"The Wooden Boy" is a treachery to the Italian Pinocchio

2018-05-04 16:26

In a meeting titled 'Value of Books and Encyclopedias', Rafaele Mauriello, a faculty member of Allameh University (Faculty of Persian Literature and Foregin Languages) discussed the effective points in translation of literary works. 

He described the translators as treacherous people and said, "The book translated from Italian into Persian was Pinocchio. If you compare the translation with the original text, you will find two separate stories. The first translation of Pinocchio was published by Gutenberg Publishing house in Iran. Other translations from 1972 to 1975 were published in the form of pocket books." 

He continued, "The translation by Sadegh Chubak was the best in the above mentioned translations which was published under the title 'The Wooden Boy'. Since Chubak did not know Italian, he used the English version for translation into Persian."

Mauriello read part of the preface to 'The Wooden Boy' and then said, "Chubak used Pinocchio to promote Persian language. He confessed that he had translated Pinocchio to make Iranian children interested in Persian language."

He also added, "To deliver a correct translation, the translator must have a complete knowledge of the orignal text language.

If a translator is translating a book from say, Italian into Persian, it is their duty to know the complete grammers of both languages."

Pointing out to the words used in 'The Wooden Boy' , hecdescribed this translation as an exquisite book. However, according to him, 'The Wooden Boy' is a treachery to the Italian Pinocchio.

The faculty member of Allameh University presented similar explanations regarding the Italian translation of Shanameh in eight volumes claiming, "That

book is not Shahnameh but will be a valuable work in Italy."  

Mauriello, who is one of the Italian translators  of Shahnameh, emphasized on a saying from an Italian movie to say, "A treacherous translator is exactly an example of the saying that, 'A poem does not belong to the one who writes it, but to the one who uses it.'