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Awful translations from aSoIaF


Sigella

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28 minutes ago, Orphalesion said:

I don't read the German translation, but I have heard some bits from friends that are absolutely perplexing:

The Eyrie got turned into "Die Hohenehr" (literally The High Honour) when it there's a perfectly good word for an eyrie: Adlerhorst

Highgarden meanwhile became Rosengarten (the standard German word for a rose garden) when it should be Hochgarten I have no idea whether Margaery is "Die Rose des Rosengarten" (The Rose of the Rose Garden in German...) 

And the best/worst name is King' s Landing which became...Koenigsmund (King's Mouth) apparently in the German version of Aegon's conquest the first thing he did on landfall was to take a bite out of the scenery... the worst part is that even here there's a more obvious and better translation: Koenigslaende, which comes somewhat close to the original meaning and is similar enough in appreance and sound.

Oh, and I think Dire Wolves are "Schattenwoelfe" (Shadow Wolves) which meh...I don't really care either way.
 

Maybe something translated into "the eagle's nest" would give too much reverence to hitler and his Bavarian retreat, just a suggestion. Highgarden is directly translated in Dutch to Hooggaarden but Rozengaarden wouldn't be that much of a problem... King's Landing is an essential part of the lore so I'm with you on (not) changing that.

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5 hours ago, JaneSnow said:

I don't get why they translated the family names. Aren't you supposed to leave things like names in their original form, not translate them.

That depends - if the names occur in their natural, existing context and do not have an established translation, they should be left as they are. However, if the names are coined by the author for a specific purpose, and especially if they carry a certain meaning that should be conveyed to the reader, they should be translated. With ASOIAF, it gets even more complicated - the names do carry a meaning but at the same time, they emulate the medieval England setting.

9 hours ago, Horse of Kent said:

Direwolves were real animals. How do you screw up the translation of a word you language already has?!?

Wikipedia says the actual animal is called Jättevarg in Swedish, Pravlk obrovský in Czech, Canis dirus (just its scientific name) in French and Reuzenwolf in Dutch.

I suppose the translator didn't realize it was an existing name and mistook it for GRRM's creation. Pravlk obrovský would translate as giant pre(historic) wolf, but I don't think the scientific nomenclature would be the best option :D She did get aurochs right as pratur (pre-bison), but I don't think pravlk sounds quite right in the ASOIAF context - I'd probably opt for obří vlk (giant wolf) as I don't think it is necessary to accentuate its ancient origin.

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I read the books in English, but the Italian translation is kinda notorious here for some... let's call it weidness (I feel kinda bad writing this since the guy who translated all the books died recently).

Direvolves became "metalupi": "lupo" is "wolf" and the prefix "meta" is the same in English and Italian so your guess to the meaning of the word is as good as mine. Casterly Rock is "Castel Granito", literally "Granite Castle"; Winterfell is "Grande Inverno" which means "Great Winter"; Riverrun is "Delta delle Acque" which sounds something like "Delta of waters" and... yeah, I know. Other location names were translated literally: Highgarden is "Alto Giardino", the Dreadfort is "Forte Terrore", King's Landing is "Approdo del Re", Oldtown is "Vecchia Città" and so on.

Luckily, personal names were not translated, even the ones that maybe should have like bastard surnames and I think it was a good decision; personally I would have done the same thing for locations because in Italian they sound kinda ridiculous.

However, I left the best for last. The famous Tully hair became, for some reason, "corvino", which means "raven black", in some instances, "nero" (simply black) in others and even "castano" (brown) sometimes. And here's the real gem: the mother direwolf was not killed by an antler, which makes plenty of sense, no, she was killed by an unicorn horn. I'm not kidding, the translator said it sounded more "fantasy" to him so unicorn it was.

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5 hours ago, Deepbollywood Motte said:

Maybe something translated into "the eagle's nest" would give too much reverence to hitler and his Bavarian retreat, just a suggestion. Highgarden is directly translated in Dutch to Hooggaarden but Rozengaarden wouldn't be that much of a problem... King's Landing is an essential part of the lore so I'm with you on (not) changing that.

