Hello there, "Still paddling the old knew" is one of my favourite lines and I've been wondering for a long time how this has been translated into other languages, so if there are any other international posters here, or people who just happen to have read Ender's Game in another language, it'd be cool if you contributed And not to leave you hanging, I'll start with the Romanian translation and spin on the word game, which is: Tot canoe, vaslind - where "tot"=still, "canoe" you can figure and "vaslind"=paddling. The explanation for the joke behind is where it gets fun, since canoe is spelled as it normally would be in Romanian. The word game in this case involves separating canoe into "ca" and "noe" where "ca" means "like" and "noe" is the Romanian form of the name Noah, so the inside joke would translate into English: Still paddling, like Noah. So there you go. How has it been adapted to other languages?
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Hi, henry! Welcome to Hatrack.
I'm afraid the only language I've read EG in is English, but it's always fun to see what puns can be translated.
Posted by Clumpy (Member # 8122) on :
Douglas Hofstadter wrote a book called Godel, Escher Bach which was filled with puns (both verbal and visual - the structure of the book itself was intended to form a very specific framework). He charged himself with translating the book into as many languages as possible and was fascinated with the ways that puns and visual language changed between versions. I was pretty interested in the way "canoe" was tackled in the various versions. Being able to adapt a pun rather than having to switch it entirely when translating to a new language is admirable indeed.
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