After growing up in Pittsburgh and studying at Notre Dame (B.A. in American Studies, 1974), at Yale (M.A. Am. Studies,1976) and J.D., Yale Law School (1980), I practiced as a legal services lawyer in New Haven and Waltham, MA. Then in 1985 I moved to Perugia, where I have been ever since. Like my Sicilian grandfather, who emigrated to Pittsburgh in 1892, I’m an immigrant--in the opposite direction.
I think my immigrant status is essential to my translating and teaching. In Italy I teach English to mostly Italian students at the University of Perugia, and Italian history to American students at the University of Rochester in Arezzo. Teaching English helps me keep in touch with my linguistic and cultural roots, but my being an immigrant is why my study and teaching of Italian history focuses on the question of Italian political and cultural identity. It became clear to me after just a few years of living in Italy that Italians and Americans have a very different sense of national identity, and I wanted to figure out what made them so different. The history course I teach examines the evolution of Italian national identity from unification to the Republic, and its expression in literature and the arts as well as politics.
Inevitably, I started translating as soon as I moved to Italy though I didn’t publish my first book until 1998. There have been eleven others since and three more due out by spring 2014, ranging from non-fiction in history, economics, religion, and philosophy to novels, short stories and even a bit of poetry. My favorite projects are the books and shorter works that I have found and proposed to prospective publishers, sometimes successfully (such as works by Enrico Deaglio, Rosetta Loy, and Emilio Lussu) and sometimes not, but I am also quite happy to translate works proposed to me by authors or publishers. Overall, my objective as a translator is to provide English-language readers with as much as possible of the Italian flavor of the work while still making it a pleasure to read in English.
I think my immigrant status is essential to my translating and teaching. In Italy I teach English to mostly Italian students at the University of Perugia, and Italian history to American students at the University of Rochester in Arezzo. Teaching English helps me keep in touch with my linguistic and cultural roots, but my being an immigrant is why my study and teaching of Italian history focuses on the question of Italian political and cultural identity. It became clear to me after just a few years of living in Italy that Italians and Americans have a very different sense of national identity, and I wanted to figure out what made them so different. The history course I teach examines the evolution of Italian national identity from unification to the Republic, and its expression in literature and the arts as well as politics.
Inevitably, I started translating as soon as I moved to Italy though I didn’t publish my first book until 1998. There have been eleven others since and three more due out by spring 2014, ranging from non-fiction in history, economics, religion, and philosophy to novels, short stories and even a bit of poetry. My favorite projects are the books and shorter works that I have found and proposed to prospective publishers, sometimes successfully (such as works by Enrico Deaglio, Rosetta Loy, and Emilio Lussu) and sometimes not, but I am also quite happy to translate works proposed to me by authors or publishers. Overall, my objective as a translator is to provide English-language readers with as much as possible of the Italian flavor of the work while still making it a pleasure to read in English.
