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If you speak another language, have you read a book translated from English published under a different title? (piefed.social)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by Shadow79@piefed.social to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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I recall reading both "The Good Soldiers" (兵士は戦場で何を見たのか) & "Thank You For Your Service" (帰還兵はなぜ自殺するのか) by David Finkel in Japanese which have been renamed into "What did soldiers saw at the battlefield?" or "Why do returnees commit suicide?" , very different from the English original. The artwork for the front covers are different, the English one depicts troops in Iraq from inside a Humvee while the Japanese one depicts actual combat.

(Japanese books: translated from another language or originally Japanese written are always formatted from right to left with vertical text, even translated versions of works that are originally in English get the reading format mirrored, also the book dimensions do differ: English novels are larger while Japanese versions are smaller in comparison).

I mean, is this also present in European languages (i.e. German, Spanish) where a translated copy of literature that's originally published in English is called under a different title irrelevant from the source material alongside different cover art? The thing is, why are translated versions of books sometimes published under a completely different title and depending on the publishing house, why do they create their own front covers in the translated copy?

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[–] akunohana@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 day ago

If you speak another language, have you read a book translated from English published under a different title?
Yes, to name a few:

The Lord of the Rings in Hungarian (first language) whose cover art was different than many other cover arts. This is also a bad example in that there are so many variations of the cover art in English depending on publisher.
The Hobbit in Swedish (first language) whose title different in that the translator made up a word for "hobbit" in Swedish ("hob", pronounced hoob in English). 🤮
Koto by Yasunari Kawabata in Swedish whose cover art is different than the one publication that I have of it in Japanese.

I mean, is this also present in European languages (i.e. German, Spanish) where a translated copy of literature that’s originally published in English is called under a different title irrelevant from the source material alongside different cover art?
Yes, see previous answer.

[...] why are translated versions of books sometimes published under a completely different title [...]
My guess is that in a case like The Hobbit versus Hoben (Swedish), the translator and the publisher wanted to make the title less foreign sounding and easier to pronounce. As for your own examples, I have been asking myself the same question on multiple occasions. Sometimes the translated title is either ridiculous or it straight out ruins the immersion. Really werid... The only case in which I don't think it's weird is if there are cultural aspects to it that otherwise make the title conceptually hard to grasp for the target population.

why do they create their own front covers in the translated copy?
Because artists love to artist. 🙃