Repository path: workshop/translations/malavoglia-i/R06-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

T-malavoglia-i-R06-v1 — Verga, «I Malavoglia», opening of Chapter I

Source. Giovanni Verga, I Malavoglia (Treves, 1881), Capitolo Primo, opening through «chi comanda ha da dar conto». 609 Italian words, 7 paragraphs. Copy-text: it.wikisource.org, I Malavoglia/Capitolo I, transcribed from the scanned edition (Indice:I Malavoglia.djvu), retrieved 2026-08-08 and stored at workshop/experiments/E-20260808e-low-pole/arms/source_it.txt. Public domain (author d. 1922).

Regime. R06 — lead single pass, source only, no revision, no register programme. Written straight through; where a choice was unresolved at the moment of writing, the option written is the one that stands and the alternative is in the log.

Contamination: suspected, declared before measurement, with two specific bases.

1. The lead has rendered Verga twice before in this project («Cavalleria rusticana» ¶50–81 under R04/R08 at S118 and under R21 at S124) — a different work, but the same author, the same translator, and the same Sicilian material.
2. One direct exposure is on the record and must be declared: while establishing that a public domain English translation of this novel exists, the lead saw the title of Mary A. Craig's 1890 rendering, The House by the Medlar-Tree. No sentence of Craig's text was opened before this translation and its log were frozen. The exposure is to four words of her title, and it bears on exactly one recurring phrase below (casa del nespolo), which is why that phrase is rendered the house with the medlar tree and not by Craig's hyphenated form — a deliberate divergence, recorded here rather than hidden.

Measurement against Craig 1890 is run after this freeze and reported on the experiment page; this declaration is not conditional on the result.

Freeze. This file and its log were committed before Craig 1890 was opened, before any census site was cut, and before E-20260808e's design existed.

Translation

Once the Malavoglia had been as many as the stones on the old road to Trezza; there were even some at Ognina and at Aci Castello, all of them good decent seafaring folk, exactly the opposite of what the nickname made them out to be, as is only right. In the parish register they went down as Toscano, true enough, but that meant nothing, because ever since the world was the world, at Ognina, at Trezza and at Aci Castello they had always been known as the Malavoglia, from father to son, and had always had boats on the water and tiles in the sun. Now at Trezza there were none left but the Malavoglia of padron 'Ntoni, the ones of the house with the medlar tree, and of the Provvidenza, which lay moored on the shingle below the washing place, next to uncle Cola's Concetta and padron Fortunato Cipolla's trawler.

The squalls that had scattered the other Malavoglia this way and that had gone over the house with the medlar tree and the boat moored below the washing place without doing much harm; and padron 'Ntoni, to explain the miracle, would hold up his shut fist — a fist that looked as if it were made of walnut wood — and say: To pull an oar the five fingers have to help one another.

He would say too: Men are made like the fingers of the hand: the thumb has to do the thumb's part, and the little finger has to do the little finger's.

And padron 'Ntoni's little household really was laid out like the fingers of a hand. First came himself, the thumb, who ordered the feast days and the Forty Hours; then his son Bastiano, Bastianazzo, because he was as big and thick as the St. Christopher painted under the arch of the fish market in town; and big and thick as he was he went straight to whatever manoeuvre he was told to, and would not have blown his nose if his father had not said to him "blow your nose", so much so that he took the Longa to wife when they told him "take her". Then came the Longa, a little slip of a thing who saw to the weaving, the salting of the anchovies and the making of children, like a good housewife; last the grandchildren, in order of age: 'Ntoni the eldest, a twenty-year-old loafer, who still earned himself a clout on the head from his grandfather now and then, and a kick lower down to put the balance right when the clout had been too hard; Luca, "who had more sense than the big one", his grandfather kept saying; Mena (Filomena), nicknamed "Saint Agatha" because she was always at the loom, and they say "woman at the loom, hen in the coop, and mullet in January"; Alessi (Alessio), a snotty little thing, the very picture of his grandfather, that one; and Lia (Rosalia), still neither meat nor fish. On Sundays, when they went into church one behind the other, it looked like a procession.

Padron 'Ntoni knew certain sayings and proverbs as well, that he had heard from the old people: "Because the saying of the old people never lied": — "Without a pilot the boat won't go" — "To play the pope you have to know how to play the sacristan" — or else — "Follow the trade you know, and if you don't get rich you'll scrape along" — "Be content with what your father made you; if nothing else you won't be a rogue" — and other judicious sentences.

