I was approached to edit a batch of stories written in Italian that the author wished to publish in English as well. So I copied the original, pasted it into a machine translation app, and edited the English version.
The English rendition was confusing and incomprehensible in places — which is actually better because False Friends* are the most dangerous, leading you into complacent acceptance. At least if it obviously doesn’t make sense, you can check with the author.
One hilarious bit, in the context of rockets falling, came out as “the silence fell with a bang”, which had me laughing for days. After changing it, I then thought it might actually be great fun to leave it like that, juxtaposed, as word play (which I love). Unfortunately, the author said that the original is meant to be “suddenly”, that it’s the difference between “botto” and “di botto”. What a pity.
*Linguistic False Friends are pairs of words that are spelt or pronounced the same way in both languages but actually mean different things, e.g., pain in French and pain in English. (See also: https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2012/01/true-role-of-pain-in-french-dining.html.)
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