FAKE in German vs. FAKE in English?
I've always read Fake online in English - but quite soon, I wanted to (a) read it in German, too (b) have the books in my bookshelf and (c) support Sanami Matoh with my money. So I ordered the seven volumes some days ago via amazon, and six of them already arrived today! I was sooo happy when I opened the package!
It's quite interesting to read the story in German after I got to know it only in English. Most of the characters have slightly different names: Ryo Maclean is known as Ryo Maclane instead, Dee Laytner is called Dee Layton, Berkeley Rose is Ross Barclay, etc. etc....
Another difference is that whoever did the german translation obviously wanted to save space - or just was in a rush while translating: The dialogues are much shorter; when there's three sentences in English, they get summarized in one sentence in German. That surprised me because I expected the dialogues to be longer (in German, you often need more / longer words to express something that you could say in English with a much shorter sentence). I can't say if this is good or bad - on the one hand, everything happens faster of course when there's less conversation; but on the other hand, you don't get to know the characters as good as when they talk more.
Furthermore, there are many expressions you just can't translate into german. E.g., there's no german expression for "Hi" or "Yo". Therefore, the characters just say the english word - or they say "Hallo" (which would mean "hello" in English). Many jokes can't get translated either because there's no similar expression in German, and if you would translate them word by word, it wouldn't make sense. But I don't blame the translators on this, I blame the language. I always tend to say that English is the cool language while German is the boring language. Maybe that's why people in Germany who want to be cool use so many anglicisms.
Besides the univetable changes concerning the translation, there are also intentional changes: In some scenes, the characters say something slightly or totally different. One example: When Bikky kicked Dee in the face and wants Ryo to get him an autograph from Diana, he says that he finds Diana "super hot", whereupon Dee angrily jumps up and asks why he isn't allowed to find someone hot then. In the end, it leads of course to the same thing - which is Bikky and Dee fighting again. Therefore, the story itself is of course not changed.
When I excitedly unpacked the books, my father came in to have a look at what I'd ordered. He took one to skim through it, and since it was "only" volume one, I let him. He was really interested in it and compared it to some old crime movies (that I don't know, lol) and I thought he wouldn't stop reading at all. I hope he won't start looking into the other six books too, I don't want to traumatize my dear daddy, haha. By now, he luckily doesn't suspect yet that there are so many sexy scenes. ;)
So all in all, I prefer the english translation, although the german one is not bad either. And it's of course nice to actually own the books and have them standing in my bookshelf. :) And maybe my dad will even become a Fake fanboy - who knows... xD
It's quite interesting to read the story in German after I got to know it only in English. Most of the characters have slightly different names: Ryo Maclean is known as Ryo Maclane instead, Dee Laytner is called Dee Layton, Berkeley Rose is Ross Barclay, etc. etc....
Another difference is that whoever did the german translation obviously wanted to save space - or just was in a rush while translating: The dialogues are much shorter; when there's three sentences in English, they get summarized in one sentence in German. That surprised me because I expected the dialogues to be longer (in German, you often need more / longer words to express something that you could say in English with a much shorter sentence). I can't say if this is good or bad - on the one hand, everything happens faster of course when there's less conversation; but on the other hand, you don't get to know the characters as good as when they talk more.
Furthermore, there are many expressions you just can't translate into german. E.g., there's no german expression for "Hi" or "Yo". Therefore, the characters just say the english word - or they say "Hallo" (which would mean "hello" in English). Many jokes can't get translated either because there's no similar expression in German, and if you would translate them word by word, it wouldn't make sense. But I don't blame the translators on this, I blame the language. I always tend to say that English is the cool language while German is the boring language. Maybe that's why people in Germany who want to be cool use so many anglicisms.
Besides the univetable changes concerning the translation, there are also intentional changes: In some scenes, the characters say something slightly or totally different. One example: When Bikky kicked Dee in the face and wants Ryo to get him an autograph from Diana, he says that he finds Diana "super hot", whereupon Dee angrily jumps up and asks why he isn't allowed to find someone hot then. In the end, it leads of course to the same thing - which is Bikky and Dee fighting again. Therefore, the story itself is of course not changed.
When I excitedly unpacked the books, my father came in to have a look at what I'd ordered. He took one to skim through it, and since it was "only" volume one, I let him. He was really interested in it and compared it to some old crime movies (that I don't know, lol) and I thought he wouldn't stop reading at all. I hope he won't start looking into the other six books too, I don't want to traumatize my dear daddy, haha. By now, he luckily doesn't suspect yet that there are so many sexy scenes. ;)
So all in all, I prefer the english translation, although the german one is not bad either. And it's of course nice to actually own the books and have them standing in my bookshelf. :) And maybe my dad will even become a Fake fanboy - who knows... xD