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Bilingual Readers?


Regel

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First off - Hello everyone!

I have been lurking for quite a while and finally decided to sign up to reply to a comment that had me raging. By the time my account had been activated, I had already forgotten what I was upset about to begin with! Probably better this way. Not a nice way to introduce myself in a rage-post.

Anyway, on to my actual question.

Has anyone else bothered to read the series in a different language other than their native tongue?

Personally, I first read the books a few years back in German, which is my native language. In 2009 I picked up the books in English because they were on sale. I am pretty sure I prefer the English original as some things just seem to flow better. But apart from a few character name changes and some small annoyances the German translation was of outstanding quality and translated with well chosen words.

So what about you? If you have read the books in more than one language, which one do you prefer?

Did you like any part more or less in the translated version? Did you find any major differences or annoyances?

PS: Believe it or not - "it is known" is even more annoying in German than in English. I sure hope Irri will be killed off in a gruesome way and these will be her last words... but I will save further details on that fantasy of mine for another topic!

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I read the books both in French and English and I like both the same, for different reasons.

The french translation is very good, with some mistakes of course, but nothing for the amount of pages. The translator made a wonderful job on proper nouns, and the translation always sounds right. But not all the nouns were translated unfortunnaly, and it's sometimes weird to see people with french last names and people with english last names in the same time...

But Martin's original writing is more simple, more direct and with a perfect flow especialy during dialogues.

The major annoyance of the French version ? the word "Direwolf" has been translated in "loup-garou" wich is the translation for... Werewolf... that was source of confusion for newbie-readers in GoT... No major differences except that, the french version seems to be a very good one compared to what I heared about spanish and italian ones.

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I've only read the books in Finnish, and I must say that the translation is very good. I hope more translations these days were done as acts of love by fans for fans. It's sometimes a bit annoying when the family names are untranlated when everything else is, but not all the names are translatable in any case and I think the mixed version would have been even more annoying. It helps that the translation issues were discussed in a SF&F readers' forum beforehand.

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The major annoyance of the French version ? the word "Direwolf" has been translated in "loup-garou" wich is the translation for... Werewolf... that was source of confusion for newbie-readers in GoT... No major differences except that, the french version seems to be a very good one compared to what I heared about spanish and italian ones.

Interesting.. they are "Schattenwolf" in German, literally meaning "shadow wolf".. so pretty close to the original.

I'm curious - what did they do about Lem Lemoncloak in the French and Finnish versions? He is one of the characters that were renamed in the German version along with hot pie and a few others of the Brotherhood without Banners. Lem became "Zit Zitronenmantel", basically the same thing as in English with his first name being a wordplay on "Lemon".

Interestingly, while most of the nicknames were changed, Littlefinger remained Littlefinger. :dunno:

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PS: Believe it or not - "it is known" is even more annoying in German than in English. I sure hope Irri will be killed off in a gruesome way and these will be her last words... but I will save further details on that fantasy of mine for another topic!

This is slightly off topic but I love the phrase "It is known". Why? Because it's always said after something outrageous and hilarious.

Something like "If you ride a horse backwards, your child will be born with blue eyes. It is known!"

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I'm curious - what did they do about Lem Lemoncloak in the French and Finnish versions? He is one of the characters that were renamed in the German version along with hot pie and a few others of the Brotherhood without Banners. Lem became "Zit Zitronenmantel", basically the same thing as in English with his first name being a wordplay on "Lemon".

Interestingly, while most of the nicknames were changed, Littlefinger remained Littlefinger. :dunno:

Lem Lemoncloak becomes Lim Limonbure, so exactly the same sort of translation with the wordplay about the lemon-color.

And Littlefinger remains Littlefinger in french too, he's also one of the few nicknames that were not translated.

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Well, Regel, I read AGoT and ACoK back in '05 first in German, despite receiving the first three volumes in English as a gift from a good friend of mine (he and others practically forced this very good fantasy series on me). But as I bought the Fanpro hardcovers of AGoT and ACoK instead of the paperbacks with the weird covers, I had to read on in English with ASoS. AFfC appeared a few months after I finished ASoS, and soon after that, I reread the series completely in English.

Later I gave the translation another try, and I have to contradict you here, it is awful. I don't want English names in a German translation of a fantasy book set in an imaginary world where no one really speaks English. Especially I don't want easy names to translate like Ghost-Geist, Ice-Eis, Summer-Sommer and so forth remaining in the original. I was told that they are translating the books anew, correcting these mistakes.

I almost stopped reading the books as this habit struck me as completely unprofessional. Apparently the editor did not care much about the product he was trying to sell.

But this was not the only problem, there are many names misspelled (plenty of Aegons are Aemons and vice versa), and in one phrase the translator even introduced the people 'Doom' who destroyed Valyria. This is really, really awful.

