Quote:
Originally Posted by Ea
It was interesting to hear your opinion of the French translation though. Generally I expect translations into Danish to be fine (not all is, but still I don't expect them to be bad from the outset). I wondered if you think it may have to do with the structural differences between the romantic and the germanic language groups? I can certainly say that French, Spanish and Italian translated into Danish has a certain different "flavour" that can set the prose apart, unless you have an especially talented translator - though you could argue that then it's a re-telling, not translation.
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I think the reason is much simpler: translators are underpaid, and they just don't have the time (and maybe sometimes not the qualification, since some of them can't even produce correct sentences or use the correct words) to do a decent job. But I suppose this would also be true of Danish translators, so maybe what you're saying about the language groups also plays a role. Or, in the case of "exotic" languages (in the sense of languages not very widely known in France), it's hard enough to find someone who speaks both languages, and if the publisher is too picky they just won't find anyone to do the translation.