Publication and reception overseas (especially in foreign languages)

[animalia]

I was wondering if anyone knew how the Cosmere is received anywhere it has been published overseas. Especially in any foreign languages and cultures the various works might  have been published in.

Edited January 30, 2018 by animalia

[Shqueeves]

Given that we have Sharders all over the world, I'd venture to guess it's recieved pretty well

[animalia]

I am hoping for something a little more specific. I would love to talk about the cultural implications of various aspects of the works with someone from China, Korea or Japan. But I don't know any of those languages.

EDIT: Not the same thing with each of those countries obviously. I was just throwing out three examples.

 

EDIT 2: For example, based on annotations on being ignored I would expect Korea and Japan might relate to Warbreaker in different ways. To quote said annotation "What {Vivenna} sees here is something real. She notices that most of Hallandren doesn’t care about Idris or the Idrians. When I lived in Korea, I sensed a lot of resentment from the Koreans toward the Japanese. The Japanese had done some pretty terrible things to the Koreans during the various wars throughout the history of the two countries, and the anger the Koreans felt was quite well justified. The thing is, most Japanese I meet are surprised to hear how much resentment there is. It’s kind of like Americans are sometimes surprised to hear how much dislike there is for them in Mexico. [Publish before Trump].

When you’re the bigger country, the one who historically won conflicts and wars, you often don’t much notice the people you’ve stepped on along the way. While the smaller country may create a rivalry with you, you may not even realize that you have a rival. This is what happened with Hallandren and Idris. While some people push for war, the general populace doesn’t even think about Idris—except as that poor group of people up in the highlands who sell them wool and do jobs they, the Hallandren, don’t want to do."

Edited January 30, 2018 by animalia

[Weltall]

I can't speak for how it was received personally as I'm not from there but I've got Japanese copies of all of Brandon's works that have been translated so I can perhaps generalize a bit on the State of the (Translated) Sanderson. There are complete translations of Elantris, Mistborn Era 1 and The Way of Kings in Japanese, as well as The Gathering Storm (but not the last two WoT books). Way of Kings appears to be the last of his works to be translated; I don't know the cause of this and don't want to speculate without any basis.

As it stands, there's probably not much discussion among Japanese readers of Warbreaker because that's one of the works with no translated version. A very quick check confirms however that there is a bilingual fanbase that's discussing books with no official translations. I might be able to get a secondhand impression of how the books have been recieved by reading online reviews and discussion threads in more detail, but like I said I can't offer a firsthand one.

There appear to be translations of some of Brandon's works in Korean and Chinese, but not being able to read either language, that's about the limits of my Search-fu. In the former case, it looks like the translations include Mistborn Era 1, the Reckoners, Elantris and The Emperor's Soul (I mean, if you're gonna translate anything of his into Korean I figure that's gotta be the one given Brandon's inspiration) but not anything from Stormlight Archive.

So yeah, if there are Sharders able to give you a personal take on the books that'll do more for you. The best I can offer if you're interested is to have a gander at what the Japanese readers are saying online.

[The One Who Connects he/him]

11 minutes ago, Weltall said:

Way of Kings appears to be the last of his works to be translated into Japanese; I don't know the cause of this and don't want to speculate without any basis.
There appear to be translations of some of Brandon's works in Korean and Chinese, but not anything from Stormlight Archive.

It's probably just the sheer word count. SA is averaging.. what? 400k words per book so far(as a rough guess), and that's gotta be time consuming to translate.

[animalia]

Thanks.