Comments on: Alien words in our prose

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:53:00 +0000

Glenda, I just saw this — thank you! I’m so glad you got what I meant. I actually thought it was a pretty obvious point — I’m certainly not the first one to make it, and in fact was just putting into my own words what many more illustrious folks (Rushdie, Roy, Jamaica Kincaid, Vikram Chandra, Junot Diaz) have said before me (and better) but surprise surprise, there are still people who get all worked up about what I’d thought of as a settled debate (though in at least one case it seems that they ended up making my point for me in their rebuttal)! So thanks again for reinforcing the point.

Peter — dunno if you will see this, but yes, translation is a particularly rich and tricky issue when non-standard English is involved. I’ve been working closely with the translators of my book and I’ve seen that that’s precisely what they try to do — to preserve tone, essence, and cadence, rather than literal meaning. It’s amazing work.

— Preeta

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:30:00 +0000

It’s so irksome to have to go to the appendix all the time (sorry JRR Tolkien’s fan, i’m an awfull traitor ^^’), or reading a book with a dictionary, it might also be like having a kind of Dr Jones father adventure ^^

By: hrugaar

hrugaar — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:28:00 +0000

We read to expand our vocabulary, yes? :)

(Thanks glenda, you gave me an idea for a blog post!)

By: Jo

Jo — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:03:00 +0000

Nevertheless, write the words you know (or invent) and these days we can all look them up. Toad in the Hole must conjure up some interesting images.

I know when I emigrated to North America I suddenly thought "oh is that what they meant" and as far as NA and UK are concerned, Churchill said it best "Two nations divided by a common language".

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 17:41:00 +0000

Surely if authors had to write with a global readership in mind and remove all words of cultural or regional uniqueness then the story would be diluted and bland.

It must be hard for book tanslators to maintain the integrity and cadence of a story when many words, phrases and cultural icons cannot be directly translated into a different language.