Line #54 Woolseyism/Literature


1	* The decision of one translator of ''Theatre/{{Lysistrata}}'' to call the organization of [[ObstructiveBureaucrat Obstructive Bureaucrats]] the "Committee of Public Safety", historically the name of the French Revolution government better known as "The Terror". As obviously anachronistic as this may be, given that Athens's government was somewhat similar to Robespierre's and that the modern reader would be unlikely to know much about the real organization, the translated name seems appropriate.
2	* ''Literature/HonorHarrington'': David Weber's series's Polish translation, where the translator "localized" the StateSec by naming it after [[PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny the Communist secret police]]. StateSec gets scary only when you abbreviate it and then make a connection to ThoseWackyNazis, but this way the reader knows from the very beginning they're up to no good (and referring to people "citizen" is not as scary as [[DirtyCommunists "comrade"]]). Unless you're Russian, in which case ''grazdanin'' ("citizen") is ''scarier'': it's how the cops (''militsiya'') address a suspected criminal. Of course, the Poles aren't Russians, which is why the change of terminology was appropriate for the Polish translation and not the Russian one.
3	* The Portuguese translation/reworking of Creator/HRiderHaggard's ''Literature/KingSolomonsMines'', made by 19th-century writer Eça de Queirós (nowadays recognized as one of the best Portuguese writers of all time) is considered by many as a better book than the original. There are even translations to English, French and Italian of Eça de Queirós's translation.
4	* A very famous John Keats poem, ''On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer'', is about how the author had read the sober academic editions of ancient works, but was never truly enthralled by Creator/{{Homer}} until he read George Chapman's more liberal translation. As a side note, the literati of the time ignored or dismissed the point entirely -- one even going so far as to propose that, since Keats was relying on translations instead of reading the original Ancient Greek, he was obviously not qualified to be an authority on the subject. This may mean that FanDumb is OlderThanRadio.
5	* Due to Creator/JKRowling’s love of wordplay, ''Literature/HarryPotter'' can be quite hard but different translators have different ways of doing it.
6	** Most have a different [[FunWithAcronyms silly acronym]] for Hermione's house-elf-helping organization in ''Goblet of Fire'', and a different SignificantAnagram for [[http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Lord_Voldemort#Translations_of_the_name Voldemort's true name]] in each language.
7	** The French translation of the Sorting Hat gives us the "Choixpeau magique", as a {{Portmanteau}} between "choix" ("choice") and "chapeau magique" ("wizard hat" or literally "magical hat"), pronounced almost the same as the latter.
8	** Ron's "[[UranusIsShowing can I have a look at Uranus too, Lavender?]]" joke from ''Goblet of Fire'' was changed in many translations since a lot of languages lack the pun from Uranus's name.
9	*** The French translation changes it to the moon - in French it has the same connotations as "mooning" in English.
10	*** The Danish translation changes it to Lavender talking about her ending got an unknown aspect, to which Ron replies "can I see an aspect of your end too?"
11	*** The Polish translation was even better where Professor Trelawney describes Uranus as "an important celestial body". Ron asks if he can have a look at Lavender's body too.
12	*** The first Italian translation just ignored the joke and translated the line literally, while the 2013 rerelease went with the "celestial body" joke as the Polish version.
13	*** In the Norwegian version, it was translated as "Kan jeg få se på ur-anusen din, Lavendel?" (Can I take a look your ancient anus, Lavender.)
14	** George's ear joke from ''The Deathly Hallows'' is arguably funnier in the Swedish translation than in the original text. In the English version, George claims that he feels "saintlike" after he loses his ear in battle. He then clarifies that he means "holy" (since he now has a hole in his head). In the Swedish version, he claims that he "feels like an old coin," which sounds even more nonsensical (and more deserving of the FlatWhat reaction). He then explains that the coin in question is the "ettöring" (a discontinued Swedish coin that isn't used anymore) which has a name that could be interperated as "uniear" or "one-eared" (though technically, the gramatically correct version would actually be "enöring), resulting in a pretty clever pun. Though this also has the effect of making Fred's LamePunReaction feel less justified.
15	*** In the Italian version, George feels "Roman", with a pun around "foro" ("hole") and the Roman Forum.
16	*** In the Finnish version, George feels "compensated", the pun being based on the Finnish words for "ear" (korva) and "replaced" (korvattu). You might say he lost something ear-replaceable.
17	*** In the Spanish version, George "misses his lentil". The pun here is that "lenteja" ("lentil") rhymes with "oreja" ("ear").
18	** The Spanish version had quite a bit of FunWithAcronyms with the O.W.L.'s and N.E.W.T's exams. The former was changed to "'''T'''ítulo '''I'''ndispendable de '''M'''agia '''O'''rdinaria" (TIMO, which means "scam"), while the later is called "'''Ex'''ámenes '''T'''erribles de '''A'''lta '''S'''abiduría e '''I'''nvocaciones '''S'''ecretas" (aka EXTASIS).
19	** The Swedish translation of the goblins is also quite genius. Their Swedish name Svartalfer (black elves) does not only reference their relatedness with the house elves ("husalfer" in Swedish), but is also the name of a mythological creature from Norse mythology. The mythological creature just so happens to live underground, be shorter than the average human, and have a habit of smithing various items imbedded with magic.
