odore di storno

T

theartichoke

Senior Member
English - Canada
Hi everyone,

Here's a bit of an odd one. The narrator's lover, whom she's heartily sick of, has run off and left her. She sniffs the pillow from his unmade bed and thinks "sapeva di selvatico, un acre odore di storno." Storni are starlings (I assume we're not talking about dappled horses dal mantello storno), and from what I can tell through online searches, it's their droppings that have un acre odore.

Strange as it sounds to say that someone's pillow has "a pungent odour of :warning: birdshit," is this what it means? "A pungent smell of starlings" would sound even stranger, as I don't associate any particular smell with starlings themselves. (And yes, I know that there's no vulgarity in the Italian, but "birdshit" sounds more colloquial in this context than "bird droppings" or "guano," which I tend to associate with bats.)
 
    • Mary49 said:
    Perhaps because they had sex on the fields, where starlings went to feed.:confused:
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    They most certainly did, but the sex-in-fields, we've just been told, takes place amid the smell of piante di capperi e di maggiorana. I've never smelt a caper bush, but marjoram smells delightful.

    Paulfromitaly said:
    Birds do stink a lot.
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    Maybe I'm too quick to reject the literal "pungent smell of starlings"? I suppose the reader could make the connection as to what smells about starlings without me spelling it out for them?
     
    You're right.
    Are there many references to sex in this novel?
    As you should know, one of the several words for :warning:cock in Italian is "uccello" so perhaps the author mentioned a specific bird to mean something else..
     
    Hmmm. Never thought of that. There's a fair bit of sex, but surprisingly few sexual terms (for body parts, actions, or anything else) and almost no sexual slang. The language in general is very "clean." I'd be surprised if this were a reference to his uccello, which has never been mentioned despite several descriptions of his body being skinny and oddly proportioned and unappealing.
     
    Maybe "..the pillow smelled pungent and gamey, like a bird's nest"

    I am leaving the starlings alone because as far as I know, in Italian "odore di storno" does not really have a specific idiomatic meaning.
     
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    Pietruzzo said:
    That's literature. No one in a novel just stinks, they stink like someone or something.
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    True, but a novel is exactly what I have to reproduce in English. :D

    Odysseus54 said:
    Maybe "..the pillow smelled pungent and gamey, like a bird's nest"

    I am leaving the starlings alone because as far as I know, in Italian "odore di storno" does not really have a specific idiomatic meaning.
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    Extrapolating to "a bird's nest" presents the same issues as extrapolating to "birdshit," though I suppose it's less startling.:)

    Fellow English natives, if you were to read that someone's pillow had "a pungent smell of starlings," would you be flummoxed? Or would you think, with Paul in #5, "birds do stink a lot"?
     
    The smell birds have comes from their uropygial gland. I think the person in question has had contact with starlings at some stage of her life and remembers it vividly. It could have been any bird. They all have that similar smell.
     
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    theartichoke said:
    Fellow English natives, if you were to read that someone's pillow had "a pungent smell of starlings," would you be flummoxed? Or would you think, with Paul in #5, "birds do stink a lot"?
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    I'd be a bit flummoxed and think it was a jarring description. I'd think why starlings in particular? and start leafing back through the book in search of some previous reference to them. Some writing just doesn't work because the descriptions/similes/metaphors are just too specific.

    However, if I read that the pillow had a pungent gamey smell or a pungent smell of birdshit I'd know exactly what it meant.
     
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    Mary49 said:
    This doesn't mean starlings don't go there.
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    Yes, but being so specific about the smell of one particular bird when that bird hasn't previously been mentioned in the novel seems a little odd. It would make me, as a reader, wonder why starlings? It smacks of Chekhov's gun...
     
    Janey UK said:
    Yes, but being so specific about the smell of one particular bird when that bird hasn't previously been mentioned in the novel seems a little odd.
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    Probably the author is assuming storno is so common a word it can immedialtely convey the sense of the smell,
    while sounding much better (or simply more "original") than: uccello. Just my guess.
     
