History Woolseyism / Literature

** Mr. Tortoise from his ''Literature/GodelEscherBachAnEternalGoldenBraid'' becomes female when translated into languages having grammatical genders, as described in the introduction to the 20th anniversery edition. He becomes Madame Tortue, for example, in French. Hofstadter, dismayed at the realization of having failed to include any significant female characters in his dialogues, but unwilling to change the original English version, considers this an improvement.

** Sirius Marauder nickname "Padfoot" doesn't have an equivalent word in Spanish, so the translation calls him "Canuto" (a relatively common name for dogs, since it derives from the word "Can").

** George's ear joke from ''The Deathly Hallows'' is arguably funnier in the Swedish translation than in the original text. In the English version, George claims that he feels "saintlike" after he loses his ear in battle. He then clarifies that he means "holy" (since he now has a hole in his head). In the Swedish version, he claims that he "feels like an old coin," which sounds even more nonsensical (and more deserving of the FlatWhat reaction). He then explains that the coin in question is the "ettöring" (a discontinued Swedish coin that isn't used anymore) which has a name that could be interperated as "uniear" or "one-eared" (though technically, the gramatically correct version would actually be "enöring), resulting in a pretty clever pun. Though this also as the effect of making Fred's LamePunReaction feel less justified.

** Most have a different [[FunWithAcronyms silly acronym]] for Hermione's house-elf-helping organization, and a different SignificantAnagram for [[http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Lord_Voldemort#Translations_of_the_name Voldemort's true name]] in each language.

** The "[[UranusIsShowing can I have a look at Uranus too, Lavender?]]" joke from ''Goblet of Fire'' was changed in many translations since a lot of languages lack the pun from Uranus's name. The French translation changes it to the moon - in French it has the same connotations as "mooning" in English. The Danish translation changes it to Lavender talking about her ending got an unknown aspect, to which Ron replies "can I see an aspect of your end too?" The Polish translation was even better where Professor Trelawney describes Uranus as "an important celestial body". Ron asks if he can have a look at Lavender's body too. The first Italian translation just ignored the joke and translated the line literally, while the 2013 rerelease went with the "celestial body" joke as the Polish version.

** 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.

** A rather controversial one is the transformation of ''Malakoi'' (soft) to ''effeminate'' (KJV) to ''homosexual offenders'' (Living Bible). Whether this counts as Woolseyism or BlindIdiotTranslation--or worse, TranslationWithAnAgenda--is a matter [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment best not discussed here]].

* Creator/JRRTolkien planned that his works are translated in this manner. There is even a list of the linguistic roots of names to help with translation. The Finnish translation provides a perfect example of a well done adaptation (complete with an appendix describing the decisions that the translator made). ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' and ''Literature/TheHobbit'' are themselves supposed to be adapted from the common language of Middle Earth (see discussion under LiteraryAgentHypothesis and TranslationConvention).

* Translations of ''Literature/HarryPotter'' have a different [[FunWithAcronyms silly acronym]] for Hermione's house-elf-helping organization, and a different SignificantAnagram for [[http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Lord_Voldemort#Translations_of_the_name Voldemort's true name]] in each language.

*** In the Finnish version, George feels "compensated", the pun being based on the Finnish words for "ear" (korva) and "to replace" (korvata). You might say he lost something ear-replaceable.

** George's ear joke from ''The Deathly Hallows'' is arguably funnier in the Swedish translation than in the original text. In the English version, George claims that he feels "holy" after he loses his ear in battle. He then clarifies that he means "holey" (since he now has a hole in his head.) In the Swedish version, he claims that he "feels like an old coin," which sounds even more nonsensical (and more deserving of the FlatWhat reaction). He then explains that the coin in question is the "ettöring" (a discontinued Swedish coin that isn't used anymore) which has a name that could be interperated as "uniear" or "one-eared" (though technically, the gramatically correct version would actually be "enöring), resulting in a pretty clever pun. Though this also as the effect of making Fred's LamePunReaction feel less justified.

** The French translations are also very good, to the point that the translator received an award for his work. Just to name one example, Mr Teatime in ''Discworld/{{Hogfather}}'', whose name has been translated as Lheurduthé (literally "hour of tea", and the actual translation of "tea time" in French), insists that his name be pronounced as "Le-re-dou-té", which sounds like "the feared one" (''le redouté'') in French.

