Compliance

The seventh entry is il pagamento di agevolazione, a phrase written for statutes, and it is worth setting beside the words the two languages use when nobody is drafting anything. English puts the picture in the hand. You « grease somebody’s palm », you slip a man « a backhander », and what travels back the other way is « a kickback » — three expressions, and the hand is in all of them. Italian puts the picture in the packaging. The everyday word is la bustarella, the little envelope, a diminutive of la busta, the ordinary envelope a letter goes in, and it names the payment after the thing that carries it rather than after the body part that receives it: hanno preso una bustarella needs no gloss for anybody. Where English would reach for the hand a third time, Italian reaches for furniture, and sottobanco is under the counter rather than under the table, so that vendere sottobanco is to sell a thing illicitly. The grease is the one image both of them kept: ungere le ruote against « to grease the wheels ».