WOT in different languages

[Mystica]

I know that the series has been translated in quite a few different languages all over the world.

 

Curious and impatient, I once picked up a copy of book 10 in Dutch. I honest to God hated it. They even translated the names and everything in that typical annoying and completely amateuristic way that annoys so many readers both in Holland and Belgium. After reading it (was still too curious) I simply threw it away and waited for my English copy to arrive from the States.

Now I would not touch a translated copy again if my life depended on it. I rather wait 10 years to get an original one instead.

 

 

Are there other people who have similar experiences?

[Mystica]

*bump*

[dyring]

Well, I read the first 3 books in swedish, before turning to english books in order to not haveto wait(and have still been waiting for every book since nr 5 :p )

 

All in all the swedish copies are pretty decent from what Iv seen, Iv reread them in english later, and havent found anything majorly wrong.

 

//dyring

[MsDanya]

haha. actually, I came into a huge arguement about this with the guy that translates the WoT books to norwegian. I hate the translations. names are translated, and it jsut doesnt feel the same when I read the books in norwegian. too bad for me, the guy was really offended cause I didnt like his translations. hahaha..

 

I always read fantasy in english for some reason. I never read norwegian fantasy. I'm jsut weird like that.

[Alarwyn Liande]

I read the first 5 books in Finnish, and they were obviously good enough to get me hooked on the series. I hate almost nothing as much as bad translations, so I'm quite picky about these things...

 

In my opinion, there're a few quite good translations for some words, but all the names and important are left as they are (which is just a good thing). :/

 

The covers are just horrendous though. :x

[Raena]

I don't remember exactly how many books I read in Swedish before switching to English, but the translations weren't that bad. I started reading the books in English so that I wouldn't have to wait for them to be translated to Swedish.

[Anajon]

I haven't actually read any of the German books but they have split each book into two sometimes three German books! So they are on book 26 or something ridicules like that. Some friend of my dad was quite hooked but he gave up when a whole book just described a dress and a ball room :-)

[Mystica]

Oh my God... that's just insance, Anajon. lol.

Poor guy, didn't you introduce him to the English version? I can't find a nicer way to brush up my English than by reading the books.

[Guest Majsju]

I started reading before the first Swedish copy had been published, so I got the English from start. I did however read a few chapters of a friend's Swedish version of one of the earlier books, and I was not impressed, though at least the translation seemed far superiour to any other fantasy I've read translated.

 

Tolkien being the grand example of that, I didn't even like him at first, because I started off with the old Swedish translation, and that version is so bad it would make Tolkien cry. It wasn't until I picked up the english version I started to appreciate the books.

[Mystica]

Yeah Majsju, I hear you.

Luckily though, I got a copy of Tolkien in Dutch that was very decently translated (for a change).

 

Didn't stop me buying the English version too though. lol Never get enough of Tolkien.

[Anajon]

I just checked on a German fantasy page and I lied - it is 38!!! books!

 

LOC and COS are 4 books each!

 

Sadly my dad’s friend doesn't speak much English at all :-(

[schneb]

I read the first 3 books in Spanish just as a way to practice Spanish and thought that the translator did a fairly ok job. I did however have a couple of major complaints. The translator translated feet to meters without bothering to do a conversion. So when Mat was balancing on the wall near the Stone of Tear, it was a 3 meter thick surface, which frankly doesn't require all that much balance.

 

Another thing that the translator did and is a much bigger problem is that he translated spear into "espada" which means sword. So the Aiel were running around with a bunch of swords, yet they still wouldn't touch a sword.

 

Although it was great practice, I think that I'll stick to English.

[algspkr]

I read the first 5 books in Finnish, and they were obviously good enough to get me hooked on the series. I hate almost nothing as much as bad translations, so I'm quite picky about these things...

 

In my opinion, there're a few quite good translations for some words, but all the names and important are left as they are (which is just a good thing). :/

 

The covers are just horrendous though. :x

Don't buy American, buy British:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Knife-Dreams-Wheel-Time-S/dp/1841492280/sr=8-1/qid=1160457560/ref=pd_ka_1/026-9153208-0477216?ie=UTF8&s=books

The covers are much nicer.

[Kocisz]

I only read the books in English, but once out of curiosity I decided to check how they translated the names of the books in Polish. So, I went looking on some online bookstore, and man.. were those titles off.. One had a sample chapter, or maybe just a couple of paragraphs, and as I expected the translation was really bad. They translated the names such as Arthur Hawkwing into Polish. Needless to say I didn't like that idea at all.

 

I have in fact read all the books by David Eddings, both in English and in Polish. The translation wasn't all that bad in fact. The only thing that annoyed me was that they had apparently different translators work on different books, and the style of writting was somewhat different. Also, the key terms were translated differently. For the first couple of books in the "Belgariad" series they were talking about "Aldur's Jewel" and all of a sudden in one of the books they started calling it "the Globe." For some reason I found it very frustrating, this inconsistency of terms. But then again maybe it's just me...

[Bob T Dwarf]

That whole bad translation thing goes both ways.

 

I believe "Cinderella" was originally written in French. Somehow a fur slipper became a glass slipper. Who knows how much else changed.

 

I don't even want to contemplate how badly Dumas may have been butchered in the English translation.

 

The Brothers Grimm. Hans Christian Andersen. I have no idea if the stories I grew up with bear any resemblance to the originals.

 

Strange how different cultures do things. One Chinese character might take a paragraph to express in English, and one English word might take a paragraph to express in German. Or at least a polysyllabic 47 letter word. :lol:

[water_seeker]

So yeah, I'm definately a WOT nerd. I saw the British copies and really liked them. I think I'm gonna buy them, but I checked the price and they're about twice as much on that side of the "pond" as they are here.

 

Also, I really want to read them in Spanish & German but I don't know where to look for Spanish & German copies.

 

Lastly, does anyone know if they come in Greek? I don't read modern Greek, but would like to try.

[Thorum]

I read it first in English, but now my little brother starts reading them in Dutch (he's only 10 and doesn't know English enough yet), it's very difficult to talk about them, since every single name has been changed. Also, the beauty of the parafrasing (sp?) by Jordan is completly obliterated. And finally (for now, at least), they're written in the dialect of Holland (Hollands), which is a very challenging read for someone from Flanders. Has it to be told I wouldn't even wanna read them in Dutch?