Italian Grates

Tim Parks, a British novelist, translator, and author who has lived in Italy since 1981, makes an interesting comment about the positive lyrical attributes usually associated with the Italian language:

Over my thirty years in Italy I have often been told by uninitiated English friends what a beautiful and harmonious language Italian is; but that is Italian as heard by an ear accustomed to English sound patterns. To the Italian ear, and to mine these days, much of what is said in Italian grates. One hears the language differently when one knows it.

Parks, in "Translating in the Dark," also discusses the translation process and cites an example in which 20 poets each translated a canto of Dante's La Divina Commedia, with unexpected results.