20	** There is no "th" sound in Russian, so the Russian translation turns Slytherin into Slizerin. "Sliz'" means "slime".
21	** The French translation of ''Goblet of Fire'' takes advantage of the [[HeyYou differing forms of second-person address]] in their language by changing Ron's question about Snape and Karkaroff being on a first-name basis to why they use ''tu'' (informal) with each other as opposed to ''vous'' (formal).
22	** The Bulgarian translation has some of these despite avoiding having to translate proper names. Examples are the Polyjuice Potion, the not-so-apt literal translation of which was changed to "Poly''face'' Potion", and the Whomping Willow (a single-letter change transformed the name "weeping willow" to "scary willow", a. k. a. "the willow that scares", which it does).
23	** The Spanish translation calls the Whomping Willow "Sauce Boxeador" (lit. "''Boxing'' Willow").
24	** Sirius' Marauder nickname "Padfoot" doesn't have an equivalent word in Spanish, so the translation calls him "Canuto" (a relatively common name for dogs, since it derives from the word "Can").
25	** The mainland Chinese translations just translate the puns and such literally and then explain them in footnotes.
26	** Luna Lovegood's nickname "Loony" was in Polish version translated to "Pomyluna" ("pomylona" means "crazy").
27	* Creator/JRRTolkien planned that his works are translated in this manner. There is even a list of the linguistic roots of names to help with translation. The Finnish translation provides a perfect example of a well done adaptation (complete with an appendix describing the decisions that the translator made). ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' and ''Literature/TheHobbit'' are themselves supposed to be adapted from the common language of Middle Earth.
28	** Done by Tolkien himself in the appendix to ''The Lord of the Rings'', where he explains that English puns such as the Bar-Anduin river being nicknamed the Brandywine are based on similar meaning puns in the original languages.
29	** It's not clear if Tolkien did this as a pun, or as a subtle way of suggesting "so THAT'S where that story came from"... but one of the sections of ''Literature/TheSilmarillion'' is entitled ''Akallabêth'' which is Adûnaic (the language of ancient men) for "The Downfallen". It describes the corruption, and eventual destruction by sinking into the sea, of the nation of Númenor (situated on a large island/small continent west of Middle-Earth and just east of Valinor, the land of the gods). The pun comes when you translate the title into Quenya ("High" Elvish), in which it becomes ''[[{{Atlantis}} Atalantë]]''. (He remarked that it was, in fact, an amusing coincidence.)
30	** Tolkien, of course, was rather a master philologist who pretty much created ''The Lord of the Rings'' to give his made-up languages appropriate backstory.
31	** The [[http://web.archive.org/web/20070429172640/http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-SanJose/9606/teiji_seta.htm Japanese edition]] of ''The Lord of the Rings'' (''Yubiwa Monogatari'') is notable.
32	** The Czech translators of Tolkien made some subtle Wolseyisms of the very good kind which you barely notice unless you compare the translations directly to the original. For example, Bilbo's seed cakes (not a thing in Czechia) in the first chapter of Literature/TheHobbit became poppy seed koláče, a considerably different food item in fact, but one equally likely to be sorely missed when devoured by an unexpected party of dwarves. Stanislava Pošustová in Literature/TheLordOfTheRings pulled a far more daring move: she exchanged Tolkien's elvish ''yrch'' - "orcs" for ''skuruti'' - "skřeti"; the Uruk-hai are also often referred to as Skurut-hai. No one has ever complained.
33	** The first Polish translation of ''The Lord of the Rings'' was fairly simplistic and a lot of names were left in from the original. A second translation was made which attempted to reproduce the effect of the English names in Polish ("Bilbo Baggins from Bag End" became "Bilbo Bagosz z Bagoszna"). Unfortunately by this point the Anglicized names were so prevalent in {{Fanon}} and tie-in materials that FanDumb won the day, and all modern editions of the books use the first version.
34	** Suffice to say some of explanations provided by the translator of the second version (philosopher Jerzy Łoziński) sounded like third-rate {{Ass Pull}}s, like translating "dwarves" as "krzatowie" (which can be re-translated to English as "ixies", "warfs" or "nomes") just to avoid the "krasno-" ("red-") part of "krasnoludek" (dwarf, as in "Literature/SnowWhite") or "Strider" as "Łazik" (a word often used in Polish to refer to Jeeps and similar vehicles), whereas the first translation by Maria Skibniewska had it translated as "Obieżyświat" (someone who traveled all over the world). Some of the ''Franchise/{{Dune}}'' books, also translated by Łoziński, are similarly {{Macekre}}d.
35	** The Dutch translation is quite close to the original version, with some name-changes being very close since Dutch and English (especially Tolkien's[[note]] By way of explanation, Tolkien's style is very heavy on Germanic vocabulary, and among the Germanic languages. Dutch is the closest major language to English (the absolute closest--besides Scots, whose situation is complex--is Frisian, which has only a few hundred thousand speakers).[[/note]]) are quite similar. Since certain elements of Middle Dutch are still easily understood by modern Dutch speakers, the translation has an older feeling without being unintelligible. For example, Dutch has several pronouns for the second person singular (you), whose use is based on formality, familiarity, tone, etc. All of which are used throughout the story to deepen the understand of the characters who use them. The original Dutch translation went a bit further (such as changing 'hobbit' into 'hobbel', meaning 'bump'), but Tolkien, who spoke Dutch, thankfully reverted that.
