When Michael, the Turk and McClusky are at the table, the Turk says he is going to speak to Michael in Italian. Does anyone know what they said b4 he got up to use the bathroom? I put on the subtitles on my dvd but it doesnt translate to english. Thanks.

Welcome to the boards!

Another member here translated this scene for us. Here is what he posted :

Don Cardi

Thanks for the translaion. Now how about after he comes back from the bathroom and sits down, the Turk says a few more lines in Italian, somethin about tu padre, just b4 Michael smokes 'em.

Here is a rough translation according to the script on The Godfather Trilogy Site.

"Everything all right? I respect myself -- understand? -- and cannot allow another

man to hold me back. What happened was unavoidable. I had the unspoken support of the

other Family Dons. If your father were in better health, without his eldest son running

things, no disrespect intended, we wouldn't have this nonsense. We will stop fighting until

your father is well and can resume bargaining. No vengeance will be taken. We will have

peace, but your family should interfere no longer...."



Don Cardi

I must take a bit of issue with some of dontomasso's posted transliteration.

The line of Sollozzo's: "Kay-AY-oh! Son o more di amore." is actually "Io, sono un uomo di honor". ("Me, I am a man of honor.")

Now, I'll admit that my Italian is not particularly good, but I have played the scene over many times (perhaps too many) and this line was quite obvious to me.

Signor V.

Can't anyone here who speaks fluent Italian give us the right translation?


DS

Hundreds of Godfather fans here and no one speaks Italian? This is worse than the band in Tahoe.

"Can o' peas, my ass..."

Actually, much of the Italian translation I have for that scene comes from the closed-captions on my ancient taped copy of GF1 that I got off HBO ages ago. I have to say, however, that there are many errors in those captions, so they should be taken with a small grain of salt.

Still, to quote Charlie Dog, from the immortal and classic Warner Bros. cartoon A Hound For Trouble:

"Doesn't anybody here capeesh??"

Signor V.

Yes. The one translation that always cracks me up is when Luca is meeting with Tattaglia and after hearing Tattaglia's financial offer Luca says in Itallian slang
"Mingia." And they translate it to something like "Wow."

That word definitely does not mean Wow!


Don Cardi

Yes there is. Our Sweet Lavinia can. Where are you when we need you Lavs?


Don Cardi

DC, not to criticize you personally, but... what the hell was that?
Probably the worst Italian I've ever read.

What are you talking about? The word Mingia? I may not know the correct Italian spelling of the word, but I sure know how to say it!

How would you spell that word in italian?


Don Cardi

I swear I worked really hard on a translation, but when I tried to post it, it said I used parentheses in my HTML tag, and I didn't even know I had one!! I would say that the translation originally posted by DT and kindly reposted by DC is obviously quite phonetic, but the translation comes close to giving us the gist of the conversation.

My apologies DC, I was talking about your first post, and I didn't see you were quoting dontommasso in it. I tought you wrote all of that.

So actually I should have been picking at dt.

My apologies again!

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Signor Vitelli:
The line of Sollozzo's: "Kay-AY-oh! Son o more di amore." is actually "Io, sono un uomo di honor". ("Me, I am a man of honor.")

Io parlo l'Italiano un poco
Secondo me,e un onore o una dignita
"Io,sono un uomo di onore" sounds right to me

Segnorina's translation (and spelling) seems more accurate than my feeble attempt - which goes to show that there are serious pitfalls in using an online translator (which I did).

Grazie, segnorina!

Signor V.

Considering the Corleone family knew where the meeting was taking place, you'd think they just would have sent a hit squad to take care of the two as opposed to Michael. I mean they could have just setup a signal; he goes to the bathroom and five heavily armed men come in...

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Signor Vitelli:
Segnorina's translation (and spelling) seems more accurate than my feeble attempt - which goes to show that there are serious pitfalls in using an online translator (which I did).

Grazie, segnorina!

Prego,signor Vitelli

Oh, you mean where Luca (apparently) exclaims; "Not bad!" That made me giggle too, Don Cardi. I don't know a word of Italian but I knew that subtitle was wrong. It was just so out place and it stuck out like a sore thumb. The ! mark just made it even more cheesy.

Luca's subtitles might as well be edited to fit with this level of cheese; something like; "Gee, I know you!" and "But hey dude, what's in it for me?" Why not rewrite the whole scene in that bar, so that all the characters present speak in dubious Luca-speak. "I think you and I can do business!" and "$50,000, to begin with!" A wonderful way of making sure no atmosphere is created at all in that scene, instead of partially ruining it by having Luca exclaim "Not bad!" Calm down, dear; you're supposed to be playing this whole "I'm betraying Don Vito and his family" thing cool and collected....

You have to remember that the term "not bad" is an American idiom.

Perhaps Luca's comment was an Italian idiom which would have made no sense to an American audience, as "not bad" might've to an Italian one, and it was just translated that way because it was as close as they could come to something that an American audience would understand.

The term that Luca uses is an Italian slang curse word, one too offensive to ever post on here. It's obvious that the translators were not ging to sub-title that Italian slang line to show the real meaning of the offensive term that he used.


Don Cardi

I know from the IMDb that the term Luca used was a swear (ummm) and I can see why they chose to subtitle it as they did, to show the literal meaning of what Luca was implying through using that swear word; but it was just so funny, as when you don't know these things, you take them at face value. If anything, the ! mark was the icing on the face-value giggle cake.

Were they speaking in Italian or Sicillian?

I read that during the giant mafia trials in Sicily in the 80's and 90's they had to have people to translate the various Sicilian slangs of Palermo spoken by defendants for the court, who consisted of Sicilians and people from mainland Italy.

Can anyone tell me the translation of the word Luca said? PM perhaps, if it's too offensive.

Don Cardi has said that the word Luca used is too offensive to translate on this board (in public); and I'm not arguing with Don Cardi.

I'll try to find out what it means.