Eco's Echo

"Umberto Eco was contemporary Italy’s most famous and most popular intellectual. Though he called himself a philosopher and was best known as a scholar for his work in semiotics, Eco was also known in Italy for his writings on popular culture, particularly for his essay “The Phenomenology of Mike Buongiorno," the American-born game show host and frequent MC of the annual San Remo pop music festival. Italy’s combination Bob Barker and Bert Parks.  
But it’s no secret that Eco owed his worldwide fame to the success of his novels, most notably The Name of the Rose, which has been published in 47 languages and has sold more than 50 million copies. So as we commemorate Eco, we might also spare a thought for his translators, foremost among them William Weaver, whose English version is listed today on amazon.com as number 399 in books and number 11 in fiction>historical>mysteries, over thirty years after it was first published in 1983.
Translators would also do well to recall that Weaver did not agree to do the translation for a one-off flat fee but instead successfully negotiated the payment of a royalty on book sales. When I met him in the 1990s, Weaver recounted that his royalties had been given concrete form, so to speak, with the construction of a new guest bedroom on his Tuscan home in Monte San Savino, a bedroom that Weaver dubbed, with characteristic wit, “the Eco chamber.”