My other half, who works in the antiques trade, often sends me texts to translate, check and correct. The only trouble is that I am not all that hot on expressions such as bombature, rocailles, modanate and baccelliere (this last one is ‘bachelor’ sometimes…). But I got ‘ebanistici’ to be ‘cabinet maker’, which seemed to fit quite well. Our usual way round this is to leave them as they are, in Italian, and hope that those working in this field know what the blazes these terms mean. Maybe I am wrong, but attempting to translate some furniture terminology is quite possibly like trying to translate words used on musical scores such as ‘allegro’, ‘forte’ or ‘pianissimo’, ie not really necessary. At least I hope so.
Stop reading, start speaking
Stop translating in your head and start speaking Italian for real with the only audio course that prompt you to speak.
If anyone out there on the www wishes to point out the error of my ways, I’m all ears or even modanate??!!
PS ‘modanate’ could be related to ‘moda’ – which is fashion or way or method. The ‘ate’ indicates that the word could be the second person plural of an Italian verb such as ‘andate’. Don’t know. Enlighten me.