36	** Say what you will about Creator/AkeOhlmarks's Swedish translation (and there is much to be said: see that page), "Vidstige" is an ''inspired'' choice for "Strider".
37	** The "New Norwegian"/"nynorsk" version of the book consciously made a play of known Norwegian language and folklore tropes, as well as "broadening" of the hobbit dialect into known rural varieties. A nod to the Norwegian language development was also done on behalf of the elder races and the "high linguistic style", being in more ancient grammar.
38	** While on the subject of Tolkien, his own translation of ''Literature/SirGawainAndTheGreenKnight'' is '''masterful'''. Granted he was "only" translating from (14th-century Middle) English to (Modern) English (Middle English from that period is quite different from Modern English, but a speaker of Modern English can usually painstakingly puzzle out the meaning of a passage with the help of a dictionary), but he did it while also changing from the old convention of 'rhyme' (the beginnings of words should sound the same) to the new convention (the '''ends''' of words should sound the same). And he usually managed to keep the alliteration too, meaning his version rhymes by both the original author's standards and our modern day ones.
39	* A similar effort to that of Tolkien was that used by Richard Adams in ''Literature/WatershipDown'' which presented the names of characters and other vocabulary as Woolseyism translations of the "Lapine" language.
40	* The German version of ''Franchise/{{Dune}}'' changed '''C'''ombine '''H'''onnete '''O'''ber '''A'''dvancer '''M'''ercantiles (CHOAM) into '''M'''erkantile '''A'''llianz für '''F'''ortschritt und '''E'''ntwicklung im '''A'''ll (MAFEA)[[note]]Mercantile Alliance for Advancement and Development in the Universe[[/note]]. Keep in mind that the organisation in question is basically a intergalactic space monopoly.
41	* Creator/DorothyLSayers's translation of ''Literature/TheDivineComedy'' (Sayers translated all of Inferno and Purgatorio. She translated parts of Paradiso, but died before completing it. Barbara Reynolds, a medievalist scholar and Sayers's goddaughter, completed the rest of the Paradiso.) is another example. For one thing, her translation adheres to the terza rima. The names of the demons in the Inferno are also translated, with "Draghinazzo" becoming "Dragonel", "Libicocco" becoming "Libbicock", "Cagnazzo" becoming "Harrowhound", and "Calcabrina" becoming "Hacklespur", to name some examples (while sounding like coworkers of Screwtape). Another instance is in the Purgatorio, when Dante briefly encounters the Occitan troubadour Arnaut Daniel, who speaks to him in his native Provençal. Sayers translates Arnaut's lines into the Border Scots dialect to try to preserve the contrast and shift of languages, saying that Border Scots has a similar relation to English as Provençal does to Italian.
42	* ''Literature/HisDarkMaterials'':
43	** When the Spanish publisher Ediciones B got to translate the trilogy, they soon had to figure out a way to translate the word "dæmon": they couldn't use "demonio", Spanish for "demon", because dæmons are more like [[SpiritAdvisor Spirit Advisors]] rather than AlwaysChaoticEvil beings. The answer? The translators took a look at Greek mythology, found out that a ''daimon'' is a supernatural being between mortals and gods which can be good as well as evil, saw that this word was the closest thing to Pullman's term, and thus, they translated "dæmon" as "daimonion", which is essentially the same word but more transparent to Hispanic eyes.[[note]]Of course, the terms "dæmon" and "demon" are both derived from "daimon" - the AlwaysChaoticEvil aspect is due to early Christianity declaring all non-Christian supernatural beings to be diabolic in nature. Literally ''demonizing'' them, in other words.[[/note]]
44	** Similarly, the Scandinavian translations couldn't use the word 'dæmon', because that LITERALLY means 'demon' in Danish (in the Norwegian and Swedish, the spelling is "demon"), so, like in Spain, the translator changed it to 'daimon'.
45	** The Portuguese books translated the word as "génio", which obviously means "genie". It may sound very stupid, but it is arguably a case of FridgeBrilliance, as in Arabic lore genies/jinns are occasionally analogous to daimons. Furthermore, in Latin "genius" could referred to something similar to the dæmons in the books. ''Film/TheGoldenCompass''[='s=] subtitled translation, however, decided to settle for the Portuguese word for "demon", either for laziness or to make the already controversial movie more provocative.
46	* Douglas Hofstadter's ''Le Ton Beau de Marot'' is practically a tome ''about'' Woolseyism-- it's all about the stylistic choices involved in translation, centering around how to best translate a poem by French poet Clément Marot but with digressions on all manner of other works.
47	** Mr. Tortoise from his ''Literature/GodelEscherBachAnEternalGoldenBraid'' becomes female when translated into languages such as French or Italian where the word for tortoise or turtle is a feminine noun, as described in the introduction to the 20th anniversery edition. He becomes Madame Tortue, for example, in French. Hofstadter, dismayed at the realization of having failed to include any significant female characters in his dialogues, but unwilling to change the original English version, considers this an improvement.
48	*** Averted in German: "Schildkröte" is feminine, but the tortoise still is male.
