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Post by audreyhorne on Jun 23, 2012 18:57:42 GMT -5
In Germany we only have books 1-13, but not LSUA or TBL.
VFD is FF here (because our term for "volunteer fire department" is "Freiwillige Feuerwehr") and I have no idea how you could make that look like an eye.
It must have been difficult for the translators to translate all the other VFDs because they always had to constrain to two words instead of three. I think there are also some cases where a VFD disappeared in the translation. In other cases they "cheated" and added a third word (e.g. it's pFF in "poetische Fluktuations-Feststellung" for "Verse Fluctuation Declaration").
There are also some "VFDs" that do not appear in the English books because a coincidental sequence of the letters FF is probably more likely to appear than that of VFD, especially since the books have a lot of alliterations (e.g. "Freudlose Fähre" for "Fickle Ferry").
Speaking of alliterations, a lot of them got lost in the translation. Most of the book titles don't have an alliteration and the stories have fewer alliterations than the originals. For some reason they suddenly used an alliteration in the title of book 13, which doesn't even have one in the original ;D
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Post by Christmas Chief on Jun 23, 2012 19:42:47 GMT -5
That "Fickle Ferry" was accidentally given V.F.D. status is interesting, since significant locations in ASOUE often do fall under the V.F.D. abbreviation and the Ferry itself doesn't have any real significance in the text. (I think dropping the title alliterations is normal, though it is indeed ironic The End was given one.)
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Post by audreyhorne on Jun 23, 2012 20:52:11 GMT -5
The tenth book also has some false VFDs/FFs in the German version. The Title (The Slippery Slope/Der Finstere Fels) contains FF (again a location) and the Snow Scouts talk about the False Spring and that Carmelita is always crowned False Spring Queen. In the translation it is "Falscher Frühling", so Carmelita is a "VFD" Queen ;D It's really annoying that in the translation you never know whether it's an intended FF or not.
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Post by Dante on Jun 24, 2012 2:09:19 GMT -5
To be fair, there are a fair few red herring V.F.D.s in the original books, so in that sense the spirit of the original is emulated... but I agree that it's surely very annoying. I also think it's fairly amusing that The End once again bucks the trend, but for the wrong reasons. As for making F.F. into an eye, maybe you could spiral them around one another and do something with that? I'd demonstrate what I mean, but I don't really have the resources on hand to do that competently.
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Post by Kensicle on Jun 24, 2012 5:06:53 GMT -5
I've seen a picture of someone's attempt at the ff insignia...yep, I've found it. Here.I'm interested to see what the Korean insignia would be. It would be insanely difficult to do, although it's likely they just did VFD and acknowledged the fact that it was a translation.
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Post by audreyhorne on Jun 25, 2012 4:10:39 GMT -5
I've seen a picture of someone's attempt at the ff insignia...yep, I've found it. Here.Thanks for sharing, that totally works By the way, I noticed a funny little mistake in the German translation. The back of book 6 says something about 3 mysterious letters though it's obviously only 2 letters in FF. Seems they just translated the text on the back cover from the original one without bearing in mind that they used a different acronym.
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Post by Dante on Jun 25, 2012 5:04:26 GMT -5
Oh dear; you'd have thought they'd have caught that. Maybe the Dear Reader letter was translated by someone different, or done earlier without checking it against the rest of the book afterwards.
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Post by audreyhorne on Jun 29, 2012 7:21:32 GMT -5
How do those three suspicious letters that we've all come to know and love fit into each of these languages while still maintaining their various meanings, and what are all the different variations of letters? I found these on the internet: Czech: DP Dutch: VBA Finnish: VPK Hungarian: DSA Norwegian: VMS Swedish: FBK Turkish: GİT
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Post by Dante on Jun 29, 2012 8:16:24 GMT -5
The V is really very consistent. It's kind of a shame, therefore, that it's the most ill-fitting part of the original insignia. If the D managed to stay across more languages, that would make it far easier to picture an eye insignia for them all. I wonder what The Daily Punctilio's initials are in Czech?
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Post by Kensicle on Jun 30, 2012 7:04:03 GMT -5
Here's my version of GİT:
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Post by Dante on Jun 30, 2012 10:48:30 GMT -5
That's very convincing, Kensicle. Professional-looking, even. It's a shame that the books probably don't get re-illustrated in any fashion except for the covers, as I think we can see that it's possible to do a good job on some of the translated spellings.
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Post by Kensicle on Jul 1, 2012 7:59:59 GMT -5
Thanks, Dante. Didn't the Russian editions get different illustrations, though?
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Post by Dante on Jul 1, 2012 8:39:57 GMT -5
That is true, but we've never gotten a good look at any of them, I think. My recollection is that they weren't very detailed, in contrast to the cover art, but it's been a while since I saw them.
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Post by B. on Jul 1, 2012 9:15:46 GMT -5
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Post by Christmas Chief on Jul 1, 2012 12:52:08 GMT -5
Interesting finds. Manipulating the various V.F.D.s into eyes perhaps wouldn't prove such a challenge after all - Kensicle's GİT is a good example of that - but it's interesting to see the different stylizations, as each language gives the abbreviation a flavor of its own.
Meanwhile, I can see the Russian illustrations tried to preserve some of Helquist's framing, if not his shading on the interior drawings. The eye on Olaf's ankle on the cover is the same as TBB's, I notice.
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