German translation

[altariel]

My Finduilas story Lady of Silences has just been translated into German. My German is practically non-existent, but I'm amazed that the translator, Cúthalion, has managed to retain the rhyme in the verse that's part of the piece.

Lady of Silences has been one of my more controversial pieces; I'm not sure it was entirely successful, but for those who have 'got' it, it seems to work.

Comments

[glitterboy1.livejournal.com]

Gosh - there's a compliment!

I hadn't read this story before, so I read both. And gosh again, but differently this time. Silences indeed, but painfully loud. Thanks, Altariel, it's a good story, and I like the fact that it says something about all of the characters.

I just went to read your At Sea (http://www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=1301707) again, for a very different glimpse of Denethor and Finduilas. Sorry, I'm just a soppy romantic at heart. :-)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's a bit of a depressing one, I'm afraid... 'At Sea' was written in part to make me feel a bit better about the way LoS came out.

[glitterboy1.livejournal.com]

Well, it certainly made me feel better. It doesn't make LoS any less depressing, but it's a view of better times. Thanks for both of them.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I'm tinkering with a bit of a gloomy Denethor story at the moment (hm, what is it about Denethor that the stories seem to come out gloomy?). I'll give plenty of warning.

[glitterboy1.livejournal.com]

:-)

I'll look forward to it.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

The translation reads well. Preserving rhyme between German and English is actually easier than you might think, certainly easier than between English and French, because a lot of the root words that make rhymes are the same or connected; English did more or less develop from Germanic roots with some Norman add-on vocabulary. I was once on a Dutch train with my Geordie father-in-law; we were walking down a corridor when the Dutch guard said "Nee furder". My father-in-law was dead chuffed to find he understood Dutch perfectly!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I had wondered if there might be difficulties in rhyming coming from the fixed word order in German.

I was once on a Dutch train with my Geordie father-in-law; we were walking down a corridor when the Dutch guard said "Nee furder". My father-in-law was dead chuffed to find he understood Dutch perfectly!

:-D Oh, that's a great story!

[hafren.livejournal.com]

I had wondered if there might be difficulties in rhyming coming from the fixed word order in German

Oh, German poets are sensible about that - they cheat when they need to.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Ah! Makes sense to me.

[ithilwen.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! It's nice to know your story is going to find a wider audience (and even nicer to know that someone thought well enough of it to want to translate it!).

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It was very pleasant to be asked! Apparently the translator is quite keen to do some of the Faramir stories, and possibly even 'A Game of Chess', which strikes me as a fairly major task - I know writing it was!

[ithilwen.livejournal.com]

Seems those German-language readers have a lot to look forward to!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

:-D

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Thanks! :-D

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! I'm not surprised someone wanted to translate this. I went and read both LoS and At Sea. The former made me shiver, the latter made me smile, and a little tearful too. Both lovely.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Thank you. LoS was one of those stories that wouldn't go away until it was told. At Sea came from a challenge (write the story of how one character proposed to another) - Mr A.'s idea, of course, to tell it from that particular POV!

[vasiliki.livejournal.com]

I loved that story.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Why thank you, ma'am!

[communicator.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't normally read LotR fiction as you know, and I'm not sure of the context, but that is a very sad and affecting story. Surely this is what fanfic ought to do, to flesh out the gaps in the canon to make it more real.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

My understanding of the critiques I got was that, given the dearth and under-developed nature of the female characters in Tolkien, it was preferable to write female characters to portray them in a positive light. And I think some people found it melodramatic. I don't know, I could well be misunderstanding. It's certainly not meant to be a comfortable piece.