Harry Harrisons excellent book "Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers" contains a piece of inline translation. During a rather intense firefight one character yells to his companions "Ich möchte ein Einzelzimmer mit Bad im ersten Stock!" which in the book is translated as "I spotted a door behind the throne, so grab onto me and we can escape that way." The reason for yelling in a foreign language is to keep the alien antagonists from understanding him. In reality, the phrase is German for "I'd like a single-bed room with a bath on the first floor." Harrison speaks a whole bunch of languages (including Esperanto "like a native" as people like to put it) and is of course completely aware of the translation atrocity he has performed. He is fond of salting his books with sentences or even long paragraphs in non-english languages, usually without providing a (correct or false) translation.
Edited by 81.235.128.134
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81.235.128.134
Since: Dec, 1969
Jul 20th 2010 at 5:04:38 PM
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In "The Boondocks", that poor, poor kickball team