That is why the house with the medlar tree prospered, and padron 'Ntoni passed for a square head, so much so that at Trezza they would have made him a town councillor, if don Silvestro the clerk, who knew a thing or two, had not preached that he was a rotten old pigtail, a reactionary of the sort that stand up for the Bourbons, and that he was plotting for Franceschello to come back so that he could lord it over the village the way he lorded it over his own house.

Padron 'Ntoni, for his part, did not know Franceschello even by sight, and minded his own business, and used to say: "A man with a household on his back can't sleep when he likes", because "whoever gives the orders has to render the account".

Translator's log

Frozen with the draft, written as the draft was written. Decisions and alternatives, not quality claims. Any evaluative sentence carries internal-judgment-only, which the front matter also asserts for the page as a whole.

The one structural fact I had to decide before the first sentence

This prose has no narrator standing outside the village. The sentences are grammatically the author's and lexically the village's — come dev'essere, questo non voleva dir nulla, tutt'ora, colui! — so that the judgements in the narration are the community's judgements reported without quotation marks. The decision, taken once and applied throughout: keep the village's voice in the narration and do not lift it into an authorial one. That is what forced good decent seafaring folk, true enough, that one, and the bare and they say before the mullet proverb. The opposite decision — a standard literary narrating voice with the proverbs quarantined inside quotation marks — was live and was rejected at the first paragraph, because it would have made come dev'essere unwritable: nothing in a detached narrator's mouth can mean as is only right about a nickname meaning its own opposite.

Decisions, in order

1. numerosi come i sassi della strada vecchia — as many as the stones on the old road. Alternative: as thick as the stones. Rejected: thick is an English intensifier that would have added an evaluative colour the Italian comparison does not have.

2. come dev'essere — as is only right. This is the hardest four words in the passage and the reason for the structural decision above. It asserts that a nickname properly means the opposite of the truth, as a rule of the world. Alternatives: as it should be (flat), as one would expect (turns a village law into an observation), naturally (adds irony the Italian leaves for the reader). Only right keeps the assertion of propriety.

3. nel libro della parrocchia si chiamavano Toscano — in the parish register they went down as Toscano. Went down as is a plain colloquial English construction for an official record; were entered as was the alternative and is a register above the Italian.

4. da che il mondo era mondo — ever since the world was the world. Calqued deliberately. The English idiom since the world began exists and is a shade more formal; the Italian phrase is a village tautology and the tautology is the point.

5. delle barche sull'acqua, e delle tegole al sole — boats on the water and tiles in the sun. Left entirely literal. It is a formula for boat and house, i.e. property, and it is not glossed. Rule: R06 does not supply what the source withholds; I did not write a roof over their heads.

6. la casa del nespolo — the house with the medlar tree, throughout. See the contamination declaration above: I know Craig's title reads The House by the Medlar-Tree, and I have chosen a different preposition and no hyphens, so that the recurring phrase in this rendering is not hers. The medlar-tree house was the third option. INT, forced by a known exposure.

7. la paranza di padron Fortunato Cipolla — padron Fortunato Cipolla's trawler. A paranza is a specific two-boat pair-trawling rig; trawler is the nearest single English word and loses the pairing. Recorded as a loss. Paranza untranslated was rejected: R06 has no foreignising rule and the passage already carries two untranslated boat names.

8. padron — kept untranslated, lower case, throughout, as the Italian has it. Master was the alternative and was rejected because it would collide with padrone elsewhere in the novel and because the word is functioning here as a title fused to the name.

9. mostrando il pugno chiuso — would hold up his shut fist. Shut rather than closed: closed fist is the anatomical description, shut is what a man does with his hand. The walnut-wood simile is literal.

10. Per menare il remo bisogna che le cinque dita s'aiutino l'un l'altro — To pull an oar the five fingers have to help one another. Left unpunctuated by quotation marks, as Verga has it with the dash. English convention wants quotation marks; the dash-only presentation is part of how the proverbs sit inside the narration and is kept. D — a deviation from English punctuation convention, taken deliberately.

11. il dito grosso deve far da dito grosso — the thumb has to do the thumb's part. The Italian repeats the noun; far da is to act as, to play the part of. Play the thumb was the alternative and reads as a stage metaphor in English, which the Italian is not.

12. comandava le feste e le quarant'ore — ordered the feast days and the Forty Hours. The Forty Hours devotion is left as its English name, which exists. The joke — that he commands the liturgical calendar as if it were a boat crew — survives only if the objects are named.