** 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 "krzatowie" (which can be re-translated to English as "ixies", "warfs" or "nomes") just to avoid the "krasno-" ("red-") part of "krasnoludek" (dwarf, as in "Literature/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 ''Franchise/{{Dune}}'' books, also translated by Łoziński, are similarly {{Macekre}}d.

** The French translations are also very good, to the point that the translator received an award for his work. Just to name one example, Mr Teatime in ''Discworld/{{Hogfather}}'', whose name has been translated as Lheurduthé (litterally "hour of tea", and the actual translation of "tea time" in French), insists that his name be pronounced as "Le-re-dou-té", which sounds like "the feared one" (''le redouté'') in French.
*** Another gem is the translation of The Death of Rats as "La Mort Aux Rats", litterally meaning the "The Death of them rats", but also the name for rat poison in French.

** The Bulgarian tranlation has some of these despite avoiding to translate proper names. Examples are the Polyjuice Potion, the not-so-apt literal translation of which was changed to "Poly''face'' Potion", and the Whomping Willow (a single-letter change transformed the name "weeping willow" to "scary willow", a. k. a. "the willow that scares", which it does).

** Zakhoder did this to the Russian translation, 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.
** Boris Zakhoder did the same with ''Literature/AliceInWonderland'' and ''Literature/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".
** There is a Russian joke which says "I imagined Tolkien in Zakhoder's translation. Cried a lot".

* ''Literature/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory'': A mild case. Veruca Salt's surname was changed to Paprika in the Hebrew translation because "Salt" dosen't have a meaning in Hebrew. If it would have stayed like that the young readers wouldn't understand there's a connection between the name and the dad's business.

** In Russian, голубой (goluboy) is a word for "light blue" that's also used as a slang term for "homosexual". At least one Russian translation took the passage describing Aziraphale as [[MistakenForGay appearing to be]] "gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide" and translated it as "more light-blue than the sky on an ad pamphlet for a tropical vacation."

* ''Literature/HonorHarrington'': David Weber's series's Polish translation, where the translator "localized" 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"]]). Unless you're Russian, in which case ''grazdanin'' ("citizen") is ''scarier'': it's how the cops (''militsiya'') address a suspected criminal. Of course, [[CaptainObvious the Poles aren't Russians]], which is why the change of terminology was appropriate for the Polish translation and not the Russian one.

** The Dutch translation is quite close to the original version, with some name-changes being very close since Dutch and English (especially Tolkien's[[note]] By way of explanation, Tolkien's style is very heavy on Germanic vocabulary, and among the Germanic languages. Dutch is the closest major language to English (the absolute closest--besides Scots, whose situation is complex--is Frisian, which has only a few hundred thousand speakers).[[/note]]) are quite similar. Since certain elements of Middle Dutch are still easily understood by modern Dutch speaker's, the translation has an older feeling without being unintelligible. For example, Dutch has several pronouns for the second person singular (you), whose use is based on formality, familiarity, tone, etc. All of which are used throughout the story to deepen the understand of the characters. who use them. The original Dutch translation went a bit further (such as changing 'hobbit' into 'hobbel', meaning 'bump'), but Tolkien, who spoke Dutch, thankfully reverted that.

** The Dutch translation is quite close to the original version, with some name-changes being very close since Dutch and English (especially Tolkien's[[note]] Since certain elements of Middle Dutch are still easily understood by modern Dutch speaker's, the translation has an older feeling without being unintelligible. For example, Dutch has several pronouns for the second person singular (you), whose use is based on formality, familiarity, tone, etc. All of which are used throughout the story to deepen the understand of the characters. who use them. By way of explanation, Tolkien's style is very heavy on Germanic vocabulary, and among the Germanic languages. Dutch is the closest major language to English (the absolute closest--besides Scots, whose situation is complex--is Frisian, which has only a few hundred thousand speakers).[[/note]]) are quite similar. The original Dutch translation went a bit further (such as changing 'hobbit' into 'hobbel', meaning 'bump'), but Tolkien, who spoke Dutch, thankfully reverted that.

** The Dutch translation is quite close to the original version, with some name-changes being very close since Dutch and English (especially Tolkien's[[note]]By way of explanation, Tolkien's style is very heavy on Germanic vocabulary, and among the Germanic languages, Dutch is the closest major language to English (the absolute closest--besides Scots, whose situation is complex--is Frisian, which has only a few hundred thousand speakers).[[/note]]) are quite similar. The original Dutch translation went a bit further (such as changing 'hobbit' into 'hobbel', meaning 'bump'), but Tolkien, who spoke Dutch, thankfully reverted that.