she appears distracted while on her public duties. She even insists on introducing literature into inappropriate contexts, such as her Christmas broadcast. Her behaviour gets so odd that the palace staff begin to wonder if she is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease (“Thus it was that the dawn of sensibility was mistaken for the onset of senility”^16 ), and her Private Secretary and the Prime Minister decide that they must put an end to this unacceptable state of affairs. Norman is sent to university, and a pile of books he had chosen to enliven her time during a visit to Canada mysteriously disappear. An elderly family confidante who is persuaded to get her to quit her new habit talks her into writing, instead. Thus begins her writing stage, which absorbs her even more than the reading.
(^15) The result is a type of writing which is “né azzerata né egocentrica, ma decentrata , capace di ascoltare voci diverse” (Ibid_._ , 9).
(^16) Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader (London: Faber and Faber, 2007), 81; further references in the text.
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In the end, the Queen discovers that Sir Kevin, her Private Secretary, was behind the crusade to stop her from reading and writing, and she appoints him the High Commissioner to New Zealand to get rid of him. On her eightieth birthday, when all the ministers gather to wish her well and drink champagne, the Queen announces her idea of writing a book and asks those who have read Marcel Proust to raise their hands. Just a few hands go up. Like Marcel in Proust’s masterpiece, she says, she feels that her life “needs redeeming by analysis and reflection.” (115) The Ministers are alarmed by the news. When the Queen rebukes the Prime Minister
- who has said that Her Majesty is in a unique position and that a monarch has never published a book – she provides a few examples of ancestors who have done so, mentioning among them her uncle the Duke of Windsor. The Prime Minister makes the objection that he could do so because he had abdicated. At which point, the Queen seems on the point of making an important announcement (“‘Oh, did I not say that? said the Queen. ‘But…why do you think you’re all here?’”, 121), and this is where the book ends. With its 121 pages, The Uncommon Reader is longer than a short story, but too brief to be listed as a novel. A novella, then, with quite a lot packed into such a small space. Bennett’s clever prose and his humour, resulting from the fine line he creates between reality and absurdity, makes it a little jewel. The fast witty narrative functions as a cultural Bildungsroman (the Queen of England turns from a duty- bound reader 17 into a voracious reader-for-pleasure^18 and later a writer). It also fosters reflection on both the humanising power of literature and the potentially subversive nature of reading.
Fig. 1: Original cover of The Uncommon Reader , Alan Bennett, 2006.
Fig. 2: Italian cover of The Uncommon Reader/La sovrana lettrice , 2007.
(^17) “She’d never taken much interest in reading. She read, of course, as one did, but liking books was something she left to other people. It was a hobby and it was in the nature of her job that she didn’t have hobbies” (6).
(^18) “What she was finding also was that one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do” (21).
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example of how language is deeply gendered – many would probably disapprove of the term lettora.^20 Moreover, supplementing, i.e. foregrounding the compensation strategies used to convey the multiple layers of a text – which is, in itself, a legitimate process – may be looked at as annoying exhibitionism and overstatement which repels rather than attracts potential readers when used in the very title. As already hinted at above, it is not immediately clear why Pavani drops the interdiscursive relation with Woolf in the title. However, if one also focuses on the different pictures used on the two front covers, the choice starts making sense. In 2006 – which is also the year when The Uncommon Reader was first published in the London Review of Books before being published in hardback the following year
- a film about the British monarchy in the aftermath of Diana’s death by director Stephen Frears (starring Helen Mirren in the role of Her Majesty and Michael Sheen in that of Tony Blair) came out in the cinemas around the world. The film was acclaimed by both critics and the public, particularly thanks to Mirren’s and Sheen’s excellent acting. Mirren, who won the Oscar for Best Actress for her performance, publicly praised the Queen in her acceptance speech, 21 and was invited to dinner at Buckingham Palace in May 2007 (but had to decline due to work commitments).^22 As is clear, Frears’s film had a huge coverage in the media all over the world, and Adelphi could clearly not miss the opportunity.^23 The decision of severing the interdiscursive relation with Woolf’s The Common Reader to set up a new one with Frears’s film, which is clearly confirmed by the front cover of the Italian version, was perhaps a purely commercial choice: the relation with The Common Reader would have probably not been immediately obvious for the Italian common reader, while the film was surely in most people’s memories. Pavani also confesses to deliberately drawing inspiration from the film to sort out some tricky language issues posed by the translation: she may, as well, have tried to create a link, albeit tenuous and debatable, between the source text and the target readership. As for the book’s content, what one notices at first sight is a lack of meta-textual materials – footnotes, preface or other immediately visible signs of intervention on the translator’s part, i.e. a lack of all those strategies that feminist translators usually employ as a strategy of visibility. Since Pavani is a translator who is used to reflecting on her work, this choice may be deliberate, but is probably due to the publisher’s own policy, as usual in these cases. However, some bold linguistic choices stand out, and it is exactly on those that the following paragraphs will focus, as they are linked to the sketching of the three main characters in the story, the Queen, the queen and Queenie.
