The Dyers Hand and Other Essays

2,) When Tamino approaches the doors of Sarastro's temple, a bodiless voice cries Zuriick!, strongly accentuat­ing the second syllable. This looks easy to translate liter­ally by Go Back! and, were the tempo a slow one, it could be. Unfortunately, the tempo indication is allegro assai and at that speed, the two English monosyllables sound like a nonsense disyallable geBACK. Another solution had to be found; ours was Beware!

Sometimes the translator is forced to depart from the original text because of differences in the sound and association be­tween the original and its exact English equivalent. Take, for example, the simple pair, Ja and Nein, Si and No, Yes and No. In the Leporello-Giovanni duet Eh, via buffone which is sung allegro assai, Leporello's two stanza's are built around the use of no in the first and si in the second.

Ed io non burlo, ma voglio andar. No, no, padrone, v'andar vi dico. No! No! No!

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Non vo' resteer, si! Si! Si! Si!

Si, si, si, si, si, si, si, si, si, si!

In English as in Italian, one can sing rapidly no, no, no, no . . . but one cannot sing yes, yes, yes, yes . . . The opening lines of Tamino's first aria run

Dies Etwas kann ich zwar nicht nennen, Dock fiikl ich's kier wie Fewer brennen;

Soil die Empfindung JLiebe sein?

Ja, J a,

Die Liebe ist's allein.

The tempo this time is moderate so that it is physically pos­sible to sing Yes, Yes, but Yes-Yes in our culture has a comic or at least unromantic association with impatience or boredom. Similarly, one cannot translate Komm, Komm which occurs in one of the choruses in the same opera as Come, Come, without making the audience laugh.

Another problem is that feminine rhymes which are the commonest kind in Italian and frequent in German, are not only much rarer in English, but most of the ones that do exist are comic rhymes. It is possible for a competent versifier to copy the original rhyme scheme but often at the cost of making the English sound like Gilbert and Sullivan. On rare occa­sions such as Leporello's Catalogue aria, the tendency of double rhymes to be funnier in English than in Italian can be an advantage but, in any tender or solemn scene, it is better to have no rhyme at all than a ridiculous one. The marble statue rebukes Don Giovanni in the churchyard scene with the couplet

Hibalde, audace,

Lascia'l morti in pace.

Here any rhyme in English will sound absurd.

Then, languages differ not only in their verbal forms, but also in their rhetorical traditions, so that what sounds perfectly natural in one language, can, when literally translated, sound embarrassing in another. All Italian libretti are full of poly­syllabic interjections; such as Traditore! Scelerato! SconsigliatoI Sciugurato! SventuratoI etc., and these sound effective, even at moments of high emotion. But in the English language, aside from the fact that most of our interjections are one or two syllables long, they are seldom, if ever, used in serious situations and are mosdy employed in slanging matches be­tween schoolboys or taxicab drivers. In serious situations we tend, I think, to make declarative statements; instead of shout­ing Traditoref (Vile seducer!) to shout You betrayed me!

Now and again the translator may feel that a change is necessary, not because the habits of two languages are different but because what the librettist wrote sounds too damn silly in any language. When Donna Anna, Donna Elvira, and Don Ottavio arrive at Don Giovanni's party in the finale of Act I, Donna Elvira sings

Bisogn' aver corraggio,

O cari' amici miei.

which is perfectly sensible, but Don Ottavio's reply is not.

L'amica dice benel

Corragio' aver conviene.

that is to say:

Our lady friend says wisely;

Some courage would do nicely.

Nor in the finale to Die Zauberflote when the Spirits see Pamina approaching distraught, can one allow them to say, as they do in German:

Where is she, then?

She is out of her senses.