Book recommendations?

[Miles]

Carol wrote:
> To be clear, I meant that the Bible is an important cultural influence
> on all of Western culture, and the King James translation is
> particularly influential in English-speaking countries. I certainly
> didn't mean to exclude other important translations! Unfortunately,
> many of us on this list don't read German, so we can't read the German
> translation despite the importance of Martin Luther to the Protestant
> tradition, but we can all read English and consequently appreciate the
> beauty of the King James translation.

Miles
I took no offence or whatever, I didn't doubt your intention in the initial 
post.
But I think your point brings us to a very important issue: Translation of 
literature.
While bible translations are in the scope of many scientists, who try to 
understand words, text history and so on, the quality of the translations of 
works of fiction is quite often questionable.

About two or three years ago, I began to (re)read Agatha Christie novels. 
After reading them in German many years ago, I read them in English now - 
and these are quite different books. The German translations are awful. The 
publisher who bought the rights is a bad one, known for cheap books (in 
terms of both paper and text). They translate the plot alright, but they do 
not even try to catch the language, the irony, or the wording - and that 
really is a pity.

Not really bad: the Harry Potter translations. But still it doesn't feel 
"right" for me to read the one German translation (GoF) I have. The problem 
with Rowling are the many puns that are difficult, if not impossible to 
translate. For example, to make "I am Lord Voldemort" work, the translator 
renamed Tom "Vorlost" Riddle (don't ask, that's not a name).

What you need is a really good author as a translator. Only few of them do 
translate - not least because the payment is poor. I don't know about 
translator fees in the UK or US, but when I once read about what they get 
here in Germany, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. There are few 
exceptions. German Nobel prize winner Heinrich Bll translated The Catcher 
in the Rye, famous Austrian poet Erich Fried translated many Shakespeare 
plays (keeping them very ... juicy). But most translators aren't authors of 
own fiction at all.

> Carol, who thinks that new languages should be taught to children of
> six or seven, whose brains are more receptive than those of teenagers
> to that sort of learning

Right you are. That seems to be the only realistic way to really let them 
enjoy literature of other part of the world - not the only advantage of 
knowing more than one language, but not the least.

Miles, who started his second language English much later (aged ten) and 
still has to work on it, and misses a third language very much (I do not 
count Latin...)