The Queen
One of the most delicate issues in the translation of The Uncommon Reader is quite obviously the Queen’s language. One can surely still agree with Wales that “[i]t is in grammar, in pronoun usage in particular, that royalese is most strikingly illustrated apart from pronunciation”, 24 where ‘royalese’ could be described as “a group of
(^20) However, in Carlo Alianello’s L’eredità della priora (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1963), the character ‘Madre Lettora’ shows the word has actually been used in this form. A ‘Madre Lettora’ is the nun who is weekly entrusted the duty of reading passages from the Bible or the Rule during meals in a convent. (^21) “For 50 years and more, Elizabeth Windsor has maintained her dignity, her sense of duty and her hairstyle. If it wasn’t for her, I most certainly wouldn’t be here – ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Queen”; BBCNews, “Mirren ‘Too Busy’ to Meet Queen”, 10 May 2007, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/ hi/entertainment/6643793. stm>, 30 June 2012. (^22) Ibid.
(^23) In an interview Pavani admitted to watching the film to this very end: “Ovviamente me lo sono riguardato attentamente non appena mi è stata proposta la traduzione di questo libro”; Luca Balduzzi, “Intervista via e-mail a Monica Pavani”, 4 November 2007, <http:// www.imolaoggi.it/civetta/ index.cfm?wnews=105>, 30 June 2012.
(^24) Katie Wales, “Royalese: the Rise and Fall of ‘The Queen’s English’”, English Today , 10 (1994), 39.
The Italian Translation of The Uncommon Reader
linguistic features widely associated in Britain with the speech of members of the Royal Family, as well as certain other high status groups”,^25 or better as the language of the older members of the Royal Family which reflects their ideological as well as social distance, i.e. what we could call the linguistic manifestation of “the distance between royalty and commonalty”.^26 The two pronouns which characterise the language of the Royal Family and of the Queen in particular as ‘royalese’ are ‘royal we’ and ‘royal one’. The ‘royal we’, or majestic plural, is a marker of the speech of Shakespearian rulers, although Queen Victoria was allegedly the first monarch to be reported as using it in real life, with the famous remark, “We are not amused”.^27 Others have suggested that the quotation is not an example of the ‘royal we’, since Victoria was probably speaking on behalf of all the ladies present at court. Princess Alice denied Queen Victoria ever uttered the comment in a 1978 interview; she said she had asked her grandmother about the expression, “but she never said it”, Queen Victoria being “a very cheerful person”.^28 It has not always been of exclusively royal use though, as ‘We have become a grandmother’ was Margaret Thatcher’s statement to the press on the birth of her first grandchild in 1989, a statement which caused much controversy and hilarity. 29 At present, the pronoun is “[v]irtually obsolete … in the mouth of the current monarch, but … very much alive in the ‘royalese’ of satirical journalism, parody and caricature, a crude symbol of royalty, like the orb and scepter”; according to Wales, “the present queen is more likely to use the properly exclusive ‘royal firm we ’, speaking on behalf of the royal family present and past; or the ‘royal tour we ’, equivalent to my husband and I ”,^30 the latter having become a real catch-phrase. Unlike ‘royal we’, ‘royal one’ meaning ‘I’ is still “undoubtedly used frequently by royalty, in real life as in stereotype”,^31 but also by people only even remotely connected with the Royal Family. It is as much an object of caricature and mockery as ‘royal we’: in a famous episode of Dead Ringers , a television comedy show broadcast on BBC Two, the character impersonating Her Majesty, taking over Helen Mirren’s role in Prime Suspect in revenge for the actress playing her role in Frears’s film, closes the episode saying “One’s telling you one’s nicked, you slag!”. Other examples of ‘royal one’ being “a marked and widely recognised stereotype”^32 are easily found in the tabloid press: “One is not amused by Prince Harry’s smokebomb prank”; 33 “One is NOT amused! Or how the Queen can’t help revealing her royal displeasure”^34 are just two of the many. More recently, when publicity agency Saatchi & Saatchi conceived the idea of marrying T-Mobile’s ‘Life’s for Sharing’ slogan with the April 2011 royal wedding, they rephrased it into ‘One’s Life’s for Sharing’. 35 Margaret Thatcher also used ‘royal one’, which probably confirmed people in their disdain of her pretentious manners, in addition to producing popular linguistic jokes.^36 In addition to ‘royal we’ and ‘royal one’, Her Majesty must also use – probably much more often than ‘royal we’ or ‘one’ – in the right contexts, the pronoun ‘I’, although in public she only seems to use it in the famous and much laughed about phrase mentioned above, ‘my husband and I’.^37
(^25) Sharon Goodman, “’One’ and the Pun: How Newspapers keep the Monarchy in its Place”, Language and Literature , 6.3 (1997), 197. (^26) Wales, “Royalese”, 5.
