 Of the adjectives available in English—"barbarian," "barbaric," and "barbarous"—to translate the Italian "barbaro" ("barbare" is the feminine plural form in Italian), "barbarian" is the choice of most English translators, including the Nobel Prize committee in its 1906 literature award to Carducci.The word, here, is to be understood not in the negative sense of something savage, but simply as a reference to the Classical and pre-Christian setting of the ancient world of the Greeks and Romans, a reference that is a constant in Carducci's poetry.Prominent translators such as William Fletcher Smith also use the term "barbarian".