Translation mistakes

[Thunder_93]

Hey everybody,

 

this topic is basically for people who read Sanderson books in other languages (or the one's that are just curious).

So, my first language is german, so I read my first Sanderson-Books (all started with Mistborn) in german.

 

And there were pretty many translation mistakes (I reread the trilogy by now on english):

Fighting the Lord Ruler, Vin never sucked in the mists! In Hero of Ages, it said something like "she sucked in the mist, like when fighting TLR". And I just thought, whaaaaat, that never happened --> so, reread the Final Empire on english, and there it happened. They just skipped the most important detail

 

Other bad mistake:

The second book "The well of Ascension" is named in German "Krieger des Feuers". Wenn you translate that back to english, it means "Warriors of Fire".... yeah, makes totally sense.

 

 

Did anyone else experience translation mistakes like that?

[Botanica she/her]

Yeah!

My first read of Mistborn was through simplified Chinese copy, and the translation of that edition is incredibly bad. (The same thing also happened with Elantris.) How bad? There're translation mistakes on almost every page! Especially The Final Empire. The whole fandom (not only the Cosmere one, but also the whole fantasy/sci-fi fandom) was shocked by its bad quality, so we complained, "That publisher brutally ruined Brandon's reputation and his Cosmere series! It's scandalous! It's a sin!" (Fortunately, another publisher wish to do all of Brandon's books anew, and that gives us a chance to read some good translation.)

Some examples of mistakes:

- TLR is called "Sliver of Infinity", but the translator just thought it's "Silver of Infinity" without another glance.

- Pewter should be translated as "白镴", but in the copy-editing process (we suppose), the word was changed into "白蜡" (They read the same.), just because the character "镴" is more complex and uncommon to see. However, "白蜡" means "white wax", which is wrong.

(BTW I've read German Words of Radiance once. The overall translation is nice, but I also found some mistakes. The translator seemed to omit many things. But I'm not sure if it is common in German translation of English fantasy books.)

[Thunder_93]

Wow, seems like chinese is translated really bad...

 

But you're right, overall, the German translation is pretty good. Just in the Mistborn-Series are a lot of Mistakes. I mean, look what I wrote about the name of Band 2. Band 3's name is poorely translated too, but not as bad. It says "Herrscher des Lichts" which means something like Ruler of Light... I mean, yeah, almost Hero of Time. But Band 2 is just the worst to me.

 

And I think it's funny that they made a mistake at Pewter, as they did the same in German! In German, it's called "Weissblech", which is a thin steelplate covered in Tin... Funny they've made a mistake in 2 languages, but at the same metal

[natc]

Well until I read this series I did not even realize pewter existed, so I can't blame them >_<

As a Chinese guy (I read the English version because my upbringing kind of resulted in my Chinese writing fluency to tank while I can basically handle English like a native speaker. Speak both languages fine) though, I feel embarrassed about that.

Edited November 9, 2015 by natc

[Young Bard he/him]

I have tried reading German books before (German is my second language). All I can say is... I find it difficult enough reading the book even when it's written correctly, let alone when it's written incorrectly, so I strongly sympathize.

 

@Thunder93: What do they do instead? I might read it myself (try German for a change - I've read it 3 times in English), and I'm curious what they did. How did Vin defeat the Lord Ruler in that version?

[Thunder_93]

@ TheYoungBard: When Vin was fighting the Lord Ruler, she just flared her Iron (thats pulling on metals right?), but still didn't see the lines. Then it says, the mists start coming closer to her, and she just kind off looks at them. And then sees the blue lines pointing to TLR braces, then pulls on them

[Alfa he/him]

It's not an actual error, but in german they use the same word for "Splinter" (e.g. in splintering), "Sliver" (e.g. Sliver of Infinity) and "Shard" (e.g. In Shardblade). IIRC nowhere in the books the word "Shard" is used in referring to an actual shard, so we will see.

The problem is, German lacks words. We have "Scherbe" which is approximatly "Shard", we have "Splitter" ~ "Splinter", "Sprengsel" ~ "Spren", but for "Sliver" the best translation will be "Splitter" again, so the Cosmere will not be accesible for Germans in its whole beauty.

[DreamEternal]

In the portuguese translation of Mistborn here in Brazil, TLR is the "Spark/Ember of Infinity" because there are not enough words that talk about a piece of a broken whole that can be taken seriously.

EDIT: I don't consider it a "mistake" myself, since the way Slivers work make "Ember/Spark" more fitting in my opinion.

