FOR STRANGERS...

[marko]

Let's see,people!Which of you are not from Britain and USA?
I am interested how do you read Moorcock,in english,or in your own language?And if you do not read in English,say,do you think it sounds good?

I begun to read in Serbian,and I figured it sounds pretty good,for example:
Arioch of the Seven Darks - Arioh od Sedam Tama
Duke of the Higher Hell - Vojvoda Viseg Pakla
Elric of Melnibone-Elrik od Melnibonea
Eternal Champion - Vitez Sudbine
Imrryr the Beautiful,the Dreaming City - Imrir Divni,Usnuli Grad
...
And we have phonetical alphabet,so every letter we pronounce as a single voice.
I am realy interested how do you say these stuff in,say,Spanish,or maybe German...?

[Anonymous]

آ؟Existe un valeroso seأ±or nacido por el Destino
para manejar viejas armas, ganar nuevos estados
y desgarrar las murallas que el Tiempo santifica,
arrasar antiguos templos como mentiras benditas,
quebrar su orgullo, perder su amor;
destruir su raza, su historia, su musa,
y, tras renunciar a la paz por una vida de lucha,
dejar sأ³lo un cadأ،ver que hasta las moscas rechazan?



Crأ³nicas de la Espada Negra.

[L'Etranger]

Hello Marko, dobr dan!

I read them all in English, but I have several books of MM's in German in the house in case friends wanted them. Translations seem to be different in quality, often depending on the publisher. Moorcock's still seen very much as the "SciFi" or Fantasy author here, few people are aware of the, what I call, "non-Eternal Champion" books. There's also a "class thing" (f**king snobbery) about distinguishing between "Literature" and "light literature" meaning "everything else" (non-fiction set aside of course) and finally "trash".
Therefore, a Garcia Marquez, a Norman Mailer and a Milorad Pavic usually get a better paid translator, often a writer in his own right. I think translations of books published by Heyne are mostly of higher quality than those of others in the Fantasy camp, but that's only a very general impression, since, as I said before I read them all in English. If you want me to look up something for you, just shout (but please tell me whereabouts to look, for some of the books I many, many years ago).

L'Etranger

Oh, and if you want to hear some Moorcock in Hungarian, go get yourself the MMAAS soundscape (details here: [link expired]) where you will hear a woman's voice speaking Moorcock texts in Hungarian. If a Serb can bear to hear that, that is ...

[mordenkainen]

I read the elric books in french, but then I was 12 years old and not much of a critic. I'll try to find one of these books and compare it to my english editions. L'E is probably right, too: SF books are often poorly translated for economical reasons..

[marko]

Thank you,L'Etranger!!! Dobar dan i tebi!
and good joke,I must admit,hehe... :twisted: You are right about translations - for example,our translation of Elric was censured,because it was published as children book.There are no scenes like dr Jest's cutting off organs from people,and Yirkoon's desire for his sister...
And I was never clear with how to pronounce Erekose?!Or Melnibone:we say with a long e at the end.You?

[Dead-Air]

The idea of Elric as a censored children's story is a very amusing and strange one. But then many of us seem to have read him first as preteens, and Michael himself has written about the somewhat adolescent mentality of the early books.

Excellent thread Marko, fascinating stuff.

[marko]

Yes,it's maybe funny,but it is something like that...Elric is ,in my opinion,very good as a teen hero,especially for these generations of kids,not any more amused with heroes without brain,I would say...Even censured.

[Michael Moorcock]

Long e -- yes. Or long a, if you prefer. Melnibonأ© as in French.
I didn't know they were censored until now. Wondered about that at the time. The paid a lot for it and they apparently sold well, but maybe future books were even less suitable and requiring even more censoring!

[Dead-Air]

With a censors scissors, assuming that incest and drugs and mocking religion are big no-nos, you could probably whittle the Cornelius books down to about ten pages total. :lol

[Marca]

The only foreign language title I have is a French edition of Stormbringer from the 80s, but I'm not at all fluent in French so it's always sat on my shelf as a curio. Not sure if it's censored or not but it has a nice fold-out poster in the middle of the book. :)

[marko]

Yesss!!!I knew!!!Thank you mr Moorcock!!!
We DO pronounce like in French,but I haven't known how to write how I speak,because in Serbian,every letter-one voice .E is spelled like yours (again!) e in the word "men",and there are no exeptions at all.We are very proud about our alphabet,because it is the simpliest one.

[Michael Moorcock]

The French editions are probably my favourites. There have been a lot of them over the years, some of them very elaborate. There's a new set just being published, as it happens. In fact I've been very well served by my French editions in general.
Serbian presumably is like Russian in that respect. Once you learn how the letters are pronounced, it's fairly easy to speak. Not that Russian is otherwise that easy, of course!