Due Giorni Alla Fine: Adventures in the Shadow of Babel

It may interest some of you to know that, thus far, Just a Couple of Days has been (or is in the process of being) translated into Spanish, Italian, Polish, Turkish, French, and Hebrew. Curious about the process of translation, I did some research and happened across a wordreference.com discussion board where the Turkish translator of Just a Couple of Days was inquiring if anyone could explain what "wise-assed" specifically meant. Thence ensued a lively discussion with contributors from the U.S., France, Turkey, Germany, Ireland, and Israel attempting to draw distinctions between a wise-ass, a smart-ass, a smart-aleck, a wise-guy, as well as a klugschitter (a German word whose literal English translation is wise-shitter), which of course led to a spirited debate as to the proper distinction between the verb forms of shit and bullshit.

Not long after, I received an e-mail from the Italian translator of Just a Couple of Days (Due Giorni Alla Fine in Italian, incidentally…), who was in a state of puzzlement over how to translate certain sections. My sympathies were with her, for as some of you know, there are passages in Just a Couple of Days so thick with puns, similes, allegories, allusions, metaphors, and nonsensical non sequiturs that they have inspired a seething hatred of my presence on this planet from a vocal few, and this from native speakers of English. I cannot imagine the task of translating such wordplay. The Italian translator writes:

The Billet-doux at pp. 198-9 is the most obscure for me. Could you explain what it is exactly about?
Rosehips: We really must hand it to ourselves. We quibble and we quoth, and quack as muck as quick, but quiver do we niver a cold and lonesome shiver.
Sweetlick: Fe fi fo fum, enough of this enterprising ho hum. Yo ho ho and a bottle of pennies. Money is our shortage, loans, bills, and mortgage…

I'm not sure I was much help in my reply. I can only pray that Saint Peter won't read those words, else I'll find myself at the gates of heaven one day staring down the accusations of his index finger as he bounces a tattered copy of Just a Couple of Days off my head and thunders, "What is the meaning of this horseshit?" and I'm forced to kick at the clouds beneath my feet and stammer that I really have no idea.

Fortunately, I was able to assist with the translator's other earnest perplexities. In a way, it reminded me of what Just a Couple of Days was all about in the first place: How much we take for granted when we use language—what is known as the etcetera principle. Every word is deeply embedded in a cultural context so all-encompassing that we forget it even exists, and it's not until we're forced to explain what we exactly mean that its existence becomes apparent. For the sake of posterity, and for the sake of an adventure in the shadow of Babel, I've included some of her questions below, along with my tortured replies.

p. 151: doom is on the loom? What is the meaning?
Tragedy is looming.

p. 162: shiver me timbers... Is it a Tom Waits' song?
I don't know the Tom Waits song, but I intended it as a reference to pirates, "shiver me timbers" being an alleged expletive of pirates.

p. 164: Tofu! Tofu!... The inmates shout these words. Can you explain?
Tofu is a soybean-based protein food. It's intended to be utter nonsense without sensible context.

p. 182. gotten a pick-up game of co-ed naked Red Rover going with the nuns
next door... Could you explain to me what is Red Rover?
Red Rover is a childhood game in which two opposing lines face one another with hands clasped and call individuals from the other line to try to run and break through their hands. It's fun.

p. 195: hands now flirting with his fiddle like the devil down in Georgia... Is it an idiom? Otherwise I don't know anything about a Georgian devil.
The Devil Went Down to Georgia is a popular song by the Charlie Daniels Band in which the devil challenges a fiddler to a fiddle-playing contest down in the state of Georgia. Not that it matters to the reference, but the fiddler wins and calls the devil a son of a bitch.

p. 216: propriety shmo-priety... What does it mean?
Sh- is a prefix of mockery or dismissal, possibly of Yiddish orgin (e.g., shmuck), as in money shmoney, dance shmance, or propriety shmo-priety. In any event, the meaning is "propriety be damned."

p. 218 whom he called "li'l pumpkin"... What does li'l mean?
Li'l is a contraction of little.

p. 219: he settled for wagging his whippersnapper... Whippersnapper = penis?
Regrettably, yes. I was young when I wrote this.

p. 233: I'd rather you jack yourself off than off yourself Jack... jack oneself = masturbate; off Jack = cut off one's penis? Who would cut it? Flake to himself?
"Off yourself" means to kill yourself, and Kiljoy is only calling Flake "Jack" for the word reversal. Essentially he's saying "I'd rather you masturbate than commit suicide."

p. 234: and began twirling his tamale... Tamale = penis?
Yes, Kiljoy plays with his privates a lot, and every time the narrator observes this he uses a different euphemism. As I said, I was nothing but a whippersnapper myself when I wrote this.

p. 249: pleased as a peach in fourth grad, or a plum in fifth… Could you explain it, please?
This is an allusion to a grade school rhyme in some regions of the U.S. that goes:
Kindergarten babies,
first grade snots,
second grade angels,
third grade pots,
fourth grade peaches,
fifth grade plums,
and all the rest are dirty bums.

p. 264: Miss Mary may well have shaken herself to death... Does it mean that Miss Mary is frightened?
Miss Mary was addicted to cigarettes, and people in nicotine withdrawal get "the shakes," uncontrolled nervousness and jitteriness. "Shaken herself to death" is hyperbole.

p. 270: and so the shit riseth, and life is crappy... riseth = rises?
Yes.

p. 288: They ran for it... What do they run for, exactly?
"Run for it" is an idiom, to depart as fast as possible.

p. 293: Brahmic brap... Brahmic = family of scripts? Brap = loud noise of an engine or an onomatopoeic word for burp?
Brahmic refers to the highest form of consciousness in Hinduism. And yes, brap is an onomatopoeic word for burp.