Edited November 25, 2015 by CognitivePulsePattern

[Alfa he/him]

That is a clever solution.

[Oversleep]

Well, in Polish there is no term for pewter. So the translation is, literally 'tin with lead'. And pewtermind is tinleadmind. In Polish it's not uncommon to link words like that, so it's not the issue. All of sprens translate similarly, no issue with somethingspren. But "Cryptics" became "Riddlers".

Also, the first book set on Scadrial is named 'Mistborn'. Not 'The Final Empire', but 'Mistborn'. And for some reason translator instead of inventing a new word which would translate to 'Mistborn', went with something like 'From Mist Born' or rather 'Of Mist Born'. In the text, it's commonly shortened to 'Born'. I got used to it...

 

Ruin became 'Destruction' in spite of us having the word "ruina"! No idea why.

Also, we do not have a word for bendalloy, so it's left untranslated.

Stormlight is 'Storming Light' or maybe 'Stormy Light'. Adjective Noun phrase. No issue with that, though. A lot of these two-words-mixed-into-one which Brandon loves got separated. Binding the Surgers. Binding the Void. Singers of Dawn. Smiths of Bonds. Dancers of the Edge. Shapers of Will.Those who See the Truth, but without all that "those who", much like a Seer, but it's another word. Blade of Shard, Plate of Shard, 'Shard' dumped when shortened version.  Maybe something like Shard's Blade and Shard's Plate?
Also, we don't have "of", so these are all two words phrases.
Sometimes part of the word is dumped, and because it's nearly impossible to translate them, like Elsecallers - we got something like Relocaters.Like with Voiders and Dusters, ommiting the 'bringer' part.
Windrunners became... Windyers? It's a word derived from adjective of 'wind', much like dancer is somebody who dances and caller somebody who calls. And similarly Skybreakers became "Heavenly" or "Divine". So the "-runner" and "-breaker" is lost in translation.
Soulcasters became "Soulers" and Soulcasting "Souling". Shadesmare translates perfectly.
Also, 'Truthless' is kinda hard to translate, so we got 'Liar'.

 

Edited November 29, 2015 by Oversleep

[flying_shadow she/her]

In Russian, ''Ruin'' and ''Preservation'' were translated into the words for ''Destroyer'' and ''Preserver'', but ''Odium'' and ''Honor'' were translated correctly. Minor thing but it could confuse people.

 

Since you often can't stick two words together to make another one, ''Shardblade'' became ''blade of shards'' and ''Mistborn'' became ''mist born'', but it's two long words that sound really clunky. ''Truthless'' became ''one who doesn't know the truth''(in Russian, that is written with 3 words).

 

Some names were transliterated improperly.

[Oversleep]

Also, at first I was confused if the name 'Jasnah' was translated. Since in Polish word "jasna" means "bright" (and title 'brightness' is 'jasność'). Then I found out about the origin of her name.

 

In Russian, ''Ruin'' and ''Preservation'' were translated into the words for ''Destroyer'' and ''Preserver'', but ''Odium'' and ''Honor'' were translated correctly. Minor thing but it could confuse people.

 

Since you often can't stick two words together to make another one, ''Shardblade'' became ''blade of shards'' and ''Mistborn'' became ''mist born'', but it's two long words that sound really clunky. ''Truthless'' became ''one who doesn't know the truth''(in Russian, that is written with 3 words).

 

Some names were transliterated improperly.

I suspect the 'blade of shards' issue is similar in our languages

[DreamEternal]

Count portuguese among those languages you just can't stick two words together. I dread the day SA gets translated .

[Guest keeper of the light]

In Turkey, we are waiting the second book of Mistborn, The Well of Ascension. And the publisher said that they named the book "Kuşatma", which means "Siege" in English and nobody understood why

[DreamEternal]

In Turkey, we are waiting the second book of Mistborn, The Well of Ascension. And the publisher said that they named the book "Kuşatma", which means "Siege" in English and nobody understood why

Why didn't they understand? It is mostly about a big siege, after all.

Edited November 29, 2015 by CognitivePulsePattern

[Guest keeper of the light]

Instead of translating the original name, why would you translate it differently? Author gave that name to book, why did you change it?

[DreamEternal]

Instead of translating the original name, why would you translate it differently? Author gave that name to book, why did you change it?

Because if you have the chance to make it cooler without changing what matters, you should at least try. The author is the maker of a work, but his word is not holy.

[Guest keeper of the light]

But I don't think "Siege" ise cooler than "The Well of Ascension" Whatever, it doesn't matter much as long as they translated the book good