Carrie and her dirty pillows�

�

And our travel through the translations of King's novels starts from here� his first work. King's Italian translation has been committed to more than one only translator during the years, with different ratio of success.
King's style in Carrie was more direct, rough, maybe the style of a writer not yet sure of his means as a storyteller. As for the Italian version of Carrie, this style has been well translated by Brunella Gasperini in her work for Bompiani in 1977, three years later its first American publishing.
If you're reading this article, I guess you read Carrie. If not, I advise you to do it, as it's a really fine work and 'cause I could spoil something about the plot. So, be careful!

Part one, "Blood sport" becomes something like "Blood shower", but it's ok, we Italian readers are used to more serious mistakes in the latest translation, so we can go on. And going on, we can find the general tone is well rendered since the beginning.
Even with some inaccuracies and missing words (sometimes even entire sentences), we can find the original Carrie in the words of Mrs Gasperini. She calls Carrie using her nick name in the article that opens the book, too, where King properly uses her full name Carietta, but affects little of the general lines of the novel. Nothing more than inaccuracy. There are many similar cases throughout the book, but King's spirit survives in the translation, with a right balance between clearness of exposition and controlled vulgarity.
As for the characters, only those who use slang (Billy Nolan and Chris Hangensen above all) lose strength in Italian and at the beginning Miss Desjardin seems less strong and dictatorial� but it's our language's fault, not Gasperini's.
As for the missing words (sometimes sentences) I'll quote only an example below:

"� let's short-sheet Carrie's bed at Christian Youth Camp and
I found this love letter from Carrie to Flash Bobby Pickett let's
copy it and pass it around and hide�"

In bold the missing part. Why? I don't know� maybe censorship? I don't think so�
Generally speaking, direct reference to American ordinary life has been cut (a Virginia Slim is only a cigarette and so on�) as if Italian readers could not understand a reality different from ours� but in more than one case, it's Gasperini herself who seems not to understand an American reference.
And so, Estelle is always Stella, "an odd pinched look, that is more like Lovecraft out of Arkham than Kerouac out of Southern Cal" has been translated without the literary references.
Trifles� no doubt about it. Somehow irritating, but much preferable than a whole difference from King's spirit.
Trifles which mustn't divert our attention from a basic point: King, in his 1974 green style, is here, alive, in this Italian version of its first novel.
But is it Gasperini's merit? Or King's fault?

I don't want to seem too critic (this translation doesn't deserve this), but there's something to underline, too. Anywhere King gets audacious and goes out of scheme in the exposition, Mrs Gasperini can't follow him. The only pun is cut in Italian version (during the election of the king and queen of the Prom Night, the announcer says "we've got a tie" and in the murmuring crows, George Dawson asks "Polka dots or striped?", making everyone laugh), but, more serious, the last page letter, signed Melia and written in unliterary language, is translated in standard Italian, losing its colourful tone which recalls (or maybe even anticipates) King's future characters.

Would Gasperini have been able to translate Dolores Claiborne's long speech or the poetic intensity of Hearts in Atlantis with the same good results?
Obviously, I can't answer this question� so let's just thank Mrs Gasperini for this good version of Carrie.

Antonio Cuomo
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