Then there is 'Euer Majestät' for 'Your Grace' in the first volume, 'Rote Natter' for 'Red Viper' is some of the appendices, and the whole Martell family keeps to be addressed both as 'Fürsten' und 'Prinzen'. ('Prinz' would be the better choice in my opinion, as 'Fürst' usually refers to the guy in charge of a Fürstentum, whereas in the series every Martell is a Prince)

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That would be possible, but would require the translator to differentiate between different usages of 'Prince' - something he actually did not do. Oberyn and Elia are frequently styles 'Fürst' bzw. 'Fürstin von Dorne' (in ASoS, if I remember correctly). But that likely would be a good choice, as only Albert of Monaco is styled 'Fürst' in German whereas his sisters are 'Prinzessinnen'.

By the way, has anyone any idea how we could the 'Lord' problem in German? 'Lord' is a most stupid English word which almost always sticks in German, and actually is on its way to become a favorite term in German written fantasy novels.

GRRM's choice to address and style almost everyone as Lord is pretty problematic for any translator. The German 'Herr' really referred to the guy who owns a fief back in feudal times, but right now it is totally equivalent to 'Mister', and would thus not suffice as title or style to a nobleman.

One could think about picking German noble titles for the nobles, but without any titular differentiation in the original this could be only guesswork. I could see obvious minor lords as 'Freiherren' and 'Barone', and the former royal Great Lords as 'Fürsten', but the difficult thing would be to decide what kind of styling the houses in between would get. Royces and Boltons could be 'Herzöge', and some of the middle houses like Blackwoods, Brackens, Glovers etc. could be 'Grafen', but I really don't want to be the guy thinking about this mess.

And the proper styling in conversation problem is not resolved by this. There is no general term in German like 'Mylord' which suffices as styling of pretty much every nobleman besides the royal family. One would technically have to differentiate between the proper styling for a Baron, for a Graf, for a Fürst etc.

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I have only read it in English which is not my native language. I prefer reading the original, if I can understand it.

Same here, the books aren't even translated to Norwegian. Though I prefer reading English anyways, except books which are originally Norwegian/Swedish.

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Later I gave the translation another try, and I have to contradict you here, it is awful. I don't want English names in a German translation of a fantasy book set in an imaginary world where no one really speaks English. Especially I don't want easy names to translate like Ghost-Geist, Ice-Eis, Summer-Sommer and so forth remaining in the original. I was told that they are translating the books anew, correcting these mistakes.

I almost stopped reading the books as this habit struck me as completely unprofessional. Apparently the editor did not care much about the product he was trying to sell.

Lord Varys, while I was not really bothered by some of the names being kept in English the rest of your post got me thinking again. I suppose by living out of Germany for the last couple of years but still speaking German and English daily I somehow mentally overlooked the name issues. They did not feel out of place to me while reading it for the first time. Thinking about it now I see your point, the names you mentioned should be in the "common tongue of Westeros", so a German translation would indeed make more sense. Maybe it is time for me to re-read the books again in German. After all these years and re-reading the English ones twice I might change my mind about the German translation.

Regarding the "Lord" issue - I agree and don't think there is any easy way to resolve this. It can't be ignored or changed since GRRM uses it so frequently and with so many different meanings. Think of "Lord Snow" or "Lord Piggy" - I can't think of any German noble title that gets close to the proper meaning and social status of a "Lord" and could still be used in the same mocking way without sounding silly in German.

Another scenario that instantly comes to my mind is the hound feeling insulted by being called "Lord" by Sansa. Again, I can't think of any German title that would even get close to working out in a situation like this. The logical title here would be "Herr", but that would make little sense in the actual dialogue and in his reaction. :dunno:

I suppose we just have to get used to the lords.

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Has anyone else bothered to read the series in a different language other than their native tongue?

Yes.

I read the series in English, because at the time I've heard about the books, there was no Brazilian edition available.

(of course there was the Portuguese edition, but it would me cost about $45~50 dollars, while a second-handed US edition had cost me about $5).

The Brazilian edition was launched a couple of months ago. I've picked one copy, but I had no time for a full-reading - I'm expecting to do that on my summer vacations, sooner.

One thing I must to say is that there was no translation for Brazilian Portuguese, the publisher bought the European Portuguese translation rights, made some slight changes and launched on that way. It's a perfectly understandable reading, but the vocabulary sounds much more formal than was intendend on the original books (this is not the only problem, but it would be off-topic going on about that). A pity.

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Lem Lemoncloak becomes Lim Limonbure, so exactly the same sort of translation with the wordplay about the lemon-color.
Except "limon" means most of the time silt and as such doesn't match the colour of the cloak anymore (at first sight); Not that it matters, because "bure" doesn't mean cloak but frock. I guess the translator prefered to keep the alliteration. Lem Manteaucitron rend moins, j'imagine, mais c'était peut être l'idée derrière le surnom.

Anyway, there's always something off in any translation, that's why I try to read them in the original language. From the few glimpse I had at ASOIAF's translation, I thought it was calamitous: no it's not OK to use "werewolf" instead of "direwolf" because you happen to have a word for the former and not for the latter, no it's not OK to translate half the names, and no it's not OK that the ones you decide to translate end up being ridiculous and miss entirely the original meaning. Seriously, Euron is called "Euron le Chouca" (Euron the Jackdaw) for example, how does that make sense, and why not the literal "Euron oeil de corbeau", which stays somewhat cool? Meh.

