mbresso

I want to have engraved for presentation in Italy a ring that inside paraphrases or truncates the Robert Browning quote: "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a Heaven for?" to ultimately:

"What a heaven's for..." or alternatively, "What a heaven is for..."

HOWEVER, inasmuch as we'll be in Italy at the time I would like the phrase to be written in Italian. Although I'm of Italian ancestry I don't speak or write it, so am wondering if somebody can help me with the correct translation. The internet has provided two versions:

"Ché cielo è per" and
"Che cosa è un paradiso per"

Would one or either be more correct or even correct at all? Many thanks!

P.S. No, she won't be browsing this forum. ;-)

zeppole

I recommend you take your question over to the Slow Travel message board, where there are several native Italians who post and a couple who are quite fluent in Italian, and even one Italian editor, I believe. It's possible that Browning's poem has already been translated into Italian, and someone could give you that translation, or provide a translation that would be closer to the way an Italian would render it in speech.

Therese

"Ah, ma l'uomo dovrebbe andar oltre
Ciò che può afferrare,
O a cosa serve il paradiso?"

So you'd use just the last line.

mbresso

Thanks folks.

Therese, I really want to say specifically, "What a heaven's for (w/or w/out contraction)" instead of mimicking exactly the last words of the actual quote ("...or what's a heaven for?&quot because the idea is the declaration inside the ring is STATING (sorry for the yelling, just don't have italics handy) that my lady is in fact.... what a heaven is for. Capiche paisan?

I have posted in Slow Travel, but still if anybody here wants to take a crack, I love to know the Italian for:

"What a heaven's for"
(or "What a heaven is for&quot

LoveItaly

Hello mbresso, well I phoned my son-in-law born and raised in Rome and lived there until ten years ago.

He said exactly what Theresa posted "O a cosa serve il paradiso".

Not an expression an Italian would use so to speak but that is true in our English language. Best regards.

mbresso

Thanks LoveItaly, but that still doesn't seem correct. I just want to translate:

"What a HEAVEN's for" (the declaration)

and not

"or WHAT's a heaven for?" (the question).

Since your son-in-law said exactly what the earlier person here posted was the translation to the entire quote (which I am not trying to do at all), AND I see it starts with "O" which I presume is "or," this then can't be correct. Perhaps you read him the actual Robert Browning quotation and not what I wanted to translate (I wish now I wouldn't have put in the former). But thanks for trying. What do I owe you for the transatlantic call...? ;-)

To translate "What heaven is for," I have a feeling I'm going to go with:

Ché cielo è per"

SeaUrchin

what a heaven's for doesn't make sense to me.

maybe you are saying (your lady) is what heaven is for?

mbresso

Yes SeaUrchin, precisely. SHE is what a heaven is for.

I probably shouldn't have introduced any of the details about WHY I wanted the translation because it seems to be coloring the responses, but suffice it to say everyone will just have to believe me, it does make perfect sense and will have the utmost and perfect meaning to us.

Here I'm merely trying to see if I can get the appropriate translation, but my usual verbose self.. get... horribly in.... the way.. ;-)

SeaUrchin

Oh you won't get away that easily on Fodors, mbresso. Fodorites wil dissect your whole relationship before you are through. And maybe your political and feminist leanings and who knows what all. This is not an easy bunch!

Have fun!

flanneruk

First, don't ever, ever, ever use Babelfish or the like to produce translations into a language you're not familiar with.

To see what happens, take just about any Italian phrase you know (like 'e pericoloso sporgersi'), run it through Babelfish and see the gibberish it churns out.

And it's the same the other way round "Che cielo e per" isn't bad Italian: it's meaningless twaddle: what you'd get if you got a million monkeys on typewriters in an Italian room.

Second, don't assume everything's translatable - or at any rate into something that'll fit inside a ring. "O a cosa serve il paradiso?" is a common-ish translation of the Browning line, though you'll note it isn't accurate: "O a cosa serve un Paradiso?" would be accurate, but maybe it doesn't sound right to an Italian. Poetry practically never translates into anything that reads properly without losing accuracy.

You have to be wary, though, of people telling you it doesn't sound right since that's often the point of poetry. You'll notice a poster's just said that "what a Heaven's for" doesn't sound right. Yup, and it didn't when Browning wrote it either: the oddness is precisely what the line's about.

Sadly, though, your twist isn't that easy to do. It'd literally be "Il punto a che serve un Paradiso", since modern Italian just hasn't got an equivalent of English's pithy "what bricks are for". The closest would probably be "A questo serve un Paradiso" - but I'd get someone who both had Italian as a mother language and was famiilar with Browning to check.

Or just use your twist, in English You'll know for certain that "what a Heaven's for" (unlike "What a heaven's for..." or alternatively, "What a heaven is for..." )
- conveys the meaning you want
- is sonorous
- carries the reference to Browning
- will be fully understood by Her.

You've absolutely no way of knowing any of that will be true of any Italian formula someone else suggests.

And both you and She know it's from Andrea del Sarto. Isn't that Italian enough?

Steve_James

What Flanner said.

Therese

One of the nice things about Italian (and lots of other languages, of course) is that it's pretty flexible when it comes to swiching questions and declarations---changing inflection (and punctuation if it's written) often suffices.

