Min had a false viewing

[Guest Teyril]

Just something I noticed while re-reading book 6 last night, but two of Min's viewings were wrong. Or it could have just been an author's mistake because they were mixed up actually. But if it wasn't a mistake, can Min really be wrong?

 

Anyhow, the viewings I am talking about are concerning the High Lord's Maringil, and Meilan. This is immediately after Rand flee's from the Salidar embassy when they turn up unexpectedly with 7 Aes Sedai, not the 3 Rand stipulated, and he went to Cairhein with Min.

 

Min views them and says "Maringil, white-haired and blade-slim and cool as ice, was going to die by the knife"

"Meilan, with his pointed beard and oily voice, would die by poison." Page 903 of Lord of Chaos

 

Well about 40 pages later they die, however, "Lord Maringil was found dead in his bed, of poison it appears. And only a short while later High Lord Meilan apparently fell victim to a footpad's blade in the streets." Page 947 of Lord of Chaos

[Feral]

I think that was probably just a mix up.

[Vam]

min was obviously confused. she gets upset by stuff like that. we all know this.

[Rose]

I think so too. She would have noticed otherwise.

 

However, I do think that her viewings can be wrong, at least now. One reason is that eveybody says her viewings are always true, but we are in the WOT, so we can almost be sure that at least one of her viewings will actually be wrong. Another reason is that her viewings are connected to the Pattern. Moiraine thinks that she can "read" the Pattern somehow. But the Pattern is becoming increasingly messed up. Things change places all the time, things disappear and things that were never there suddenly are. So I expect that she will be less and less able to read the Pattern accurately, and that her latests viewings will be much less reliable than the early ones.

[water_seeker]

In my copy I have:

 

Maringil, white-haired and blade-slim and cool as ice, was going to die by poison...Meilan, with his pointed beard and oily voice, would die by the knife.

 

Maringil-poison, Meilan-knife.

 

And later Dobraine reports to Perrin:

 

This morning, Lord Maringil was found dead in his bed, of poison it appears. And only a short while later High Lord Meilan apparently fell victim to a footpad's blade in the streets.

 

Maringil-poison, Meilan-knife.

 

So Min isn't wrong or confused...the author/editor/publisher was.

[David Selig]

That's the way it's in my copy too, there's no mistake.

[water_seeker]

Oh, and if you use chp #'s, POV's, and character names it makes it easier to look up...

 

In Chp 50 (Thorns), just after getting the note from Fel about belief and order, there's mention of a viewing...

 

But in Chpt 53, Dobraine tells Perrin...

 

[Terez]

That's the way it's in my copy too, there's no mistake.

Just to clarify...I have a first edition, and I checked, and there's no mistake.

[Xcorpyo001]

Maringil, white-haired and blade-slim and cool as ice, was going to die by poison. Colavaere, her more than handsome face calm and collected once she learned Aviendha was not with Rand this time, would die by hanging. Meilan, with his pointed beard and oily voice, would die by the knife. The future carried a heavy toll for the High Lords of Tear. Aracome and Maraconn and Gueyam were all going to die too, bloody deaths, in battle, Min thought. She said she had never seen death so often in one group of people.

LoC, chapter 50

 

 

A man who has a wife he can trust, Lord Aybara, is favored of grace beyond wealth.” Still, Dobraine eyed her a moment before going on. “Today Cairhien has suffered two misfortunes. This morning, Lord Maringil was found dead in his bed, of poison it appears. And only a short while later High Lord Meilan apparently fell victim to a footpad’s blade in the streets. Most unusual during the Feast of Lights.”

LoC, chapter 53

 

No error in my version. Do you have a translation? I saw worse things happening in one of those, so I just buy the English version now.

[Leyrann]

Maringil, white-haired and blade-slim and cool as ice, was going to die by poison. Colavaere, her more than handsome face calm and collected once she learned Aviendha was not with Rand this time, would die by hanging. Meilan, with his pointed beard and oily voice, would die by the knife. The future carried a heavy toll for the High Lords of Tear. Aracome and Maraconn and Gueyam were all going to die too, bloody deaths, in battle, Min thought. She said she had never seen death so often in one group of people.

LoC, chapter 50

 

 

A man who has a wife he can trust, Lord Aybara, is favored of grace beyond wealth.” Still, Dobraine eyed her a moment before going on. “Today Cairhien has suffered two misfortunes. This morning, Lord Maringil was found dead in his bed, of poison it appears. And only a short while later High Lord Meilan apparently fell victim to a footpad’s blade in the streets. Most unusual during the Feast of Lights.”

LoC, chapter 53

 

No error in my version. Do you have a translation? I saw worse things happening in one of those, so I just buy the English version now.

 

Worse things... Like?

 

(because I have some books in Dutch, and my first read was in Dutch, except for ToM. I didn't have a full reread already.)

[Xcorpyo001]

Maringil, white-haired and blade-slim and cool as ice, was going to die by poison. Colavaere, her more than handsome face calm and collected once she learned Aviendha was not with Rand this time, would die by hanging. Meilan, with his pointed beard and oily voice, would die by the knife. The future carried a heavy toll for the High Lords of Tear. Aracome and Maraconn and Gueyam were all going to die too, bloody deaths, in battle, Min thought. She said she had never seen death so often in one group of people.

