I Think My Language Wires Are Crossed, and I Like It

Yesterday I got to work as an interpreter at the presentation of Helene Stapinski's book Murder in Matera (Mistero a Matera in italiano) with the brilliant Elisa "BookWitch" Morini as host of the event.

First of all, it was a lot of fun. Helene is a wonderful, easy-going Jersey girl with a deep commitment for "getting the story." She speaks a little Italian, so I didn't have much to do at first, but pretty soon a bit of interpreting became necessary. As Elisa started to dig into her line of questions, Helene would look at me more and more often for a quick interpretation. Logically enough, her own answers became steadily more intricate. So my role was also to translate her responses to Elisa back into Italian for the Italian audience, which had begun with exactly one elderly fellow from Parma (who was super alert and even compared the book to Mann's "Death in Venice") and ended up as a full house with folks standing at the back of the Fiaccadori bookstore.



Again, it was fun! Though I don't do this kind of job very often, so something weird bagan happening to me.

Towards the end of the presentation, and then even afterwards, when we went for a stroll around "il centro città" and of course stopped for some delicious prosciutto, parmigiano-reggiano and a bottle of local Lambrusco, I began to realize that my neurons were scrambled.

My wires were crossed. I was speaking Italian to the Americans and English to the Italians.

It lasted only for about fifteen or twenty minutes (until the first glass of wine, lol) but I found it oddly fascinating. I was somehow observing my own criss-crossing of languages, with curiosity and humor, and since I was surrounded by friends and the presentation was such a success, everybody was laughing along with me.

Then, yes, finally I got a little of that sweet, fizzy red wine and suddenly English was English and Italian was Italian and as the waiter layed the table with a generous "tagliere" of local sliced meats, I hollered, laughing - MANGIAMO - to one and all!