History Woolseyism / Literature

* [[TheBible The King James Bible]], making this trope OlderThanSteam. A localized translation of the ten commandments would read something like "No murder. No coveting." etc.
** Similar with Martin Luther's German translation, which BTW helped to create the German standard language of today.
** ''Malakoi'' (soft) to ''effeminate'' (KJV) to ''homosexual offenders'' (Living Bible).
*** Let's just say that there's been some arguments over whether that particular example fits better under {{Woolseyism}} or BlindIdiotTranslation [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgement and leave it at that]].

* The King James Bible is full of more-or-less Woolseyisms. More modern translations such as the New International Version have preserved the most famous ones in only slightly modernized form. The KJV Twenty-Third Psalm, for example, begins "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." In the NIV, this has been translated to "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want," which is both more awkward-sounding and almost as anachronistic, even if it is a somewhat better literal translation.

*** Let's just say that there's [[{{Understatement}} been some arguments]] over whether that particular example fits better under {{Woolseyism}} or BlindIdiotTranslation [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgement and leave it at that]].

** David Weber's ''HonorHarrington'' series's Polish translation, where the translator "localised" the StateSec by naming it after [[PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny the Communist secret police]]. StateSec gets scary only when you abbreviate it and then make a connection to ThoseWackyNazis, but this way the reader knows from the very beginning they're up to no good (and referring to people "citizen" is not as scary as [[DirtyCommunists "comrade"]]).

* The Portuguese translation/reworking of [=~H. Rider Haggard~=]'s ''King Solomon's Mines'', made by 19th-century writer Eça de Queirós (nowadays recognized as one of the best portuguese writers of all time) is considered world-widely as a better book than the original, making this trope OlderThanTelevision. There are even translations to English, French and Italian of Eça de Queirós's translation.

** The first Polish translation of ''TheLordOfTheRings'' was fairly simplistic and a lot of names were left in from the original. A second translation was made which attempted to reproduce the effect of the English names in Polish ("Bilbo Baggins from Bag End" became "Bilbo Bagosz z Bagoszowa"). Unfortunately by this point the Anglicized names were so prevalent in {{Fanon}} and tie-in materials that FanDumb won the day, and all modern editions of the books use the first version.
** Suffice to say some of explanations provided by the translator of the second version (philosopher Jerzy Łoziński) sounded like third-rate {{Ass Pull}}s, like translating "dwarves" as "krzaty" (which can be re-translated to English as "ixies", "warfs" or "nomes") just to avoid the "krasno-" ("red-") part of "krasnoludek" (dwarf, as in SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs) or "Strider" as "Łazik" (a word often used in Polish to refer to Jeeps and similar vehicles), whereas the first translation by Maria Skibniewska had it translated as "Obieżyświat" (someone who traveled all over the world). Some of the ''{{Dune}}'' books, also translated by Łoziński, are similarly {{Macekre}}d.

* ''[[ArabianNights Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves]]'' - The line 'open sesame' isn't a pun in Arabic, it doesn't sound at all like 'open says-a-me'.
** [[LateToThePunchline That's a pun?]]

* Ironically, plenty of subtle meaning is actually lost in translating TheBible's ancient languages according to overall meaning instead of word-for-word. A well-known example is {{Jesus}}'s face-off with the Pharisees in John 8, where they ask Jesus how He could possibly think He is older than Moses. The Worldwide English (New Testament) translation of the response goes: ''Jesus answered, 'I tell you the truth. I already was before Abraham was born.''', which while accurate in conveying the blunt meaning, misses out on the (intentional) back-reference of other translations. For example, the New International Version translation: ''"I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!"''. This is a reference to the name of {{God}} (''God said to Moses, "I am who am."'' - Exodus 3:14), and thus signified that Jesus considered Himself God... Which explains why the Pharisees immediately flew into a rage and tried to stone Jesus (for blasphemy) when they had earlier just put up with being called the children of the devil with far less outrage.
* Incidentally, the idea of "dynamic equivalence" in relation to the Bible tends to draw a lot of, well, ''heated'' reactions; most of the problem stemming from the fact that [[DidNotDoTheResearch many people are unaware of the "Woolseyisms" of editions like the KJV detailed above]], and thus assume that the version they are familiar with, often the KJV or Vulgate Latin, is the true, unblemished version straight from the mouth of God. Needless to say, this can make discussion of proper meaning in the Bible very, very [[SeriousBusiness difficult]].

* And going further into Woolseyism, there are Bible paraphrases out there, the best-known of which is Eugene Peterson's The Message. Your mileage may vary.

** Suffice to say some of explanations provided by the translator of the second version (philosopher Jerzy Łoziński) sounded like third-rate {{Ass Pull}}s, like translating "dwarves" as "krzaty" (which can be re-translated to English as "ixies", "warfs" or "nomes") just to avoid the "krasno-" ("red-") part of "krasnoludek" (dwarf, as in SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs) or "Strider" as "Łazik" (a word often used in Polish to refer to [[WallBanger Jeeps and similar vehicles]]), whereas the first translation by Maria Skibniewska had it translated as "Obieżyświat" (someone who traveled all over the world). Some of the ''{{Dune}}'' books, also translated by Łoziński, are similarly {{Macekre}}d.

