American mannerism

PhilK

Sounds good though I was thinking of trees that could be turned into switches haha. Somehow I see her as a Myrtyl or an Olive, though I am sure she approaches her job very merrily indeed haha! why wouldn't one be merry if all one had to do was spank naught bottoms all day haha!

PhilK
Translating has always been a great joy for me: grappling with words, changing for a better translation overnight. Unfortunately it's only a hobby while I would have been glad to make it a job...
The best example I can find on the spur of the moment is the title of David Lodge's latest book: "Deaf Sentence" which in French is "La vie en sourdine".

Translating English book titles is sometimes made difficult; because the author takes it for granted that the reader is familiar with quotations from the Bible or Shakespeare or Tennyson's works. In my opinion it shows how lazy the author is, when he does not use some time to come up with a title of his own make.

One of the neatest I know of is Gilbert Adair's translation of Georges Perec's novel 'La Disparition', which famously omits all use of the letter 'e'. Adair pulled off the same trick in English, and called his translation 'A Void'.

Very good! I didn't know that!

The best teacher I had at university told us exactly the same, insisting on the Bible and Shakespeare. I had no problem with the Bible, but as for Shakespeare...

That has a spanking in it I seem to remember!!

blimp
Absolutely not! I read it again about a month ago, I would remember!

Clearly, there needs to be a contest to decide Miss Thrashbottom's first name.

I don't entirely agree with yenz about titles. What's wrong with an author using a famous phrase and giving it a new meaning? The most famous phrases and names in the Bible are pretty widely known, so that many people know them without realising their origin - an eye for an eye, greater love has no man than this, shibboleth, Calvary. Some Shakespeare is pretty widely known too - "To be or not to be", for example. If you come across that in a bok title, you aren't obliged to read "Hamlet", though I do recommend it. Tennyson, no: not many people read him nowadays and only a few lines from "The Charge of the Light Brigade" could be said to have entered the language.

If authors can't quote (or amend quotes) for their titles, we wouldn't, for example, have "For whom the Bell Tolls" (Hemingway using John Donne) or "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" (Le Carre using a nursery rhyme).