49	** Another Hofstadter example: when ''GEB'' was translated into Chinese, the name in Chinese roughly translates back to "Collection of Exquisite Jade"... in Chinese, that's "Ji Yi Bi". (Say it out loud.) Other translations are similarly intricate.
50	* Another famous example would be the translation of Erich Maria Remarque's ''Literature/AllQuietOnTheWesternFront'' from German to English. The 1930 English translation by Arthur Wesley Wheen gives the title as "All Quiet on the Western Front". The literal translation is "Nothing New in the West" (Im Westen nichts Neues), with "West" being the war front; this was a routine dispatch used by the German Army.
51	* ''Literature/AClockworkOrange'':
52	** Occurred with some words in the Spanish translation, ''"La naranja mecanica"''. In the original, most of the nadsat language is taken from Russian with little or no change. Some terms, however, were morphed into similarly sounding English words. Take for example ''gulliver'' for "head". As the Spanish word for it (''cabeza'') sounds nothing like it, the translated nadsat (via WordOfGod) became ''golovo'', a direct transliteration from the Russian original word. Same happened with ''horrorshow'' (which turned into ''joroscho''). Some others changed in less correct ways (''"the old in-out"'' became ''"el viejo unodos"'', lit. "the old onetwo", when it could have been ''"el viejo metesaca"''). Several untranslatable terms of jargon were silently converted to their "normal" counterparts, and most of the rest were adapted to comply with the ending and concordance rules of Spanish, but still sounding a lot more like their ''Russian'' counterparts than the English portmanteaus (portmanteaux?).
53	** The Polish translator of the book, Robert Stiller, made two versions: the older one keeps the slang Russian and corrects it like the Spanish translation above (although changing the awkward "nadsat", meaning "'teen", into "nastoyaschi", meaning "current", and some words that are similar in Polish and Russian got simply converted into Polish), and the later one, retitled "Nakręcana Pomarańcza" ("A Wind-Up Orange"), replaces Russian words in the slang with English ones.
54	** One Russian translation does an inversion - the slang consists of English words. A different one keeps all pseudo-Russian slang, but keeps its spelling with Latin characters - so that they are clearly identified as lingo and not "normal" usage of the word.
55	* A Norwegian translation of ''The Brothers Karamazov'' substituted German for Polish in scenes where Polish characters [[PoirotSpeak use a few words from their native language]].
56	* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'':
57	** In the Dutch translation of Wee Free Men, the Glaswegian accented English is replaced with Frisian/Frysk, which is a language closely related to Dutch, but not entirely intelligible to Dutch speakers with previous exposure.
58	** The Swedish translations are regularly very good, replacing English language-specific puns with equivalent ones and changing references to Anglo-Saxon culture, etc. to Swedish ones. One highlight: the movie business troll in ''Moving Pictures'' is named Rock, a reference to Creator/RockHudson. The Swedish translation changed his name to [[Creator/{{IngmarBergman}} Bergman]]. (''Berg'' being Swedish for "mountain", and [[ThemeNaming all Discworld trolls having rock-related names]].)
59	** Another example: Ankh-Morpork has an "Elm Street", and since it is where undead and similar people live, it is obviously a horror movie pun, ''and'' a perfectly normal name for a street. In Swedish it became "Kreugers gränd" - which sounds like a perfectly normal Swedish street name, but obviously references [[Franchise/ANightmareOnElmStreet the same movie]].
60	** Most Polish translations of the Literature/{{Discworld}} books are equally good. For example, in ''Soul Music'', "Music With Rocks In" is translated as "Muzyka Wyk''rok''owa" (not only the phrase sounds like "muzyka rockowa" - "rock music", but also brings to mind an energetic dance step forward - "wykrok"). There are some problems with the names of the bands, though.
61	** The French translations are also very good, to the point that the translator received an award for his work. Just to name one example, Mr Teatime in ''Literature/{{Hogfather}}'', whose name has been translated as Lheurduthé (literally "hour of tea", and the actual translation of "tea time" in French), insists that his name be pronounced as "Le-re-dou-té", which sounds like "the feared one" (''le redouté'') in French.
62	*** Another gem is the translation of The Death of Rats as "La Mort Aux Rats", literally meaning the "The Death of them rats", but also the name for rat poison in French.
63	*** When Death is introduced in the French translation, to explain why he is referred to with male pronouns even though "la mort" is a feminine noun, there is a footnote: "la Mort est un mâle, un mâle nécessaire" (a pun on "mal nécessaire", meaning "necessary evil")
64	** The Czech translator of all Discworld novels, Jan Kantůrek (also awarded, multiple times) received an explicit permission from Pratchett to skip puns where they did not work in Czech and introduce new ones where they offered themselves. For example, Kantůrek came up with a whole new origin story for the name of the Lancre village Bad Ass (since there is no direct translation of that term in Czech that would offer itself to the same double meaning). [[note]]Pratchett trusted Kantůrek ever since a public multi-lingual reading where Czech fans laughed in exactly the right places, and since then visited the Czech Republic and met with Kantůrek personally several times. Kantůrek later said "We did not meet often enough for me to dare call him a friend but I would like to think that's where we were headed."[[/note]]
65	** In the absence of a more elegant Hebrew term for "pearwood", Rincewind's luggage is stated in the Hebrew translation to be made not of "Sapient Pearwood" but out of ''Etz Hada'at'', the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil from the biblical Garden of Eden. Many Hebrew fans actually think this makes it that much cooler and the fact that the Agateans make furniture out of it that much funnier in its absurdity.
