Lost In Translation / Literature

• In one of Stanisław Lem's books, one robot has a battle cry "awruk!". Some translators put it literally, some not. In fact, this is a Polish word spelled backwards, thus can be represented in English as "oh!" In this particular case, a more faithful translation would be something along the lines of "kcuf!". In fact, Michael Kandel translated it as "tickuf!"
• Remember good ol' Aesop? Remember the Sour Grapes? Well, at some point some unnamed Swedish translator of Aesop decided (since grapes don't grow there, at least not normally) to replace "grapes" with "rowan-berries" (the orange berries of a rowan tree) The problem? Rowan berries are really tart, thus ruining the entire point of the Aesop.
• All the translations of the Fighting Fantasy books have this to an extent due to the need to work out which paragraph to turn to next based on information already received.
  • Many books require the player to solve a riddle, then convert the answer into a number using a code based on each letter's position in the alphabet. For example, egg is 5+7+7=19; in French, oeuf is 15+5+21+6=47. This wouldn't be so bad, but the translators generally didn't bother to re-order the references so that the codes pointed to the correct ones.
  • Others disguised information in acrostics. Translators usually just translated the poem directly, causing the initial letters of each sentence to become meaningless. Both these practises made many books unwinnable.
• In Dragon Bones, Ward inherits his father's fierce stallion, and renames the horse "Pansy". The German translation makes a "little flower" out of it, which works fine, but completely omits the connotations that "Pansy" has in the English original. There just is no flower name in German that also works as a synonym for "wuss".
• Diario de Sofía desde el cuarto de baño, a children's novel mockbuster of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, features a character named Mia St. Claire. The protagonist notes that she dislikes the name because "St." sounds like it could stand for "street", imagining her name written on a street sign. In Spanish, "street" is "calle"; she says that "St." reminds her of "calle", and the illustration is kept, which makes no sense.
• Discworld:
  • The Swedish translations, while usually good, do fail a few times. An example is in Pyramids, where, in the original, the mummies originally translated the inscription "And Khuft said unto the First: ..." as "Handcuffed to the bed, the aunt thirsted". The Swedish version translates the misunderstood inscription word for word, without keeping the similarity in sound.
  • The French translations also have at least one misstep: Granny Weatherwax's line "You'd have to be a born fool to be a king" instead has "un parfait crétin" ("a perfect cretin"). To be fair, the joke (that by the end of the book, the position will be filled by a hereditary jester) is pretty well buried, and the translator isn't the only person who didn't spot it.
  • A Running Gag in the books is the Librarian (an orangutan) going into a rage whenever someone calls him a "monkey" rather than an "ape", as orangutans are apes. Unfortunately, this doesn't work in Polish, a language which doesn't have separate words for "monkey" and "ape". The translators usually resort to translating them as "małpiszon" (an informal and somewhat dismissive form) and "małpa" (the regular form), but not only this loses the spirit of the original joke (the Librarian getting angry at someone's biological ignorance), but ends up sounding rather unnatural since "małpiszon" isn't a word a typical person would use spontaneously.
  • The German translations of the books also have their problems with the librarian's Berserk Button. While different words for "monkey" and "ape" exist ("Affe" and "Menschenaffe" respectively), one can usually get away with using "monkey" as an umbrella term outside of scientific contexts. Faced with this dilemma, the translator made the librarian react badly to the word "Tier" (literally "animal") instead, but the Running Gag is still lost as calling an orangutan an animal isn't wrong from a biological standpoint.
• In Durarara!!, Mikado Ryugamine's name amounts to "Emperor of the Dragon's Peak," an Awesome McCoolname that sounds downright preposterous for an unremarkable teenager. This causes a lot of people to make fun of him or get weirded out, but why they do so is difficult to convey to viewers abroad.
• Translations from Swedish can be equally problematic. Some of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö's Martin Beck detective stories feature a country policeman whose surname, when the readers first meet him, is translated as "Awright", complete with the inevitable puns. However, for some reason (possibly a different translator), when he reappears in one of the later books of the series, his name has become "Content" — but without any more puns.
• Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi: With the original language being Chinese, a number of jokes and nuances in-text are made difficult to translate in other languages, especially English, and so often requires translation notes.
  • Wei Wuxian's sword name Suibian (随便) is a common word that translates to "whatever", "(do) as you please", "anything and everything". The confusion this can cause isn't as evident in translations as it is in the original Chinese; Lan Wangji thought Wei Wuxian was purposely disrespecting his sword when he told him its name, and the latter had to clarify that it's what he actually named it (when Jiang Fengmian asked what name to get carved on the sword hilt, Wei Wuxian had replied "whatever" to indicate any name was fine). To avoid the confusion from saying its name, everyone else in the story refers to it as "this sword" or "that sword".
  • There's usually some significance behind many of the courtesy names (eg. Wangji, Sizhui) and titles (eg. Hanguang-jun, Sandu Shengshou), as they typically hint at their personality, plot significance or (in the case of the latter) their achievements. Without the translation guides, however, these are easy to miss for non-Chinese readers.
  • While the name Cloud Recesses (云深不知处) sounds elegant as it is, the significance that non-Chinese audiences may miss is that it's based on a line from a Chinese poem.
  • When Wei Wuxian first met the girl nicknamed Mianmian, he decided to tease her by introducing himself as "Yuandao", which flustered her. This joke is impossible to understand without translation notes if one's not familiar with Chinese literature — he's referencing a poem from the Han dynasty called "Watering Horses at the Grotto near the Great Wall" (饮马长城窟行). The names "Mianmian" (绵绵) and "Yuandao" (远道) are referenced in the second half of the first verse of the poem "青青河边草，绵绵思远道", which also translates to "Oh, how green is the grass on the riverbank; How endless is my longing for the distant road". Most importantly, the second half can also be read as "Mianmian longs for Yuandao", which is entire joke behind Wei Wuxian's flirtatious "introduction".
  • Lan Wangji's Catchphrase "无聊" is along the lines of, "Don't you have anything better to do?" To stay faithful to the short length of the phrase, the official translation simplifies it to "frivolous".
  • Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen are referred to as the Twin Jades of Lan. While most uninformed foreign readers would write this off as the brothers simply being called cool and handsome, the nickname is significant because jade is the stone associated with gentlemen in Chinese culture, and the two brothers are well-known for their chivalrous and honourable nature.
  • Nie Huaisang's moniker in Chinese is "一问三不知", which literally translates to "one question, three 'I don't know's'", a direct description of how everyone perceives him to be a clueless idiot. To make the moniker flow better in English, the official English translations use "Head-Shaker".
• Harry Potter:
  • The Swedish translator of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone left the name of the Erised Mirror, and its inscription, untranslated, apparently believing they were in some sort of fantasy language, while in fact they are simply sdrawkcab. When the mirror was mentioned again in the seventh book, it was renamed the Mörd-spegeln (the Maerd-mirror), which is almost worse, considering the fact that "mörd" brings one's thoughts to "mörda", which means "to murder". Quite different from the intended meaning.
  • Separated by a Common Language version: In the second book, Ron tries to repair his broken wand using "Spellotape", a pun on "Sellotape," which is a brand of cellophane tape common in Britain to the point of becoming a Brand Name Takeover. Some American readers may be familiar with the brand, but it is far less common, and Scotch Tape (another Brand Name Takeover) is the usual term, so the joke is lost on American readers.
  • In the Italian translations of the Harry Potter books, Professor Dumbledore is known as Albus Silente. The translators took the first part of Dumbledore's name — 'dumb' in the sense of 'unable to speak' — and made a literal translation. This is misguided given that "dumbledore" is an archaic/obsolete English word meaning "bumblebee."