* Incidentally, the idea of "dynamic equivalence" in relation to the Bible tends to draw a lot of, well, ''heated'' reactions; most of the problem stemming from the fact that [[DidNotDoTheResearch many people are unaware of the "Woolseyisms" of editions like the KJV detailed above]], and thus [[WallBanger assume that the version they are familiar with, often the KJV or Vulgate Latin, is the true, unblemished version straight from the mouth of God]]. Needless to say, this can make discussion of proper meaning in the Bible very, very [[SeriousBusiness difficult]].

** Done by Tolkien himself in the appendix to ''The Lord of the Rings'', where he explains that English puns such as the Branduin river being nicknamed the Brandywine are based on similar meaning puns in the original languages.

*** Let's just say that there's [[{{Understatement}} been some arguments]] over whether that particular example fits better under {{Woolseyism}} or TranslationTrainwreck [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgement and leave it at that]].

*** Let's just say that there's [[{{Understatement}} been some arguments]] over whether that particular example fits better under {{Woolseyism}} or {{Macekre}} [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgement and leave it at that]].

** Boris Zakhoder did the same with AliceToWonderland and MaryPoppins. And he succeeded there, too. By his own admission he never thought of his translations as a proper ones, though. He always called them "re-tellings".

* Zakhoder did this to the Russian translation of Winnie the Pooh (the book), to such a point that he basically rewrote the book. It worked. The popularity of his re-imagined characters in the USSR and Russia rivaled or surpassed that of the Disney animated version in the English-speaking world, and continues to do so today.

** It's not clear if Tolkien did this as a pun, or as a subtle way of suggesting "so THAT'S where that story came from"... but one of the sections of ''The Silmarillion'' is entitled ''Akallabeth'' which is Quenya (Elvish) for "The Downfallen." It describes the corruption, and eventual destruction by sinking into the sea, of the nation of Numenor. The pun comes when you translate the title into the ''other'' Elvish language, Sindarin, in which it becomes ''Atalante''.

** The portuguese books translated the word as "génio", which oblviously means "genie". It may sound very stupid, but it is arguably a case of FridgeBrilliance, as in arabic lore genies/jinns are occasionally analogous to demons. TheGoldenCompass's subtitled translation, however, decided to settle for the portuguese word for "demon", either for lazyness or to make the already controversial movie more provocative.

** The Russian translation does an inversion - the slang consists of English words.

** The passage that states that "Man should not sleep with man as he would sleep with woman" uses a different word for the second instance of man. A word that also means 'boy'. Which may mean that what is taken as a rant against homosexuality is actualy a rant against homosexual ephebophilia/pedophilia. Still contrary to [[AncientGreece Classical Greek]] civilization (and NAMBLA), but just fine as far as the modern liberal (in all senses) mainstream goes.

* Averted by TamoraPierce with regrettable consequences: When the German translators of her ''Immortals'' series asked if they could change the name of the "Ogre" species, she said no. She later discovered that they had asked because the German word for "Ogre" (''Menschenfresser'') literally means "man-eater", not a connotation the peaceful farmer Ogres of the books really needed.
* Ocurred with some words in the Spanish translation of ''AClockworkOrange'', ''"La naranja mecanica"''. In the original, most of the nadsat language is taken from Russian with little or no change. Some terms, however, were morphed into similarly sounding English words. Take for example ''gulliver'' for "head". As the Spanish word for it (''cabeza'') sounds nothing like it, the translated nadsat (via WordOfGod) became ''golovo'', a direct transliteration from the Russian original word. Same happened with ''horrorshow'' (which turned into ''joroscho''). Some others changed in less correct ways (''"the old in-out"'' became ''"el viejo unodos"'', lit. "the old onetwo", when it could have been ''"el viejo metesaca"''). Several untranslatable terms of jargon were silently converted to their "normal" counterparts, and most of the rest were adapted to comply with the ending and concordance rules of Spanish, but still sounding a lot more like their ''Russian'' counterparts than the English portmanteaus (portmanteaux?).

** Say what you will about [[SmallNameBigEgo Åke Ohlmarks']] Swedish translation (and there is much to be said: see the entry in BlindIdiotTranslation), "Vidstige" is an ''inspired'' choice for "Strider".

*** Unless you're Russian, in which case ''grazdanin'' ("citizen") is ''scarier'': it's how the cops (''militsiya'') address a suspected criminal. Of course, the Poles aren't Russians, which is why the change of terminology was appropriate for the Polish translation and not the Russian one.

* Seamus Heaney's translation of ''{{Beowulf}}'' is widely regarded as far better and more accessible than the attempts made before it. The introduction gives a great account of how much work it was by going into excruciating detail on Heaney's thought process on translating just the first word (he eventually decided on "so").

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