To be honest, I'm not big into the horror thing either. Stephen King's old work is okay though. A lot of the stuff I have read in the genre falls short, and I think that the reason is, as you mentioned with the movies, it falls short when it comes to both suspense and storytelling. ...Fff, Chapters labels IWTV as horrow? Gawdno. What are they thinking, I don't even-- ahh, well. As for me, I do like Rice's novels, even though they're terrible, but... yes. Definitely not horror. Stoker's Dracula comes closer, though it's not quite there. To be honest, I still like vampires - and did try to write a vampire novel once - but man, most of the novels out there suck.
The "pff, who am I kidding?" this is partly why I was never really able to do this ghost story. I try to write scary scenes and they just turn out so... well... not-scary. But there must be some way to figure out how to do it, because I really like this idea, it just... Argh! Can't do it! D:
Anyway. Hah, no, the smalltext didn't kill my vision. ♥ I dunno where that big long paragraph came from, man. I guess I just tend to get carried away when talking about literature.
National awakening fic with Finland Oh. Fuck. Do want. DO WANT DO WANT YES. ... Unfortunately I'd never be able to write it. Sob. I've come to the conclusion that when I want something in this fandoml, I usually have to write it myself, so frustrating... but argh. No, someone who knows more about Finland than I do would have to write that one. (I am going to file the idea in my pocket though. Ff.)
Speaking realistically, I know I'll probably never be able to read the Kalevala in the original. But ah, I can dream~ You're correct that it's long - I received the volume yesterday, and in this translation it's like, 650 pages - 50 cantos, averaging about 400 lines per canto, coming out to 20,000 lines (probably more like 21,000). Pretty hefty book - lucky that it's a paperback. What I would love to have is an edition that has the original on one side of the page, and the translation on the other - I used to have an edition of Beowulf like that, as well as a copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that was much the same (because though it's in Middle English, it's a very difficult dialect) and it was just excellent to have.
You're correct about translations being scary. Though personally, when it comes to differences in translation, I'd say it's more frustrating than frightening. Personally, I've determined that when it comes to translations, at least of old literature, the best way to go about it is thus. Firstly, try to read current, scholarly editions - ones put out by university presses etc. In these cases, usually the translator is more concerned about getting the meaning across than translating in a way that results in a pretty sentence. Avoid old translations - from the 19th and early 20th century, etc, for this reason. Secondly, read multiple translations of the same work. Since, as you mentioned, two translators will translate things quite differently, I find it's helpful (as well as interesting) to read different versions to get a feel of what differences there might be, and then determine for myself what sort of meaning might be gathered from a passage. But this can be time-consuming. ... Basically, though, just stick with scholarly versions. Yep.
You mean it gets translated into fairly easy to understand English, then? Yes. This is generally the case. The language is not usually complicated, because there is no need for complication, if you understand what I mean. Since you mentioned Beowulf, I'll talk about that one a while. When I was teaching it, my students complained about it quite a bit too. The reason was not the language itself, but various factors. Many of the names are weird and often hard to pronounce. Also, the style is very circular, very repetitive. This is typical of epic literature, because it started off as oral literature. It was not written down. So the same thing might be repeated three different times in the same sentence, and the same tale might be relayed twice or three or more times, in different ways. Those are some of the reasons my students didn't like it...
Re: Your comment of 12148 characters exceeds the maximum character length of 4300.
The "pff, who am I kidding?" this is partly why I was never really able to do this ghost story. I try to write scary scenes and they just turn out so... well... not-scary. But there must be some way to figure out how to do it, because I really like this idea, it just... Argh! Can't do it! D:
Anyway. Hah, no, the smalltext didn't kill my vision. ♥ I dunno where that big long paragraph came from, man. I guess I just tend to get carried away when talking about literature.
National awakening fic with Finland
Oh. Fuck. Do want. DO WANT DO WANT YES. ... Unfortunately I'd never be able to write it. Sob. I've come to the conclusion that when I want something in this fandoml, I usually have to write it myself, so frustrating... but argh. No, someone who knows more about Finland than I do would have to write that one. (I am going to file the idea in my pocket though. Ff.)
Speaking realistically, I know I'll probably never be able to read the Kalevala in the original. But ah, I can dream~ You're correct that it's long - I received the volume yesterday, and in this translation it's like, 650 pages - 50 cantos, averaging about 400 lines per canto, coming out to 20,000 lines (probably more like 21,000). Pretty hefty book - lucky that it's a paperback. What I would love to have is an edition that has the original on one side of the page, and the translation on the other - I used to have an edition of Beowulf like that, as well as a copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that was much the same (because though it's in Middle English, it's a very difficult dialect) and it was just excellent to have.
You're correct about translations being scary. Though personally, when it comes to differences in translation, I'd say it's more frustrating than frightening. Personally, I've determined that when it comes to translations, at least of old literature, the best way to go about it is thus. Firstly, try to read current, scholarly editions - ones put out by university presses etc. In these cases, usually the translator is more concerned about getting the meaning across than translating in a way that results in a pretty sentence. Avoid old translations - from the 19th and early 20th century, etc, for this reason. Secondly, read multiple translations of the same work. Since, as you mentioned, two translators will translate things quite differently, I find it's helpful (as well as interesting) to read different versions to get a feel of what differences there might be, and then determine for myself what sort of meaning might be gathered from a passage. But this can be time-consuming. ... Basically, though, just stick with scholarly versions. Yep.
You mean it gets translated into fairly easy to understand English, then?
Yes. This is generally the case. The language is not usually complicated, because there is no need for complication, if you understand what I mean. Since you mentioned Beowulf, I'll talk about that one a while. When I was teaching it, my students complained about it quite a bit too. The reason was not the language itself, but various factors. Many of the names are weird and often hard to pronounce. Also, the style is very circular, very repetitive. This is typical of epic literature, because it started off as oral literature. It was not written down. So the same thing might be repeated three different times in the same sentence, and the same tale might be relayed twice or three or more times, in different ways. Those are some of the reasons my students didn't like it...