  • The German translation was particularly bad at translating some puns. When Ron is corrected on the fact that one of Jupiter's moons is "Covered in ice, not mice", this was translated as "Covered in ice, not maize", since this rhymes in German. But the translator then forgot that pun when later on, Harry is taking the test and "at least he remembered the moon wasn't covered in mice" (using the word "mice" instead of "maize"). Another example: Malfoy at the end of book 4 teases: (paraphrase) "Now that Voldemort is back, Muggle-friends like your family will be first to die. Well, second. Cedric was the f..." before he is interrupted. The last word, starting in F, was obviously meant to be "first", but the German translator assumed it to mean a swear word, translating it as something like "And, secondly, Cedric was the f**..." (even though there was no "firstly")
• The German translation of The Lost World (1995), besides cutting a few sentences, manages to confuse left and right.
• In Agatha Christie's novel "Remembered Death" (also called "Sparkling Cyanide") the victim's name is "Rosemary", and Christie plays around with how the herb rosemary symbolizes remembrance. However, in the Spanish translation we have a problem. The Spanish word for that herb is not used as a feminine name, and the herb in Hispanic culture does not symbolize remembrance. In "A Murder is Announced" a character remarks that she doesn't like dachshunds, not because they're German (the novel was set right after WWII), but that she just never cared for them; the problem is that the Spanish name for that breed is 'Can Inglés'—English Dog.
• Many translations of the Qu'ran begin with a lengthy apology from the translator, for both theological (it's supposed to be a direct transcript of a book in heaven) and practical (it's heavily stylized and archaic poetry) reasons. Without fail, the translators will encourage the interested reader to attempt the book in the original. Swedes have chosen to grapple with this dilemma by saying 'Fuck It!' We have 2 Korans now!:
  Koranen [The Qu'ran] = A pocket book that is a word for word translation from Arabic to Swedish of the Koran. This is the one that non-Muslim Swedes reads in order to learn about Islam.
  Koranen i Svensk Tolkning [The Qu'Ran in Swedish interpretation] The official Swedish translation of the Qu'ran, as the official statement is: The Complete Koranen in Swedish interpretation, shown with ample annotations and the Arabic original; That is to say that each page has the original Arabic in the left column and the Swedish translation in the right. It is printed as an oversized brick.
• Don Quixote: A joke in the Spanish version is that even when everyone understands the term island, only truly sophisticated people understand the term ''insula''. So, Sancho doesn’t really understand what an insula really is, but he desperately wants to rule one, so he would be tricked later in a scam to rule a little town that is not an island. In some English translations (for example, the Gutenberg project this joke is Lost in Translation at Chapter II of the Second part:
  "May evil [insulas] islands choke thee, thou detestable Sancho," said the niece; "What are [insulas] islands? Is it something to eat, glutton and gormandiser that thou art?"
  "It is not something to eat," replied Sancho, "but something to govern and rule, and better than four cities or four judgeships at court."
• Some information says that the Spanish translation of A Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami lacks an entire chapter. That perhaps explains a little more about the Cinnamon and Nutmeg characters -or perhaps not.
• The "H" sound doesn't exist in Russian, so transliterations replace the letter with "G" or "Kh". For instance, Harry Potter is known there as Garry Potter. This leads to an interesting case with Robin Hood, who becomes Robin Good — leading Russians with some knowledge of English to completely misinterpret the meaning of his name. It still kinda fits, though.
• The French translation of Robin Hood is similar. Due to confusion between Hood and Wood, he became Robin des Bois (Robin of the Woods) in French, which is still wildly adequate. It's sometimes explained by the fact that the Celtic name of Robin Hood actually meant Robin of the woods.
• The Dutch translator for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy apparently found it impossible to translate the sentence "The yellow ships were hanging in the sky just like bricks don't", as it ended up being nowhere to be found.
• The title of Albert Camus's novel "L'Etranger" was given the title "The Outsider" in its English translation (the same word can also mean "stranger" or "foreigner"). Unfortunately, SE Hinton later came along and wrote The Outsiders, which became hugely popular in high school English classes, to the point that it overshadowed the earlier book for many native English speakers.
