Could pizza feasibly exist within Redwall? They clearly have the stuff for bread and cheese, as well as other veggies for toppings (though I doubt pepperoni would be on the menu). The only question remaining is the tomatoes. Jacques usually kept things confined to the British Isles, and tomatoes are a new world plant.
Fuzzhugs out here asking the real important questions
Actually in the Italian translation of the first book they made the moles speak Neapolitan dialect, and their favorite dish was the pizza “che cchiú grossa nun ce sta” (the biggest pizza there is)
Oh, wow! I knew they changed the dialects to make sense in new language contexts but I didn’t know about that. Tell me more about things that got changed!
In the first books the translators were pretty creative with translating names and puns, then they gave up (for example, in Legend of Luke they canceled two pages because they couldn’t figure out how to translate a pun).
They made a lot of names more Italian, to make their easier to read to the Italian public, including vermin names, of course: for example, the two vermin bros’ names in Mossflower were translated as Nasorotto (Broken-nose) and Dentenero (Black-tooth), and called each other Nasino (little nose) and Dentino (little tooth).
They changed Matthias in Pietro (Peter, basically) to fit the riddle: “I-am that is” -> “Io – ripeto” (I – (I) repeat). I thing I find really cut is that that young badger maid from Salamandastron, Mara, is called by her hare friend “Maramea”, which indicates this gesture:
That means “Ah, ah, I fooled you!” but in a friendly way.
Up until Salamandastron, the moles speak in this Neapolitan accent, and they also have “Neapolitanized” names, while the hares (with the exception of Basil) use this -I think- Central Italy’s accent, which is kind of weird, but fun. The sparrow too, speak a broken Italian. After that book they didn’t bother with it anymore, the moles in the sequels speak standard Italian with a few “urr durr” in it, which is kinda lame. They started adapting only the funny speeches of those vermin and toads tribes. Also we don’t have a pirate accent in Italian so that was cut off (which is a shame, I love it in English), except for some nautical expressions, which are the same that otters use, so in the end they talk in a very similar way lol.
But the greatest thing is the part in Salamandastron when Ferahgo is making his horde assaulting the fortress, while being conveniently outside the range of hares’ weapons. So one of the hares says this:
“Figlio di buona donnola”
Now, in Italian we use the expression “figlio di buona donna” (son of a good woman) as an euphemism for “son of a bitch”. And the word for weasel is “donnola” which is similar to “donna”, so why not use this fact for a cute pun in a kids book?
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