Hebrew Android’s Dream + Other Notes
Posted on February 23, 2015 Posted by John Scalzi 22 Comments
First, look! The Hebrew version of The Android’s Dream:
I can tell it’s The Android’s Dream because of the sheep on the cover. Also, it says so inside, in English. But mostly from the cover. I’m always still geeked when I get foreign editions of my books. It’s both strange and wonderful to be read in languages I don’t read or speak. I hope it’s a good translation.
Aside from that, busy Monday so I won’t be here much. I will note that last night I got my customary five out of six major Oscar categories correct, flubbing Best Actor, which I still think should have gone to Keaton, but, oh, well. One year I’ll get all six categories correct and I won’t know what to do with myself.
Hope your day is going well.
Nice writing. I stopped by.
I learned to make pie from my mother-in-law. She is gone to heaven, but I know how to make pie.
In the upper section “Warning, this book is not for vegetarians”
The book’s name is translated quite directly in Hebrew without losing the meaning (We actually read Android in Hebrew the same as in english)
at the top it say – warning this is not a book for veterinarians and the translation can be good but the translator probably had to make a decision about the gender of the non gender character (you have to do it in Hebrew) this will also be true for the lock in book
The title is Ha’Olam Ha’Android, or The Heaven of the Android, by John Scalzi. (Hebrew doesn’t have a J sound, so the apostrophe after the gimmel–which is a hard G sounds–serves as a J sound. Interestingly, W is represented by two vavs–literally VV.)
You have some fans in Israel; there’s a fairly large and active fan base there, and most of them (like most fans) read English. (One of my Israeli friends says she learned English from Star Trek reruns.) However, getting English language SF is difficult there. I once went with an entire suitcase full of used paperbacks, and they’re always looking for more. So they may not have an English version to compare it against.
This book is not for vegetarians, according to Shiran, and veterinarians, according to G.
Which is it? Inquiring minds want to know!
It’s vegetarians. Hebrew is my native language.
As for the name itself, it is Halom Ha’android, with Halom (read Ha-Lom, with the H being hard, and with Ha’android, the H being soft.) The direct translation back to english would be ‘Dream of the Android’.
It says chalom, not ha’olam — those are different words with different meanings.
It’s vegetarians. Also, a correction to cogitationitis’s transliteration: the title is Chalom Ha’Android, which means dream of the android.
Way cool to see the Hebrew cover, and to even be able to read it…
Might I politely suggest that it would be cool to include the translator’s name on posts like this one? Translating fiction is a skilled and demanding job that’s sadly underpaid and under-appreciated. It’d be nice to see a bit of light shone on those who help spread the good stuff far and wide.
I did guess Best Animated Short Film correctly. We’d seen Feast at a film festival last fall, and it had the kind of Disney audience appeal and production values that it seemed like it’d be a credible winner, plus it played along with Big Hero 6 in actual theaters, which most short films don’t get to do.
The local art-house theater has been running the shorts as one show of animated and one show of live, and had we not been old fogies, we could have watched both sets and Rocky Horror all in one evening, but that was really too much movie for one day, so we saw them on two different days, and had mediocre sushi next door Sally Hawkins was excellent in The Phone Call as well.
“Ha’Olam Ha’Android” == “The Heaven of the Android” according to cogitationitis. GoogleTranslate says:
“העולם הוא’אנדרואיד” == “Ha’olm Ha’andreud”
— so, frankly, I don’t know. But mazel tov
[exclamation]; Google’s surprise rabbi sayeth:
a Jewish phrase expressing congratulations or wishing someone good luck.
“Though she’d been told otherwise, right to the last that woman thought a surprise rabbi would appear from the rafters to say mazel tov .”
How often do your translators call you for a word or phrase that does not have a good phrase? What is the process you use to change the American phrasing into the other languages?
It clearly reads חלום = chalom / ḥalom [choose your transliteration system] = dream, not העולם = ha’olam = the world, making it a direct translation of “The Android’s Dream.”
(Where heaven would come into this, I know not. Possibly cogitationitis is thinking of העולם הבא = ha’olam haba = The World To Come, with a sheep-based pun making it ha’olam ha-baaaa?)
Another Hebrew native speaking fan(who finished reading the translation a couple of weeks ago:), and I can confirm what G and Shiran say. Also, which character was genderless in the English source?
Reblogged this on oshriradhekrishnabole.
@antongarou The partner of Archie, the geek working for the bad guys. Sam is an ambiguous name, and their gender is not specified at any point that I noticed.
Oh, thanks. The translator indeed made a decision: in the Hebrew edition Sam is referred to as male.
I see that I’m late to the “translate the cover” game, aside from the subscript at the bottom, which reads “from the creator of Old Man’s War.” Which I really enjoyed reading side by side with my English edition.
Agreed vis a vis the Oscars. Keaton’s been too awesome for too long to get snubbed. Eddie Redmayne’s great and all but he’s got plenty of time ahead of him.
for those of you disagreeing over the proper translation of the first word in the title – this is what happens when your written vowels are implicit!
That said, if there’s a value for those characters which can be interpreted as “dream”, then that’s clearly the correct one.