Right! I didn't even think about the Eagle's Nest thing, truth be tol I didn't even know about that name. Still it would have been nice to preserve the nest part in some way, due to Lysa sitting up there like a bird, smothering her young in his nest :-P
Since the Arryns are associated with falcons anyway, maybe Falkennest (Falcon's nest) might have worked.

The prblem with Rose Garden is that it sounds very generic, it doesn't evoke the same...image of glittering beauty... as Highgarden or Hochgarten would (imho). There's a castle close to where I grew up, the Rosenburg (Rose Castle) imho even that would have been better, due to not being a generic word. Or maybe "Bluetenburg" (Blossom Castle)

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16 hours ago, Kandrax said:

In serbian edition of TWOIAF Blood and Cheese are one person.

Blackfyre is sometimes kept in original form, and sometimes translated to Crna Vatra, meaning Black fire.

Brave companions's name in serbian sounds childish, because Hrabri drugari can be translated into Brave friends.

Vargo's lisp is worse in serbian version.

Serbian Dorkstar

...and night is mine.

"The Brave Friends" :rolleyes: :lol:

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17 hours ago, Therae said:

Maybe trying too hard? An actual direwolf is extinct, so shouldn't it have an eldritch vibe to it in any language?

(Sorry for sticking my native-English-speaking nose in, but this is the best thread I've seen in ages.)

Trying way too hard in many languages it seems :D

And thank you!

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17 hours ago, Horse of Kent said:

Direwolves were real animals. How do you screw up the translation of a word you language already has?!?

Wikipedia says the actual animal is called Jättevarg in Swedish, Pravlk obrovský in Czech, Canis dirus (just its scientific name) in French and Reuzenwolf in Dutch.

I don't think the RW dire wolf "will rip a man’s arm off his shoulder as easily as a dog will kill a rat". So the word may be real-ish (note spelling), the animal is not.

And we should bear in mind that to reverse engineer Martin's direwolf back to prehistoric dire wolf is way easier nowadays, than it would be in the mid-1990's. When more or less the only reliable sources available for translators were printed dictionaries, not powered by any fuzzy search engine. If a translator decided that GRRM had made up a word and (s)he needed to make one up, too - that's perfectly understandable.

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18 hours ago, Deepbollywood Motte said:

I never even considered to read the books in my native language. Sometimes I come across the Dutch wiki, Google tends to think that I want to go to the Dutch wiki, and I think the Dutch translations have the same problem as German or Scandinavian translations (direwolf=schrikwolf=scarewolf *ugh*). The language is just off. Also, some (if not most) of the poetry tends to get lost in Dutch translations, in any booktranslation, and that's really a problem in these books IMO. 

But to be honest I never read a full chapter or even a paragraph in Dutch so I can't really tell.

I need to jump back to this. I think what specifically goes wrong with this is that the translators think "medieval fantasy" and does that, which entirely misses the mark because the language isn't very far from what english is today. There is no "where art thou" stuff so far as I can comprehend - so why the heck are translators adding it?

Like, I tried reading a swedish book printed in the 1600's and I could not get through one sentence.  And thats like 100 years after the medieval period ended. I don't think this is the kind of authentic GRRM is going for.

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2 hours ago, Sigella said:

"The Brave Friends" :rolleyes: :lol:

In French the BC are "les Brave Compaings" (compaing is ancient French for "copains (friend)). That sounds like the name of a band of comic musicians playing maedieval songs in Fêtes de la Bière or Commices Agricoles, dressed like fools…

But I have no idea how "Brave Companions" sound to an american or english ear…

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13 hours ago, Orphalesion said:

I'm a firm believer that personal and place names shouldn't be translated at all. Everybody above the age of 15 should be able to understand simple English terms like "Rock". The only one I can think of right now that would be problematic is "Eyrie" and, well, god forbid you make your readers look up a single name and might learn something in the process :rolleyes:

I have to disagree on that. To me English names in German language are connected to modern technology, internet and youth language. It is utterly misplaced to mix English and German in a medieval world.

