A Net of Words
A Journal: Translating Gipi's Special Moments with Fake Applause
1 Tell me
2 You smart alec
3 Peng
4 Don't shoot. Answer me!
Why did I start translating comics? The spoken language has always fascinated me. The literary representation of spoken language, I mean. And comics, I believed, heavily feature dialogue, are practically teeming with it. The first comic I translated, Stefano Ricci's Story of the Bear (avant-verlag, 2014) is an immense, polyphonic book about partisans, a troubled bear (Problembär) called Bruno, and Heinz Meynhardt, a wild boar researcher. It features multiple bizarre dreams and animals, but has remarkably few speech bubbles. In short, it's a fairly literary comic. The projects that followed were also pretty complex and polyphonic – but had barely any dialogue. Perhaps this is because when it comes to Italy, the German market has a particular interest in literary comics. Still, my fascination prevailed: by translating comics, I got the best of both worlds. And now I have the opportunity to write about a comic that has captivated me like almost no other.
This comic is my third Gipi. I'm familiar with his intricate narrative style, but in Special Moments with Fake Applause1 (Momenti straordinari con applausi finti) even the text operates like a picture puzzle. My aim here is to describe – in a pragmatic way that draws on specific examples – a few of the fundamental challenges I faced when I translated this comic. But first a few warm words before the cold facts of my translation process take over: Special Moments is a breathtaking comic, one that becomes more fascinating with every reading. It is heart-rending and funny, and even those who usually steer clear of comics might want to delve in and get their feet wet…
Treasure hunt
Do you remember the children's game featuring the clues "hot" and "cold"'? What do you call that kind of game – i.e. Topfschlagen (Hit the Pot) – in which players shout out clues to a blindfolded person looking for a treasure? Could we call it a "treasure hunt", which in Italian translates directly to "caccia al tesoro"? Or would we call it a "scavenger hunt"? Internet research yields odd results, as it so often does when searching for everyday things that have no precise name. I try "search game hot cold ", and find myself watching a video instructing me how to play a game from the Middle Ages.
The costume is funny and the music cheerful. (Why, though, is the searcher walking rather than crawling?) But the most important element of the game is missing from the video: assistance from other players who are not blindfolded. I want to hear the words that are called out to direct the searcher – cold, ice cold, lukewarm, hot, burning hot – until the wooden spoon is bashed loudly against the pot and the searcher claims the treasure hidden beneath.
Topfschlagen seems still to played at children's birthday parties, judging by the many hits that my search gives me. (Watch out, procrastination alert: the clock is ticking!) This video, for example, depicts Topfschlagen as I remember it.
But what does this have to do with Gipi's comic?
Getting wet
Gian Alfonso Pacinotti, better known by his pen name, Gipi, has concealed several treasures in his polyphonic comic Special Moments. As a translator, these can be unearthed by following word clues and finding the tracks – and by rendering these comprehensible to the German reader. Single words and sentences are cast over his illustrations like a net. In several instances, comprehension relies on the text. The net must not be torn in the act of translation.
As early as on the first page, in the prologue, I encounter a central, thorny linguistic puzzle. What significance do the words "water" and "fire" have? The first version of my translation, broken down line by line for each panel, looks something like this:
Page 5.1
1 Where were we?
2 Here?
3 Water
5.2
1 The black car?
2 The black car. So many memories …
3 Not here.
4 Water.
5.3
1 We trusted you, we all trusted you!
2 Was that a mistake?!
3 Calm down
3a Shit, no …
4 Tell me.
5 Was it wrong to trust you?
6 Was that a mistake?!
5.4
1 Little Fire
2 So, Water.
I keep swimming:
Page 6.1 Water
6.2
1 But not like on holiday by a sea with shells in it.
2 A water Festival ((Acqua di Feste))
6.3
1 With canoes.
2 No.
3 No
6.4 Prehistoric water ((Acqua primitiva))
6.5 Algae water
6.6 Forgive me. / I'm sorry.
6.7 The water of yore.
6.8
1 Prehistoric pastures ((Di primo pascolo)).
2 ((cellule zero.))
3 Prehistoric life ((Primavita)).
6.9
1 Stop it!
2 I don't get it.
3 How could you?
4 How the hell could you?!
6.9
1 And if I apologise?
2 If I apologise
3 Will everything be forgotten?
So here we are. I'm fascinated. And lost.
What's it about?
