Sunday, April 26, 2009

Go tell Dallas : Portuguese translation of 'Dead Until Dark' is excellent

Our wonderful friend, Telma from Portugal (who you met if you listened to the True Blood/ Sookie international show a few weeks back) promised to give us a review of the translation of the book Dead until Dark into Portuguese as soon as it became available. It has come out and Telma writes and she send along the note she received from Charlaine , who always seems to be interested in hearing about foreign language translations of her books.

Hi Dallas,
As promised I'm sending my review of "Dead until Dark" Portuguese's version, that was released on April 9th. I loved it! The translation was good, meaning it was true to the original as well making sense in Portuguese. Some "southern" expressions were lost, of course, but the humour survived. I actually left a message on the CH boards and here is what she answered:
Me:
Hello Charlaine,
First of all thank you for your fertile imagination and congratulations for your success.
I came here to tell you that the first edition of "Dead until Dark" was released here in Portugal last Thursday, and I'm so happy about it!
Was worried that some would get lost in translation (and it did) but your sense of humor came across the language barrier and it's really fun to read.

Some words are just impossible to find in Portuguese (for example, being glamored, redneck) and other sound horrible when translated (fangbanger).
But the hole spirit and feel are there and that's what really matters.
Can't wait for the next 8 books!! Big kisses from across the Atlantic, Telma, Portugal
CH:
Telma, thanks for letting me hear about the Portuguese translation. Some of my other foreign readers are not so happy with the translations they read.
I guess comparing to other countries I'm lucky! Now I'm hopping that the book becomes a good seller so I can see all the other books published very soon.

Kisses,
Telma

-

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I didn´t read the portuguese version yet and it must be different from the portugal, since there a lot of diferences between portugal portuguese and brazilian portuguese, but I´ll try to read it...I don´t like to read translated stuff simply because it always annoys me! They never truly keep the spirit of the books

" Dallas " said...

Sucker you made my head explode with the "Portugal Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese" comment ! hhahha

yeah telma doesn't like to read them either but she wanted to try the translation and see how it was ..you guys should talk !

Using some language -- just don't tell me about it

ahhahahahha

Lara said...

I read the brazilian portuguese version of Dead Until Dark. Thing is, after reading all the other seven books in english, i'm so used to the terms and writing that I just don't remember how they translated it... I'll have to check it later.
As for the differences between portugal portuguese and brazilian portuguese, I guess it's like american english and british english. Pronunciation and a lot of words and terms are very distinct.

isabel said...

I'm Portuguese and I still hadn't readed the translation, only the original in english. But now I'm really curious too buy it sooner to compare them.
For the question, I already readed books in Brazilian Portuguese, because of ebooks, and there's a lot of difference, we use very different expressions and terms.
And by the way, sorry my english! :D

Mima said...

The Brazilian translation to DUD is good.
The only thing I didn't like was that the translator (or the editor, I don't know) chose to do it in a more "formal" way.
I thought it would be better in a more colloquial tone. But it is good anyways...