#anyways. i have trouble reading xiv fanfic

[seaseren]

Genuinely. The idea of needing someone who is so much stronger than you, who is irreplacable, who could leave at a moment and there's nothing you could do and you would all be fucked- and this person has no regard for you, actively resents you, finds you a nuisance at best and at worst actively dislikes you is the stuff of a great psychological horror. Having to mold yourself around this person who is a walking army, a ticking bomb who you know thinks you're useless and demanding and just dead weight- and you look up to them. They have to be right. They're the hero, aren't they?

[child-of-hurin]

I’m starved for lpm content so I’m reading French fanfics with the help of google translate and I now hate the translators that much more because that guy from the third book? I did NOT realize it was a reference to “chevalier sans peur et sans reproche” bc they bungled it both in russian and in english! >:(

Oh god okay!! This sent me on a bit of a rabbit hole bc I had no idea how it had been translated, but ok so, in English he’s called “Fearless-and-Almost-Blameless”... In PTBR I just checked: “Sem medo e sem muita culpa”, literally “With no fear and not much blame” - which is a little more charming than the Eng version, but it also connects reproche to blame... Why? 

In PTBR we don’t have a proper good translation for reproche - Pierre Terrail’s wiki article uses irrepreensível which I think it’s also what I have seen George Duby’s translators use, and it works but it’s a mouthful, & I honestly have no idea .. I woulda preferred that translation to “culpa”/”blame” anyway, but w/e. But you know what? It’s a YA book, and at least the translation sounds nice to the ear. The Eng translation tho????

Throwing it on google got me

So maybe this is where the Eng translator decided to stop, in terms of cultural reference? 

I just can’t get my head around the translation of “reproche” to “blame” instead of “reproach”, the word is literally there?

I keep thinking that choosing the adjective form “blameless” instead of the adjective phrasal “without blame” happens bc then you can treat it as a noun, like, it’s much clunkier to say “I saw the Without Fear...” than “I saw the Fearless...”, so ok I get that.

except,

if that’s a choice to make it less clunky,

then what’s up with... the removal of the article in English? In FR he’s “le Sans-Peur-et-Presque-Sans-Reproche”, in PTBR the article remains there, in English they just... don’t use articles For some reason? 

If the original text read “c’est le Sans-Peur,...” why does the Eng translator chooses to go for “it’s Fearless...”? I always feel like the Eng translator is trying Too Hard to make it sound eerie and like a period piece, when IMO the FR dialogue is charming and vivacious... Every time I try to find a passage in the Eng translation I get a little :| :| :|  because it always sounds like the translation is just trying too hard... I kinda respect that a an aesthetic choice tbqh except the text does lose brilliance. 

But most importantly. If the translator is arbitrarily trying to give it a classic, period feeling by making the dialogue less sound less natural to an Eng reader than it does in the original to a FR reader... then why drop the ball on historical references like this??? IJDGI 🤷

Anyway, how did it get translated to Russian?? >_> Same problem? I know the Russian translation is a nightmare, though I don’t know the details (I wish I did! If you know exactly what the problems were... can you tell me? 👀) 

Besides that, I know the author’s father is a scholar specialized in Louis XIV’s court and esp in Fouquet’s trial so it really just makes you wonder how many references are there and we just don’t get? 👀

(Another thought: isn’t it crazy that Ophelie finally gets rid of one chevalier in a book and then gets in trouble with another chevalier in the next book?? Let her catch a break dshbdfnjfdm)