One of my guilty pleasures is reading bad book reviews by good book reviewers (especially when I agree with them and/or they’re taking down an author I think is pretentious and overhyped). So imagine my delight when Anna Silman rounded up a bunch of Michiko Kakutani’s best bad reviews. (The Cut)
Nikki Griffith’s briefly shares booksellers’ stories of sticky-fingered customers. (Moby Lives—via Internet Archive)
Pair with Alison Flood and Sian Cain’s longer article on book thievery. (The Guardian)
Texting and the internet are doing really interesting things to Arabic (classical and dialect), according to Hodna Nuernberg. (Asymptote Journal)
Emily Temple offers an interesting new way of understanding A Midsummer Night’s Dream: by giving it a playlist. (LitHub)
I loved TaraCheesman’s article, especially considering the meager % of translated novels published in the US /UK. I consider myself pragmatic, and I find it a bad excuse. I have read badly translated novels, and it’s a shame, but something is better than nothing. The cringiest thing I learnt was that US translations of Simenon in the 1960s cut entire paragraphs, edited heavily and changed storylines (I could find the source if you’re interested)
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I’d be very interested, especially since authors are still having issues with this. I recently read that the Russian publisher for V.E. Schwab’s books cut out an entire subplot–because it dealt with homosexuality–from her Shades of Magic series: article at The Guardian.
I don’t know that I’ve read a really bad translation. I’ve read a few where the dialogue was off or the language just seemed dead.
I loved TaraCheesman’s article, especially considering the meager % of translated novels published in the US /UK. I consider myself pragmatic, and I find it a bad excuse. I have read badly translated novels, and it’s a shame, but something is better than nothing. The cringiest thing I learnt was that US translations of Simenon in the 1960s cut entire paragraphs, edited heavily and changed storylines (I could find the source if you’re interested)
I’d be very interested, especially since authors are still having issues with this. I recently read that the Russian publisher for V.E. Schwab’s books cut out an entire subplot–because it dealt with homosexuality–from her Shades of Magic series: article at The Guardian.
I don’t know that I’ve read a really bad translation. I’ve read a few where the dialogue was off or the language just seemed dead.