Translating trap

When The Boss appears in public, Manuela Spinelli is right by his side making sure nothing gets lost in translation.

Now, the Italian-born linguist who fell in love with Ireland finally speaks up for herself.

“ On Dublin life

When I first came to Ireland it was still very provincial in a way that I liked. I think in those years people were freer to be themselves and not to conform

Below: Manuela Spinelli and Giovanni Trapattoni have built a strong bond while working together as translator and The Boss with the Irish senior side. Picture: Inpho

Spinelli was initially hired to interpret for Marco Tardelli when he and Liam Brady were introduced to the press in April 2008.

STYLE AND SUBSTANCE: Manuela Spinelli has spent half her life in Ireland but still radiates an image more Milan than Montrose. When she heard Trapattoni — “a god in Italy” — was being interviewed for the role of Ireland manager, she immediately sent her CV to the FAI applying for the job as his personal translator. Pictures: Renato Ghiazza

“ On The Boss

He instantly recognised we spoke with the same accent. Then he said, ‘We’ll make this thing easy. Just call me Giovanni’. And right there we clicked ”

T would actually be easier for her if The Boss didn’t speak any English at all. That if he left saying “in this situation” or “mentality” or “every chance is difficult” to her and he only kept speaking in their native Italian.

In the rest of her work Manuela Spinelli listens to what someone says in one language and simultaneously translates into another. It took her a while to acquire that knack of “splitting [her] brain in half” but at this point that’s a lot easier than having a client try to speak the second language by himself and you’re there having to keep your ear out to make sure he’s said what he really wanted to say.

“It’s more tiring, more difficult,” she explains in her impeccable English.

“Someone who doesn’t speak a second language, you do your job and that’s it, done and dusted. But in the case of The Boss, your level of concentration has to be higher in case he switches into Italian or, when he keeps speaking in English, to make sure that he’s not being misunderstood.”

For instance, he has this habit of saying “I will do this” when she knows what he’s trying to say is “I wish to do this”. There’s a big difference between the two and making that distinction is where she comes in. That’s what she’s there for and that’s why she needs to be switched on and that’s why it can be that bit more tiring and challenging than other gigs.

She’s not complaining, though. Working with The Boss, or Trap or, as she calls him to his face, Giovanni, has been the gig of her life. The way they interact, she wouldn’t want it any other way, and it would be fair to say we or he wouldn’t want or couldn’t picture it any other way either.

She’s been his virtual shadow, from the day he was unveiled as Irish team manager, to the anguish of Paris, to the day he was released from hospital, to the days he’s animatedly talked about chicken and eggs and cats and sacks and she laughingly has been as baffled as anyone else.

The way he has endeared himself to the nation not just with his success but with his genial, fatherly manner, has perhaps been best conveyed in and accelerated by his post-match interviews when inevitably he has been flanked and assisted by this amiable, dutiful woman half his age.

Seeing the Trap-Manuela double act, at times it’s as if she is his own daughter, and at times, with her wholesome, girl-next-door demeanour, as if she’s one of us.

She nearly is at this stage anyway. Although she remains unmistakably Italian (on the day we meet, she is dressed in a magnificently-stylish black coat, top, short dress and boots that smack more of Milan than Dublin), making it easy to understand why her appearance and single status has prompted a number of appreciation threads on various discussion boards — she’s lived almost half her life here now.

Manuela Spinelli first came over for a couple summers as an exchange student in secondary school before returning in the autumn of 1993 to study full-time in UCD. Languages, and English in particular, fascinated her. She had grown up in the small town of Befana in Brianza, 30 kilometres or so outside Milan, listening to musical acts like Prince on the radio and wondering what he was singing.

In UCD she would discover that not every lyric of the Minneapolis maestro could be found in the English dictionary but she would develop a love of the language and of Ireland itself, from working part-time in its pubs as well as toiling in its libraries.

“When I first came to Ireland it was still very provincial in a way that I liked. I liked the fact that Dublin was so distinctive from every other European big town. I think in those years people were freer to be just themselves and not to conform but that started changing around about 1998.”

After UCD she studied a masters in linguistics in Trinity while holding down a job in a call centre. Then she started freelancing as an interpreter. By the time Giovanni Trapattoni was being linked with the Irish job, she had been working in the business for over eight years.

Sport was a particular speciality, mainly because it was a real passion of hers. All through her teens she trained daily in judo. She won a bronze medal in the national championships. Girls she routinely defeated competed in the Olympics but she wouldn’t because of chronic injuries. It wasn’t enough to finish her involvement in sport. With her competency in English, French and Italian, the three working languages of European rugby, she started getting work with the European Rugby Commission stationed in Dublin and, to this day, she regularly works for them.

That though, is mostly boardroom stuff. With Trap, it’s cameras, lights and action.

