Thursday, November 17, 2011

November 17, 2011

If anyone out there is following my slow progress--I could use some help with today's translation. I think Camillo is telling a joke--or at the very least being sarcastic and funny about what life is like in Chicago. My translation needs help--it's not really capturing what he's saying. So, if you feel like taking a peek--let me know what your take on this passage is.

Dalle rive del Mississippi

Minneapolis, Minn September 20, 1893

Carissima mamma,
Eccoti una storiella un’po maligna che mi ha raccontato qualche tempo fa un newyorkese a proposito di Chicago e dei suoi abitanti. Dunque devi sapere che secondo la detta storia una chicagoano un bel giorno si mori. E una cosa che capita a tutti ed in tutte le parti del mondo, ma spcialmente nell’Illinois ove abiualmente si beve acqua di cui un goccia contiene 1400 colonie di microbi e dove i treni ferroviari han l’abitudine di telecoparsi quasi ogni giorno (osserva la bellezza e l’evidenza del verbo telescopare inventato qui per dipingere un treno che entra dentro l’altro). Lasciata la spoglia terrena, quest’anima chicagoana si diresse verso il Paradiso ove aveva intenzione di prendere dimora se non che non conoscendo la strada domando al primo policeman che trovo quale fosse la via del Paradiso.


Dearest mother,
Here’s a bad joke that someone told me a little while back...A New Yorker was talking about Chicago and its inhabitants. But you need to know that according to the story it was a good day in Chicago and then you die. This is one of those things that everyone gets, everywhere, but especially in Illinois where its normal everyday people drink the water--in which one drop contains 1400 colonies of microbes and where the trains have the habit of [telescoparsi?--crash into each other?] almost everyday (see the perfect evidence--the verb “telescopare”-telescope--was invented here to describe one train that enters into another). Leaving the barren earth (?) the spirit of the chicagoans is headed to Heaven where he intended to take home, if not the way he knew, the one he asked the first policeman who was drunk as usual and had found the only real road to Paradise.

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