66	* Georges Perec's ''La Disparition'' is a lipogrammatic french novel without the letter 'e'. The various translators of the book have mirrored Perec's choice by excluding the most common letter in their language, so while the English version (''A Void'') also contains no E's, the Spanish edition (''El secuestro'') has no A's.
67	* ''Literature/TheCyberiad'''s translation by Michael Kandel is well-known, and praised in ''Le Ton beau de Marot'' above. It includes, among other things, a poem written almost entirely in complex mathematical jargon. And it rhymes.
68	* ''Literature/{{Beowulf}}'':
69	** Seamus Heaney's translation is widely regarded as far better and more accessible than the attempts made before it. The introduction gives a great account of how much work it was by going into excruciating detail on Heaney's thought process on translating just the [[FlatWhat first word]] (he eventually decided on "so"). Anglo-Saxonists tend to deride this translation because of its Woolseyist tendencies, referring disparagingly to it as "Heaneywulf."
70	* Frank L Warrin's French translation of ''Jabberwocky'' exchanges Creator/LewisCarroll's nonsense words for French nonsense of similar derivation. For example, ''slithy'' (reminiscent of ''slimy'', ''slither'', ''slippery'', ''lithe'' and ''sly'') became ''lubricilleux'', reminiscent of the French word for ''to lubricate''.
71	* ''Literature/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory'': A mild case. Veruca Salt's surname was changed to Paprika in the Hebrew translation. Translating a European proper name into a Hebrew one is frowned upon in modern Hebrew translations, and while Salt has a native noun in Hebrew, Paprika uses the foreign one. And it keeps the connection between the name and her dad's business clear for younger readers.
72	* ''Literature/PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians'': Some translators had a fun time with the "dam snack bar" joke (where our heroes kept joking around at the Hoover Dam).
73	** In the French translation, the joke isn't about the word "dam(n)" but instead about the name of the dam, Hoover. Our protagonists kept joking about if the snack bar is ''ouvert'' (open), which sounds like "Hoover".
74	** The Hebrew translation has the pun turned a little more vulgar. There's a sign at the dam that describes it as having "בטון מזוין" (''beton mezoyan''), a technical term meaning "reinforced concrete". However in Hebrew the word "מזוין" (''mezoyan'') has the [[DoubleEntendre double meaning]] as a slang term for [[PrecisionFStrike "fucked"]] (or "screwed"). So in the Hebrew version, a bunch of preteens and teenagers are joking about the "fucking concrete".
75	** On the other hand, the traditional Chinese (Taiwan) translation is ''less'' vulgar with this. It takes advantage of Mandarin Chinese being a tonal language and changes the tones to the words for dam (大壩, ''dà bà'', literally "great dam") to turn the 'dam snack bar' into the 'target practice snack bar' (打靶, ''dǎ bǎ'', literally "hit shooting-target"). This is most likely playing on how Zoë Nightshade, the one who first called for the questers to visit the "dam snack bar", was a Hunter of Artemis.
76	* The Norwegian translation of the ''Literature/{{Jennings}}'' books and audio dramas are so full of changes that they are almost ''adaptations'' rather than straight-up translations; the stories and the characters are mostly the same, but the translator, Nils-Reinhart Christensen, decided to change the ''location''; instead of taking place in an English boarding school, the Norwegian books take place in a Norwegian boarding school, with the students now coming from various places in Norway and speaking the characteristic dialects of their hometowns. Names are different; Jennings himself is nicknamed "Stompa" (for his initials; his full name is "Stein Oskar Magell Paus-Andersen"), and many purely-English terms and traditions are either swapped for Norwegian ones or dropped altogether. But with the changes -- and the brilliant acting of [[LargeHam Gisle Straume]] as "Lektor Tørrdal" (the Norwegian Mr. Wilkins) in the audio dramas -- the Norwegian "Stompa" became ''hugely'' popular, and even spawning four theatrical movies which are still regarded as classics today.
77	* ''Literature/WinnieThePooh'':
78	** Boris Zakhoder did this to the Russian translation, to such a point that he basically rewrote the book. It worked. The popularity of his re-imagined characters in the USSR and Russia rivaled or surpassed that of the Disney animated version in the English-speaking world, and continues to do so today.
79	*** Zakhoder did the same with ''Literature/AliceInWonderland'' and ''Literature/MaryPoppins''. And he succeeded there, too. By his own admission he never thought of his translations as a proper ones, though. He always called them "re-tellings".
80	*** There is a Russian joke which says "I imagined Tolkien in Zakhoder's translation. Cried a lot".
81	** Creator/FrigyesKarinthy's CultClassic Hungarian translation of ''Literature/WinnieThePooh'' is also highly favored over the original for its extensive use of more "colorful" expressions (no, not swearing, but things like using "barked Pooh triumphantly" in place of "said Pooh"). Fans of the translated version tend to see the original as uninspired and dry, some even calling it downright annoying.
