Taboo or not taboo: swearing, satire, irony, and the grotesque in the English translation of Niccolò Ammaniti's Ti prendo e ti porto via

Abstract

Swearwords, not unlike humour, dialect, and poetry, are notoriously difficult to translate, and rather like the words and images of poetry, or the colourful expressions of jokes, dialect, and slang, swearing can have a powerful emotional effect. If one plays around with the taboo words of a foreign language, they seem like completely innocuous clusters of vowels and consonants, whereas one’s own swearwords seem blessed — or rather cursed — with almost supernatural powers. In addition to its power to offend or to violate taboos, swearing can be a source of humour, and can provide an insight into a speaker’s personality and preoccupations. Several of the characters in Niccolo Ammaniti’s novel, Ti prendo e ti porto via, make liberal use of swearwords.1 The novel’s humour, as well as its depiction of a particular social milieu, depends in large part on the way the characters express themselves. It has been translated into English by Jonathan Hunt, and a close reading of the original (source text) and the translation (target text) provides insights into the task of the translator and into the analytical potential of translation itself.2 Hunt’s approach, as well as significant differences between source and target languages, has implications for the target text’s manifestation of satirical, ironic, and grotesque effects. A ‘stereoscopic’ reading of source and target texts, in which the two are read and analyzed side by side, illuminates some of the challenges inherent in the translation of swearing, and highlights the role of language, especially taboo language, in this particular novel.3