The best translated Book you've ever read

[astrangerhere]

I'd have to say the best translated books I've ever read (both originally in Japanese) are:

Banana Yoshimoto's Kitchen and Haruki Murakami's Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

Slightly off-topic, but I must share this one. It's a review on the Penguin version of the Count of Monte Cristo. A 1-star review at that:

http://www.amazon.com/review/RK6OQ9T...tag=&linkCode=




You should read the entire review, but be sure you secure yourself upon your seat, or you'll fall off!

LOL . I love it. I think the author is joking, but one never can be too sure...

To answer your other question, by the way - I've now bought the Kindle version of the Buss translation and it's definitely Mobi, so no worries there!

[Teddman]

The Penguin/Robin Buss translation of Monte Cristo reads astoundingly well.

I also really like Elizabeth Abbot's translation of The Saragossa Manuscript. Unfortunately, it's out of print. Abbot's version is more humorous than the Ian Maclean version on shelves today.

[James_Wilde]

The Swedish translation from the German of "Austerlitz" by W. G. Sebald. The original must be a front-runner for the worst book ever written. The Swedish translator actually made it worse than the original. My (Swedish) wife is a teacher of german, and I read Swedish well and German after a fashion. We compared the two. In the Swedish version one sentence actually occupied over a page and a half.

So the translator made an even more worthless translation of a totally worthless book.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

Slightly off-topic, but I must share this one. It's a review on the Penguin version of the Count of Monte Cristo. A 1-star review at that:

Hee. It's like watching performance art!

Now you may ask how come I didn't just order it on Amazon, but everyone knows that if you order a product online your bank account will be drained.

That is some quality review trolling right there. And the reviewer, if serious, should probably go watch Gankutsuou, the animated version with the Count as a futuristic undead maybe-vampire IN SPAAACE!*

As for good translation/bad translation noms:

WORST ever professionally published translation I've personally read: Mercedes Lackey's By the Sword, translated as Par le Fer by Rosalie Guillaume, and reprinted not once, but twice!

Now, there's nothing technically wrong with the translation, besides the part where it takes a 492 pg paperback book down to a mere 344 pages, not by using tiny squinty print, but by simply omitting the vast majority of the actual book, turning it into a sort of Readers' Digest Condensed Edition.

All that lavish scene-setting description and detail and dialogue and character introspection? Poof! Gone! Who needs it as long as you've got the bare bones of the action, hein?

On the flipside, Patrick Couton does wonderful translations of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, especially with the names, which usually Mean Something in English. So Corporal Littlebottom becomes "Petitcul", and the dwarf name "Stronginthearm" is "Fortinbras", and everyone's favourite wizzard Rincewind is "Rincevent".

He also translates the jokes, too. In Feet of Clay, there's a joke about the priest lying there dead, "and him a holy man, lying! tsk", which isn't literally translated, but there's an equivalent joke that makes sense in French put into the same place (can't remember what it is, copy's at the library).

* For the record, I liked Gankutsuou and have also seen the Gérard Dépardieu Monte Cristo. But that wasn't nearly as fun as futuristic undead maybe-vampires IN SPAAACE!

[colinsky]

Just responded to a thread where the Penguin Classics edition of Ulysses was $0.99 at Amazon; and now I'm finding the same price for the here-discussed Buss translation of Monte Cristo:
http://www.amazon.com/Count-Cristo-P...6861827&sr=1-2

Any thoughts about where these prices are coming from?

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by HarryT

LOL . I love it. I think the author is joking, but one never can be too sure...

It's a good laugh anyway

Originally Posted by HarryT

To answer your other question, by the way - I've now bought the Kindle version of the Buss translation and it's definitely Mobi, so no worries there!

Good, time to order it then!

Edit: and done! That one-click ordering is dangerous!

[sassanik]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

Slightly off-topic, but I must share this one. It's a review on the Penguin version of the Count of Monte Cristo. A 1-star review at that:

http://www.amazon.com/review/RK6OQ9T...tag=&linkCode=




You should read the entire review, but be sure you secure yourself upon your seat, or you'll fall off!

The responses were funny, I particularly liked this one.




Amy

[Logseman]

Maybe this will be a bit clouded by nostalgia, but I have a book of Michael Ende's short stories which I adored as a child. When I came to read his original narrations, that translation stood up to par with his original work.

As an amateur translator, that book is something I try to keep in mind while working in a text.

[Latinandgreek]

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

I'd have to say the best translated books I've ever read (both originally in Japanese) are:

Banana Yoshimoto's Kitchen and Haruki Murakami's Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World

They are favourites of mine, too!

[Latinandgreek]

I'm going to have to go with "Spring Snow" by Yukio Mishima, and "The Wind-up Bird Chronicles", by Haruki Murakami.

[YGG-]

Best translation ever (for me) is "Les histoires comme ça" -from the original "Just so stories" by R. Kipling- by Fabulet et D'Humières; almost as beautiful as the orginal English! (& Kipling himself loved it).
My father read them to me often when I was a kid & I did likewise w/ my own ones...

[ctol]

For me two books, the Robert Fitzgerarld translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey. In my opinion these translations are closer to the Homeric texts.

[Timoleon]

Originally Posted by ctol

For me two books, the Robert Fitzgerarld translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey. In my opinion these translations are closer to the Homeric texts.

Totally agree. I think the Fitzgerald translations set the bar for everything else that follows.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Timoleon

Totally agree. I think the Fitzgerald translations set the bar for everything else that follows.

Hmm. I'm a big Fagles fan, but two recommendations in a row make this worth checking out.

Just on the openings though,

Fitzgerald:

Anger be now your song, immortal one,
Akhilleus’ anger, doomed and ruinous,
that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter loss
and crowded brave souls into the undergloom,
leaving so many dead men — carrion
for dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done.
Begin it when the two men first contending
broke with one another —
the Lord Marshal
Agamémnon, Atreus’ son, and Prince Akhilleus. . . .

Fagles:

Rage — Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.
Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,
Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles. . . .

I find that the second makes me want to read the rest of the book, more than the first does. Perhaps a more populist translation.