(^27) Caroline Holland, Notebooks of a Spinster Lady (London: Gassell and Company, 1919), 269, <http:// www.archive.org/stream/ notebooksofspins00spinuoft/ notebooksofspins00spinuoft_ djvu.txt>, 30 June 2012; also found in Elizabeth Knowles, “we”, The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) <http://www.encyclopedia. com /doc/1O214-we.html>, 30 June 2012. (^28) Here is the context provided by Caroline Holland: “There is a tale of the unfortunate equerry who ventured during dinner at Windsor to tell a story with a spice of scandal or impropriety in it. ‘We are not amused’, said the Queen when he had finished” (268-269). (^29) “Lately [Margaret Thatcher] has seemed to take almost a regal view of her position, using the royal we. On a television program after the birth of her first grandchild she said, ‘We have become a grandmother’”; Anthony Lewis, “Is It Thatcher’s Britain?”, The New York Times , 23 March 1989. (^30) Wales, “Royalese”, 64.
(^31) Ibid., 9.
(^32) Sharon Goodman, “‘One’ and the Pun”, 198. (^33) Lucy Ballinger, “One is not Amused by Prince Harry’s Smokebomb Prank”,
The Italian Translation of The Uncommon Reader
‘One has never seen you here before, Mr…’ ‘Hutchings, Your Majesty. Every Wednesday, ma’am.’ ‘Really? I never knew that. Have you come far?’ ‘Only from Westminster, ma’am.’ ‘And you are…?’ ‘Norman, ma’am. Seakins.’ ‘And where do you work?’ ‘In the kitchen, ma’am.’ ‘Oh. Do you have much time for reading?’ ‘Not really, ma’am.’ ‘I’m the same. Though now that one is here I suppose one ought to borrow a book.’ … ‘Is one allowed to borrow a book? One doesn’t have a ticket?’ ‘No problem,’ said Mr Hutchings. ‘One is a pensioner’, said the Queen, not that she was sure that made any difference. (6-7)
‘How did you find it, ma’am?’ asked Mr Hutchings. ‘Dame Ivy? A little dry. And everyone talks the same way, did you notice that?’ ‘To tell you the truth, ma’am, I never got through more than a few pages. How far did your Majesty get?’ ‘Oh, to the end. Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up. Books, bread and butter, mashed potato – one finishes what’s on one’s plate. That’s always been my philosophy.’ ‘There was actually no need to have brought the book back, ma’am. We’re downsizing and all the books on that shelf are free.’ ‘You mean I can have it?’ She clutched the book to her. ‘I’m glad I came. Good afternoon, Mr Seakins. More Cecil Beaton?’ (11)
As is evident, a certain form of complicity is created among the three characters by the chance encounter as well as surely by the fact that the Queen is not used to meeting ordinary people outside official occasions and, above all, without the presence of a mediator. Also, through her occasional slip into the use of ‘I’, Bennett probably wanted to convey the Queen’s personal curiosity and enthusiasm for a world she does not know particularly well. Bennett has the Queen using ‘we’, instead, to express the other (upper) extreme of the formality spectrum. The pronoun is only used on a few occasions in the book, which confirms Wales’ idea of it not being very much in use today (“I doubt if the present Queen ever uses it”,^38 ). The first context where ‘we’ is used is a conversation with Sir Kevin about a royal visit to Wales where the Queen’s literary aide, Norman, is called to intervene:
‘Norman.’ Sir Kevin heard a chair scrape as Norman got up. ‘We’re going to Wales in a few weeks’ time.’ ‘Bad luck, ma’am.’ The Queen smiled back at the unsmiling Sir Kevin. ‘Norman is so cheeky. Now we’ve read Dylan Thomas, haven’t we, and some John Cowper Powys. And Jan Morris we’ve read. But who else is there?’ ‘You could try Kilvert, ma’am,’ said Norman. ‘Who’s he?’ ‘A vicar, ma’am. Nineteenth century. Lived on the Welsh borders and wrote a diary. Fond of little girls.’
