{"id":532,"date":"2012-12-27T21:20:18","date_gmt":"2012-12-28T02:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/machiavelli\/?page_id=532"},"modified":"2019-02-01T16:26:04","modified_gmt":"2019-02-01T21:26:04","slug":"translating-machiavelli","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/machiavelli\/addenda\/translating-machiavelli\/","title":{"rendered":"Translating Machiavelli"},"content":{"rendered":"

I admit up front that my ability to read and speak Italian<\/strong> is limited to ordering some restaurant food. However, I have studied English and its etymology, some French, Spanish, and Hebrew, small Latin and less Greek (to paraphrase Johnson), so I can fumble my way through some Italian phrases and understand much of the intent and recognize word roots, if not speak it. I have just enough understanding to recognize that the translation from any other language into English is fraught with challenges and how a single word is translated can frame the emotional impact of a paragraph, even the whole chapter. This is abundantly evident in the many translations of Machiavelli’s The Prince<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In a 2002 lecture<\/a>, Ian Johnston, a now-retired research assistant at Vancouver Island University, declared The Prince<\/em> to be a work of satire, based, apparently, on his appreciation of the translation by Quentin Skinner (and Russell Price). In his lecture, he said:<\/p>\n

“One feature of Machiavelli’s style which exerts a certain ironic pressure on the reader is the yawning gap he creates between a conventional moral language and the immoral activities he is proposing, a common satiric technique.”
\nLecture on Machiavelli’s The Prince, Johnston, 2002<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While I cannot translate The Prince<\/em> myself, I can intellectually appreciate the difficulties it represents, and would hesitate to make any sweeping statements about intent or context based on a single translation. Too much of the translator’s personality is injected into any translation for anyone to see past the veil to the author’s intent. This is one reason I referred to more than a dozen translations when assembling this book.<\/p>\n

Allan Gilbert, in his introduction to Vol. I of The Chief Works and Others<\/em>, wrote:<\/p>\n

To expect from a translation the effect of the original is to demand an English Prince written by Machiavelli himself\u2026 Some of his effective devices, such as the verb at the beginning of the sentence, can seldom be carried into English; non-idiomatic English hardly renders into idiomatic Italian.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In my page “About the Prince<\/a>“, I discussed some of the problematic words that have challenged translators. Here I will compare how various translators have approached a few lines. In one edition of The Prince<\/em>, the authors write,<\/p>\n

“Machiavelli had a predilection for words that have several senses and various overtones. Thus, respetto combines the senses of ‘respect’ and ‘fear’, sometimes with overtones of ‘hesitation’, ‘reluctance’ or ‘caution’: when one has respetto for another ruler’s power one will hesitate to oppose or attack him.”
\nThe Prince, edited by Quentin Skinner & Russell Price, Translator’s Note<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Similarly, Mansfield writes,<\/p>\n

“…I would have liked to never vary the translation of such important words as impressa, modo and respetto, but I found it impossible to produce a readable version with such a rule.”
\nThe Prince, translated by Harvey Mansfield, Jr.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Parks, one of the most recent translators, has a whole page on the difficulty of the title word, “prince”:<\/p>\n

“It isn’t easy. The first problem, and one that sets up all the others, is already there in the title: The Prince. What is a prince for Machiavelli? Well, a duke is a prince. The pope is a prince. A Roman emperor is a prince. The King of France is a prince. The Lord of Imola is a prince. This won’t work in modern English.”
\nThe Prince, translated by Tim Parks, Translator’s Note<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bondanella writes,<\/p>\n

“Important terms such as virtu, stato, occasione, fortuna, prudenze, liberta, ordini, vivere, civile, gloria and dominio often have no single and systematic equivalent in the English language. The translator must rely on sensitivity to the context surrounding the word to determine its precise meaning.”
\nThe Prince, Bondanella, Translator’s Note<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Johnston, however, dismisses context as an argument, saying,<\/p>\n

“…I don’t by nature place much value on contextual arguments (since they can so often go in any direction one wishes\u2014hence the old saying: if you torture the contextual facts sufficiently, they’ll confess to anything)…”
\nLecture on Machiavelli’s The Prince, Johnston, 2002<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yet if Italian words have no direct correspondence in English, how else do we translate except by examining and weighing context? Adams also notes that,<\/p>\n

“For a couple of crucial words in Il Principe, modern English has no true equivalent… Further dilemmas arise in translating the words stato, dominio, paese, provincia, regno, citta and patria… which I have had to adjudicate with nothing more decisive than tact.”
\nThe Prince, Adams, Translator’s Not<\/strong>e<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Skinner\/Price edition includes 14 pages of explanation of a mere 24 words Machiavelli used, provided so readers,<\/p>\n

“…gain some understanding of most of the key terms used in The Prince, particularly those that have several senses, and those that (unlike gloria and reputazione) have no exact English equivalents, or else have equivalents that it is often or usually inappropriate to use.”
\nThe Prince, Skinner\/Price, Notes on the Vocabulary<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Skinner\/Price wrote more than two pages on the word fortuna<\/em>, alone. To compound the problem of translation, Constantine tells us that,<\/p>\n

“Wherever technical words did not exist, Machiavelli either used a Latin term, or created a new one from the Latin.”
\nThe Prince, Constantine, Translator’s Note<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So not only do translators need to wrestle with the complexities of Renaissance, Florentine Italian (his dialect was by no means universal throughout Italy), but also Latin \u00a0– and Machiavelli’s neologisms! A bit further on, Constantine tells us, “all translations have a unique voice.”<\/p>\n

Looking at One Line in The Prince<\/em><\/h2>\n

In Chapter V<\/a>\u00a0(Concerning The Way To Govern Cities Or Principalities Which Lived Under Their Own Laws Before They Were Annexed<\/em>), the original line<\/a> Machiavelli wrote in Italian is:<\/p>\n

\u00a0Perch\u00e9, in verit\u00e0, non ci \u00e8 modo sicuro a possederle, altro che la ruina.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This has been translated into modern Italian<\/a> as:<\/p>\n

Perch\u00e9, in verit\u00e0, non c\u2019\u00e8 nessun modo sicuro di possederle, se non quello della loro distruzione.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It seems evident to me that the key difference between these versions is in the substitution\u00a0of distruzion<\/em>e (destruction) in the later edition for ruina<\/em> (ruin, or its synonym rovina) in the original. It may be a small, even moot, semantic point, but which one chooses for the English rendition can clearly create the emotional and political framework for the reader. There is a wide range of meaning between ruin and destruction.<\/p>\n

Do we even know if either mean today what they meant 500 years ago? Clearly words like principe<\/em> have changed in the intervening centuries. Have others?<\/p>\n

Here are a few English versions of that line (or a portion of that line):<\/p>\n