Andrzej Sapkowski's witcher novels.

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He sounds pretty decent here.

I remember he said about LOTR something like "every one can write a book about two midgets and a ring"

He should post on the Codex.

As the principal Polish fanboy of Sapkowki's works on this forum I must say you are utterly and completely... right. Yep, Sapkowski is not Tolkien, neither his works were ever so groundbreaking. I have to say, even though I like his books a lot, there are parts in them that beg for better attention, and polish. As a matter of fact, of the whole Witcher saga I value the two short stories' volumes the most, the rest being, well, not so well thought out.

The fact remains, however, that Sapkowski singlehandedly reinvigorated Polish fantasy scene which - for that reason alone - owes much to him. Secondly, though lacking, his narratives are far above the talentless pulp-fiction that most contemporary fantasy novels are. I would rank them equal to Gaiman's and Pratchett's early novels in terms of quality. Thirdly, as you admitted, his novels work with computer games, as a medium, almost perfectly. Lastly, there is something in his writings that screams CODEX!!! to me.

If you feel like editing the whole thing, then I will gladly take a peek at your work, compare it against the original version of the book, and possibly roughen it a bit if need be. From what I've seen so far, though, your editing skills are far above my own, so I don't know how much help I can really provide.

Thanks for that, please keep us posted if you find any of the other books in engrish, particularly in mobi or epub format.

There is an ongoing translation of Times Of Contempt, but it hasn't been updated in a while now.

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/the_witcher ... vels/page1

This.. I've read all of Sapkowski in Polish and it's simply enjoyable pulp.

The series of books Sapek wrote after the Witcher are much better though; they're historical low-magic fiction filled with historical trivia and a nice atmosphere. No chance of them being translated though

Actually they were translated to several languages but not English.

Narrenturm seems a good one, there is an official German translation..

It depends on Pole you are speaking with, then.

Having said that, I do think these books are more then just a pulp. Reading that stuff was kind of refreshing.
My pet peeve with fantasy in general are main characters following The Destiny like a little slaves. Sometimes they do grumble "why me", but sooner or later they'll suck it all up. I mean, some creep comes to your house, "You must! It is your destiny!", and on the Quest you go. How retarded one can get?
Geralt was one of the very few fantasy characters that behaved just as I'd like them to. Hearing "You have to! It is the Destiny!" he is able to answer "fuck off" or "don't make me laugh", like any reasonable person would do. And he is consistent about it, not going to change his mind.

I prefere Corwin of Amber, though.

So Lesi, how's that editing going ?


On other news, some nice chaps over at the witcher2 forums have completed the english translation of Times Of Contempt. I haven't read it yet, but from a glance it seems pretty decent for a fan translation. Here's the thread : http://en.thewitcher.com/forum/index.ph ... nslations/




As expected I converted it to epub. Here's the link with an archive containing it in epub and docx along with a custom cover I made : LINK


Snazzy custom cover based on the German edition. You can't believe how crappy most of the covers for the witcher books are. This one is acceptable :




It seems they've already started translating Baptism Of Fire, such good chaps.

I think it's possible his agent (or publishing agency) is holding out for better deal from an English publisher. So the process got boggled down. We are talking about serious potato here.

Anyway.

Dont worry about it. Lots of English writers being touted as second coming of Tolkien (Robert Jordan, Rowling...) and fall short of promise. So we are familiar with being disappointed.

He set himself completely different goals from Tolkien. Why should his books be even remotely similar?

Whoops.

Fucking potato supremacists.

Anyway, any dedicated poles know the story behind why it's taken so long for the english translations? I bought The Last Wish around the time W1tcher was first released, then came back to it this month, only to find (as predicted by OP) that they haven't translated a single new one!

I guess it's not a big deal. Maybe the prose really is delightful in original polish, but Blood of Elves seemed like pretty mediocre fantasy.

I don't think there's much of a story behind it.
It's mostly the circumstances and scale of the entire project. Also, nobody was really sure if the non-slavs would "dig" this whole Witcher thing.
Eastern European and ruskie Sci-Fi writing is very, very different from the Amerikwan and UK works. Mostly in the sense of humor and general philosophy. Very often that does not translate well.