• Les Misérables:
  • Jean Valjean was imprisoned in the Bagne of Toulon, a term which has long created problems for translators, since it literally means "galleys", conveying the misleading impression that Valjean was in a Slave Galley (something which has carried over to some adaptations). In her 2013 translation of the novel, Christine Donougher opts to use the term "prison hulks" instead, which has the advantage of preventing this confusion and being historically accurate (the Bagne replaced an earlier system of galley slavery and for a significant period, prisoners continued to be "housed" in ships even though they did not serve as rowers).
  • "Les Miserables" literally means "the miserable," but can also be taken to mean "the guilty." The double meaning, and the complexity it implies (i.e. Jean Valjean is guilty of breaking the law, but still doesn't deserve the suffering heaped upon him by the legal system), is often lost on English readers, who (correctly) assume that the title's a cognate and stop looking.
  • Hugo employs a lot of puns that only work in French. Most translations will note that Les Amis de l'ABC is a play on Les Amis de l'abaissé^note ("the friends of the oppressed"), but skip over more minor ones.
• Jane O'Connor's Sir Small and the Dragonfly is about a tiny knight who rides an ant on a quest to slay a dragonfly, which is drawn to resemble a dragon. In the French version, the word for dragonfly, libellule, indicates nothing about dragons, which completely eliminates the pun.
• The Polish translation of The Guns of Tanith was titled Karabiny Tanith (literally: The Rifles of Tanith). Since the original English title is a reference to The Guns of Navarone, translated into Polish as Działa Nawarony, the proper choice of words would be Działa Tanith.
• In The Exploits of Moominpappa, when Little My hears that the Muddler and the Fuzzy have just gotten married, she cheerfully announces that they've gone off and poisoned themselves — because in Swedish, the word for "married" ^note  gift. This word also causes confusion in translation from German to English, where gift also means poison. One of Hitler's generals was nicknamed "der Giftzwerg'' by his men; one English translation missed the point entirely and somehow rendered General Heinrici's nickname as "the gift-dwarf" is the same as the word for "poison." This pun was impossible to translate into most languages; in the English translation she just says something generic about "they're in real trouble now."
• The Lord of the Rings:
  • In-universe example. When reading the inscription on the doors to Moria, Gandalf translates the phrase pedo mellon a minno to "Speak, friend, and enter", and interprets it to mean "if you are a friend, say the password out loud and the door opens". He then spends hours trying every manner of password, until he realizes he's made a bad translation. The phrase is in fact "Say 'friend' and enter", and the password is the Elvish word for "friend", mellon.
  • In another in-universe example: in the appendices, where it's explained that most of the book is actually translated from the dead language of Westron, we learn that Frodo and Sam's real names are "Maura" and "Banazîr"—which literally mean "Wise" and "Simple" (or "Wise" and "Half-Wise"), respectively. In translating the book into English, Tolkien drew on etymologies from Real Life languages to replace the characters' Westron names. So "Maura" became "Frodo" (a real antiquated name derived from the Old English "fród", meaning "wise"), while "Banazîr" became "Samwise" ("Sam" being derived from the proto-Germanic prefix "sam-", meaning "half", making his name "Half-Wise" or "Halfwit"). With the "translation", the wordplay is nearly impossible to notice.^note  Pippin's nickname also makes a lot more sense in the "original" Westron: his real name is "Razanur", and he's called "Razar" for short; "Razanur" is a Westron word meaning "stranger" or "wanderer", while "Razar" means "apple". Tolkien translated "Razanur" as "Peregrine" ("peregrine" being an adjective meaning "prone to wandering") and "Razar" as "Pippin" (a word for a type of apple), even though "Pippin" doesn't sound much like a diminutive form of "Peregrine" in English. It conveys the general meaning, but the pun is lost.