She unashamedly sought out the gig. Trapattoni was from only 20 kilometres up the road and was a living god in all of Italy so when she first saw he was being merely linked with the Irish job in early 2008 she fired off her CV to the FAI.

For a couple of months she heard nothing until it was confirmed Trapattoni was in final negotiations with the FAI and she touched base with the association again. There she was interviewed along with a number of other candidates but she was the one they went with and before she knew it she was sitting in the FAI offices in Abbotstown in front of the local legend from near home.

“I was hired basically at the start to do just two jobs — one was to interpret for Marco [Tardelli] when he and Liam [Brady] were being introduced to the press, and then a couple of days later, to interpret for The Boss when he was being unveiled. I met him the day before that.

“In Italian we have a formal and polite way of speaking to people, especially when they’re a bit older than you — you address them in the second person plural rather than singular — and that’s how I addressed him at first. ‘Hi, I’m Manuela and I’ll be your interpreter’, but the minute I opened my mouth, he said, ‘Ah, we’re from the same part of the world!’ He instantly recognised we spoke with the same accent.

“Then he said, ‘We’ll make this thing easy. Just call me Giovanni. Please, don’t be formal with me. There’s no need’. And right there we clicked. I don’t know still if people in Ireland really appreciate just how big he is in Italy or European football. In Italy he is just a god. Whether you like football or not, everyone in Italy knows Trapattoni.

“But I couldn’t get over how down to earth he was. He has time for everybody. He never gives off that air of ‘Do you know who I am?’”

It helped that right away he put her at ease because the following day was all new to her. While only beat reporters were there for the Tardelli and Brady press conference, in the case of The Boss at the RDS it was, as she puts it, “as if the world and his mother was invited”.

“It was my first time dealing with the cameras and, oh my God, I remember wearing glasses because I just wanted to hide! You were used to being at the back of a room and in a booth and nobody seeing you and them just hearing your voice. I hadn’t really known this would involve me being in front of so many cameras.

“Now, I can’t say I don’t enjoy it because I think anyone in my job would, but it was definitely an issue at the start.”

She got through it well enough though, to be practically an ever present ever since.

It’s not as if she’s always by his side. She has little dealings with the team, for example. It’s not as if she’s there before the game or at half time conveying his pearls of wisdom to Shay Given and Richard Dunne. She doesn’t go near the dressing room.

“My job,” she says in that soft but self-assured tone of hers, “really starts after the match.”

All kinds of things can happen or be said in what the great man calls “that situation”.

For the most part she just lets him away unchecked. She’ll always translate any question to ensure he understands it perfectly but as he speaks English better than he might comprehend it, she just lets him off. It might not be the most concise or proper English he is using but when he tells a television interviewer: “In my life I always look for my feeling,” she intuitively understands he’s translating his sentiments better than she ever could.

“It’s not my job to stop him and correct him. An interpreter can never say anything that a client hasn’t said or cannot [retract] stuff that a client has said. It’s up to the client to decide whether they want to use the interpreter or not. But because of the relationship that has developed between us, I let him speak, and if something’s not really clear I will indicate to him it wasn’t really clear.”

Their appearance on the Late Late Show last year was typical. He was speaking about club presidents and how they “look for you to win, [but] it’s not easy”. That didn’t quite convey the urgency and pressure they impose so she tweaked that to: “They expect you to win.” Just like “wish” and “will”, there is a subtle but big difference between looking for and expecting victory.

Translating his metaphors is a job in itself. Often she’s right on the beat. In explaining his substitution strategy and using it to give the side a jolt, she explained he was trying to say “We need to shake the water”. Its originality and meaning translated.

Others though, have left her completely stumped. Ahead of the Italy game in Belgium back in June, she was smiling and shaking her head as much as anyone about his animated references to “chickens” and “hot bums” and “eggs”.

“I’d never heard that expression in my life,” she laughs.

“He slagged me about that one afterwards. ‘Hey, come on, you’re basically from my home town, you should know that!’” And that’s how for the most part she sees him and them and their relationship — the pair of them laughing. The work has its demands — just like she has to swot up on medicine for two weeks before any medical conference, she researched assiduously the careers of Tardelli, Brady and Trap himself before her first gig — but even those demands have been fun.

“This has been just amazing,” she says, “a real, real honour to work with such a special man.”

She has no contract with the FAI so this could finish up at any time but it’s hard to see any end soon to this arrangement and whatever transpires, the friendship will endure anyway. She’s visited his house in Italy. They regularly keep in touch. She didn’t travel to the Ukraine with him, instead she’d stopped off in Italy where she spends a good bit of her time too.

She was minding her brothers’ children when her native and adopted countries were pitted against each other.

So how did she feel? It prompted her to smile, not a whole lot more. She’ll probably feel emotional all right when she hears the Italian national anthem on that June evening but that’ll be about it.

Like The Boss, there’s no doubt about which side she’s on. Or whose side she’ll be by.