Chinese Version of The Thief

[yao590.livejournal.com]

Rain ing asked me about Gen's name in Chinese, and MWT also asked me about the Chinese translation weeks ago. I think there might be someone else curious about it, too. Since I have got a Chinese edition now, I will briefly introduce it here.

On the top is its cover. The picture is quite attractive, but I think it's totally irrelevent to the world in the book, and Gen will never look like that! The title is the same, it means "thief".

About the translation, I thought it was good after I first read it, it's fluent and the atmosphere is same as the English version. But now I have compared it with the original, I disappointedly find out numerous mistakes. There are important ones, like when Gen thanked Pol "Be blessed in your endeavors" the translation is just "thank you". And what I can't understand is that she translated several "south" into "north". How unbelievable!! So I had corrected some important parts before I lent it to a friend, and now I'm enjoying myself examining the whole book.

Eugenides is 歐吉尼迪斯 in Chinese, it is pronounced owe-gee-nee-dee-s. And Gen is 吉恩, pronounced gee-an. If you want to know more, just ask me. And I'd like to know if anyone here have read another version of Thief's series. May somebody also make an introduction?

Comments

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Your comments are very interesting - I always find it fascinating to see how a book is translated. If I should ever find a copy of "The Thief" in French, Esperanto, Latin, or Italian, I'd grab it. (I suspect to get an Esperanto version I'd have to translate it myself. Might be... challenging.)

[(Anonymous)]

The cover: Gen goes to Russia and meets ET?
-Philia

[rain-ing.livejournal.com]

The cover: Gen goes to Russia and meets ET?

LOL. perhaps he is attempting a flying leap? (although i highly doubt such a scene was ever mentioned in the thief.)Beautiful castle though.

And why is he wearing a cape?! It makes him look like a too-skinny superman who is having problems flying. Probably not enough mass, which is why he is fluttering in the sky :P

oh, and the eugenides is pretty accurate given the limited phonetics of the chinese language XD you pronounce it as "ou ji ni di si" and "ji en" in mandarin, if you were curious..

thanks, yao590!

[rain-ing.livejournal.com]

and a more important question: what is MWT's name in chinese!?

[empmai.livejournal.com]

LOL.

and to make this post more than just an acro, like the person below, I love the castle as well.

[empmai.livejournal.com]

And I'd like to know if anyone here have read another version of Thief's series. May somebody also make an introduction?

Great idea, I can't help thought since I'm limited to english and the phrases "Ich spreche night deutsch" and "Je ne parlez Francais" - and I think these are even gramatically wrong

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

Je ne parle pas francais.

C'est vrai pour moi, parce que j'apprendais le francais, mais je suis t3h suck.

I wonder how they say "teh suck" in French? "the" is le or la...kinda hard to mix that up.

I think the cover is very pretty, if crazy and not at all accurate. Pretty is good, though. ^.^

[fabricalchemist.livejournal.com]

It sort of reminds me more of Howl's castle =) I likee! and the figure over the moon has to be more of a symbolic representation, otherwise (proportionally speaking) that would have to be the royal toolshed. XDD

[jyms.livejournal.com]

*giggles* it does look like ET!
of course the thing to do with any book in a foreign language is to read it in the original language so you get the actual flavour, but usually learning a whole new language just for one book does not seem very worth it...

[yao590.livejournal.com]

She didn't translate it. It just printed as "Megan Whalen Turner".