  • Peter Jackson, among others, noted that the word "wraith" doesn't translate. This is mostly because it has a similar root to the words "writhe" and "wrath" suggesting something which is both illusive, in pain and angry.
• Imperial Radch: In-Universe example. The Radchaai Galactic Superpower has no societal concept of gender and uses female pronouns as a matter of Translation Convention, which sometimes confuses or offends male outsiders. Played for Laughs with the historic Culture Clash when the Radch conquered the planet Athoek: they mistranslated the pronoun usage as an implicit demand for the emasculation of all men and invented the Athoeki Penis Festival as an attempt to placate the Radchaai with a cornucopia of genital effigies.
• In I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level, Azusa made a Meaningful Rename by rewriting her name from kanji to katakana, with the connotation that she no longer sees herself as Japanese. This only works in languages that have multiple syllabaries, which means in most languages, Azusa won't even appear to have changed her name at all, let alone the connotations. The anime adaptation, which includes spoken dialogue and has at least a little intention of being presentable to English-speaking audiences, eases this a bit by also having her flip the given name-surname order, going from Aizawa Azusa to Azusa Aizawa. The full meaning behind the rename is still lost, but Western viewers at least can comprehend there being a change at all. Meanwhile, the anime's Funimation dub throws this issue completely out the window, with Azusa instead declaring "Goodbye, Azusa workaholic, and hello, Azusa lazy witch."
• In Good Omens, there is a joke about an American soldier wondering why they should be giving faggots to a Witchfinder, and who is quite excited to learn that it is probably to burn them. The French translation kept the exchange, using the French word "fagots" (which only has the meaning of "bundle of wood") to translate "faggot", with the translator adding a footnote apologising for not being able to translate the original joke and explaining the double meaning of "fagot" in English.
• In the Philogelos, an ancient Roman joke book, there are several jokes whose punchline depends on wordplay that doesn't work in English, or cultural touchstones that have been lost over the last millennium and a half:
  • Joke #1: A dumb scholar goes to a silversmith and commissions a lamp. The silversmith asks him how big he wants it, and he replies, "Large enough for eight people!"^note Potential meanings are that he's providing a useless metric, he's just asking for a very large lamp, or as one paper argues, it's a pun about ordering a lanternfish from a fishmonger's.
  • Joke #8: A dumb scholar wants to catch a mouse that keeps gnawing at his books, so he waits in the dark with a piece of meat in his mouth.
  • Joke #15: A dumb scholar buys a house and spends all day sitting by his windowsill, asking passersby if it makes him look good.
  • Joke #23: A dumb scholar enters a bathhouse when it first opens for the day. Upon seeing no one inside, he tells his servant, "As far as I can see, this bath doesn't wash."^note this may be a reference to a quote by the cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope.
• Tales from Jabba's Palace: An In-Universe example. The Huttese word "fierfek" is generally believed to mean poison, so the chef Porcellus is horrified to learn Jabba thinks he used a "fierfek" on the food. While able to prove his assistant was poisoning Jabba's food, Porcellus is still sentenced to death. As C-3PO (unhelpfully) explains, Hutts don't actually have a word for poison as their biology is too resilient for most toxins to harm them. "Fierfek" actually translates most closely to "hex"—meaning Jabba believed that Porcellus was cursing his food to cause bad luck, hence why so many people who ate it died soon after.
• Common with In-Universe examples in Always Coming Home. A lot of aspects in Kesh language are hard to translate to us. Prominently, a double case is Stone Telling complaining that she has to use "reversal words" which sound ridiculous to Kesh speakers in order to properly describe the Dayao culture. However, the differences in question are things like status and wealth being determined by possessions rather than generosity, a difficulty completely lost to modern Western society, which is closer to the Dayao in that respect.
• There are two popular British children's books in which the word "human beans" are consistently used to describe human beings: The Borrowers and The BFG. In the Norwegian translations of both books, the expression "menneskebønne" (direct translation) is being used, even though it doesn't work as any kind of pun.

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