82	** Likewise Irena Tuwim, who wrote the Polish version. She took significant liberties with the translation, including completely changing the names of some of the characters (for example, Winnie's name is Kubuś, i.e. Jim) and rewriting Pooh's simplistically-rhymed hums into proper poems. Many of her coinages in the translation have [[MemeticMutation entered the popular lexicon]].
83	* The Spanish translation of ''Literature/ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents'' changed renamed Esmé Squalor to Esmé Miseria.
84	* OlderThanSteam: ''[[Literature/TheBible The King James Bible]]'':
85	** It's full of more-or-less Woolseyisms. More modern Bible translations such as the New International Version have preserved the most famous ones in only slightly modernized form. The KJV Twenty-Third Psalm, for example, begins "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." In the NIV, this has been translated to "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want," which is both more awkward-sounding and almost as anachronistic, even if it is a somewhat better literal translation.
86	** That is also a case of an ever changing language. There are more technically accurate translations of ''The Bible'', but what has made the King James Version so popular is the poetic 16th Century prose they used. Putting it in modern language may make it slightly easier to understand, but it loses a lot of its charm.
87	** A localized translation of the ten commandments would read something like "No murder. No coveting." etc.
88	** Ironically, plenty of subtle meaning is actually lost in translating ''Literature/TheBible''[='=]s ancient languages according to overall meaning instead of word-for-word. A well-known example is UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}}'s face-off with the Pharisees in John 8, where they ask Jesus how He could possibly think He is older than Moses. The Worldwide English (New Testament) translation of the response goes: ''Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth. I already was before Abraham was born."'', which while accurate in conveying the blunt meaning, misses out on the (intentional) back-reference of other translations. For example, the New International Version translation: ''"I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, '''I am'''."'' This is a reference to the name of {{God}} (''God said to Moses, "'''I am''' who am."'' - Exodus 3:14), and thus signified that Jesus considered Himself God... Which explains why the Pharisees immediately flew into a rage and tried to stone Jesus (for blasphemy) when they had earlier just put up with being called the children of the devil with far less outrage.
89	** Incidentally, the idea of "dynamic equivalence" in relation to ''The Bible'' tends to draw a lot of, well, ''heated'' reactions; most of the problem stemming from the fact that many people are unaware of the "Woolseyisms" of editions like the KJV detailed above, and thus assume that the version they are familiar with, often the KJV or Vulgate Latin, is the true, unblemished version straight from the mouth of God. Needless to say, this can make discussion of proper meaning in ''The Bible'' very, very [[SeriousBusiness difficult]].
90	** And going further into Woolseyism, there are ''Bible'' paraphrases out there, one of the best-known of which is Eugene Peterson's ''The Message''.
91	** Similar with Martin Luther's German translation, which by the way helped to create the German standard language of today.
92	** A rather controversial one is the transformation of ''Malakoi'' (soft) to ''effeminate'' (KJV) to ''homosexual offenders'' (Living Bible). It is very much debatable whether this is a Woolseyism or BlindIdiotTranslation--or worse, TranslationWithAnAgenda.
93	** In the Jewish oral tradition, it is brought down that King Ptolemy ordered 70 elders to translate the Torah into Greek. They made changes to the text in order to adapt it to the Greek (in one example, they changed an animal referred to as impure because the original animal's name in Greek sounded like the name of Ptolemy's wife), and miraculously, though all 70 scholars were translated independently and in separate rooms, they each made the exact same changes.
94	** Another English example caused by language drift: ''dikaiosuné'' is translated in the KJV and many later versions as "righteousness", but is usually translated into modern English as "justice".
95	** Averted? Played straight? with the translation of "kidneys" as "reins" (pronounced "reens"). Throughout the Pentateuch (the first five books), they Hebrew word is always translated as "kidneys". Afterward, the translation switches to "reins". The change is because the Pentateuch always refers to kidneys in the context of animal sacrifices and the augury that follows. Afterward, the kidneys are referred to in the context of the belief, common in the Mediterranean and West Asian world, that the kidneys, along with the heart, are the source of thought and emotion. No, not the brain. The kidneys and heart. Literally. By the time of the KJV, the use of the heart as the ''metaphorical'' seat of human emotion had remained thanks to literature and poetry, but the kidneys were completely absent. So the KJV uses the word "reins", related to the modern French word for kidneys but incredibly archaic at the time of the translation, in order to disguise what is now and would equally have been then the absurd idea that people think using their kidneys.
96	** [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrical_psalter Metrical psalters]], translations of the Literature/BookOfPsalms that arose out of the Reformation. They attempt to render the Psalms into English rhyming poetry for easier use as hymns in churches. Compare the KJV's "''The earth is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein. For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.''" (Psalm 24:1-2), to Robert Crowley's 1549 translation:
97	--->''The earth and al that it holdeth, do to the lorde belonge:\
98	The world and al that dwel therein as wel the olde as yonge.\
99	For it is he that aboue al the seas hath it founded:\
100	And that aboue the freshe waters hathe the same prepared.''
101	* Similar to the biblical examples above, most Muslim scholars will say that this is the only way that Literature/TheQuran can be translated, as there is too much meaning riding on the phrasing of the original Arabic as to render the text "untranslatable" in the traditional sense. The most popular English translation, Abdullah Yusuf Ali's, takes this approach.
