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DiagonallyStripedRat t1_jegd433 wrote

Reply to comment by mitkah16 in Just finished The Sword of Destiny (The Witcher #2) by No_Cockroach_5048

Oh well, I take it You read in English, so it was a very direct translation from original (Polish) to English. So a lot of the words that don't have the counterpart in English may have been Polish. Other Slavic languages do have their own words for those creatures, so in translations those were used. In short, You googled the untranslated into English Polish names, so got results in Polish.

But I don't know. I read the books in a Slavic language and it all seemed familiar and well translated, never had my hands on the English localisation (:

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mitkah16 t1_jegfgz0 wrote

But then it is the translation that adapts it? I don’t get it. Not saying you are not right. Or that I am wrong. Just that with reading it in English and googling the names of the monsters, they all connected to polish folklore. Which was cool. I did not google every single one of them, just the ones with trickier descriptions. From there I found also their legends which were from polish myths and fables. Good that it is more diverse and not only Polish stuff is there.

Still hate Yennefer tho hahaha

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DiagonallyStripedRat t1_jeglt0w wrote

I don't know how they were translated to English. For example how is žmij? Or kelpi? Or striga?

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DiagonallyStripedRat t1_jegmoqg wrote

Or rusalka.... In English you could either just keep rusalka as in ,,The rusalka came from the water" or translate it as ,,water nymph" because that's ultimately what a rusalka is. Same with vila. You could keep vila (,,At noon in summer, vilas appear in the fields") or translate vila as ,,sun demon" or ,,wheat witch" or something. Do you understand what I mean? In original it's Wiedzmin, in English Witcher, in some other Slavic languages it's Vedmak. Still it's the same creature, but if You google Wiedzmin you'll get Polish result, if you google Witcher you'll get just the books :D

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