The requirements to deliver quality work are steep. Culls most self-taught fan translators straight away, but as you may have noticed, it also takes monies, and Polish publishing houses that dabble in fantasy and related stuffies
are notoriously stingy.
Simply put, it takes stamina to translate hundreds of thousands of words, something that is not frequently found among fan-translators.
It takes genuine dedication not to burn out after doing a short story, now let me think about translating an entire saga, 5 x 125 000 words.
Even when you make up your mind to translate 5 pages per day, it will take you three months to translate just one book. (And that's just raw translation. How much time editing would take is anybody's guess)

Anyways, the scale itself is enough to scare off the most faint of heart, sure you can work in groups, but that's always a bad idea for fan translations.
First of all, you get many guys with varying skill and ability working on the same thing.
Best case scenario, you'd get five different styles in one text (let's assume all are equally good), worst case scenario, additional editing to smooth out the quality.
Second of all, just look at the discussion above, three guys, so much bitching, and they managed to "sorta, kinda" nail half a paragraph worth of text.
Which means the project now needs an editor that knows his shtick and can keep the whole party by the balls.

And that's only the beginning. Looking at the language itself you see that it's no simple text. FCE certificate level won't make the cut here.
The stuff tends to draw heavily on slavic mythology, and most of the stuff is untranslatable. Quick, find me a guy who knows what the fuck is Płanetnik and how to make it into english so that it doesn't suck.

I'm not saying there are no capable people out there that would do it, thing is they usually don't have that time on their hands or would expect to be paid a lot.

And that still wouldn't be enough. As said, you need an editor, but you want the proper kind, an English native speaker that knows some Polish, and is both good at editing and "digs" this whole Sapkowski thing.
Such people were next to impossible to find (and again won't do it for free, not on that scale at least), the commercial success of the Bitcher changed that somewhat, so I'm guessing we have CD-Projekt
to thank for the fact that somebody somewhere actually sat down on his ass and begins to git some shit done.

I see, thanks. Was really hoping for some juicy insider gossip regarding the publisher house though

Read the spanish translation, loved the books. But the translators had the nerve to split the last book in two and sell each at whole price, I purchased the demo instead.

Actually, the main obstacle is the delicate, witty and sophisticated style of Sapkowski's Polish, constantly mixing different registers. You have to be an extremely gifted Polish speaker to speak or write like this, and so you need a similar (very rare) level of competence in English AND great understanding of Polish to properly translate it. It's possible that such a person simply does not exist on Earth right now. And if she / he does, she / he might not be willing to do this job.

Wojciech Orlinski, a specialist in "pop" culture, and a gifted writer himself, recently wrote an article on this; he says he is a consultant for the British publisher, and they asked him to evaluate 5 translations from different translators. It seems none of them were really good...

Apparently, Dukaj's Ice is supposed to be released in english this summer. I bet that was a lot of fun for the translator.

I liked Falka/Mistle.

In my experience belittling Tolkien has become the cool thing in hipster literary circles today. A lot of my friends who do lit/art constantly deride him, Lovecraft (for being racist, nothing less instead of talent) and Shakespeare. Sir Walter Scott is now almost forgotten as far as I hear. At least Defoe, Dumas and Stevenson are still surviving in popular culture.

In this environment, grim-dark is somehow becoming the favored world-view of all historical fiction, sci-fi and fantasy genres, reading which happens to be one of my favorite hobbies. I hear of Sapkowsky and Martin a lot these days but haven't had the courage to read them. Having read Sapkowsky's comment on Tolkien does not exactly encourage me to read his works. Some of you lit people here, how would you compare his prose to that of Tolkien's? Do you find it worthy in terms of literary value? I would request you to tone down the contribution of the plot in your judgement.

...holy shit. Who's the translator?

I'd still say Dukaj's language is a lot easier than Sapkowski's. Full of jargon, yes, but less fluid...

If someone belittles Shakespeare, I'd take this to mean that person simply has never seen a Shakespeare play... The guy's genius still shines brightly after all the centuries...