Story of friendship and football gets lost in translation

Clumsily translated sentences like this litter the book. Not only are they difficult to understand, they deny the book any sense of narrative voice. The same goes for the characters themselves: "Where are you coming from at this hour, Ruso?"; "From dropping off the twins at school, Fe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIndependent (London, England : 1986)
Main Author Soutar, Jethro
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London (UK) Independent Digital News & Media 06.08.2014
Subjects
Lethem, Mara Faye
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Summary:Clumsily translated sentences like this litter the book. Not only are they difficult to understand, they deny the book any sense of narrative voice. The same goes for the characters themselves: "Where are you coming from at this hour, Ruso?"; "From dropping off the twins at school, Ferchu." Ruso and Ferchu talk normally to one another in Spanish, so why is their language so stilted in English? It's doubly unfortunate that the book is about football, which has a language all its own. In football speak, it's "The Reds" not "The Red" ("playing against the Red was a challenge for everyone"); "byline" not "goal line" (The ball goes out of bounds along the goal line); "youth team" not "juvenile" ("I had a few juvenile players under consideration").
ISSN:0951-9467