Quizfoo. yay.

[camwyn]

Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose. You are a
mystery novel dealing with theology, especially
with catholic vs liberal issues. You search
wisdom and knowledge endlessly, feeling that
learning is essential in life.


Which literature classic are you?
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And here I thought it was going to come up LOTR. Funky. I never read Name of the Rose, but Foucault's Pendulum was pretty cool. Mind you, The Island of the Day Before was the first book I ever wanted to hurl across the room so that it cracked the author upside the head and knocked him ass over teakettle- but I really liked Foucault's pendulum.

I also think that every time an Eco book gets rendered into English, an asylum in Italy somewhere opens up another private room, and the translator is ushered in to spend the next six months putting his brain back together. But that's me.

Comments

The name of the rose is FUN....

[xianghua.livejournal.com]

But the description of one building gives me headaches because I can't figure out how it's physically possible the way it is described. I don't know if it's MEANT to be impossible, or simply badly translated or my brain is just deficient...

Cait

Re: The name of the rose is FUN....

[taimatsu]

Which building? If it's the library, my edition had a map in.

And seconded - this was the first Eco book I read, and I love it. Definitely worth reading.

[firestrike.livejournal.com]

You search wisdom and knowledge endlessly, feeling that learning is essential in life.

Nah. You just wanted to poison a monk.

-M

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Which reminds me I wanted to read The Name of the Rose...

Heh. I got LOTR. No big surprise...

[pandoras-closet.livejournal.com]

I felt like poisoning a monk.
-- Umberto Eco on why he wrote the novel "The Name of the Rose."

[lasa.livejournal.com]

I got "Name of the Rose" too, which is funny because I'm currently reading it.

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

Camwyn, if you want to talk insane translators, how about the translator of Lem's The Cyberiad, with his epic, tragic poem about betrayal where all the words started with the letter S? :-)

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

And I got LOTR, FWIW. :-)

[camwyn]

It... what?

Eek.

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

Ah, Googling for "Samson" works much better than Googling for "Sampson". :-)

He ends up succeeding, and the machine is finally challenged, after satisfying many poetry requests to: write a poem about a haircut "lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom. Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter s!"


Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
Silently scheming,
Sightlessly seeking,
Some savage, spectacular suicide.

Bear in mind that the original was in Polish (iirc). :-)

Translating Lem

[kelathefinn.livejournal.com]

If I recall correctly, Lem was first published in Russian... and it's easy to translate what is essentially a list of words beginning with the same letter - the translator can choose the letter! Now, something that impressed me was the translator of The Hobbit and LOR into Finnish, who translated the RUNES (Futhorc) so that they transliterated back into FINNISH in the Finnish edition.

On translating Umberto Eco

[kelathefinn.livejournal.com]

Actually, translators usually work IN the asylum...and get let out when the job is done...(Kela the Certified Translator)