Translation Evaluation
The language being translated
Fiore was a Friulian writing around 1409 for the Este court at Ferrara. His prose is not Tuscan "standard" Italian but a northern koiné — a Padano-Veneto literary vernacular with Friulian substrate features and heavy scribal abbreviation. Judging a translation means checking it against this language, not against Dante's Tuscan or modern Italian:
- Orthography: ç for /ts–dz/ (abraçare, çoventu, açça); x for /s–z/ (raxione); Latinizing h- (homini, honore); Roman numerals with medial dots.
- Morphology: avere + participle with bare a for ha (a imprese = "has learned"); participles in -ado/-udo (guadagnado, debudo, veçudo); contracted futures (faro, scriviro, mettero); fo = fu, digo = dico.
- Lexicon: a stratum of words whose form or meaning has shifted since — the real test of a translator (below).
The verse witnesses raise the bar: the Pisani Dossi is rhymed Italian couplets, and the Paris is Latin elegiac verse, partly damaged.
Verdict in brief
High, research-grade philological quality. The translations read the early-Quattrocento vocabulary and morphology correctly in the overwhelming majority of cases, including the false-friend words that trip non-specialists; they preserve the first-person voice and technical register; they keep original terms inline; and they flag cruxes with notes instead of smoothing them. The soft spots are the expected ones: the Latin verse of the Paris manuscript (least secure, honestly marked as conjectural), an inevitable flattening of the notarial register, and a handful of genuine textual cruxes no translation can resolve.
Vocabulary check — ca. 1400 words
The words most likely to be misread by modern-Italian intuitions, checked against their plays. Every row below was rendered correctly — several idiomatically, where a literal reading would mislead.
| Source word (ca. 1400) | Naïve reading | Correct sense | Rendered as |
|---|---|---|---|
| questione (façemo questione) | "question" | quarrel, dispute | "our quarrel is…" |
| vargo (di vargo in vargo) | "I cross" / "valley" | pace, stride | "from stride to stride" |
| sesto (a sesto e a misura) | "sixth" | compass, set-square | "by compass and measure" |
| merchato (bon merchato) | "market" | bargain, deal | "a good bargain" |
| briga (pocha briga) | "brigade" | trouble, bother | "little bother" |
| inzegno (cum inzegno) | "engine" | cunning, ingenuity | "with cunning" |
| fadiga (non ti dar fadiga) | "fatigue" (state) | effort, exertion | "do not weary yourself" |
| apostar (apostar lo inimigo) | "to bet" | to lie in wait for | "waylaying" |
| impichare (si vorave ben impichare) | "to stick/pin" | to hang (by the neck) | "might as well go hang himself" |
| da solaço … da ira | "solace … anger" | for sport … in earnest | "for sport … in anger, that is for one’s life" |
| oltrança (ad oltrança) | (opaque) | to the utmost / to the death | "to the utmost" |
| sori (piu sori) | (opaque) | signori, lords (abbrev.) | "lords (sori for signori)" |
| scarmidori / scrimiduri | (opaque) | fencers, fencing-masters | "fencing masters" |
| çuparello d’armare | (opaque) | arming doublet/jacket | "arming jacket" |
| a ferri moladi | "soft irons" | ground/sharpened steel heads | "sharpened steel heads" |
| tempere di ferri | "temperatures" | the tempers of steel weapons | "the temper of steel weapons" |
| fateççe (de çaschuna arma) | "facts" | make, fashion, features | "the make of each weapon" |
| liçie / lizere (a fare) | "lacy" | easy, light | "so easy are they to do" |
| petenichio | (opaque) | pubic bone, groin | "the groin" |
| presteça | "prestige" | speed, quickness | "celerity / quickness" |
| arme (in arme e senç’arme) | "weapons" | here: armor (harness) | "in armor and without armor" |
| cusiremo (tanto no taiaret…) | "we will cook" | we will sew (thrust vs cut) | "we shall do the sewing" |
| Re (of the Masters) | "king" only | the crowned Remedy Master | "King and Remedy [Master]" |
The arme = "armor" reading in in arme e senç'arme is a good diagnostic: the translator disambiguated by context rather than defaulting to the modern cognate. Likewise questione → "quarrel", vargo → "stride", and sesto → "compass" are exactly where a machine or a modern speaker goes wrong — and they are right throughout.
Morphology and syntax
- The -ado/-udo participles and the bare-a perfect are read correctly everywhere; a is never mistaken for the preposition.
- Contracted futures (faro = "I will make") are correctly future, never misread as past or present.
- The breathless ¶-segmented syntax of the preface is broken into readable English sentences — a deliberate departure from the source's paratactic rhythm (see the register note below).
- Enclitic and elided forms (t'o serato'l brazo = "I have shut your arm") are resolved correctly.
The verse and the Latin — the exposed edge
Handled well: rendered as verse, accurately, with rhyme sacrificed to sense — the right call for a study text. The metaphor-dense lines land ("more venomous than the serpent… however much you cut, we shall do the sewing").
The least secure part of the corpus, and correctly the most hedged. The manuscript is water-damaged and the Latin compressed; garbled passages are marked as conjectural rather than invented. Treat the Paris English as provisional wherever a note flags it — anyone needing the Latin precisely must go to the transcriptions in the research repository.
The one systematic limitation: register
The source is early-Quattrocento notarial-inflected vernacular — the oath-and-honor cadences of a professional man-at-arms addressing a Marchese. The translation renders all of it into clear, modern, register-neutral English. That is the right choice for a research translation, and it is applied consistently. But it is a real loss, worth stating plainly: the English does not sound 1400. Anyone studying Fiore's rhetoric, self-presentation, or period voice must read the transcriptions, not the translation. The translation is a faithful semantic map of the text, not a stylistic facsimile of it.
Measured against the actual state of the language ca. 1400, the translations are accurate, consistent, and honest. The false-friend vocabulary is right; the northern morphology is read correctly; the verse is respected as verse; the genuine cruxes are disclosed rather than smoothed. Keep two things in mind: the Paris/Latin renderings are provisional wherever noted, and the English deliberately modernizes the register. For their stated purpose — a research base for reading and analyzing the plays — the translations are fit and reliable.