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#Post#: 8--------------------------------------------------
Answers from Ali
By: featheryca Date: May 20, 2018, 8:18 am
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Hello,
my name is Federica Aceto and I'm Ali Smith's Italian
translator. Here are a bunch of sundry questions/doubts of mine
with Ali's answers.
Hope this can be of help
***********
Q: Is opening an opiate a quote, a paraphrase, a reference to
something?
A: Elisabeth is misquoting Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats,
the line 'Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains', because
she can't remember it – Daniel will have recited it to her, and
she's confused the words.
Q: The man dead-eyes her. He keys something into his phone, then
holds it up to get an image of her
Dead-eyes her: does it mean he aims at her or that he is looking
at her (with his eyes and not through a device) in a particular
way?
A: He is looking at her with dead eyes.
Q: Marielle Simi played her an old song where the backing
singers have to sing the word onomatopoeia eight times.
Elisabeth played Marielle Simi a Cliff Richard song in which the
backing singers have to sing the word sheep
Can I use the feminine for backing singers in both cases? In
Italian we don’t have a gender-neutral term for backing singer,
and I would have to write a very long sentence in order to avoid
specifying if they’re men or women or both
A: Of course, I don't think it'll make any difference. Though
truthfully, in Annie, I'm not your daddy the backing singers are
women, and in We don't talk anymore the sound like men.
But in case you need to specify
it's from this: 2.26 min into
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQYxZyZlp0o
and this: 3.00 into
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htZir_Taizg
Q: I find that I have a fantasy image. It’s that I really like
making other people happy,
What does she mean by fantasy image here? An idealized self? An
image of herself that meets the expectations of others?
A: Hard to tell, this is a direct quote from Boty. But i think
she means she realises she fits a fantasy image people have of
her, and that she chooses to fit it somethimes to make people
happy.
Q: But he has some pages, still, of the letters from when she
was nursing their mother. She is eighteen.
The clever forward-slope of her.
Does forward-slope refer to her writing?
A: Yes, literally.
Q: acting was a time thing, though, sort of confidence trick
Does it mean acting was just a temporary thing? Something she
considered like cheating?
A: I think so. It's hard to tell, again I'm quoting her.
#Post#: 30--------------------------------------------------
Re: Answers from Ali
By: paoulinca Date: June 12, 2018, 10:01 am
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Hi! I am Poli (Paulina Micheva), Bulgarian translator of Autumn.
Here is my communication with Ali Smith:
1. The first issue, related to the translation is this one:
One of the grand features of the text is the entangled quotes
from various books and texts. For an English native speaker, who
has grown up with the English literature, they are something
completely familiar and they don't need any explanation. But for
readers who have not grown up with Dickens, Keats, Yeats, Blake
etc. many of those quotes are not familiar. I guess other
translators have faced this problem too.
I think that for the better understanding of the text those
quotes and references need to have their source pointed out -
author and work. Like footnotes? Or maybe at the end of the book
like endnotes? Endnotes are less intrusive and will not
interrupt the flow of reading.
- Answer from Tracy, the agent:
Ali was glad to hear from you and has given this some thought –
in the end she suggests simply translating them – she doesn’t
feel they need notes, explanations or footnotes. So far, this is
how her other international publishers are handling it.
2. On page 79 there is this phrase: Opening an opiate.
Is it a quotation from somewhere like the phrase before it -
Season of mists/Keats?
- Answer: It is a child misquoting something she's half
remembering.
3. Page 136 – It’s Johnnie! her mother says. From Call Box
Kids!
Again, only for my information, could you give me some
directions where to find something about this lady and this
show. The Internet didn't help in my research.
- Answer - That's because this is fictional.
I have the same question about Grabowski show and Mike Ray and
the Milky Ways?
- Answer - See above.
4. And a botanical question (and maybe a little silly:)
The cow parsley holds itself stately and poisonous in the air
while the celebrities...
Here I have the following question: if we speak about this plant
-
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthriscus_sylvestris
- I
haven't been able to find any information that it is poisonous.
Maybe there is some figurative meaning which I can't get.
- Answer - cow parsley is poisonous if eaten by certain
animals.
I hope this will be helpful:)
#Post#: 38--------------------------------------------------
Re: Answers from Ali
By: Jerzy Date: June 29, 2018, 11:13 am
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Ali very kindly replied to my queries. Here they are and I hope
some of you will find them useful:
p. 8 (all page numbers refer to the paperback Penguin edition)
The “nectar” rhymes at the end of the page. I wonder if they are
random or not. And who is “her” in “Recollect her. Affect her.
Neglect her.”
He’s making rhymes, showing his aptitude for, his tendency, to
search for a rhyme. But obviously it’s also a resonating
reference to someone lost to him, a woman, who he loves.
p. 9
The child from the Boubat postcard. Does “offed” mean “killed”
by soldiers who rounded her up during the war?
It means everything from rounded up to killed, without actually
saying, because so sensitive, either of these things.
p. 80
Why does Elisabeth say the pictures are “by a tennis player he
knew”? Did Pauline Boty play tennis?
He’s told her about Boty being The Wimbledon Bardot (she went to
Wimbledon School of Art). The child heard the word Wimbledon.
Wimbledon means tennis almost before it means a place in London,
and not just to someone of the child’s age. Most people would
hear the word and default to tennis.
p. 98
In “The Ballad of the Girl Who Keeps Telling Me No” some of the
elements are a bit vague. Are “furcoat(y)” and “petticoat(y)”
used because PB wears those? Is “Torpedo boat(y)” a reference to
her character? And “Don’t be haughty” is his advice to himself
or to her?
Again, this is the tendency in him to try to find rhymes. The
rhymes dart everywhere in their possible resonances, from the
related to the ridiculous. Find some Polish rhymes and play
with them !
p. 181
Is “relief” at the end of the paragraph meant as a feeling of
relief?
It means everything that the word relief means.
p. 210
“Crying came out of her like weather”. Weather in what sense?
We can’t choose the weather.
p. 243
Is “my armpits are charmpits” a play on any particular song? I
couldn’t find it (all the other student revue references are
clear.)
This is a real line Boty herself made up when she sang her own
made-up satirical version of Diamonds are a girl’s best friend
at a student revue. The point of it is, Boty, in a song all
about seduction and wealth, uses words usually uneasy or taboo
at that point in public, and armpits = one of those things
almost nobody talked about in polite society. She’s going
straight to the places desire is all about but people won’t
name.
p. 260
The very last sentence: “Look at the colour of it”. When you
were writing it, did you mean plural (all) readers or a more
intimate singular reader, the one who’s reading the sentence at
the moment? In Polish, unlike in English, the verb form is
different depending on which of the two you had in mind.
Interesting question. I think probably it’s a quiet take, a
personal look. But it can be open and public too. I’m going to
let you decide.
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