The current translation I have is a reviewed and corrected version, because the former translation (I don't know if that was the first) had too many errors/bad translations. Overall I am ok with that German translation. I never understood, why some people think "Jon Snow" sounds any different than "Jon Schnee" or why "Greyjoy" should sound better than "Graufreud". "Altsass" sounds more medieval to me than "oldtown" and I was disappointed when I read oldtown in the original version. "Grauenstein"(dreadstone; Dreadfort) sounds more like a mixture of  "Grauen" and "Frankenstein" and not like a bad translation for "fort".

The first two of the following mistakes were corrected in the current translation.

- Varys titles "spymaster", "master of whisperer's" and "the king's spider" were translated with "Oberspion" (superspy - sounds like the name, a 5-year-old would give), "Meister der Ohrenbläser" (master of earblowers) and "Die Königsspinne" (the spiderking).

- House Dustin was translated with "Staublin" (Dust-lin). While reading the English version I never connected Dustin with dust.

- "Stark" is not translated, but "stark" is already a german word and means "strong". To avoid a name conflict with Robert Strong, he is translated to "Robert Kraft"(Robert Force).

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36 minutes ago, Pekronac de Zyvat said:

I never understood, why some people think "Jon Snow" sounds any different than "Jon Schnee" or why "Greyjoy" should sound better than "Graufreud".

Maybe because "Jon Neige" or "Theon Joigrise" or "Mya Pierre" (Mya Stone) or "Aurane Eau" (Aurane Waters) are absolutely out of the question in French; it just doesn't work…

In some other cases, like Bloodraven translated in "Freuxsanglant", the english is more effective, it sounds better, has more "mystère" and poesy…

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1 hour ago, Pekronac de Zyvat said:

I have to disagree on that. To me English names in German language are connected to modern technology, internet and youth language. It is utterly misplaced to mix English and German in a medieval world.

The current translation I have is a reviewed and corrected version, because the former translation (I don't know if that was the first) had too many errors/bad translations. Overall I am ok with that German translation. I never understood, why some people think "Jon Snow" sounds any different than "Jon Schnee"

I disagree strongly. As an avid reader of Medieval English history even before moving away from Germany or learning English. English names sound bvery natural to me in an Medieval setting. and anyway, it's the names the author gave the characters and places, there's no need to "Germanize" them.
And well, on the "Jon Schnee" topic; Snow and Schnee are different here because  while Snow is perfectly acceptable and natural sounding as a potential English surname, it just doesn't work as a German one. There aren't many Medieval German family names that are just a noun. A more natural name would have been something akin to "Schneier" ...which in turn would be completely senseless.
Robert Kraft sounds absolutely laughable, particularly if you know about Kraft Foods. Is he the knight of mac and cheese? 

And wait...in what version was Dustin turned into Staublin? The old one or the new one? That's absolutely stupid. Dustin, in the real world is a Norman name completely unrelated to anything "dust" related.
That's another problem with translating the names in ASOiAF, in many ways they emulate the family names of British nobility, with some being clearly English/Saxon in character, while others sound Norman or French. If you just arbitrarily translate  the ones that are clearly English names all of that is lost.
And it sounds extremely jarring to have a Theon Graufreud next to a Margaery Tyrell.

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14 minutes ago, Orphalesion said:

English names sound bvery natural to me in an Medieval setting.

To me as well. For instance, "House Hornwood" sounds better, more "natural" and more credible than "House/Maison Corbois" to french readers. The translation is not really "bad", it's just not worth it…

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34 minutes ago, JaneSnow said:

I wonder how they dealt with the faith of the seven in the French translations, since the temples are called septs and sept translates to seven.  

 

Septon = Septon

Sept (temple) = Septuaire, which is coherent and sounds actually good.

The High Sparrow is "Le Grand Moineau" which is not terrific but "Haut Moineau" (litteral translation) doesn't work.

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