The Italian spoken in the restaurant scene

Coppola intentionally omitted to include subtitles. For the scene between Michael and Solozzo, just before Michael shoots him, the body language was critical, so I can understand why Coppola wanted the audience to focus on the faces of these two characters, and if he had added subtitles, they would be reading the subtitles, not looking at the faces. However, NO subtitles were used in the film for any Italian spoken. When Luca Brasi is pretending to switch to the Tattaglia family, he and Solozzo speak in Italian. Actually the same rationale of wanting us to see the body language may apply here, and in any case, what they were saying was pretty obvious. Still, for the whole segment where Michael was in Sicily, it became a bit annoying to always be wondering what they were saying. You can gain some of the meaning through context (Apollonia's father was insulted because the two Sicilian bodyguards were obviously telling him that Michael saw a hot piece of ass and the father realized they were talking about his daughter).

It was pretty clear what the basic premise was. We knew going in to the meeting what Sollozzo and Michael wanted.

When they first started speaking in Italian, Sollozzo said something and gestured to his jaw. Clearly he was asking Michael about the injury that McClusky gave him. Plus, a lot of the words kind of translated easily. Words like grosso respecto (sp?) and padre told me that Sollozzo was telling Michael that he had considerable respect for his father. He also said (bees een ease) which I assume is business, again referring to Sollozzo telling Michael the hit wasn't personal, but business like Hayden was telling them earlier.

Later, when Michael struggles with the Italian and switches back to English, Sollozzo reverts back to English and seems to repeat the earlier points in English, even making the same facial expression and gesture to himself when he said he "was the hunted one".

After I started posting on this board recently, I looked up an online copy of the script. It's at http://www.thegodfathertrilogy.com/gf1/transcript/gf1transcript.html

The transcriber doesn't claim it's authoritative, but it seems to be accurate overall, at least the English language parts. Here's the section with that conversation. I don't think his translation is quite right, most of it is tagged "sounds like." Anyway, here it is, for what it's worth:

SOLLOZZO (to the waiter)

Capide? [understand?]

(then, after the waiter nods, opens the bottle and pours the wine)

All right.

(then, to McCluskey)

I'm gonna speak Italian to Mike.

McCLUSKEY

Go ahead...

SOLLOZZO

Me dispiace... [I'm sorry...]

MICHAEL

Lassa-i ["leave it alone/forget about it"]

SOLLOZZO

[Sounds like, in Italian: "What happened to your father was business -- I have much respect

for your father -- but your father -- his thinking is old fashioned. You must understand why I

had to do that"...]

MICHAEL

[Sounds like, in Italian: "I understand those things..."]

SOLLOZZO (after the waiter brings McCluskey's veal, then exits)

[Sounds like, in Italian: "Now let's work through where we go from here... (more)"]

MICHAEL

[Something in Italian]...come si diche...? ["How do you say...?"]

(then, in English)

What I want -- what's most important to me -- is that I have a guarantee: No more attempts

on my father's life.

There's like a dozen Youtube videos with different but similar interpretations.

Sicilian and most Italian dialects from various provinces are very slangy and different from one another. It's like in England where a Geordie sounds nothing like a somebody from Kent

From memory, the Italian was spoken so quickly in the film that it would have been difficult to subtitle.

In the book, Solozzo is basically trying to strike a bargain with Michael (although Michael knows he's only buying time before the next attack on the Corleones) and expresses regret over the attacks on his brother and father. Meanwhile, Michael is barely paying attention as he tries to maintain his composure while hyping himself up for his own assassination attempt on Solozzo and the police captain.