This translation discussion is so fascinating and helpful to me! When I let a friend drag me into this fandom, I asked him what translation he would recommend since I was kind of overwhelmed by the ~500 ebooks on amazon, and got Hapgood as a recommendation for a start. And I don't actually have any complaints reading it - I've genuinely enjoyed it, and the archaic language hasn't bothered me since I obviously didn't have anything to compare it to, but when I started writing fic and reread chapters for that, I've also looked at the original French of whatever scene I was looking at, and was struck by how easy it was to understand that. It would make sense though if the original is a lot less archaic sounding than the translation. (I read French every day for work, but that's just bug reports - it's probably been 15 years or more since I read a French novel in school. /o\)
I wonder if there is any sort of French "school edition" that comes with a ton of footnotes and vocabulary lists for the more unusual words? (And I love how this fandom makes me actually want to go and buy a French novel after so many years of being glad that I wouldn't have to do any more French.)
And I hear you on the use of "thou". On the one hand, I really really love that distinction in speech between a formal and a familiar address - German does the same as French there so it feels natural to me and I love the way you can theoretically use it to use direct speech to denote respect/disrespect and shifts thereof without any further explanation. I've tried to go with her use of "thou" in one story and found it just very painful amd awkward an experiment, and it left me with the decision to not try that again because I just can't see it working. How do other translations handle that? Do they simply go with footnotes or with explanations in the narrative like "...had switched to an informal address?"
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2014-04-01 01:08 am (UTC)I wonder if there is any sort of French "school edition" that comes with a ton of footnotes and vocabulary lists for the more unusual words? (And I love how this fandom makes me actually want to go and buy a French novel after so many years of being glad that I wouldn't have to do any more French.)
And I hear you on the use of "thou". On the one hand, I really really love that distinction in speech between a formal and a familiar address - German does the same as French there so it feels natural to me and I love the way you can theoretically use it to use direct speech to denote respect/disrespect and shifts thereof without any further explanation. I've tried to go with her use of "thou" in one story and found it just very painful amd awkward an experiment, and it left me with the decision to not try that again because I just can't see it working. How do other translations handle that? Do they simply go with footnotes or with explanations in the narrative like "...had switched to an informal address?"