Early Monday morning, having had a sleepless night due to the anxieties produced by his new undertaking, he presented himself to the foreman in his work uniform: a severe case of bedhead, velvet pants, and a shirt that said \u201cLegalize Pot, Jail Prime Minister Craxi! Now is our time to rise up!\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cNice to see you ready for work, kid,\u201d scolded the foreman, noting the massive bags under Lu Purk’s eyes: \u201cWhat happened? No sleep last night?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRelax, man. I’m charged to 1000!\u201d he lied. \u201cI just can’t wait to start work! Let’s go!\u201d he said. \u201cJust pass me that bucket over a-that-a-way.\u201d He gestured vaguely toward the top of the scaffolding; one of the young workers on the roof saw him, and responded with a wave. \u201cWell, I’m here, man, so I can ‘lend a hand’\u201d he spluttered anxiously. \u201cAre you joking, kid?\u201d said the foreman, with a hint of annoyance in his voice. \u201cWe agreed that you’d work the buckets. It’s no place for you, up there\u2014it’s dangerous\u201d he warned seriously. \u201cYou’ll work the cement mixer and give a hand to the cripple with the buckets, end of story.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhatever you say, Sir\u201d said Lu Park, extending an olive branch. \u201cDon’t get all worked up now. I’ll watch over that goddamn cement mixer through hell or high water.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course you will,\u201d agreed the foreman. \u201cIf you want to make some money here, and avoid me regretting hearing you out, you will give me the divine pleasure of being obeyed, understood?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYup,\u201d said Ant\u00f2 Lu Purk. \u201c<\/span>I wouldn’t want to give you trouble for nothing in the world,\u201d he added.<\/span><\/p>\n I think the most important part of translating this excerpt is nailing the relationship between Ant<\/span>\u00f2 <\/span>and the foreman. The foreman obviously has serious doubts about Ant<\/span>\u00f2<\/span>‘s work ethic, and talks down to him, calling him \u201cragazzo\u201d and \u201cfigliolo.\u201d Meanwhile, Ant<\/span>\u00f2 <\/span>tries to be deferential to his new boss, attempting to us the \u201cvoi\u201d form (though he constantly slips up and uses \u201ctu\u201d), and obeying the foreman’s orders, but is too much of a young, left-wing goofball to be entirely formal\u2014he comes to work looking slovenly, curses, constantly uses slang and casual speech, and calls the foreman \u201ccump<\/span>\u00e0\u201d.<\/span>I think the foreman’s dislike of Ant<\/span>\u00f2<\/span> was easy to translate, because it is entirely in his words\u2014he’s not very subtle about his disdain. The one thing I did change with him was the words he uses to address Ant<\/span>\u00f2, <\/span>Rather than \u201cragazzo\u201d and \u201cfigliolo\u201d, I had him say \u201ckid\u201d for both. \u201cBoy\u201d and \u201cson\u201d in modern English would not realistically be used in the way. \u201cBoy,\u201d beyond the literal meaning of a male who’s not an adult, is used to refer to animals (like saying \u201ccome here, boy,\u201d to a dog), or, historically, was used by southern whites to refer to black men. \u201cSon,\u201d beyond the literal meaning of male offspring, can be a mild term of endearment an older man gives to a younger man. Because in English these terms don’t provide the same condescension and disdain that they do in Italian, I changed them to \u201ckid,\u201d which works better in this context. In translating Ant<\/span>\u00f2<\/span>‘s mixture of formality and informality, I mostly used titles\u2014I had Ant<\/span>\u00f2<\/span> alternate between calling the foreman \u201cman\u201d, and \u201cSir\u201d, depending on the sentence. This, in addition to his generally informal speech, succeeds in translating his tone in the source text. <\/span><\/p>\n Something I changed just to make it more clear to an international audience was the motto on Ant<\/span>\u00f2<\/span>‘s shirt, <\/span>\u201cCraxi in galera\u201d<\/i><\/span>. I chose not to replace this with an equivalent 1980s American left-wing motto, because I respect the audience’s intelligence. <\/span>\u201cCraxi in galera\u201d<\/i><\/span> is surrounded by other left-wing political slogans, and the audience knows this is an Italian story, so anyone can intuit that it’s a left-wing political statement. I added \u201cPrime Minister\u201d simply to clarify that Craxi is a person, since \u201cCraxi\u201d by itself would be confusing and vague. <\/span><\/p>\n