Italian Translation Practice #20: The Blasphemous Frog

Hi everyone

English newspapers don’t report a great deal of Italian news, but occasionally a story captures the imagination of English editors and is given widespread coverage in the English media. To illustrate this, today’s translation practice is taken from the online edition one of England’s quality broadsheets, The Daily Telegraph, and it concerns the sacking of a Museum Director over her refusal to remove from display Martin Kippenberger’s Zuerst die Füsse ("Feet First") – the sculpture which became well-known this summer in England as ‘the crucified frog’. You can read the entire article here.

Controversy has raged around the sculpture since it first went on display in May at the Museion, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano, in the staunchly Catholic region of Alto Adige. Many commentators were offended by what they perceived as the blasphemous quality of the sculpture, and demanded its removal from the exhibition. Other commentators argued equally passionately in support of freedom of artistic expression, and maintained that the sculpture should be kept on display.

At the height of the controversy the museum decided, by majority vote, to keep the sculpture in the exhibition, but the piece was moved from the entrance hall and placed in a less prominent position until the exhibition closed on schedule at the end of September. The Telegraph article reports on the eventual fall-out of the affair, which allegedly resulted in this week’s dismissal of the Museum Director.

I hope you have fun translating the piece! I’ll try and post my own translation in a few days as a comment to the blog.

OK, onward with the article.

Head of Italian museum displaying 'blasphemous frog' sacked

The head of an Italian museum who offended the Pope by exhibiting a wooden sculpture of a crucified frog has been sacked amid a debate over artistic freedom.

Corinne Diserens, the Swiss director of the museum in Bolzano, in the mountainous north-east of Italy, was dismissed after months of controversy over the bright green, bug-eyed amphibian, which is nailed to a cross and holds a frothing mug of beer and an egg. She had refused to remove the work by the late German artist Martin Kippenberger despite protests from the Vatican that it was blasphemous.

She said the museum had a right to artistic freedom, and kept the frog on display as originally planned from May to September.

But a majority of the museum's board of directors disagreed and instead dismissed her this week.

The official reason given by the museum was that Ms Diserens had caused a "difficult financial situation" by overspending her budget, but supporters said she was being punished for the row over the frog.

Her sacking prompted a debate on contemporary art in the German-speaking region of Alto-Adige, where a far-right party with anti-immigration views tripled its support in local elections this week, becoming the province's second most powerful political force.

"The relationship between art and politics is never an easy one, but to be sacked because of one work of art is really incredible," said the head of a gallery in nearby Trento, Fabio Cavallucci.

Pope Benedict XVI condemned the four-foot-high frog, entitled Zuerst die Fuesse (Feet First), when he heard about it during his summer holiday in the nearby town of Bressanone.

He said it "injured the religious feeling of many people who see in the cross the symbol of the love of God and of our salvation which deserves recognition and religious devotion"....