Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Well... I finished The 39 Steps.... it wasn't a bad book... just not very good... at least to me. Certainly not a "thriller" as this months MRBC topic was.

I'll post more thoughts once the MRBC thread for it opens.

Now to choose my next victim.

BOb

I found the vote for this month's book more thrilling then the actually winner.

[JSWolf]

Currently, I'm just finishing up the Star Trek Movie Tie-In by Alan Dean Foster.

After that, I'm moving onto Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I've read it already, but I want to read the entire series including the new books. So I am read them in timeline order. I've already read the original short story.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I checked it (Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) out from the library, read the first few pages and then picked up something else. I've not been back yet....

I really can't vouch for it either way at this point.....

You cannot know how good or not the book is after just a few pages. You really do need to go on to find out how good it really is.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

...
[BTW - are those volunteers still in the capsule simulating the trip to Mars?]

Yes.



.

[Bluesman7]

Just finished Lethem's The Fortress Of Solitude (which I really liked for the most part except for the bits concerning the ring) and have just begun (for the second time) Mieville's The City & The City.

[FlorenceArt]

Still reading The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, and I can confirm one thing: the French translation is not just "awkward". It's pure crap. I wonder if the English translation is any better?

I usually don't read books in English if they were translated from another language, but in this case it would be no worse than reading a French translation written by someone who obviously doesn't know French very well. It looks to be transcribed word for word (and not always the correct words) from the Swedish, which I think has a sentence structure that is closer to English than French, and also probably uses a lot of expressions imported from English. So even a word for word translation may be more bearable in English.

Otherwise, the story is starting to go somewhere at last, and I'm beginning to be interested.

[Helen Smith]

I have a copy of The City & The City and I'm going to get to it when I finish what I'm reading. You must think it's good, Bluesman7, if you're about to reread it, so I'll take it as a recommendation. I wasn't sure whether to start Wolf Hall or The City & the City next. Perhaps I'll go with Mieville rather than Mantel.

[Bluesman7]

Originally Posted by Helen Smith

I have a copy of The City & The City and I'm going to get to it when I finish what I'm reading. You must think it's good, Bluesman7, if you're about to reread it, so I'll take it as a recommendation. I wasn't sure whether to start Wolf Hall or The City & the City next. Perhaps I'll go with Mieville rather than Mantel.

I guess I just didn't express myself properly. This is a re-start on the book. I had begun reading sometime back but got sidetracked for one reason or another.

Sorry for giving the wrong impression. (I've got one or two by Mantel on my list as well.)

[Ea]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

Still reading The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, and I can confirm one thing: the French translation is not just "awkward". It's pure crap. I wonder if the English translation is any better?

I usually don't read books in English if they were translated from another language, but in this case it would be no worse than reading a French translation written by someone who obviously doesn't know French very well. It looks to be transcribed word for word (and not always the correct words) from the Swedish, which I think has a sentence structure that is closer to English than French, and also probably uses a lot of expressions imported from English. So even a word for word translation may be more bearable in English.

Otherwise, the story is starting to go somewhere at last, and I'm beginning to be interested.

I had to say that I doubt Swedish probably uses a lot of expressions imported from English - but since English, being a partly Germanic language (the group to which Swedish also belongs), and from my knowledge of Danish, which is close to Swedish, I can say that the sentence structure certainly is a great deal closer to English than French.

I would also be interested in reading an English translation - just to compare to the Danish.

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.

[FlorenceArt]

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.

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.

[BearMountainBooks]

Just started reading Take the Monkeys and Run I sampled it earlier today--was going along VERY nicely so I bought it. Looks like it will be a crazy, zany cozy type of book--lots of fun.

Maria

[Ea]

Exactly, that was what I meant. If the language is too "exotic", it's basically more expensive to translate. Which may lead to poorer translations generally. But I think you also mentioned something earlier about translation from French into English being generally bad, and I wondered why they should necessarily be that bad? As an example, I don't generally find translations from English to Danish to be bad, and I wondered whether it would be worse from French to English and whether it might a language issue. I can't believe *all* French publishers (and translators) are that bad.

[FlorenceArt]

The last time I read a book where the translation was so bad it partly ruined it for me, it was a book by Orhan Pamuk, translated from the Turkish I suppose. Recently I read a book by Ismaïl Kadare (Albanian), and the translation was bearable but a bit awkward in places. On the other hand, I don't remember ever noticing anything wrong when reading books translated from the Italian or Spanish. So maybe the language similarities make the translation easier. But my impressions are very subjective anyway and not based on a lot of books, so chance also may have played a role.

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by Ea

Exactly, that was what I meant. If the language is too "exotic", it's basically more expensive to translate. Which may lead to poorer translations generally. But I think you also mentioned something earlier about translation from French into English being generally bad, and I wondered why they should necessarily be that bad? As an example, I don't generally find translations from English to Danish to be bad, and I wondered whether it would be worse from French to English and whether it might a language issue. I can't believe *all* French publishers (and translators) are that bad.

I avoid reading books translated from English to French, so I can't really judge here, but I suspect the quality must be all over the place - depending mostly on the publisher's budget. I hate it when I can spot an English expression in the French translation. I may be a bit oversensitive to these issues though

[Ea]

Sorry, I might have mixed up your comments with someone elses - I just remembered the impression that your view of translation into French = bad! Especially from English into French. I just can't see why it necessarily always should be.