Discworld Translations
- Thread starter NineTenthsMadness
- Start date
Just noticed your poem "La Ginesta", Mixa. It is lovely! 
Here's a bit of trivia for all you Brits out there.
The broom flower (or genesta in Latin, or ginesta in Spanish) is the source of the medieval Plantagenet dynasty - the one that stretched from William the Conqueror to Richard III (he of "Princes in the Tower" legend). The dynasty was named planta genesta (i.e. the broom flower), or planta genet for short.
Etymology is fun!
Here's a bit of trivia for all you Brits out there.
The broom flower (or genesta in Latin, or ginesta in Spanish) is the source of the medieval Plantagenet dynasty - the one that stretched from William the Conqueror to Richard III (he of "Princes in the Tower" legend). The dynasty was named planta genesta (i.e. the broom flower), or planta genet for short. Etymology is fun!
Goodness, how have I managed not to spot this thread before?
I am a Brit living in Luxembourg, a country only slightly bigger than Lancre. Luxembourg has three languages: French (the Official Language), German (an official language, note lower case), and Luxembourgish (the National Language - a Germanic dialect but most emphatically not a dialect of German - which all Luxembourgers speak at home).
I would love it if someone translated DW into Luxembourgish, but I fear its readers would number in the dozens, if that. Of course there are DW fans here, but they will mostly read it in English (or French, or German).
And it would be very difficult to get the class and regional differences reflected in Luxembourgish. You could just about have the Feegles talking broad Éislek (northern Luxembourg), but there is no upper class with a distinctive way of speaking, so it would be hard to distinguish Lady Sybil from Sgt Colon by their accents.
Maybe, one day when I have retired, I will give it a go...
Btw someone mentioned Death being a female character in Italian. Death is feminine in all the Latin-based languages, I think. In "Mortimer", the French version of "Mort", there is a footnote on the first page which says "Sur le Disque-Monde, la Mort est un personnage masculin", which gets round the problem quite nicely.
I am a Brit living in Luxembourg, a country only slightly bigger than Lancre. Luxembourg has three languages: French (the Official Language), German (an official language, note lower case), and Luxembourgish (the National Language - a Germanic dialect but most emphatically not a dialect of German - which all Luxembourgers speak at home).
I would love it if someone translated DW into Luxembourgish, but I fear its readers would number in the dozens, if that. Of course there are DW fans here, but they will mostly read it in English (or French, or German).
And it would be very difficult to get the class and regional differences reflected in Luxembourgish. You could just about have the Feegles talking broad Éislek (northern Luxembourg), but there is no upper class with a distinctive way of speaking, so it would be hard to distinguish Lady Sybil from Sgt Colon by their accents.
Maybe, one day when I have retired, I will give it a go...
Btw someone mentioned Death being a female character in Italian. Death is feminine in all the Latin-based languages, I think. In "Mortimer", the French version of "Mort", there is a footnote on the first page which says "Sur le Disque-Monde, la Mort est un personnage masculin", which gets round the problem quite nicely.