Today I visited a Dutch book store. The Horror!

Originally Posted by rkomar

This enforced jump to trade paperback/higher prices seems to be universal. (...) Shenanigans is what I say.

It makes me wonder if publishers are trying to put themselves out of business. I too made a holiday trip to a bookstore and had much the same experience as Katsunami, except for the Dutch part (which I'm sympathetic to, but can't entirely relate to, as an English speaker in an English nation). I ended up walking out of the bookstore, buying nothing. It's hand crafted gifts this year, which is probably the way it should be anyhow.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by GlenBarrington

When I was in the US Air force, one of my friends was originally from Ecuador. He claimed that when he cursed or swore using foul language, he only used English.

He claimed he could get the MEANING of his feelings across in Spanish, but that he never felt quite as satisfied emotionally as when he swore in English. He said Spanish was too "pretty" to be an effective language for blasphemy.

I understand his feelings but... I feel the opposite. I find English quite short of cursing (Spain is a bit different of South America in that sense).

[Fluribus]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

- And the worst of all: The translation. I've read some paragraphs, and while the Dutch language was fine in itself, it... just... doesn't... jive. Not for reading Fantasy. It just doesn't. Period. Reading Fantasy in Dutch feels all wrong. Even the "darker" fantasy by George R.R. Martin and Stephen King reads like some sort of badly written stuff that's supposed to be scary for children.

Watch a few episodes of The Simpsons. Listen for the accent of Apu. Use that accent to read all English language books aloud. End all reading sessions with "Thank you! Come again!" After a couple of months, try the Dutch again. The Dutch should seem much darker.

[Katsunami]

LOL

Is Apu a "typical" Indian helpdesk employee, by any chance?

Edit: Indian indeed. Is "Thank you, come again" THAT typical for their English? Apparantly.

[Tizzalicious]

Brrrr, I try to avoid translations at all costs. Unless the book is written in a language I can't read, and I really want to read it.

Dutch to English translations are just as bad though. I recommended Kluuns "Komt een vrouw bij de doker" (Love life) to a bunch of my English speaking friends. When I read the English version myself I had to withdraw my recommendation. It was HORRIFIC.

[antithesis]

The first part of your rant was just something you dislike about books and book stores in general, not particularly Dutch ones. However, I cannot but agree on the part about translations. Dutch isn't exactly a poetic language. It's good for sarcasm and irony (A.F.Th. van der Heijden being the epitome), but it's hard to take things like fantasy, sci-fi and horror seriously. It just doesn't convey as much emotion without the rich vocabulary English offers.

It goes both ways, though. Ever tried reading Kafka in English? It just isn't the same. (Of course, Kafka is German, but it sure is a hell of a lot closer to Dutch than to English.)

But book stores aren't even that bad, if you ask me. There's many different book stores, both online and offline, and you can always find the book you want in the end. It gets worse with libraries. I only have experience with one library, but I notice that almost all the non-English classics are available here only as a Dutch translation, not the English one. It's the same story: unless the original language is German or Nordic, the English translation tends to be a lot better. But because they only have the Dutch ones, my local library is for the most part useless to me.

I heard that in other countries, like Norway, if there's a rare book that isn't available from the libraries in your country, you can order it from a library in another country, and they'll send it to your local library. You can have virtually any book without buying it that way. I wonder why they don't do that in the Netherlands.

Originally Posted by Katsunami

It's a direct translation of the Dutch sentence; I don't know the original English one. However, I think the English one is just better. It's more based on a feeling than on some sort of objectivity, apart from the word assassin, which I think can't actually be translated into Dutch very well.

Wait, you speculated about what the accurate Dutch translation would have been, while you don't know what the English original was?

Originally Posted by Zetmolm

'Assassin' can quite well be translated as 'sluipmoordenaar', a word which would also fit the atmosphere of the paragraph quite well.

The thing about Dutch is, it does actually have one heck of a lot of words, and the world's biggest word book, is a Dutch one, but nobody actual uses those words. Translations have to use words that people know, and because Dutch people know their own language less well than Brits and Americans know theirs, they often have to dumb it down to keep it comprehensible to the average person. Even in everyday speech, I sometimes have to look for more common alternatives to certain words in order to be taken seriously. A regular English word, when translated into Dutch, can make it sound like you're just trying to be a smartass.

Originally Posted by Katsunami

A dance with dragons, hardcover, English, €22.95.

Een dans met draken, hardcover, Dutch, €19.95.

Even seeing the title translated makes me cringe. It sounds like a complete joke.

Originally Posted by GlenBarrington

When I was in the US Air force, one of my friends was originally from Ecuador. He claimed that when he cursed or swore using foul language, he only used English.

He claimed he could get the MEANING of his feelings across in Spanish, but that he never felt quite as satisfied emotionally as when he swore in English. He said Spanish was too "pretty" to be an effective language for blasphemy.

I feel the same way, except that English is the 'pretty' one to me. Dutch is an ugly language, but it's damn good for cursing. English is only good for the casual curse.

[Zetmolm]

Dutch is not more or less poetic than English, and Dutch is not an ugly language. It's all about how you use the language. We do have 'poetic' authors. Also, you do not need a lot of different words to convey an emotion, but it does help to choose words carefully.

The problem with translations into Dutch may very well be the poor payment for translators. Translators are paid by volume, and if you want to make some sort of living out of translation work, you need to rush through things. No time to choose words carefully. It's not that our language is ugly or not rich enough, it's not that translators cannot do any better, it's just that they don't have the time.

And we are already complaining about book prices so there is no room for publishers to give translators more time and money. That would make books even more expensive.

[Tarana]

Reading Fantasy in Dutch feels all wrong.

I know some people who learned english mostly so that they could read science fiction and fantasy. They said the translations sucked, if they even existed. This was back in the 80s.