Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
A classic example is the Jules Verne 1864 classic "Voyage au centre de la Terre", generally translated as "Journey to the Centre of the Earth". The most common English "translation" of this, and the one that you'll very likely still get if you buy an English edition of the book in any book shop, is the 1871 translation by Griffith and Farran. It's undoubtedly a good book, but it's not the book that Verne wrote. The plot outline is the same, but all the details are different - the "translators" have taken Verne's plot and written their own book.
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Very interesting, I wasn't aware of that. I'll try the accurate one, and see how it compares.
Being Brazilian, I tend to read in English (whaaa?), just because for a long time pocket books were pretty cheap in Brazil. Also, I've read some very bad translations in here, and not from particularly complex writers (Stephen King, for one).
Of course, *if* you can read the original without a massive effort, you should. Can't see Pratchett or Piers Anthony translated without losing enormously, as they depend too much on puns and wordplay.
Another thing that happens a lot in here is the translation to portuguese of translations. Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy, published not too long ago here in Brazil is a translation of the French edition.
That said, I can read in Portuguese, English, Spanish and I can figure things out in French.