Bollocks to continuity is an excellent motto. I find the German who, what, when words* etc strangely difficult to remember. Every time I hear wenn, wer, or was I think of the English one that sounds the same, and then have to mechanically remember what it actually means.
What I now want to know is why a vampire's library has a dating guide in it.
Being easily lead, I somehow found myself watching some videos this evening and found myself rather warming to "if" for Alfred. It has an uncertainty/ambiguity to it that works, especially when being sung after a scene in which however much love is chiming in him like music, the beloved didn't care.
I also think that the the guide must have been written for the inexperienced, and since "when" implies that this is not the first time, it doesn't feel quite right. Whereas in Herbert's case it's clearly not a matter of "if" but "whenever".
Someone did post the original title of the book and it's along the lines of "How to Winne ye hearte of a comeley damzel". I wanted to translate it as "Love for Dummies" but ended up with "Romance for Beginners" on the grounds that if the text is going to serve as the basis for other translations, it had better not be too culturally specific.
if the text is going to serve as the basis for other translations, it had better not be too culturally specific.
I have been known to send marketing-type translations off to agencies with comments such as "this line was a pun in Finnish which means X and refers to Y. My English version makes an entirely different joke but I am just telling you the original in case the people using my English version to turn it into German and Norwegian can do anything better with it in their languages". But I assume my commercial context is different from yours. Also this is when they have specifically said "can you do it in a day because we need your translation to produce all the others".
It's always slightly bizarre to be reminded that the original is in English (indeed I have the DVD. It was cheap, and I had enjoyed it as a teenager. It has the one thing missing from the musical, namely a skiing scene). Much as I'd love an English production to have "Love for Dummies", "Romance for Beginners" does have a more universal feel...
I found a bit of the original on youtube when I was trying to find out whether Sarah calls her father "Daddy" or "Papa" in the original, and I enjoyed it far more than I was expecting to.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: The YouTube rabbithole is a great and terrible place...
What I now want to know is why a vampire's library has a dating guide in it.
*Surely there is a grammatical term for these?
Re: The YouTube rabbithole is a great and terrible place...
Re: The YouTube rabbithole is a great and terrible place...
Re: The YouTube rabbithole is a great and terrible place...
Re: The YouTube rabbithole is a great and terrible place...
I have been known to send marketing-type translations off to agencies with comments such as "this line was a pun in Finnish which means X and refers to Y. My English version makes an entirely different joke but I am just telling you the original in case the people using my English version to turn it into German and Norwegian can do anything better with it in their languages". But I assume my commercial context is different from yours. Also this is when they have specifically said "can you do it in a day because we need your translation to produce all the others".
Re: The YouTube rabbithole is a great and terrible place...
Re: The YouTube rabbithole is a great and terrible place...