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I've been told some of you might find this interesting, if not amusing.
Those of you who have read the letters of J.R.R. Tolkien may remember how hilariously annoyed Tolkien was about the "efforts" of the Swedish translator of of the Lord of the Rings, Ake Ohlmarks. Let me tell you that Ohlmarks is an amateur, a lousy amateur compared with the ( Read more... )
Those of you who have read the letters of J.R.R. Tolkien may remember how hilariously annoyed Tolkien was about the "efforts" of the Swedish translator of of the Lord of the Rings, Ake Ohlmarks. Let me tell you that Ohlmarks is an amateur, a lousy amateur compared with the ( Read more... )
I had read LotR first in English, but about 4 years ago I read the new German translation together with my younger son (he had to read aloud to me then by request of the teacher.)
Not only was I often disappointed because much of the charm, wit and sheer beauty of Tolkien's language is lost in the translation, but I noticed how this guy "modernised" especially the hobbits talk.
While it's true that the Hobbit's English is more modern than that of eg the Elves, changing their style of speech so that they speak a slang like the young people in Germany TODAY results in destroying not only the local colour but the whole atmosphere.
e.g. Gollum calls Frodo not "master" but "Chef" (= boss) or even "liebes Chefchen" (dear little boss)
And in addition the new German translation has really some awful blunders!
Apparently the translator felt obliged to alter as much as possible, and not write the same as his predecessor.
e.g. something as easy as "his voice was like music" becomes "seine Stimme klang wie ein Orchester" (His voice sounded like an orchestra) !
Such things just destroy the mood of the narration.
(About Gandalf) "G for Grand!" They shouted and the old man smiled.
is rendered as: "G wie g...!" riefen sie und der Alte grinste.
g... can only mean "geil", a rude word which teenagers nowadays use if they're enthusiastic. Why else should they print 3 dots?
"Der Alte" is much less respectful than "Der alte Mann" (as it should be.) And finally "grinste" means "grinned"!
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I just picked out a few really bad examples. Indeed, the things like "Chef" are much more annoying because they appear throughout the book, and not just at a few places.
Here's a statement from the German Tolkien Society, btw (translated by me, again):
"Krege has interesting approaches and is in places better than Carroux. However, his modernisations are so defacing and many mistakes as regards content so catastrophic, that one cannot accept it."
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