Big in Japan: Sutcliff fandom in translation

[smillaraaq]

Those of you who follow some of the other excellent Sutcliff blogs outside of LJ (check the sidebar here for links) may already know that many of Rosemary Sutcliff's works have been translated and republished around the world; The Eagle of the Ninth in particular is said to have been published in nineteen different languages other than the original

Comments

[smillaraaq]

Monogatari basically is a literary form equivalent to the epic, and gets tagged onto a lot of long-and-sprawling foreign works in translation, like LOTR, so it pleases me to no end to see Epicese Sutcliff getting tagged with it.

And yeah, "hakuba" is "white horse" -- it's the same "haku" as in Hakuryu (because Hakkai has NO IMAGINATION WHATSOEVER naming his white-dragon-that-turns-into-a-Jeep either "Jeep" or "White Dragon".) "Celtic Hakuba" is Sun Horse, Moon Horse and Rider on a White Horse wound up as "Hakuba Knight" after a few spins of back-and-forth translation.

I wonder if the artist was just being faithful to canon, or consciously applying seme/uke height tropes.

Could be both! I can't find a good call on Alexios' height in a quick scan over the ebook, but Hilarion is definitely tall and lean and slouchy in canon, and if Alexios takes after the average Sutcliff Roman character he'd likely run a bit on the shorter side... Now I'm trying to figure out which of Inoue's characters can be Cunorix...Klaus' little knight-obsessed fanboy gets to be Rufus, of course.

[hedgebird]

"Slight", according to the brief troopers' POV at the end of an early chapter that I accidentally remembered. The sinister Home Minister?

Surprisingly enough, Hakuryuu was my major clue there, yes. And omfg they have ROAWH? Damn them.

It's conventionally translated as "Tales of...", isn't it? Though it's not like have a precise definition of 'the epic' either.

[smillaraaq]

Hmm, I was tending to think "slight" refers more to overall build rather than height, but it's certainly vague enough that it could be both.

I've seen things with "--- Monogatari" titles variously translated as "Tale of ---", "Story of ---" or "--- Saga"; tale/story seems to be the most common English rendering, although epic/saga might better convey a little more of the sense of the original traditional narratives.