Hello, everyone !

My name is Mateo (it's just a nick), I'm 22 and I'm here today to represent a small group of Ffrench Fforde Ffans and to gather other Ffrench Ffans (if a topic like this one has already been created, please send me the link and let me leave without beating on my head too hard).

I could begin by "Oh la la, Monsieur Fforde est un très bon écrivain, j'adore ses livres, ils me font rire et rêver en même temps", but that's too of an arse-licking, so, I will go straight to the point.


With "First among sequels", that's seven books from Jasper Fforde. In France, only three have been translated (TN 1, 2 and 3), and, more than that, they are pretty bad (translations, not books). It's due to the fact that many bits of the book can't be translated in french (like the hilarious "had had that that" bit in WOLP). And when you google it, there's absolutely nothing on the Internet about Fforde in french (except Amazon).
And that's why the books are hardly known in France : because French version doesn't do justice to Mr Fforde's imagination and most of French people aren't enough open-minded to read in english (yeah, most of french people suck...)

SO, Monsieur Fforde, I speak directly to you (if somebody could pass the message) : we are a little team of 4 or 5 highly motivated people and we wanted to know how we could get the rights to translate the entire jasperfforde.com in order to have a french website in order to gather more french fans in order to make the books more widely known (I'm not sure about the syntax of this sentence), because Thursday Next is worthy to be - at least - as successfully known as Harry Potter.


Thank you all for lis... for reading and sory aboutt the spaling mysstakes.

Have a nice day/night/hour/evening/meal/cow


Mateo

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La Saladophagie est un crime.
Eating lettuce is a crime.

vouoaefhnbtotboinbd



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/16/2007 05:25PM by Shakespeare.

Hi Mateo & unnamed friends, welcome! Could you just wait until we have hidden the lettuce pie under the table?

No reason to contact his editor, I'd say. If you use his personal EMail adress jasper at jasperfforde dot com, he tends to react promptly.

Interesting though that you deem the translations bad. We once had a french fforumite around who said at least L'affaire Eyre was quite good. Someone remember her name?



And now...a very special greeting to Shakespeare! Hey, what happened? And whom are you calling a brute?

He must be talking about the people who eat their supper off the floor, I think. I'm only brutish when paid lavishly to be. All commissions welcome, natch.

Mateo, welcome, great idea, and PrinzHilde's right - emailing Mr Ff will get him and be far quicker than contacting his editor - if you want translation rights I imagine you'll have to go through his agent, but Mr Ff will at least give you an idea of whether the whole thing's workable. I have a nasty feeling the people who published the first three books in French will probably have an option on translating the others, though. Hope not, for your sake...

Welcome Mateo. Help yourself to pie.

Okay, french translations aren't "that" bad (comparing to others), but they're just incomplete... And I really don't like french point of view on foreign names. For example, Jack Shitt is called Jack Mairdd, Akrid Snell becomes Sassan LeRoussi, and in Star wars ("la guerre des étoiles"), Chewbacca is re-christened Chictabac. And, worst of all, in the world of computers, a bug is "un bogue" and an e-mail is "un courriel" or "un imèle"...

By the way, I just found out that TN4 will be published in france soon. French title : "Sauvez Hamlet"... herm... it must have a link to the killer whale Willy...


Anyway, I will write to M. Fforde directly, it's just that I didn't found his Email adress.
Thank you all for your answers and advices ! Except you over there, you filthy little lettucannibal - beware, one day, lettuces will grow up extra arms and legs and conquer the world, and they will first kill lettuce eaters, they will pick them up, wash them, tear off their limbs one by one and mix them up with vinaigrette...

Gotta go, time for my pills...

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La Saladophagie est un crime.
Eating lettuce is a crime.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/16/2007 08:06PM by Mateo.

Your English is not bad. Better than my non-existent French at any rate....

__________________________________
'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

I'd hate to meet a French lettuce! Wow!

"...carrot juice is murder..."?

No, carrots are dumb since they lost WW2 (Wegetable War 2) against the AVAC (Anti Vitamin A Cell), so eating a carrot is simply help given to lettuces.

This reminds me of a short film of grocery wars, script of star wars, with vegetables and groceries. Luke Skywalker was a cucumber, and we all know they expolde very easily...

Oooo.... Sounds like fun....

__________________________________
'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

Princess Leia Oregano?
Buck Rogers as Buck Choy?
Dustin Hoffman starring in "Lentil"? *

Sounds like we have a game brewing up here.




*"Yentyl", for you youngsters who may not be Hoffman literate.

Leek Marvin in 'The Big Red Onion'

It should be online somewhere, I got sent a like a couple of years ago, a little search may result in fruit!

Mateo,

Welcome to the fforums. Glad to have a different cultural view to share.

What is your opinion on Battenberg Cake?

In regard to translations from English to French don't worry. Somewhere among my papers I have a cutting from a newspaper informing the world that LOTR had been acceptably translated to French language. It took the translating group seventeen years to get an acceptable product, and Tolkien is technical English in comparison to the word plays in Fforde, Pratchett, Rankin R, and probably Milligan. (Is there a French language version of Puckoon in existence?)

As a small point of wonder: what is the French language equivalent of 'Feng Shui'? And is there a cultural equivalent?

Not that it matters in the land downunder, where the evil spirits fly from the thunder box to the front door, usually stopping for a few terms in Canberra.

Since the English equivalent of 'Feng Shui' is 'Feng Shui' I should imagine that the French would be the same. Although the French reputably get hot under the collar about polluting their language by using foreign terms, so maybe they have to use a more... ahem... circuitous expression.

Of course if you say it with an accent, it make it sound French yes?

I feel very ignorant. I can barely comprehend one language, let alone others.

<Hangs badly educated head in shame>

pats BK's back in commiseration
Cest la...