But perhaps a little context first. The mother of the protagonist, Silvano Landi, is on her deathbed. The comedian is on tour, and returns to the hospice after every show. He sits at his mother's side, thinking both about her imminent death and his next show. Broadly speaking, this provides the narrative framework. His mother's impending death gives rise to associations, feelings and thoughts in the 56 year old that are expressed on multiple textual and pictorial levels. The reader meets a group of cosmonauts, a Finnish sniper, the soldier James Ryan, a Neanderthal and a luminous child, to name a few. Several narrative levels are introduced in the prologue, set apart from one another by Gipi's illustration style and use of colour. Others are woven into the narrative later on. Special Moments is Gipi's most personal book. In it, he processes the death of his own mother, and the knowledge that he himself will never have biological children. He confronts the reader with the cynicism of our time and the unfathomable nature of our existence. Fake Applause is about big topics. Time and again, it's also about water. And fire.
Take the prologue. The first water colour panels seem to depict water, but it later transpires that these are landscapes. What must I consider on a textual level? What's going on? The key to the "water words" seems to be "fuocino", which is where the treasure hunt comes into play. In German, the search game works by calling out "warm" and "cold," and their corresponding gradations. Like in Topfschlagen. In Italian, you say "acqua" (water) when the searcher gets further away from the treasure, and "fuoco" (fire) when the searcher gets closer. And the in-between clue: "f(u)chino, f(u)ochino, il tesoro è ormai vicino“ (little fire, little fire, the treasure is pretty close).
The clue on the fourth panel of page five corroborates this:
In this search game, earlier references to scenes involving the black car and the landscape are red herrings. For the author, it seems to be about the cosmonauts and "trust". This panel brings us closer to the treasure. The next chapter features the landing in Normandy, but throughout the narrative, Gipi continues to incorporate little clues that direct the reader's focus to align with his own. This enables me to follow the water and fire clues, which I must do if I want solutions. At the same time, I cannot lose sight of the illustrations.
How, when the German game is played using "hot" and "cold", can I give readers the chance to follow Gipi's trails? Water crops up frequently, can be seen in Gipi's illustrations, and is at the heart of important associative spaces. As is so often the case, then, I can't go down the easy route and resort to the most direct German translation. If I translate literally, the essence of the book is lost; I have to keep the reference to the search game. And so I do what I usually do in such a situation. I keep reading and working, and let the problem germinate.
Chicken or egg?
In comics, text and image clearly belong together; they complement one other. The eye is more often than not drawn first to the image. Gipi's use of text is always very deliberate. His work is markedly associative, and in this comic, it becomes especially clear to me that the images arise from the text and vice versa. The words bring together individual narrative strands. Rather than performing a secondary function, they are central both to the reader's understanding and to narrative development. They also determine, in a unique way, the rhythm of the story. As a result, I'm set on retaining not only the textual references as I translate (text memory), but also the openness of the original, not wanting to give too much away too soon. The same words and phrases appear in various contexts, and so my translation has to leave space for multiple possible interpretations. Nor should it be too unwieldy or long.
Words unite, words separate
Gipi's experience as a director is reflected by his sketches and scenarios, and also by how he incorporates text. He uses it, for example, to transition from one narrative strand to another. This reminds me of film sequences in which a radio plays in a house, and continues playing when the protagonist gets into a car.
2 3In other instances, text and image diverge. On page 81, the comedian's "audio track" remains, but the illustrations pick up a scene from a previous chapter in which Landi ends up in the water.
New levels are created for the text and characters through Gipi's technique of layering of existing narrative levels:
4And then there's the narrative voice of the original Italian comic, which uses the colloquial turn of phrase, "in practica," at the beginning of sentences. Most of the narrator's text boxes begin with this. The dictionary suggests: "in practice, practically, in actuality, basically, ultimately." None of these seem fitting or applicable to all cases of "in practica". I try "concretely" and "effectively", before opting for "at any rate". It's meaningless enough, performs best the transition from one narrative strand to another and can be used in most cases at the beginning of a sentence (37 times, to be precise), without leading to clunky syntax.
Getting hot (and primitive)
Besides these two leitmotifs – "water" and everything associated with it, and "fire" – another field, which has origin, heritage and prehistory at its heart, opens up around the words "primo / prima" and "primitivo".
I want to retain the associative connections, the sound and the rhythm of the original. When it comes to "uomo primitivo," "Neanderthal" strikes me as the most idiomatic, but even if the syllable count roughly fits, it disrupts the text. I consult Leipzig University's word graph:5
Maybe the Dornseiff dictionary, which can now also be found online, will help. (It's not the same, but there's less risk of me losing myself.)
The Dornseiff definitions, grouped into various word clusters, look like this:
I read on, collecting options.
From uomo primitivo and its associational field – uomo della caverna, preistoria, felci giganti, un primitivo insomma, uomo di mazza e caverna, un sè rettile -> trasmissione di sangue e discendenze –
Gipi makes the transition to uomo modern (di media cultura, medio censo, media conoscenza, un uomo medio). Naturally, there is also a link to water: I come across acqua primitiva and related words – acqua d’alga, acqua di allora, primo pascolo, cellule zero, prima vita, dove tutto principiò.