102	* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lin_Shu Lin Shu]], who translated many European novels--''Literature/LaDameAuxCamelias'', ''Literature/DavidCopperfield'', ''Literature/UncleTomsCabin'', ''Literature/JoanHaste'' and ''Literature/RobinsonCrusoe'', to name a few--''without knowing any European language''. The way he succeeded in translated these novels (by WordOfGod) practically enforced this trope:
103	-->''I know no foreign languages. I cannot pass for a translator without the aid of several gentlemen, who interpret the texts for me. They interpret, and I write down what they interpret. They stop, and I put down my pen. 6,000 words can be produced after a mere four hours' labour.''
104	* ''Literature/HardBoiledWonderlandAndTheEndOfTheWorld'' is a TwoLinesNoWaiting narrative with two radically different storylines - the narrator uses two different UsefulNotes/JapanesePronouns to refer to himself (Watashi and Boku). However, Japanese pronouns don't translate over to English, so the translator took a different option that gets the point across, and gives a subtle {{Foreshadowing}}. The narrator makes the "End of the world" translations occur in the present-tense, as opposed to the past-tense narrative of the "Hard-Boiled wonderland" sections.
105	** This is LostInTranslation on digital formats, but the paperback and hardcover novels feature the title across the top. But during the "Hard-Boiled Wonderland" chapters, it only has "Hard-Boiled Wonderland" written on the top left part of the pages; whereas "The End of the World" chapters have "The End of the World" on the top right part of the pages.
106	* Moss Roberts' translation of ''Literature/{{Romance of the Three Kingdoms}}'' manages to translated the Chinese poetry into English in a way that has poetic meter and even rhymes.
107	* Played with in the ''Literature/KhaavrenRomances'', when the author makes up an equivalent Woolseyism ''in Dragaeran'' for a common English saying. Specifically, the local saying that "when you make assumptions, you are thinking like a fish" is allegedly derived from how the native language's words for "fish" and "think", when combined, sound much like their word for "assumption". The RealLife English equivalent is "when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me".
108	* In the original version of ''Literature/LifeTheUniverseAndEverything'', there's an award for Most Gratuitous Use of the Word "Fuck" in a Serious Screenplay; the American version replaces "fuck" with "Belgium" (which the radio series established as the dirtiest word in the universe). This leads to an amusing bit where Arthur Dent tries to wrap his head around the concept and accidentally ends up offending the young alien woman with whom he's conversing.
109	* The J. T. Bealby translation of Creator/ETAHoffmann's "Literature/TheSandman1816" repeatedly calls the creepy door-to-door salesman Coppola a "hawker" of oculars and glasses (which he refers to as "eyes"). This resounds beautifully with the gruesome tale of Nathanael's old nurse, who described the Sandman as a bird-like creature who hunts for eyes—a hawk is a bird of prey, and "to hawk" also means "to hunt in the style of a hawk". But it is entirely a clever translation; in the original, Coppola is just a "Wetterglashändler", which does not strike any such associations.
110	* The Regina Winter translation of the ''Literature/{{Hurog}}'' duology changes the name of Ward's horse from "Pansy" to "Blümchen", meaning "little flower". Most likely because the literal translation of "Pansy" (which doesn't mean anything in German) would have been "Stiefmütterchen", which means "little stepmother". This wouldn't have fit the sex of the horse, and isn't as cutesy as "Pansy", as thanks to the brothers Grimm, "stepmother" is a word that carries lots of negative connotations. (In fact, the flower is called that because it seems to not treat all its "children", i.e. petals, equally.)
111	* ''Literature/GoodOmens'':
112	** In Russian, голубой (goluboy) is a word for "light blue" that's also used as a slang term for "homosexual". At least one Russian translation took the passage describing Aziraphale as [[AmbiguouslyGay appearing to be]] "gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide" and translated it as "more light-blue than the sky on an ad pamphlet for a tropical vacation."
113	** The Dutch translation also featured a twist on this joke, using the word 'nicht' (which literally means "cousin" but can also be used to mean "sissy" or "effeminate") to describe Aziraphale as "more of a cousin than your aunt's daughter".
114	** The Greek translation uses αδελφή ("adelfi", a word for a nurse that literally translates as "sister" but is also used to describe homosexuals) to call Aziraphale "more of a sister than an entire nursing school".
115	** Hebrew does not have a direct translation for Aziraphale's angelic rank of 'Principality', and so the 2018 Hebrew translation has decided to call him a 'Cherub' instead. Outside of being the actual type of Angel which guarded the gates of Eden, in Hebrew it's written and pronounced just like the word for [[InherentlyFunnyWords 'cabbage']], which is probably why people 'made jokes about that these days'.
116	* In the traditional Chinese translation of ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', Mordor [[note]]Thought to have been derived from the Old English ''morðor'', meaning "murder"[[/note]] is rendered as ''mó duō'' (魔多), which can be understood as "the place of many demons".
117	** In general, a "mo" or "mor" sound in this vein can be translated thus, such as with "[[Franchise/HarryPotter Voldemort]]" .
