The Reading Room

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3:43 AM

Q: What is the story of the woman who collected valueless things?

In G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown short story, The Blast of the Book, he makes two references to a story (presumably allegoric) about a woman who collected valueless things. The references are not explained and from the context it seems that the reader is assumed to be familiar with this story. ...

8 hours later…

Rand al'Thor

11:51 AM

@b_jonas Turns out I was getting it the wrong way round. The book was originally written in English and translated into Turkish.

But it still gives rise to a host of interesting language questions, given that the author is Turkish herself and much of the book is set in Turkey.

Bookworm

12:08 PM

Q: Why was The Bastard of Istanbul translated into Turkish as "Father and Bastard"?

The novel The Bastard of Istanbul was originally written in English (by a Turkish author, and set largely in the eponymous city in Turkey). It's been translated into various other languages, as listed on the linked Wikipedia page, and usually the title is directly translated. The exception is the...

translation title elif-shafak the-bastard-of-istanbul

2 hours later…

Christophe Strobbe

2:04 PM

@Randal'Thor And what is more astonishing about that tag is that I didn't write the tag wiki excerpt ;-)

2 hours later…

b_jonas

4:13 PM

@Randal'Thor It's tricky. That's what I was talking about with the incorrect data in the library catalogs: some give the English title as orignal, and some give the Turkish one. It's also possible that it was written in one language and the author translated it to the other language, like Szathmári did with many of his stories, which is why it's not obvious which one the original language was.

It's theoretically also possible that the author wrote in both languages simultanaeously, but I think most such claims are just exaggerations. It's possible that the author got some feedback about the original from an editor after he started or even completed the translation, and thus modified both the original and the translation accordingly.

OTOH, when a work is self-translated, then the author generally understands what they meant when he wrote the original, so he can translate very faithfully, better than most other translators could, and probably has more freedom to change things without fearing of adding something the original author wouldn't approve of, and it might be possible to consider both of them originals because of that.

However, for this particular case, I have no definite proof that it was self-translated.

Otoh, long self-translated books are rare. (Short self-translated snippets are not so rare, especially on the internet.)

Bookworm

Q: Kids book from the 90's: Illustrated “solve the mystery” book I can't remember the name of

I remember part of it had the inside of an airplane and you had to look around at all of the people on the airplane for clues. I think another part had a big mansion you were looking for clues in as well. Throughout the book you were searching for clues to solve the main mystery. I'm pretty sure...