[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!