Well now I DEFINITELY need to learn Icelandic.
The shit you get away with when nobody speaks your language I swear.
Imagine publishing your punched up fanfic version of a book you found boring or not enough sexiness and everyone just assumes that’s the real version [Oh wait, Kubrick got away with it over and over again - read the originals, folks. Kubrick is a visual maestro but he butchers the emotional core and lessons of the stories]. By the way it’s been translated into english by teams of bilingual icelanders and can be bought as “Powers of Darkness: The Lost Version of Dracula”, here’s more info on the differences: https://medium.com/@toothpickings/youve-been-reading-the-wrong-dracula-a4446551d1d2
IIRC translation fuckery was a lot more common back before copyright and quicker international communication. I seem to recall that happened to Shakespeare plays all the time, but I can’t find a good source so have a 20th century example instead:
Pippi has been subject to censorship in translations. A censored edition of Pippi Longstocking appeared in France, with changes made to her character to make her “a fine young lady” instead of “a strange, maladjusted child.”[68] Additionally, the publisher, Hachette, thought that Pippi’s ability to lift a horse would seem unrealistic to French child readers, and thus changed the horse to a pony.[69] In response to this change, Lindgren requested that the publisher give her a photo of a real French girl lifting a pony, as that child would have a “secure” weightlifting career.[70] Sara Van den Bossche has hypothesized that the lack of controversy as a result of the censorship might be why Pippi Longstocking went mainly unremarked upon in France, whereas in Germany and Sweden, the book quickly became accepted within the countries’ respective children’s literature canon, even as it stirred controversy over its “anti-authoritarian tendencies.”[68] In 1995, an uncensored version of Pippi Longstocking was released in France, which “shook” French readers, although the book did not reach the cultural status as it had in Germany and Sweden.[71]
(via dollsahoy)