(^38) Wales, “Royalese”, 8.
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‘Oh,’ said the Queen, ‘like Lewis Carroll.’ ‘Worse, ma’am.’ ‘Dear me. Can you get me the diaries?’ ‘I’ll add them to our list, ma’am.’ (37) The first ‘we’ is clearly used as ‘royal tour we ’, i.e. as an equivalent of ‘my husband and I’, whereas the second can be said to correspond to ‘you and I’, a sort of ‘inclusive we’ (for Norman’s benefit) which is at very same time an ‘exclusive’ one (for Sir Kevin’s detriment). It is also a linguistic manifestation of the humanising power of reading, which is bringing the Queen closer to common people than to her usual entourage of ministers, councillors, etc. This seems to be confirmed in the following exchange, where the Queen finishes off a conversation with the Prime Minister which she does not find particularly pleasant turning to a very formal ‘we’: The Queen sighed and pressed the bell. ‘We will think about it.’ The prime minister knew that the audience was over as Norman opened the door and waited. ‘So this’ thought the prime minister, ‘is the famous Norman.’ ‘Oh, Norman,’ said the Queen, ‘the prime minister doesn’t seem to have read Hardy. Perhaps you could find him one of our old paperbacks on his way out.’ (58)
The Queen is cross because the Prime Minister would not agree with her idea of her sitting on a sofa and reading Hardy for her Christmas broadcast, so she probably wants to stress her distance from the Prime Minister, while at the very same time teasing him with the possible hint of a special complicity existing between her and Norman: indeed, ‘one of our old paperbacks’ could also mean ‘yours and mine’. Pavani has confessed that translating the Queen’s speech into Italian was not an easy task: il testo in lingua originale presentava una difficoltà pressoché insormontabile: quando parla Sua Maestà, Bennett quasi sempre le fa usare l’impersonale che caratterizza ossessivamente la sua parlata, ossia l’“one” che ancora una volta è l’indizio linguistico della quasi assenza di individualità che contraddistingue la Sovrana. Così lei, soprattutto quando prende la parola in veste ufficiale, fa discorsi del tipo: “One is a pensioner”, “One doesn’t read” ecc… Ovviamente in italiano la traduzione letterale con il “si”, o ancora peggio “uno non legge”, sarebbe stata terribile, quindi – lavorando di squadra con la redazione Adelphi – abbiamo optato per un’alternanza di soggetti, usando il “noi” quando non creava ambiguità e non diventava troppo artificioso. Soluzione – tra l’altro
- abbastanza in consonanza con il bel film di Frears, The Queen.^39 Differently from what Pavani says, in the book Bennett seems to mark – both linguistically and narratively – the Queen as an individual with personal ideas and beliefs, often in contrast with those of her entourage. And Pavani’s translation does seem to show this, although probably more as a result of the influence of Frears’s film than of a deliberate attempt to respect the source text. However, what the text certainly loses in the movement across the two languages is the linguistic manifestation of how reading brings the Queen closer to common people who share her love for reading than to ministers (and family) who do not. Indeed, Pavani seems to use ‘noi’ without exception when the Queen talks to her ‘friends of reading’. The extracts presented earlier, and brought together below side by side with their translation, can help exemplify this:
(^39) Luca Balduzzi, “Intervista”.
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connection with her clutching the book and stating she is glad she went to the mobile library, manages to achieve the same effect. In short, the complicity implicit in the pronoun switch may be lost, but the comic effect is saved for that very reason. The exclusive use of ‘I’ being one end and the use of ‘we’ being the other (rare) end of the formality/distance spectrum, the unmarked use of pronouns in the Queen’s speech in The Uncommon Reader seems to be an alternation of ‘one’/’I’, as in the following extract, where Her Majesty and Sir Kevin are discussing the Queen’s new habit of reading, a habit Sir Kevin does not particularly appreciate: ‘It’s important,’ said Sir Kevin, ‘that Your Majesty stay focused.’ ‘When you say “stay focused”, Sir Kevin, I suppose you mean one should keep one’s eye on the ball. Well, I’ve had my eye on the ball for more than fifty years, so I think these days one is allowed the occasional glance to the boundary.’ (29)
The Queen is clearly unhappy with Sir Kevin’s comment, but her position requires her to outwardly react with aplomb, and Bennett brilliantly manages to convey that. A similar alternation of ‘one’/’I’ is evident in this other extract, where the Queen and the Prime Minister appear to have different ideas about Her Majesty’s Christmas broadcast: ‘I thought this year one might do something different.’ ‘Different, ma’am?’ ‘Yes. If one were to be sitting on a sofa reading or, even more informally, be discovered by the camera curled up with a book, the camera could creep in – is that the expression?
