According to the Telegraph, the translators who translated Dan Brown’s new book were basically kept secluded in some kind of maximum security bunker without mobile phones, internet access and very little time outside. I’ve heard of conditions like those in the videogame industry (a translator colleague was offered a job to translate the text parts of a new videogame, provided he did it on site and under constant supervision in Japan), but not for books, not even tentpole releases like Harry Potter. I hope the translators were at least well paid for the trouble, but knowing how literary translation pays (namely crap), I rather doubt it.
Meanwhile, the uproar about Dead Ever After, the final book in Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire series, is still going on a day before the official release date. By now the uproar among disappointed fans has even risen to the level of suicide and death threats. The Wall Street Journal, not exactly the venue I would expect to write about a popular vampire fiction series, has got not one but two articles on the subject.
Special effects legend Ray Harryhausen died aged 92. I grew up in the age of stop-motion effects and adored Harryhausen’s work. And even today in the age of CGI, I’d rather take a Harryhausen monster over the latest digital extravaganza.
The 2012 romance cover contest at the Cover Café is open for voting. I’m probably repeating myself here, but I really wish that something like this existed for other genres as well.
Film scholar David Bordwell offers a fascinating essay on the devlopment of the suspense genre in the 1930s and 1940s. This is very helpful in determining how the genres of mystery, crime fiction, thriller and suspense are defined in the English speaking world (which is somewhat different from how they are defined in the German speaking world). But what I found particularly striking about the essay is how many of those writers are forgotten these days or only remembered because Hitchcock adapted their novels. And as usual, the women writers are more obscure than the men.
Writer Kathleen Valentine shares a fascinating ghost story from Boston on her blog. Is it me or were both sides in the Civil War very eager to hang those on the opposing side?
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What a sad loss for we fans of Ray Harryhausen’s work. He was a true genius.
He certainly was. I saw some of his original models exhibited at the new defunct London film museum. The detail was amazing.