In this instance I'd just say:

"A che serve il paradiso..." (or perhaps just "A che serve il paradiso"---the "..." suggests that either you've left some text out, which you haven't, or that you're not entirely sure of what you mean, whereas you clearly are)

You've now left off the "O" (which you correctly assume means "Or), and removed the question mark, so now it's a declaration. Were I presented with this phrase and asked to translate it directly into Italian, I'd say "What heaven's for..." (or better yet "What heaven's for&quot.

J62

Simple question - have you checked to see how many readable letters can be engraved in the ring?

I agree with the others - you cannot simply translate poetry from one language to another as subtlety of meaning get lost.

Often times even an indirect reference to a poem or lyrics can be as powerful as the actual words themselves. Does she know Browning well or will she give you the what the heck does this mean look when you give it to her? The reference to the quote is an inside secret that only you 2 will share.

You could simply inscribe something like 'my heaven' Italy 2008 in the ring, and present it to her in Uffizi under a portrait of Andrea del Sarto.

Steve_James

Rather than -

A che serve il paradiso

I think the nearest you can get in in Italian would be something like -

Tu sei il mio paradiso

Meaning -

With you I'm in heaven, or
You are my heaven

Hope this helps ...

Steve

zeppole

mbresso,

I've been following the postings on Slow Travel and on here, and what can I say but ---

I guess not a lot of people share your poetic feeling, or your feeling for poetry!

I thought the Slow Travel folk might at least help with the standard translation into Italians, but I forgot how dogmatic and stuck on themselves they are.

I hope it isn't catching over here.

There is a reason for the English phrase "poetic license." Poetry is -- as Browning knew -- at attempt to put into words what never cannot be put into words.

mbresso's feeling for this lady -- is she Italian, mbresso? -- apparently cannot be rendered in English words alone. Or else he would have done that already. But those feelings cannot be rendered in Italian words alone, or he would not be so determined to quote this Browning. He is reaching for something that doesn't quite exist, that has to be created.

Poets know that any description of love is not just a stretch but a betrayal, but they need to express the feeling to at least one someone else anyway because love unexpressed is a worse crime than love badly expressed.

To me, mbresso's only poetic mistake was to bring out his love to express over the internet to strangers -- and even that probably wasn't a mistake at all.

mbresso, Flaubert once wrote something in French which can be poorly translated thusly:

"Human speech is a cracked drum on which we tap crude rhythms that bears dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars."

Only you know what belongs on the inside of that lady's ring. And only she will understand it -- whatever it says, in whatever language or combination of languages it is in.

Cimbrone

Not necessarily for mbresso, since he doesn't seem to want to hear it: She is "what a heaven's for" doesn't make much sense. Add to this that the poem has little to do with love, and I am forced to wonder--either mbresso and his lady have had a very clever, rarified, and ongoing banter concerning this poem or mbresso is trying to contrive something that he thinks is very poetic and beautiful but is, in actuality, completely bizarre and, well, contrived. Just an English teacher's two cents.

zeppole

Well, there is translation mistakes and there are just plain typing mistakes. I meant to write:

Poetry is -- as Browning knew -- at attempt to put into words what cannot be put into words.

(Good on you, Steve James, for taking a flyer past the literal).

Speaking personally, I'd much rather my husband speak to me from the heart in inadequate Italian translations of poetry that means a great deal to him than take me to some spot by someone else's picture and speak in English -- because people were taught in school and want to believe it that poetry can't be translated.

Poets must want to slit there wrists every morning when they get out of bed. I guess writing poetry is what keeps them going.

zeppole

Cimbrone sums up exactly why I stopped listening to English teachers by the time I was 12.

Thank god that was before I had to listen to their views on sex and love and not just poetry.

zeppole

I am reminded of the finale to Bernard Shaw's Candida, a play about a poet:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Candida/Act_III

MARCHBANKS. I no longer desire happiness: life is nobler than that. Parson James: I give you my happiness with both hands: I love you because you have filled the heart of the woman I loved. Good-bye. (He goes towards the door.)

CANDIDA. One last word. (He stops, but without turning to her.) How old are you, Eugene?

MARCHBANKS. As old as the world now. This morning I was eighteen.

CANDIDA (going to him, and standing behind him with one hand caressingly on his shoulder). Eighteen! Will you, for my sake, make a little poem out of the two sentences I am going to say to you? And will you promise to repeat it to yourself whenever you think of me?

MARCHBANKS (without moving). Say the sentences.

CANDIDA. When I am thirty, she will be forty-five. When I am sixty, she will be seventy-five.

MARCHBANKS (turning to her). In a hundred years, we shall be the same age. But I have a better secret than that in my heart. Let me go now. The night outside grows impatient.

CANDIDA. Good-bye. (She takes his face in her hands; and as he divines her intention and bends his knee, she kisses his forehead. Then he flies out into the night. She turns to Morell, holding out her arms to him.) Ah, James!

(They embrace. But they do not know the secret in the poet's heart.)

socaltraveler

Zeppole,

I have also followed the conversation about this on Slow Travel and find your comments about that to be rather rude and offensive. People there are merely suggesting that perhaps making the translation is difficult; no need to call them names. But then, I guess sometimes people "jump ship" from travel board to travel board, and have axes to grind. I don't think that your comments are pertinent to the OP's request.