- until I’m in mid-shot, when I could look up and say, “I’ve been reading this book about such and such,”, and then go on from there.’ ‘And what would the book be, ma’am?’ The prime minister looked unhappy. ‘That one would have to think about.’ (56)
Unlike Bennett’s use of an alternation between ‘one’ and ’I’ in the Queen’s speech even in confrontational situations, Peter Morgan’s script of Frears’s film presents a consistent use of ‘I’ on such occasions.^41 Indeed, whereas ‘we’ and ‘one’ are used in an interchangeable way throughout the film as the royal unmarked pronoun, the switch to ‘I’ outside the family context seem to be the linguistic manifestation of the Queen’s disagreement and dissent, or simply a way of making her point clear. Distant as she may look from ordinary people and their thoughts and feelings, Her Majesty’s language seems to tell a whole different story. If anything, she can lose her temper just as much as anybody else. The following exchange with Tony Blair seems to be good evidence of this:
TONY Your Majesty, the country has spoken...and I come now to ask your permiss.. ELIZABETH (interjecting) No, no, no. It’s usual for ME to ask the questions. TONY winces. Wishes the ground would swallow him up. ELIZABETH Mr Blair, the people have elected you to be their leader. And so the duty falls on me, as your Sovereign, to ask you to become Prime Minister, and form a government in my name.
(^41) Peter Morgan, The Queen , script, IMSDb (The Internet Movie Script Database), 2007, <http://www.imsdb.com/ scripts/Queen,-The.html>, 30 June 2012.
The Italian Translation of The Uncommon Reader
Morgan’s use of ‘I/me’ as an outward manifestation of the Queen’s will to clearly state her point and express her disagreement is probably even more evident when comparing/contrasting the two extracts that follow. Here Her Majesty is simply informing Blair of her decision for Diana’s funeral to be a private one, which makes the use of ‘royal we’ the most suitable option:
ELIZABETH We’ve spoken to the Spencer family, and it’s their wish… (a beat)…their express wish, that it should be a private funeral. With a memorial service to follow in a month, or so. … ELIZABETH Given that Diana was no longer a member of the Royal Family we have no choice but to respect their wishes.
When Blair insists Diana should have a state funeral, instead, the Queen switches to ‘I’, as she clearly wants to make her point clear: she is obviously irritated, as is revealed in her language:
ELIZABETH As I said. That’s the Spencers’ wish. … ELIZABETH It’s a family funeral, Mr. Blair. Not a fairground attraction. (a beat) I think the Princess has already paid a high enough price for exposure to the press, don’t you? PRINCE PHILIP enters, dressed and ready for church. He indicates his watch. ELIZABETH Now, if there is nothing else I must get on. The children have to be looked after.
This is another example of how Morgan uses ‘I’ in Queen’s speech when he wants her to sound direct, straightforward, and determined to make her point clear with no misunderstanding whatsoever:
ELIZABETH If you’re suggesting that I drop everything and come down to London before I attend to two boys that have just lost their mother… you’re mistaken. PRINCE PHILIP Absurd.. ELIZABETH I doubt there are many who know the British more than I do, Mr. Blair, nor who has greater faith in their wisdom and judgement. And it is my belief that they will soon reject this ‘mood’ which has been stirred up by the press...in favour of a period of restrained grief, and sober, private mourning. (a beat) That’s the way we do things in this country. Quietly. With dignity. (a beat) It’s what the rest of the world has always admired us for.
As hinted at above, Pavani has openly recognised that the translation choices she made about the Queen’s speech are in tune with Frears’s film.^42 This is evident in her version of the exchange between the Queen and Sir Kevin which was analysed above and is brought to the reader’s attention again in Fig. 4, side by side with the translation:
(^42) Luca Balduzzi, “Intervista”.