Here are the connections I make:
"Neanderthal" would also be the most obvious translation of "Uomo primitivo" according to the DWDS (Digital Dictionary of the German Language), but the text requires a recognisable set of semantically connected solutions. I find myself fortunate enough to take part in the 2021 Berlin Translators' Workshop, where I address this and several more stumbling blocks. During an animated discussion with the other participants, I'm able to collect a host of suggestions. The semantic field around "primitive" generates the following: "the old world", "Urmensch", "primate", "peasant", "primitive person". My esteemed mentor, Andreas Jan suggests, among others, the solution "Wasserfreude" (water-joy) for "acqui di feste". German allows for compound nouns: I just have to be bold enough to create them. I continue searching for a solution, a memorable prefix that preferably doesn't require adjectives or adverbs. Although I sometimes have to sacrifice "water", I can solve several other instances of "primo / prima" and "primitivo" pretty satisfactorily by prefixing nouns with "Ur-". This allows me to preserve the connections: "Urmensch" (prehistoric human), "Ursuppe" (primordial soup), "Ursprungswasser" (water of origin), "Ursprung des Lebens" (origin of life).
After all these theoretical considerations, I feel like Silvano Landi and go looking for diversions. How does Gipi create his illustrations? What does he say about the process? Again, I just have to follow the water (the title of the video is "Fiducia nell’acqua"). I find myself in Gipi's studio. Spellbound, I watch the author create several landscapes from a few black splodges for Unastoria (Eine Geschichte [A Story]; published in German by avant-verlag in 2022).
Fiducia nell'acqua: A Visit to Gipis Studio (2013)
Anything else?
When I get the galleys proofs to correct, I realise once again that to an extent, I lose sight of illustrations when revising my translations. Comic translators work with word documents, and as such, our translations become uncoupled from the illustrations. The book might be open and a PDF available, but with every revision, I move further away from the illustrations. During the third step, I consider only excerpts of the original. With the galley proofs before me, it strikes me how many scenes don't have text and yet are crucial to the narrative. I read the book again and spot new narrative connections.
6It's important, then, that comic translators are given enough time to proofread the galleys. Lettering, whereby the translation is inserted into the comic either by hand or machine, is an additional production step that extends the process, making it all the more difficult for publishers to plan this phase. In most cases, the book goes straight to print after editing and proofreading. At avant-verlag, I fortunately had the chance to thoroughly review the pages hand-lettered by Olav Korth. (How does he recreate the illustrator's various fonts?) Spatial challenges become clear at this stage, and sometimes the text has to be shortened or reformulated. Luckily, I had no problems on that count. Still, seasoned comic translators develop an aptitude for brevity. Some things are dispensable, but speech bubbles that are too small can lead to painful idiomatic or stylistic omissions.
Where were we?
The treasure hunt! Hot! Could I solve the puzzle? For a long time, I didn't think I could, and adhered too closely to the original. Until, that is, I had the idea of translating "acqua" with "cold" instead of with "water", in cases where the words were relatively interchangeable. Eventually, if it was fitting, I'd make my way back to water. "Fuochino" became "lukewarm" and I translated some instances of "fuoco" with "hot" rather than "fire". Pretty simple.
Below is the final version of the translated prologue. Have I succeeded? The act of translation always involves a risk: word choice can set the course, and the chosen course can be misleading. Are readers able to follow my translated trails? After this long-winded account, I feel it all sounds unnecessarily complicated. Translation can be tricky, but at the end of the day, the German book is available to be enjoyed. And if you ask me, Special Moments with Fake Applause, unique in how it takes advantage of the possibilities of the comic form, is very much worth it.
5.1
1 Where were we?
2 Here?
3 Cold
5.2
1 The black car?
2 The black car. So many memories ...
3 Not here.
4 Cold.
5.3
1 All of us, we trusted you!
2 Was that a mistake?!
3 Calm down
3a Shit, no...
4 Tell me.
5 Was it wrong to trust you?
6 Was it a mistake?!
5.4
1 Luke warm
2 Like water.
6.1
Water
6.2
1 But not like on holiday by the sea with shells in it.
2 Water joy
6.3
1 Water sport
2 No.
3 No
4 Ur-water
6.5
Algae water
6.6
Forgive me
6.7
Water of yore
6.8
1 Ur-life
2 The first cell
3 Ur-soup
6.9
1 Stop it!
2 I don't get it.
3 How could you?
4 How the hell could you?
6.9
1 And if I apologise?
2 If I apologise,
3 will everything be forgotten?
7.1
1 Don't be a child
2 There is no child
7.2
Water
Fire
So here we are.