Fisheries

The thirty-first entry is il pesce fuggito dall’allevamento, and its plain first noun has a life outside the water that no glossary shows. A person who has run out of ideas non sa che pesci pigliare — literally, does not know which fish to catch — where English says that somebody is at a loss or does not know which way to turn. Somebody brushed aside rudely is trattato a pesci in faccia, fish in the face, and the proverb chi dorme non piglia pesci tells the late riser what English tells him with a bird and a worm. Two things are worth noticing. The first is the verb: these keep pigliare rather than the tidier prendere, and swapping it in makes the phrase sound explained rather than said. The second is where each language puts the weight. Italian builds on the animal and on the act of catching it, while the English renderings name no fishing at all — and the one saying that does cross intact, un pesce fuor d’acqua against « a fish out of water », is precisely the one in which nobody is fishing.