The Italian Translation of The Uncommon Reader
Indeed, although both Bennett and Frears can be said to have contributed to putting a human face on an institution – the British monarchy – characterised by aloofness and respect of protocol, they have done so in a very different way. They have both offered a sympathetic and affectionate portrayal of Her Majesty, but each has carried it out in their own distinctive ways. Bennett’s Queen is maybe somewhat limited in the breadth of her education but clever and thoughtful and sensitive, and as much eager to learn as to share her acquired knowledge and understanding with ordinary people, some of whom being allowed to get closer to her than the closest member of her entourage (or family). Decisions have always been made for her, even by her dogs (see the mobile library episode); she now feels the time has come for her to try to change this, although she seems to be aware, at all times, that this is only partly possible, due to the limits imposed by the so-called Royal Prerogative, i.e. by the political tradition according to which the British monarch reigns but does not rule. Frears’s Queen, instead, is a woman who seems to be used to having her every desire satisfied and command obeyed, even by her dogs, although deep down she is probably a shy person thrown into a life she did not ask for. She seems to be an affectionate grandmother, torn between tradition and public expectations. She finally has to recognise the world has changed and the monarchy – which, she now clearly understands, only represents the country – has to ‘modernise’. These different characterisations are carried out as much through narration as through language. Pavani’s choice to dress Bennett’s story with a language which is closer to that chosen by the film’s scriptwriter probably responds to the need of meeting the expectations of the target public. Despite not having a specific interest in the British monarchy – or being particularly keen on reading – Italians have come to develop a certain curiosity in the Royal Family’s private affairs after Squidgygate, Camillagate and Diana’s death thanks to the media coverage of these events as well as to films like Frears’s. Moreover, they already have a model for the Queen’s language (and therefore personality) in mind. Publishers are not charities and they do not produce books for the sake of culture (or at least not just for that). Books are marketed like any other product. To put it less cynically, Pavani may be attempting here to build a network of connections for Bennett’s book to find a suitable place in the Italian reader’s culture – and memory; she is probably trying to recreate a link, albeit debatable, between source text and target readership or, if one prefers to look at the question from the point of view of the target text, she is trying to ‘anchor’ it, just like the source text was ‘anchored’ in its turn. Clearly, this also results in producing a completely different ideal reader from Bennett’s book. Pavani’s use of pronouns in the Queen’s speech does not just affect characterisation; it also has an effect on narration at a different level. Indeed, the fusion of ‘royal we’ and ‘royal one’ into a ‘noi’ which has no other connotation in Italian than that of being used either as majestic plural by people of high rank or as a modesty plural by orators and writers, deprives the text of the added comic effect of ‘royalese’.^43 Brits are accustomed to hearing/seeing ‘royal we’ used over
(^43) The specific entry in DeMauro’s dictionary reads: “usato in luogo del singolare come plurale maiestatico da persone d’alta autorità: n. impartiamo la benedizione apostolica ; come plurale di modestia da oratori e scrittori: i testi da n. citati ”.
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and over again in transgressive ways. It is used with a lack of deference which brings the Queen down to their level whilst appropriating her language, in a carnivalesque sort of way. On the one hand, this presumably helps to relieve class tensions by acknowledging people’s concerns, but actually it is probably used to defend the status quo. 44 Italian ‘exclusive we’, instead, does not seem to have the extra connotation of sounding comic, as it is not often used to parody heads of state – or popes – who tend (despite a few exceptions: see next footnote) to use the singular in their speeches, instead, and are thus not figured as using such a pronoun in other contexts. The Queen’s voice in La sovrana lettrice is, as argued above, probably more Pavani’s than Bennett’s, and it surely characterises Her Majesty as a stronger, more self- respecting and self-assured woman than the one sketched in The Uncommon Reader. However, Pavani does not seem to intend to take the re-writing aspect of translation too far, after all, considering that she could have probably thought of an original way of dealing with the issues which have only just been touched upon (the comic flavour of ‘royal one’). Maybe building up a further interdiscursive relation for the Italian reader, or even attempting some form of linguistic creativity, might have resulted in a more exciting text. This would have had the added benefit of saving the text its comic force.^45
The queen
This paragraph and the paragraphs that follow aim to show how in fiction, as in real life, speech patterns are also tools that speakers/characters manipulate in order to place themselves and to categorise others. In doing so, they automatically create and/or identify themselves as part of particular speech/cultural communities. The specific reference will here be to purported gay speech, or better to a specific set of language choices which may be a crucial element in Bennett’s text. The paragraph will also show how the social/cultural groupings implicit in the source text can only be inferred by a handful (if any) of readers of the target text due to linguistic choices that may stem from the translator’s (or editorial staff’s) deliberate attempt to affect the text’s reach. We first read about Norman Seakins in The Uncommon Reader when he is taking out a book by Cecil Beaton from the City of Westminster travelling library parked outside Buckingham Palace. His reading choice provides a good insight into his personality straightaway. Cecil Beaton was the foremost fashion and portrait photographer of his day. He worked as a photographer for Vanity Fair and Vogue , in addition to photographing celebrities in Hollywood as well as the Royal Family themselves for official publication. In 1972, he was knighted. He was rumoured to have had a relationship with Greta Garbo but the real love of his life was art collector Peter Watson, a striking figure himself, loved by women but obsessed with American male prostitute and socialite Denham Fouts. Beaton and Watson never became lovers, and the photographer supposedly had relationships with other men. He even claimed to have had an affair with Gary Cooper. Going back
(^44) Sharon Goodman, “‘One’ and the pun”.
