Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

Jane Austen in German in public domain?

  Tags: Book | German
 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading Post Reply
9 messages over 2 pages: 1 2  Next >>
montmorency
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4588 days ago

2371 posts - 3676 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Danish, Welsh

 
 Message 1 of 9
08 December 2013 at 7:28pm | IP Logged 
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 4588 days ago

2371 posts - 3676 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Danish, Welsh

 
 Message 2 of 9
08 December 2013 at 10:46pm | IP Logged 
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 4588 days ago

2371 posts - 3676 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Danish, Welsh

 
 Message 3 of 9
08 December 2013 at 11:13pm | IP Logged 
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 5080 days ago

1256 posts - 2363 votes 
Speaks: German*, English

 
 Message 4 of 9
08 December 2013 at 11:43pm | IP Logged 
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.

1 person has voted this message useful



montmorency
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4588 days ago

2371 posts - 3676 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Danish, Welsh

 
 Message 5 of 9
09 December 2013 at 12:44am | IP Logged 
Doitsujin wrote:
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.


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 3994 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 
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.
1 person has voted this message useful



Doitsujin
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5080 days ago

1256 posts - 2363 votes 
Speaks: German*, English

 
 Message 7 of 9
09 December 2013 at 12:04pm | IP Logged 
montmorency wrote:
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?

Looks like I had a momentary brain freeze and mixed up the publishing year with the death of the translator.

montmorency wrote:
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?

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 4588 days ago

2371 posts - 3676 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Danish, Welsh

 
 Message 8 of 9
09 December 2013 at 4:20pm | IP Logged 
Doitsujin wrote:


montmorency wrote:
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?

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 attachmentid=93842&d=1349891352MobileRead">MobileRead.



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



This discussion contains 9 messages over 2 pages: 2  Next >>


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.3125 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.