13. Bastianazzo — kept. The -azzo augmentative is glossed by the following clause (as big and thick as the St. Christopher), so no gloss of mine is needed.

14. filava diritto alla manovra comandata — went straight to whatever manoeuvre he was told to. Filare diritto is to toe the line; the nautical manovra makes the idiom literal again, and I kept the nautical noun rather than the English idiom, losing the pun. Recorded as a loss.

15. non si sarebbe soffiato il naso se suo padre non gli avesse detto «sóffiati il naso» — kept verbatim, including the repetition and the quoted imperatives, which are the sentence's whole comic engine.

16. una piccina — a little slip of a thing. Piccina is affectionate and physical. A little woman was flat; a slip of a girl was wrong, she is a mother of five.

17. far figliuoli — the making of children, in a list with weaving and salting anchovies. The Italian puts childbearing in a list of household tasks and the English must too, so the three items are given parallel gerunds. Bearing children would have separated it out.

18. un bighellone di vent'anni — a twenty-year-old loafer. Bighellone is an idler with a faint affection in it. Layabout and good-for-nothing were live; good-for-nothing is harsher than the Italian and layabout is British-marked.

19. scappellotto / pedata — a clout on the head / a kick lower down. Scappellotto is specifically a cuff to the back of the head; clout carries the domestic, non-serious quality. The per rimettere l'equilibrio joke is kept literal (to put the balance right).

20. donna di telaio, gallina di pollaio, e triglia di gennaio — woman at the loom, hen in the coop, and mullet in January. The rhyme is lost and I did not compensate. Three rhyming Italian nouns; any English rhyme I could reach (loom / room, coop / soup) required changing a noun, and the three nouns are the proverb's content. L — a loss, recorded, not repaired. This is the largest single loss in the passage.

21. un moccioso tutto suo nonno colui! — a snotty little thing, the very picture of his grandfather, that one. The trailing colui! is a demonstrative thrown in after the fact, village syntax; that one at the end keeps its position and its function. The exclamation mark is dropped because English cannot carry it on a trailing appositive without shouting.

22. nè carne nè pesce — neither meat nor fish. The English idiom is neither fish nor fowl, or neither fish nor flesh; I kept the Italian's own pair rather than substituting the English one, because the passage is about a fishing village and fish is not a neutral term in it. INT.

23. The five proverbs of paragraph 5 — each rendered as a self-standing English saying with the sense intact and the form only lightly regularised. Senza pilota barca non cammina keeps its article-less shape (Without a pilot the boat won't go) rather than becoming A boat does not sail without a pilot. Fa il mestiere che sai, che se non arricchisci camperai has an internal rhyme (sai / camperai) that is lost; scrape along was chosen over get by for camperai because camparsi is bare survival. L.

24. passava per testa quadra — passed for a square head. Testa quadra is a sound, solid, sensible man. English has no settled equivalent and square head is not one; level head was the safe rendering and I rejected it, because level-headed is a compliment paid by equals, while testa quadra is what a village says about a man who does not do foolish things. Square head is a calque and reads as one. D, and the riskiest line in the rendering.

25. un codino marcio — a rotten old pigtail. Codino is the Bourbon-era queue and by extension a die-hard reactionary; the following clause glosses it (a reactionary of the sort that stand up for the Bourbons), so the image can stand untranslated into an abstraction. A rotten old reactionary was the alternative and would have made the gloss redundant.

26. la sapeva lunga — knew a thing or two. Exact idiomatic match, both colloquial, both faintly sinister in context.

27. spadroneggiare twice — lord it over twice. The Italian repeats the verb across village and household and the repetition is the sentence's point.

28. Chi ha carico di casa non può dormire quando vuole — A man with a household on his back can't sleep when he likes. Carico is a load carried; on his back makes it physical, which the Italian carico does. Alternative: Whoever has a house to carry.

29. chi comanda ha da dar conto — whoever gives the orders has to render the account. Render the account is a shade formal for the surrounding prose and I kept it: dar conto is a bookkeeping metaphor and account holds both the reckoning and the explanation, as the Italian does.

What the rule set cost, and what it did not reach

• Rhyme, twice (decisions 20 and 23). No compensation attempted, per R06's no-return-pass rule; both are recorded as losses rather than repaired.
• The paranza (decision 7) and the filare diritto pun (decision 14).
• Sicilian substrate. Verga's Italian is a literary Italian shaped by Sicilian syntax and proverb-form, and this rendering has no substrate at all — it is village English standing in for village Sicilian-Italian. Nothing in R06 addresses that and I did not invent a dialect.