(^45) Think of Berlusconi’s habit of speaking in the third person: “Gli italiani hanno chiaro che Silvio Berlusconi difende la sicurezza di tutti”; “… sanno che … non ruba e che non utilizza il potere a suo vantaggio personale”; Presidente del Consiglio, Interviste e interventi, 2009, <http://www.governo.it/ Presidente/Interventi/testo_ int.asp?d=50067>, 30 June 2012.
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man of some intelligence’” was employed in the kitchen, an equerry comments that he is “‘[n]ot dolly enough’ (…) ‘Thin, ginger-haired. Have a heart’” (15). The word ‘dolly’ – which does not immediately resonate as ‘pretty’ or ‘beautiful’ to the ordinary person (Pavani translates “Brutto com’è” - literally: “as ugly as he is”) – has a strong gay connotation in this context. Indeed, the OED informs that, as an adjective, it is ‘usually applied to a girl: attractive; fashionable. colloq. ’.^48 Moreover, ‘dolly’ is also short for ‘dolly bird’, which the online Merriam-Webster dictionary^49 defines as a British expression used to refer to a pretty young woman, and the online Gay Slang Dictionary^50 lists the expression ‘Dial-A-Dolly-Service’ meaning:
1. colloq. Male prostitute that gets his business by phone. Source: [80’s]
- A 900 phone sex line. Source: [90’s] As is clear, the Italian ‘Brutto com’è’ omits the extra hint to the kitchen hand- turned-page’s sexual preference contained in the word “dolly”, a hint which seems to be crucial for the characterization of Norman in the English text. As hinted at above, the word ‘dolly’ does not immediately mean ‘pretty’ or ‘beautiful’ to the ordinary person today; it is in Polari,^51 i.e. in gay slang that ‘dolly’ means ‘pretty, nice, pleasant’.^52 The equerry who uses the word may himself be gay, considering that, as Ackerley suggests in My Dog Tulip ,^53 to the Queen’s surprise “the guards seemed to be as readily available as the book made out and at such a reasonable tariff. She would have liked to have known more about this; but though she had equerries who were in the Guards she hardly felt able to ask” (20). Because the equerry uses the term when talking to the personal secretary, the latter may be implicitly included in the community, and indeed he is the one who seems to most clearly identify Norman as a ‘queen’ for the benefit of the ordinary reader. When the special advisor asks him if Norman is a ‘nancy’, we learn that “Sir Kevin didn’t know for certain but thought it was possible” (65). It is probably only at this point in the text that the Italian ordinary reader, who has very thin chances of spotting the allusions contained in Norman’s favourite reads, clearly understands his sexual orientation, as Pavani well translates the word ‘nancy’ as ‘checca’. Had Pavani dared to translate dolly as ‘sbarbato’, the allusion to Norman’s sexual orientation would have probably been made clear earlier on in the text, although only to a limited number of readers: the term both means ‘with no stubble’ – thereby implying the young man is effeminate or defective in some physical way (too little facial hair to look handsome in a masculine way) and therefore needs to compensate this by proving to be of above average intelligence – and points to his sexual orientation in a subtle way. The word ‘sbarbato’ may in fact ring a bell for readers of Riccardo Bacchelli, whose 1935 novel Mal d’Africa reads “Cheri spiegò in due parole al capitano che quei due mozzi erano del bel numero degli sbarbati, genere fiorentissimo in quelle contrade e rivali in amore delle donne”.^54 However, the terms ‘dolly’ and ‘sbarbato’ do not share the characteristic of being part of a private slang, besides which they are chronologically distant. Polari may date back to the 16 th^ century^55 and was most popular in the 1950s and 60s thanks
(^48) Oxford English Dictionary.