    Starless74 said:
    Probably the author is assuming storno is so common a word it can immedialtely convey the sense of the smell,
    while sounding much better (or simply more "original") than: uccello. Just my guess.
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    I think your guess is probably right. But,as a reader, sometimes the simpler term is the best term!
     
    I think the author wants to describe, through a metaphor, that the character suffers from some kind of scalp disease. Therefore, starlings and contact with their faeces do not come into play, at least for me.

    Here is my translation and a link to a text that shortly explains the reasons for a bad head odour:

    Translation:

    'When in excess, sebum on the scalp can give the hair a greasy appearance and, in acute cases, a rancid smell due to the superficial oxidation of lipids produced by sebaceous hypersecretion; dandruff, itching, and scalp pain can be added to this.'

    Link: dermatite seborroica puzza - Cerca con Google

    Bye,
    Benzene
     
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    Paulfromitaly said:
    Well, unless you know something about this novel that we don't know, this is rather far-fetched.
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    I believe each suggestion from post #1 to post #19 is as far-fetched as mine since is based on a hypothetical scenario or situation. Except for 'theartichoke', who is translating the novel, I assume all the colleagues who provided suggestions are unfamiliar with the novel.

    I've said my piece and you can react or not.

    Bye,
    Benzene
     
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    The owner of the pillow in question is a boy in his late teens: if his pillow smells gamey, we're probably just meant to assume he doesn't wash his hair often enough. I have no experience with birds and their uropygial glands, so can't say whether the smell of a bird's rump (or its droppings) resembles the smell of a dirty pillow. Ew.

    In my own opinion as a reader, sometimes an unexpected metaphor can be effective -- not to even get into the complicated debate about how faithful a translator should be to the original. If starlings / birds in general stink, not just their excrement, and this something that a lot of people know (albeit not me before this thread), then I should probably stick to the original and leave it at "starlings" for now. Thanks for everyone's help: hopefully the next question will be less disgusting! :D
     
    Janey UK said:
    I think your guess is probably right. But,as a reader, sometimes the simpler term is the best term!
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    Thing is, in Italian the seemingly more generic "il cuscino sapeva di selvatico, un acre odore di uccello" might convey instead a specific but different meaning. A specific bird name, with all the legitimate questions that it arises, could have been chosen exactly to sidestep the phallic reference and avoid uncontrollable giggles and chortles among the readers.
     
    Personally, I think the author just used the name of an animal that most people would know it's a wild, untamed animal to convey the idea of "animal living in the wild". I believe neither the author does, nor they expect the readers to have the faintest clue of how a "sterno" actually smells like. If anything, the author probably enjoyed the idea of letting the reader wonder: "but, what does a storno smell like?"
     
    theartichoke said:
    Why "storno," then, especially since the "wildlife" idea is already conveyed by "selvatico"?
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    Evidentemente voleva essere più precisa, l'odore che emanava il cuscino le ricordava proprio quello che lasciano gli storni nell'aria, e quindi "odore di storno" in senso lato. Evidentemente lì vivevano molti storni.
     
    Avete mai sentito l'odore di storno? Gia l'odore di penne bagnate in sè non è il massimo, ma lo storno in particolare puzza di un misto di terra e fango con un vago sentore di marcio è proprio un odore forte.
    Per me è una similitudine e non una metafora.
     
    Passante said:
    Avete mai sentito l'odore di storno? Gia l'odore di penne bagnate in sè non è il massimo, ma lo storno in particolare puzza di un misto di terra e fango con un vago sentore di marcio è proprio un odore forte.
    Per me è una similitudine e non una metafora.
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    I've never smelt a starling in my life, which is why I was wondering way back in #1 about whether it was the birds themselves that stank, or just their droppings. If you're saying it's the birds, then all the more reason to translate as "a pungent smell of starlings" and not "a pungent smell of birdshit." I suspect you're right about this being a very specific comparison, by an author who knows exactly what uno storno smells like.
     
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