118	* The eponymous whale in ''Literature/MobyDick'' has several possible translations used in [[UsefulNotes/ChineseDialectsAndAccents Chinese languages]], including phonic translations "莫比敵" (''Mòbǐdí'') in Mandarin, and "無比敵" (''Mòuhbéidihk'') in Cantonese, which both roughly means "[[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast an enemy without rival/compare]]", befitting the whale's fearsome reputation.
119	* The Japanese translation of the ''Literature/CaptainUnderpants'' books does a decent job of translating George and Harold's sign-rearranging gags. For instance, the Japanese version of ''Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman'' has them change a sign reading "Rouka wa shizuka ni arukimashou!" ("Please walk quietly in the halls!") to say "Rouka wa kani aruki shimashou!" ("Please crab-walk in the halls!")
120	* ''Literature/HanselAndGretel'' is about two kids who meet a witch who intends to eat them for dinner. While some Eastern European translations ''do'' keep this intact, a few have actually localised the witch to be Literature/BabaYaga - a familiar more known in Eastern Europe and Russia than Western Europe.
121	* Robert Fitzgerald's 1961 translation of ''Literature/TheOdyssey'' is generally excellent.
122	** It forgoes attempts at maintaining rhyme or rhythm, but acknowledges its history as a poem by keeping the original lines intact if you wish to go back and forth. It also forgoes any attempt at sounding like classical literature, and instead reads like rather formal literature from the early 60s (which is of course getting a little dated 60 years later). If you can get into the formal way of writing, there is a lot of humor to get out of the poem (like the icily polite hatred Menelaos and Helen have for each other, sniping in the guise of heartwarming nostalgia over Odysseus's brilliance at Troy).
123	** He even manages some excellent Woolseyisms that stay true to the original intent, such as when Odyssesus tricks ... well, such as when Odysseus [[UnreliableNarrator tells the Phaekian court]] the story of how he tricked Polyphemos. In the original Greek, Odysseus tells Polyphemos that his name is Mentes ("thought" or "mind"), so that when Odysseus and his crew blind him and he screams in agony, he tells the other Cyclopes that it's his mind that's hurting him and they all laugh at the idiot who's screaming over a headache. Fitzgerald changes Mentes to Nobdy, so instead the Cyclopes tell him to stop whining if "nobody is hurting you".
124	** Unfortunately, there are times Fitzgerald failed, as when Odysseus interprets Persephonë's dream, saying that there are two gates by which dreams can leave the realm of Morpheus. True dreams come through the gate of horn and false dream come through the gate of ivory. This means nothing in English, but in the ancient Greek, "horn" sounds very much like "fulfill", so prophetic dreams come through the gate of horn. "Ivory", meanwhile, is similar to "deceive", and you can't trust dreams from that gate. He's trying to say that her dream of his death ([[UnreliableNarrator if she had such a dream]]) was a lie.
125	* ''Literature/DiaryOfAWimpyKid'':
126	** In the first book, a boy named Preston Mudd is named "Athlete of the Month" and has his picture put up in the hall with "P. Mudd" underneath it- which results in other kids calling him "Pee Mud".
127	*** Spanish: his name is Preston Zonn, and the other kids call him ''pezón'' ("nipple").
128	*** Polish: his name is Kris Bell, and the other kids call him both ''kabel'' (figuratively "snitch") and ''kibel'' ("toilet").
129	*** Italian: his name is Preston Shasott, and the other kids call him ''pisciasotto'' ("pees himself").
130	*** Icelandic: his name is Einar Páll Lárus Ingólfsson, and the other kids call him ''epli'' ("apple"), derived from his initials.
131	** In ''Rodrick Rules'', a student named Peter Uteger is mocked for his initials being "P.U."
132	*** German: his name is Peter Puttmann, and his initials are "P.P.", sounding like ''pipi'' ("pee").
133	*** Polish: his first name is Bill and his initials are "B.U.", so it sounds like booing.
134	*** Italian: his name is Walter Creger, and his initials are "W.C." as in "water closet".
135	** In ''The Long Haul'', after the school bans the Underpants Bandits books, some kids sneak in their own copies. One kid brought in a Japanese version of a book and an illustration is shown of it. When the book was translated into Japanese, the bootleg copy was changed to Chinese.
136	* In ''Literature/WhatIf2'', one of the illustrations for "Toasty Warm" has a stick figure say, "This is the worst idea for heating a house since, or with, sliced bread." The Swedish translator decided that this joke was completely untranslatable, and so replaced it with a Swedish pun about throwing a toaster into a lake.
137	* The literal translation from French to English of ''À La Recherche De Temps Perdu '' is ''In Search Of Lost Time. '' However ''Remembrance Of Things Past, '' the title chosen by translator C.K. Scott Moncrieff, is far better known in the English world. Not only does it quote Shakespeare (it’s from Sonnet 30), it also conveys the almost mystical nature of Proust’s work
138	* Norman Ohler's book about drug use in Nazi Germany was, in the original German, called ''Der totale Rausch'' (the total rush). The English translation, ''Blitzed'', is even more overdetermined, connoting both intoxication and German military tactics.
139	* This is [[https://wob.coppermind.net/events/324/#e9338 the justification]] Creator/BrandonSanderson uses for Earth-language puns, wordplay, etc in his ''[[Literature/TheCosmere Cosmere]]'' works.

Context Woolseyism / Literature