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Besides English, I've read the books in Catalan, Spanish and French. The French one is, IMO, the best translation of the three.

If you want to discuss attrocious mistakes in the translations, I think this one from the Catalan one wins: there's one instance where "Barristan the Bold" is rendered as "Barristan the Bald". :blushing:

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Wait, so, French and German don't have words for direwolf? If a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direwolf attacked you, what would you cry for help with?

<_< I would shout "HELP", a simple and all-purpose term. :P But direwolves never lived in Europe, or anywhere else in the last 10.000 years, so I hope it won't happen.

Back to the topic: I don't like de Spanish translation, so I read just a few chapters and went back to the original version. I'm afraid to try the Catalan version, I suspect it would be terrifying. :whip:

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I read the books 1-3 in my native language (Bulgarian). A couple of years after that, when I was sailing by ship and generally abroad for a long I happened to buy and read an English copy of ACOK from a bookshop in Brazil (IIRC it was in Recife). Then after the release, I read AFFC again in my native language. Having come on these boards I realized that I deadly need at least one re-read. Well that*s something that I rarely do. I made it in English, enjoyed it very much and in my opinion there are definitely some small bits that cannot be reproduced right in other languages. I mostly mean some play on words in dialogues and that in original the book is highly quotable which is difficult to be achieved in the same degree in translating.

Frankly speaking I liked the translation as it is done in Bulgarian and I still like it. Anyway there are a lot of severe and even harsh critics against the Bulgarian translator and the particular job he made with ASOIAF series. (IIRC the same guy is also translating Jordan, Feist and some other fantasy authors in our country.) A particular detail of which I can remember that seems to have been annoyed the bilingual readers in Bulgaria would be that the translator used almost a literal translation for the wording < wheelhouse > (Cersei used one still on her way to Winterfel in the beginning of our story). Re-translated back into English it would be something like a house that is wheeled. I am not in a perfect position to judge there - first of all I have no idea how much the using of wheelhouse in that specific meaning sounds for native English speakers, secondly just because my English knowledge is not so much profound. As from my schooldays dictionary <wheel house> meant only one thing the compartment on the ship (often near or inside the navigating bridge) where the wheel is located and a helmsman posted.

What ever the case might be I am indifferent to the bad merits of that particular translation while honestly speaking there probably exist a great variety of synonyms or alternative choices in both languages to describe the Queens carriage or a luxury coach.

Another problem related would be the translator*s liberty in his work.

I have mentioned about that in another thread but it is may be the proper place for discussion if any one would bother to participate:

The original ending of the unforgettable Red Wedding chaptaer is:

Then the steel was at her throat, and its bite was red and cold.

It has been translated in BG book in the following free manner:

А после стоманата опря в гърлото й, червена като огън и студена като лед.

Which clumsy retranslated by me back in English would be something like that:

And then the steel touched her throat, Red as fire and cold as ice.

IDK why - but I like it.

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Later I gave the translation another try, and I have to contradict you here, it is awful. I don't want English names in a German translation of a fantasy book set in an imaginary world where no one really speaks English. Especially I don't want easy names to translate like Ghost-Geist, Ice-Eis, Summer-Sommer and so forth remaining in the original. I was told that they are translating the books anew, correcting these mistakes.

I almost stopped reading the books as this habit struck me as completely unprofessional. Apparently the editor did not care much about the product he was trying to sell.

But this was not the only problem, there are many names misspelled (plenty of Aegons are Aemons and vice versa), and in one phrase the translator even introduced the people 'Doom' who destroyed Valyria. This is really, really awful.

Then there is 'Euer Majestät' for 'Your Grace' in the first volume, 'Rote Natter' for 'Red Viper' is some of the appendices, and the whole Martell family keeps to be addressed both as 'Fürsten' und 'Prinzen'. ('Prinz' would be the better choice in my opinion, as 'Fürst' usually refers to the guy in charge of a Fürstentum, whereas in the series every Martell is a Prince)

Seconded. The German translation sucks. Hard. I remember a particular passage in AFFC where Brienne was referred to as a "Fecht-Sie" :fencing:, which isn't even a word. Translated it would mean "she-fencer", which isn't a word either. :shocked:

What also bugged me was that Tyrion was called Tywin multiple times in ACOK. And the names remaining english. Argh.

Concerning the lord problem i'd just translate it as "Fürst". I know it isn't completely right as being a "Fürst" implies that you're from the top notch of nobility, but it comes closest in terms of a direct translation. "Herzöge"( Dukes), "Pfalzgrafen"(Counts), "Markgrafen"( ahem... also Counts) and "Erzbischöfe" (Archbishops) were all seen as "Reichsfürsten" in the Holy Roman Empire. So of all german noble titles "Fürst" has the widest spectrum of applicability.

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