There you have it, friends and Babylonians. Relying on so much etcetera behind every single word, it's really a wonder we can communicate at all, even in the same language. Add another language into this process and you have an unbearable confusion, and so we must offer our gratitude and our compliments to the fantastic patience of translators everywhere.

So let me not be mistaken: This is not to discourage anyone from reading Milan Kundera, Haruki Murakami, or Gabriel Garcia Marquez ever again. Translators are professional folks, and the process has its own vetting protocols to hold the intent intact across languages. As one of my Turkish readers wrote to me, "It was a good translation from English to Turkish, be sure about it, I felt satisfied while reading it in my own language... your book is staying on top of the bookstores, I saw it in many places." That's nice. What a tremendous delight it would be to be strolling around the streets of Istanbul and happen to witness someone chuckling as they read Sadece Birkac Gun over some Turkish coffee. Would it really matter if they had no idea how to play Red Rover?

On the other hand, I haven't the foggiest idea what The Flash is doing on the cover of the Italian edition, though the Italian review that Google translated below is very complimentary, and never even mentions The Flash. We can only trust our human translators are more adept than the machines.

Two Days to end

Virus deadly, philosophical reflections and grotesque appearances in this novel reflective and fascinating

Is there any worry. If you hold in your library Two days before the end, crushed between a book and the other, or if you intend to buy, make sure that none of the "powerful" of the world becomes aware of its existence, or that the worst read: could really be the end for us all.

I say so because probably sfogliandolo (oddio, there aspetterete to see some light!) Soffermerebbero only on the part of fantomatico virus Clear symbolic capacity. But proceed in an orderly, and while there story of what he speaks, keep the book out of the reach of the ambitious!

Blip Korterly is an eccentric professor of sociology, married with the beautiful Sophia and father of small and arguta Dandelion, and is becoming crazy. Do you believe that a giant mushroom is ready to subvert the fate of humanity, that a large conspiracy is in progress, sees eyes and ears everywhere and assilla with visions and delusions his best friend, the geneticist Flake Fountain, narrator of a story told to 'Back, like a Volume of memories, like a diary. Blip has not so wrong (although probably is impazzendo really) and Flake will be accountable when recruited / abducted by the mysterious assassins of an association that has developed a virus dangerous for the whole human race, a weapon non-lethal but effective, at least in theory. Pifferaio The magic combination of the absurd dance of San Vito and the total deficiency, Clear the ability to recognize symbols and conventions, signs and sounds, demolisce and kills, in fact, communication between living beings and manifests itself with un'incontrollabile, contagious laugh and worrying. The conditions of the contract and binding are simple: they want a vaccine and pay profumatamente. Fountain, ethical implications aside, will be obliged to carry out this "mission" when will discover that Blip, made stop during a riot university, is among the guinea pigs chosen for the administration of that virus. Others, but not many people crowd the novel: a smoker incallita and snobbish, false and unbearable with chihuaua follow, the university rector, viscido and "poisonous" and a general borioso and despotic, perhaps insane, which does no more that giving orders and gingillarsi jewellery family furtively placing their hands in their pockets. In a vorticare theories and little events, will develop the ordeal liberating Dr Fountain, or simply Flake, who will launch the random (?) And sudden release of the virus. I believe are now more clear warnings at the beginning article.

Tony Vigorito has been a researcher and professor of sociology (but looks a little '…) all'Ohio State University long before you start writing novels in some remote desert house on the Appalachian mountains, from where they send the rest of the world. Brandisce a more reflective writing that thrilling, sometimes overly complex and academic, who obtains the result to affect the most daring and perhaps bore the most tired. He succeeds in its pages season with theories delirious but nevertheless consistent (if not correct!), Captivating for those who, like writers, knows how genetics beyond: at all.

Two Days to end, the winner of 'independent book publishers award as the best novel visionary, brings together square major issues as the evolution and the great debate about the nature of communications, on its seemingly indisputable necessity and sviscera sections and controversy in this regard: ago through characters often controversial but never stupid, it does so with flavors bizarre but never insignificant and pleasant conversations extracted from a mysterious "book of tickets amorous" who knows where that is.

Among the diary and the manuscript autobiographical, the novel is written as a report prepared by post and therefore a plurilaureato too often launched toward reasoning fascinating but verbose, which move perhaps more than necessary draw the line between fiction and essays. But this write microscopic is probably the right tool to lead the reader to think, think, think, until the paranoia, until the madness to reach then passed the crossroads between perdition and health (and long after the release for ' abbiocco), freedom, and if its goes bad, into awareness. Understanding, before become unable to distinguish letters, that the absurd mosaic from which we are surrounded is two days after its expiry date, or perhaps, as the murals of which are the same authors Blip and an audacious as mysterious interlocutor, that that day is… NOW!

Due Giorni Alla Fine,

Tony Vigorito
www.tonyvigorito.com
© 2008 Tony Vigorito... feel free to forward as far as you see fit...