We have received an email from the person who we believe is both a fool and the producer of a bad translation of Gianfranco Sanguinetti’s “Welcome to the Freest City in the World.” In this email, he writes, “I don't see much difference between our translations of the recent Sanguinetti piece.”

In what follows, we shall provide a juxtaposed selection of passages from our respective translations. We believe that the reader will quickly and easily see that (1) there is indeed a great deal of difference between them, which we believe supports our contention that this person is indeed a fool, and that (2) these differences are not a matter of “simple” disagreements concerning how a particular sentence should be rendered from French into English, but are in fact an important matter of how well (or how poorly) the translator understands Sanguinetti’s politics. It is our opinion that a translation worthy of the description “bad” combines both kinds of errors.

His translation:

Though the proletariat now has no more illusions about the real intentions of the Italian Communist Party [PCI], they still shouldn’t overestimate those bureaucrats’ strength. They’re too friendly with power to fail to be its accomplices – but they’re not tight enough with power to receive from it the authority and benefits they expect from it. They’re far enough away from the working class to not be followed by it – but they’re not far enough from the working class for it to openly condemn them.

Ours:

But just as the proletariat has no illusions about the true intentions of the Italian Communist Party [ICP], the proletariat should not overestimate the strength of these bureaucrats. Too close to power to not to be its accomplices, the Stalinists are not yet close enough to receive the power and benefits for which they had hoped. Sufficiently far from the working class that they will never be obeyed by it, they are not far enough away to escape its judgment.

His translation:

Any of us could be arrested at any moment now, or simply killed with impunity; but remember that there’s no way to escape from danger that isn’t dangerous, and from now on it must no longer be us that fears repression - the bureaucrats and the bourgeoisie must be made to fear our struggle. The movement has grown and spread every time it has made an attack; if it abandons that strategy it may be destroyed. 

Ours:

At this time, any of us can be arrested or killed with impunity, but we should remember that there is no safe escape from danger and that we should not be afraid of repression, because it is the bureaucrats and bourgeois who fear our struggles. The movement that has emerged has grown each time that it has attacked, and it can only be defeated if it gives up this strategy.

His translation:

An impatience to use guns now at all costs in fact delays the moment when the whole proletariat will take up arms by speeding up repression. Those who are willing to make a stupid use of arms are not the most advanced and “hardest” segment of the current revolutionary movement, but the rearguard of its theoretical and strategic consciousness.

Ours:

Because it anticipates repression, the impatience to use weapons today, at all costs, actually delays the arrival of the moment when the proletariat as a whole will have recourse to them. Those who gratify themselves with the stupid use of weapons are not the most advanced or the “hardest” part of the revolutionary movement, but the rearguard of its theoretical and strategic consciousness.

His translation:

The protest movement of the young proletarian generations that has become revolutionary could only remove itself from the hierarchies of the political groups and parties – which since 68 have been recuperating those movements and routing them into the dead-end alley of alienated militant activism – by taking up extremist pretensions.

Ours:

The protest of the young proletarian generation became revolutionary as soon as it detached itself from the hierarchies of the groups and parties with extremist claims that, after 1968, were tasked with recuperating and leading that protest into the blind alley of alienated militancy.