LoC, chapter 50

 

 

A man who has a wife he can trust, Lord Aybara, is favored of grace beyond wealth.” Still, Dobraine eyed her a moment before going on. “Today Cairhien has suffered two misfortunes. This morning, Lord Maringil was found dead in his bed, of poison it appears. And only a short while later High Lord Meilan apparently fell victim to a footpad’s blade in the streets. Most unusual during the Feast of Lights.”

LoC, chapter 53

 

No error in my version. Do you have a translation? I saw worse things happening in one of those, so I just buy the English version now.

 

Worse things... Like?

 

(because I have some books in Dutch, and my first read was in Dutch, except for ToM. I didn't have a full reread already.)

 

 

To my shame, I started reading WoT only a couple years ago, when I was already 'healed' of trying to read some translations, and preferred to just buy the Kindle version of what I wanted to read(I hate to wait to receive the hardcover version), so I can't give you example from WoT.

 

In GOT for example, the Night Watch is translated something like 'third shift' or 'night shift', phrases used only to name the work hours between 11Pm and 7AM. There were many more, but that one really touched me the wrong way.

 

I sometimes exchange books with my friends, and I've once got my hands on a book from the Farseer series. It was funny as hell.

They usually mixed up the names with the nouns they represented. Like, Lady Patience(a character) was translated as 'patient as a lady', and many more the same(almost everybody has a name like that...Shrewd, Regal, Dutiful, etc). It was... unnerving.

And don't even let my start about a Harry Potter translation.

 

From what I heard from people who read WoT in my native language and the English version, they found a lot of problems in the Aiel Arcs. Maidens-virgins(that was a funny error, I must admit), some strange translations for the societies, etc.

And this without mentioning the normal translation mistakes, like using another meaning for a word, typos, etc.

[JKN-SW]

Translating is often a problem. I've read the first few books in swedish, but started over to read it all in RJs own words. I guess translators are underpayed and stressed and not given the time to make their best effort.

 

I know I'm OT, but I recently watched The Pacific on DVD and the translation of gunny (gunnery sergeant) varied between "artilleryman", "gunman" "shooter" and worse. If taking on a job to translate a series of military action, one would expect the translator to have some knowledge of the subject.

 

On the other hand, the first swedish translation of Lord of the Rings was a real masterpiece.

[csarmi]

In GOT for example, the Night Watch is translated something like 'third shift' or 'night shift', phrases used only to name the work hours between 11Pm and 7AM. There were many more, but that one really touched me the wrong way.

 

Too bad. That's quite a good translation.

[csarmi]

You can't read good fantasy in hungarian these days either. The market is too small. A non-bestseller (like Harry Potter) sells only a few thousand copies. Now the WoT books in hungarian cost twice as much as in english, but that still doesn't pay for a good translator.

 

I got cured of reading translations because of WoT. Lord of Chaos is completely unreadable. I'm not exaggerating at all. In some chapters you just can't figure out what's happening, it's so confusing.

[Rose]

The French translation annoyed me so much I had to switch as well. I started off in English, but couldn't get my hands on the next few books quickly enough so I tried reading them in French. Horrible. Not as bad as what you say of the Swedish or Hungarian versions, perhaps, but still, it was painful. Although in some cases, I must admit I have a hard time thinking of a good translation myself. English has this ability to contract a lot of meaning into very short words. There is no way you can fit the meaning of "wetlander" in a single word in French. You either have to use a phrase of four words, or replace it with something else that sounds ridiculous and doesn't mean what it's supposed to. Translation is hard, man. We (the French) got lucky with Harry Potter though. Jean-François Ménard is an outstanding translater. I wish he had done WOT as well. I'm sure he would have figured it out.

[Terez]

I don't know a lick of French, but I had to translate a letter from French to English. Had a lot of help with the first bit from some semi-fluent folks, and then pretty much got the hang of it to the point I could do it on my own with Google Translate and a few online dictionaries. But it was still difficult, and there are a few bits that are still wonky, and I don't know how to fix them.

[Rose]

Wow, even the French is weird in that letter. Maybe because it was written two centuries ago. The translation is rather good for a Google Translate assisted one though :) Do you need help with it?

[Terez]

Wow, even the French is weird in that letter. Maybe because it was written two centuries ago. The translation is rather good for a Google Translate assisted one though :) Do you need help with it?

I've done as much on it as I can manage on my own. The trickiest paragraph is the one with the multiple footnotes, the fourth paragraph...if you could look at that in particular and tell me if you can think of a better translation for anything, I'd be very grateful.

 

Also, part of the reason the French is tricky is not just that it's old, but also that Custine was rather fond of being clever with words (as you can see by his puns). He, like most writers of the time, assumed that letters might at some point be read by others, so he was being somewhat secretive here, hinting at things he assumed Prince Metternich would understand clearly (things we don't know enough about to decipher, necessarily).

 

The biggest confusion is the matter of the beating, when it happened, and whether or not he's talking about the same day when he says he saw George Sand with Marie Dorval (which makes no sense - the footnotes explain why).

[Rose]

I'll look into it and PM you :)

[Terez]

Thanks. :) (Sorry for the derail.)