(^49) Merriam-Webster On-line Dictionary (2009), <http:// www.merriam-webster.com/ dictionary/dolly bird>, 30 June 2012. (^50) Gay Slang Dictionary, <http://www.odps. org/glossword/index. php?a=term&d=8&t=3747>, 30 June 2012. (^51) Polari, <http://dizionario. reverso.net/inglese- definizioni/polari>, 30 June 2012. (^52) Paul Baker, Polari. The Lost Language of Gay Men (London: Routledge, 2002). (^53) Joe Randolph Ackerley, My Dog Tulip (New York: The New York Review of Books, 1965).
(^54) Riccardo Bacchelli, Mal d’Africa (Milano: Mondadori, 1962 [1935]), 41. (^55) The on-line Collins Dictionary (also in Collins English Dictionary , London: HarperCollins Publishers,
- defines Polari as “an English slang that is derived from the Lingua Franca of Mediterranean ports; brought to England by sailors from the 16th century onwards. A few words survive, esp. in male homosexual slang”.
The Italian Translation of The Uncommon Reader
to its use by Julian and Sandy, the homosexual characters of BBC radio shows Beyond our Ken and Round the Horne , which were packed with double meanings and sexual innuendo. The term ‘mignone’, which identifies the gay individual whilst also pointing to physical appearance due to its origin from French ‘mignon’, for ‘cute, lovely’,^56 would have probably presented the same problem. Unfortunately, the connotation of the term ‘dolly’ as characteristic of gay speech seems doomed to be completely lost in Italian. This may be why Pavani chooses to let drop the sexual connotation of the term ‘dolly’ altogether, opting for the clearly domesticating ‘brutto’, which simply directly makes explicit that he is ‘ugly’ but helps to attain her highly-sought-after aim of music, rhythm and fluency. ‘Dolly’ was not worth the effort. This is actually not the only culturally gay-related connotation to be dropped altogether; a further web of inter-textual references ‘naturally’ builds up for the British reader around the word ‘queen’, as Bennett most definitely makes subtle reference to the Queen Mother’s famous remark:
Whilst waiting to be served her Gin & Tonic, the Queen Mum could hear two openly gay members of her staff arguing in the hallway outside her sitting room. Impatient at being kept waiting so long the Queen Mother eventually called out “When you two old Queens have finished arguing, this Old Queen wants her Gin”.^57
Moreover, the reference to Cecil Beaton in the source text may well be said to ‘encapsulate’ the fictitious character of Norman for the British reader: Cecil Beaton, who was gay and the Queen Mother’s friend, 58 is indeed still celebrated for his loving portraits of the Royals and especially of Queen Elizabeth II.^59
Queenie
Norman Seakins, on his first commission for Her Majesty (“the Queen gave Norman her Nancy Mitford to return, telling him that there was apparently a sequel and she wanted to read that too, plus anything else besides he thought she might fancy”, 16), hearing from the librarian that dogs may be a subject of interest, picks My Dog Tulip as the Queen’s next read. The 1956 novel by J.R. Ackerley tells the story of a man’s relationship with his dog, most probably echoing the author’s discovery, in middle age, of his ideal companion, an Alsatian bitch whom he named Queenie. Despite only being mentioned once in the book and never actually reaching Her Majesty’s ears – “‘It’s supposed to be fiction, ma’am, only the author did have a dog in life, an Alsatian.’ (He didn’t tell her its name was Queenie.) ‘So it’s really disguised autobiography.’ (17) – Queenie is a crucial character in the story for a series of reasons. Besides the Queen’s love for horses and dogs being one of the few things everybody knows about Her Majesty, Queenie is, together with her fictional counterpart Tulip, the only dog to be clearly identified in the book. Dogs are the physical trigger in initiating the Queen’s new course of life in The
(^56) The Vocabolario gay, lesbico, bisex e trans drawn up by Rai
- Segretariato sociale lists the term mignone as meaning “Ragazzo omosessuale passivo. Dal francese mignon , grazioso, gentile”. (^57) <http://bytesdaily.blogspot. it/2012/06/funny-friday. html>, 30 June 2012; the present Queen’s mother was known as the Queen Mother. (^58) Alex Needham, “Cecil Beaton: photographer to the young Queen Elizabeth II”, The Guardian, 6 February 2012. (^59) Mark Brown, “Unseen Cecil Beaton pictures of Queen to go on show at V&A.”, The Guardian, 9 June 2011.
