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Jane Austen in German in public domain? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading |  | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4834 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 1 of 9 08 December 2013 at 7:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Has anyone ever come across German translations of any Jane Austen books which are in the
public domain? German Wikipedia doesn't offer much hope here, but perhaps there is something out there that hasn't made it to Wikipedia. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4834 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 2 of 9 08 December 2013 at 10:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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While researching this issue, I came across this site:
The UNESCO index of translations. It may be useful for someone. UNESCO index of translations 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4834 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 3 of 9 08 December 2013 at 11:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
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hmmmm....the more I delve into this, the more interesting (but also more depressing), it
becomes: tale of 2 authors (I know that's not about P.D. works, but it's all kind of related). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5326 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 4 of 9 08 December 2013 at 11:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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According to the German Wikipedia, there's a 1939 German translation of Pride and Prejudice by Karin von Schwab unter the title "Elisabeth und Darcy," which is most likely in the PD, but the translation is apparently not that great.
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| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4834 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 5 of 9 09 December 2013 at 12:44am | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks for that. As a matter of interest, why do you think that's PD? Assuming it's end of life plus 70 years, she would have to have died by 1943 for it to be P.D. this year, wouldn't she, unless she declared it to be in the PD? I have a translation by Grawe, Christian; Grawe, Ursula, (c) 1977, definitely not PD. Do you happen to know if that is regarded as any good? Thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4240 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 6 of 9 09 December 2013 at 2:34am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've just found this in my pirate sources and I can't figure out what translation was read. Since I can't find any text to book, I wonder if that translation is good, too.
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| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5326 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 7 of 9 09 December 2013 at 12:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
Looks like I had a momentary brain freeze and mixed up the publishing year with the death of the translator.
Unfortunately, I cannot help you with that since I don't read English books in translation. I also don't think that even the best Jane Austen translation will help you much in learning German. IMHO, the only English PD books in translation whose translations aren't completely outdated by now are the German translations of English crime writer Edgar Wallace. (They're still a bit dated, but not as much as most 19th century German translations.) Edgar Wallace, who is nowadays largely unknown in the English speaking world, was hugely popular in Germany and Projekt Gutenberg Germany offers 53(!) of his novels for free. They're by no means literary masterpieces, but they contain many dialogs, and most paragraphs consist of short, manageable sentences. Unfortunately, Gutenberg Germany doesn't offer ebook downloads, but you can generate ePubs using the epub2go website. (If you have an amazon.de account, you can also download most of these books as free Kindle books.) You can also download a German Edgar Wallace omnibus edition with most of his novels as an ePub from MobileRead. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4834 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 8 of 9 09 December 2013 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
Many thanks Doitsun. But are the 19th century translations of English PD works any more outdated (or worse) than, say, Fontane or Thomas Mann? If not, then I'd still think it worth reading them, although preferable to read original German works of course. I realise this is not the kind of German used today, especially not in speech (no more is Jane Austen's English used today), and there are plenty of modern books around if one wants modern language. I just think classics are worth reading in their own right. Anyway, in the case of "Pride and Prejudice", there isn't a 19th century translation available. Presumably the 1977 one won't read much worse today than it did in 1977, so I'll take a chance. The main reason I wanted a PD one was to try to produce a parallel version that I could legally post somewhere, but looks like that won't be possible. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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