I was very happy to see that the book's production and print quality look every bit as good as they did in the English-language edition. The German publisher, Knesebeck, made an odd choice to use a reddish-brown cloth on the spine instead of the original blue-black. I can live with that. The fun part is picking through the pages with my high-school German and seeing the choices they made in translating my colloquial American. Some are pretty interesting.
Did you know that American snoring goes "Zzzz" while German snoring goes "Chrrr"? Me neither.
Anyway, my compliments to whoever was in charge of quality control (it wasn't me) because I think the German version turned out great. My foreign language collection has begun.
2 comments:
Komish, or is that komisch? - but in my 4 years of H.S. German and 2 at college, it never occurred to me that crab and cancer translate the same way: Krebs. Wonder what the word for lice is? Even more comical, as we're in the vein, is the Far Side book, Unter Baren (add the umlauts over U and a), which has the identical cover in English as Deutsch - a bear in crosshairs pointing to his buddy with the inquisitive look (picture's worth far more than those words). Anyhoo - am enjoying the neverending tubular surf through your pages, from the NPR site where I started, and 2nd to last the brunmarde.com site with the eye-catching "bird" photo masthead. From TBOMH, thank you and yours for providing humor in concentrated doses to those of us in the Warner Bros cartoon generation(s) who can use the levity as we live through our loved ones' and our own Krebs. 'Tschuss. P.S. Phonetically, I think the Germans have it right - Zzzz is nasal. Chrrr is gutteral, more like a snore. P.P.S. Professor Dingsbums is the German translation of an interior page of that Far Side book, aka Professor Thingamajig. Bitteschon!
Steve, thanks for taking the tubular surf through my domains. I really appreciate your insights. I also agree that Chrrr is superior to Zzzz in every way.
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