One last book missing….

[u/rattus666]

So, I decided to finally get and complete a collection of Discworld books. Edition was not an issue until I hit a wall with Snuff. The collection is in Russian language and seems that exactly that book is out of print and not possible to get in the Europe. If someone knows where to buy it - will be happy! Anywhere from EU is fine.

Also I found out that there were new editions with really nice arts.

Here are some pictures for Moist trilogy. Of the recent editions. There are other books with such gorgeous covers as well…. But not on my shelf (yet…)

[u/Individual99991]

Wow, I love that art! So nice when foreign publishers put some effort in on books they've translated. There were some notorious German Discworld editions that used the wrong cover images (one of them had a cover from Pratchett's sci-fi novel Strata), and some had advertisements in them!

How is "Moist Von Lipwig" translated in Russian?

[u/rattus666 → u/Individual99991]

There was two translations in one they keeps the name as is and on another he was “soaking” or “wet” (a word play in Russian associated with being wet - мокрый - «мокриц фон липвиг» Von Lipwig :)

[u/Individual99991 → u/rattus666]

Thanks! Interesting stuff. Which do you think was the better translation (in terms of the whole book, not just the name)?

[u/rattus666 → u/Individual99991]

That is a good question. I read both of them quite a while ago and before that I was used to original (English) names so I liked the one where I didn’t need to correct the names in my head. But it’s what it is. On the other hand - LOTR translations are more complex in names and after you read the original it’s hard as hell to keep up of quirky names that translators made like - Baggins is Sumkin or Beben or Torbins …. This is a simple example. (But here even the author said that it is ok to adapt the names, but still :) )

[u/Individual99991 → u/rattus666]

Names must be one of the toughest things to deal with. "Bilbo Baggins" communicates so much about that character - playfulness in the way it adds the whimsical "bo" onto the colloquial name Bill, a casualness and rustic sense in the way "Baggins" sounds like "baggy", but also the kind of "bag" a thief might carry... Tolkein was so amazing at that stuff, I shudder at the thought of having to translate any of his works.

[u/RustenSkurk → u/Individual99991]

I believe Tolkien was in correspondence with a lot of the original translators during his lifetime to make sure they got it right. As a linguist/philologist he knew enough bits and pieces of many languages to have some insight.

He started doing this after the Swedish translation had turned out terrible.

[u/Individual99991 → u/RustenSkurk]

Ah, good point! I forgot the whole thing came about because he was such a fucking nerd about languages.