That Nervously and Obtusely Discussed Evening: Amanda Knox’s Fateful Text Message

by Pitchforks

There are many ways blunders and consequent misunderstandings can occur when translating across two languages. This is certainly the case between English and Italian, especially around emotive vocabulary. For example, unskilled Italian speakers often translate erroneously the English word “nervous”. They translate it as nervoso, giving the wrong impression to Italians that someone was irritably snappy rather than lacking in confidence or anxious. Indeed, the correct word would be ansioso. The word discussione in Italian means an argumentative, perhaps even hostile conversation, a negative emotional nuance that the English word “discussion” does not have unless qualified by accompanying descriptive adjectives such as “heated” or “tense”. A native English speaker might be trying to convey that an amicable chat took place while inadvertently telling Italian listeners that she had a row with someone. These are just a couple of examples that demonstrate how direct or unskilled translation between English and Italian can completely change the meaning of what is intended and therefore lead to gross misunderstandings – or convenient mistranslations.

The story contained in two verbali, written statements Amanda Knox signed in the early morning hours of November 6th, 2007 at the state police headquarters in Perugia, derives from incorrect assumptions made about one single text message that Amanda Knox sent to Diya Patrick Lumumba, her boss at her part-time bar job, on the night of November 1^st, 2007, the night Meredith Kercher was murdered in the flat she and Knox shared with two Italian girls. The message was in response to a text that Lumumba had sent, telling Knox that she did not have to come to work that night after all because business was slow.

The text message Knox sent Lumumba that night represents the “kick-off” to a whole investigation and prosecutory case-building process. By examining its simple but crucial content, and the way its meaning was distorted we are given just a taste of how, during the following years, the police and state continued to turn so much banal, innocuous and meaningless information into significant and coded communications and actions loaded with sinister intent. Though the exact premise gleaned from the text message was abandoned within weeks when alibi and DNA evidence indicated that the presumed event had not happened in the way imagined, it nevertheless served, with some strategic adjustment of orientation to implicate Knox, as the fixing lynchpin from which the police and prosecution’s case against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito marauded its way forward on increasingly tortuous paths. The use of the text message by the police and prosecution gives us an indication of how, catalyzed by a specific purposeful agenda, innocent facts can be transformed into a complicated and fantastical fabrication. With that friendly and easy-going text message that Amanda Knox sent Diya Patrick Lumumba one chilly Autumn evening, sent in relief and delight at not having to work that night, she inadvertently launched a saga of six years of anguish and despair.

Amanda Knox texted to Patrick Lumumba:

Ok. Ci vediamo più tardi buona serata

The message contains three components and each element can be translated individually and literally, out of any context. There is a comma or full stop missing after tardi, “late” but this does not interfere with the identification of the three separate phrases.

Ok: “I got your message”; “I understand”; “I will do as you ask”

Ci vediamo più tardi: “We will see each other later” – In Italian “later” is composed of più, “more” and tardi, “late”.

Buona serata: “Good evening” – This is the literal meaning of the two words, but as an independent phrase without a preamble of “We had a….” or “Was it a…..?” it is a parting colloquialism meaning:

“Good night. Our meeting/conversation has ended and I hope you have a good evening, whatever you are doing tonight.”

It is this final phrase, buona serata that gives meaning to the whole, and this is important because the first part, on its own, is ambiguous. Without buona serata an Italian would understand that a meeting had already been discussed before the text exchange, and this is just confirmation that it will now go ahead as planned. But the addition of buona serata as the final remark puts the preceding phrases into a clear and unambiguous context for any Italian reading it, especially when they know that the sender is foreign and might not have a precise command of the language. Anyone who speaks both English and Italian can see that the English native-speaker writer has made an understandable mistake of translation. She has translated from the English, a paraphrase of “See you later”. A word for word translation would be ti vedo più tardi, but it is warmer and more colloquial to use the form that means “we will see each other later” which Knox had picked up on, and therefore used in the text. Though in English “see you later” can mean either confirmation of a plan to meet or simply an amiable goodbye, depending on the context, in Italian without additional qualifiers ci vediamo più tardi means only that a meeting is planned. However, even given the error, the addition of buona serata makes it undeniably obvious to any reader who understands Italian that Amanda Knox meant:

“Ok, I won’t come in tonight, then. See ya later [whenever] and you have a good evening [that I won’t be part of…].”

Any Italian who says that they understand the whole text message as meaning that a meeting between Knox and Lumumba was definitely planned is being disingenuously obtuse, and such supposed miscomprehension can only come from a desire to manipulate the content for some particular purpose. One can only therefore deduce that the police knowingly distorted the meaning of this single throwaway text message to mean that Knox and Lumumba had a secret meeting planned by choosing to ignore the contextualizing phrase buona serata. They were aided and abetted by dubiously-intentioned interpreter, Anna Donnino, who would have understood full well exactly what Amanda Knox meant and the linguistic reason she had written the text in the way she had, but chose to neglect to share her linguistic expertise with the police officers who were so intent on ascribing another meaning to the text altogether. Had Signora Donnino conducted her duty in a responsible and ethical manner, she would have poured extinguishing water on the police’s speculation that Knox had had any intention of meeting with Lumumba on the night of November 1^st.

Where the investigation might have gone instead, one can speculate, but it seems that much of the police’s negative interest in Knox’s supposedly unconventional reactions to the stress of her flat-mate being murdered during the days leading to her arrest was predicated on the “meaning” of that text message.

So, from this writer to all readers:
Ci vediamo più tardi per la discussione……!!

Pitchforks is a child and adolescent development and mental health specialist based near Washington DC who writes about the American criminal justice system and its juxtaposition with the media, runs the website Pitchforks, and hosts the blogtalkradio show Routing Out.