Joined: Jul 2007
Posts: 2,313
Thanks:
22
I remember when subs2srs came out and CB posted his sample deck for 時をかける少女. Well, before I had a good baseline for grammar or vocabulary I tried to learn from that. Very quickly gave up and stuck to finishing vocabulary and basic grammar lists. The merits of learning from entertaining native material is there. The problem occurs when you attack it too fast before there's a solid foundation to approach from.
Personal opinion, but I like to study dramas with subs2srs as you get all those side benefits: varied voices, listening material, reading material (from dramanote scripts), cultural material. Doing the same with a book takes the same amount of effort, but limited secondary materials. On the other hand, a book has much more dense material and the descriptive narrative differs from spoken dialogue.
Joined: Jun 2012
Posts: 427
Thanks:
0
Not only that, but it is also an empty zip file.
Joined: Oct 2012
Posts: 124
Thanks:
0
I don't think it's in the actual translation. I have the first 2 Harry Potter novels as audio books and there was no such inserted passage (though I'm not 100% on that since I'm only about 3 months into my Japanese studies and don't understand all of it). The audio book was done by the same person who translated the book as well. (Not read by that person, but she was the one who took the initiative to get it made. Audio books aren't really a thing in Japan and she's been trying to start the genre. I don't know if she's been having success, though I don't think so. I'd love to have the other HP novels as audio books, however).
It's more likely that the uploader inserted some stuff.
Anyway, about authors not letting translators mess with their work... Well, you go write a novel and when it gets famous to be translated into 100 languages, go check them all for accuracy.
There was some famous author whose was translated into German by one of my professors at university (that or some other professor she knew, I'm hazy on the story details, she just mentioned it as an aside in the lecture, so sorry about that) and the press reviewed the translation very highly. The original author, however, got very angry and said she thought the translation completely destroyed her work.
She (the author) wasn't very good at German, incidentally, and wanted everything in the translation to stay the same as in her native language (I think it was English) - even though German requires completely different stylistic choices. (In English "good style" is writing simple sentences, making yourself easily understood, not using a lot of synonyms for the same thing, things like that. In German, you want to make longer sentences in general, being high-brow almost requires obscuring your meaning, you want to make complex sentences packed with information in a very short space instead of using lots of space to explain something in an easy to understand fashion and you try to never repeat the same word if at all possible and use a synonym instead)
So yeah, author's influences on translated works are iffy at the best of times.
Edited: 2013-01-23, 6:15 am
Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 64
Thanks:
0
I'm sorry for digging up an old thread, but I'd like to know, what's the status of the Harry Potter audio books? I read somewhere that only the first 3 books were made into Japanese audiobooks. I've only managed to find the first two, and of those the second one doesn't seem to be working. Can anyone point me to books 2 and 3? Were the rest of them ever made into audio books?
Joined: Mar 2014
Posts: 784
Personally I never understood the appeal of the Harry Potter books in ANY language. I think I fell asleep in the theatre when I went to see the movie of the first one.
I did purchase the Latin and Ancient Greek translations of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone as "novelties" but I have no intention of ever reading them. I think at the time the idea intrigued me.
Come to think of it, the Latin translations of juvenile literature I've collected over the years are all a waste of time:
Alicia in Terra Mirabili
Magus Mirabilis in Oz
Tela Charlottae (blurb states the Latin translation is in "simple American Latin" (??!!)
Pinoculus
Winnie Ille Pu
Quomodo Invidiosulus Nomine Grinchus Christi Natalem Abrogaverit
Regulus Vel Pueri Soli Sapiunt
I only ever read half of Pinoculus and bits of the others...time to chuck them into the recycle bin.
Joined: Mar 2014
Posts: 784
The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy was boring too.
I went to all three movies, and I swear to God, I can't remember anything at all about them.
Something about people with long beards and flowing robes, and these people wandering through the woods or something. That's all I remember.
Joined: Nov 2010
Posts: 901
Thanks:
4
Of course, 十人十色 as my friendly neighbour drums into my ears every morning.
I read (or listened to) four Harriiii Potttttaaa books. There are plenty of words in them, and even some sentences.
I bought, scanned, proofread, and made parallel texts of The Ring of the Lords, too. There are plenty of words in them, and even some sentences. There are even some poems in the books.
Did I like them? I mean the books?
NO!
Then why did I do everything I mentioned above? Ask my niece, she'll be happy to explain everything in more detail.
By the way, I did like The Ring of the Lords movies. There are some monsters in them, plenty of them. But there are not scary or something - they're just electric shadows. You cut the power out and they're no longer there.
). Like the Wheel of Time series for example.
