BotNS in German

Maru · 03 Dec 2004, 15:55 · from 2004-December.txt.gz

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From: marudubshinki at yahoo.com (Maru)
Date: Fri Dec  3 15:55:57 2004
Subject: (urth) BotNS in German
In-Reply-To: <6.2.0.14.0.20041203214147.03cf27b0 at pop.gmx.net>
Message-ID: <20041203235555.73231.qmail at web14726.mail.yahoo.com>

Good grief!  How on earth do you plan to replicate his
vocabulary?
Does German even have an analogue to the OED?
Will you add critical information?
~Maru
Even if you stop tomorrow, I admire the scope of your dreams and
devotion.

--- Hmpf MacSlow <hmpf1998 at gmx.net> wrote:

> But first: print-on-demand Lexicon Urthus? Very good news. :-)
> 
> Yeah, I know I said I'd go back to lurking, but circumstances
> drive me to 
> posting again... circumstances being these: I have this habit
> of giving my 
> mom who, fortunately, is really open-minded my favourite book
> of the year 
> for Christmas. By this self-imposed 'rule' I should have given
> her BotNS 
> last year already, but I was somewhat daunted by the task of
> finding copies 
> of the German version. (I usually read books that were written
> in English 
> in English, but my mom reads mostly German, and I certainly
> wouldn't ask 
> her to read *Wolfe* in English.) But this year, I've found
> copies of all 
> the five volumes, and one of them, UotNS, arrived today. I've
> only had a 
> quick glance at it so far, but even so it is painfully obvious
> that the 
> translation is, well, less than satisfactory. Severian's '...
> what I've 
> done *to* Urth." has been turned into a '... what I've done
> *for* Urth*, 
> Apheta is addressed as 'woman' instead of 'lady', etc.
> Unfortunately all 
> the volumes have been translated by the same translator, so
> there's little 
> hope of the other four volumes being any better.
> 
> Add to that the fact that the books have been out of print for
> years, and 
> you can see why I as a German Wolfe fan feel both vaguely
> ashamed and 
> enormously frustrated. I want to recommend this book to people
> I know, but 
> it's unavailable! (I'm translating the book myself now, as
> 'therapy' for 
> that frustration, but of course there is little chance of me
> finishing that 
> work, much less finishing it within any kind of useful
> timeframe. It 
> clearly is a mammoth task.)
> 
> In my opinion it is a crying shame that The Book of the New Sun
> is not 
> currently available in a German edition. I don't know if there
> is any 
> chance of us lowly readers influencing the decisions of big
> publishing 
> houses, but maybe it's worth a try. Are there any other German
> Wolfe 
> readers on this list? Maybe a few well-argued letters to Heyne,
> the 
> 'current' publisher, and perhaps to Suhrkamp and Klett-Cotta,
> which IMO 
> would me much better suited to Wolfe than Heyne is, couldn't
> hurt... and if 
> we're asking for a reprint, we can just as well ask for a new
> translation, 
> too...
> 
> The worst that can happen is that they tell us 'no', in which
> case we'll be 
> no worse off than we are now.
> 
> Hmpf
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
> 



		
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