I am delighted to announce that MY LADY GAMESTER will be translated into German — and so I will join the other Riskies as one of the many foreign authors published by German romance publisher Cora. (It’s old hat for a lot of authors, but it’s a first for me, so I’m excited!)
So now I’m wondering….what will they call it? To educate myself, I checked out how Cora has changed the titles of some other Regencies. (I have had Todd and his dictionaries translate the German titles for us, to the best of his abilities, but he doesn’t vouch for their correctness. If anyone spots an error, please mention it!)
ANNE ASHLEY:
Betrayed and Betrothed
becomes
A Gentleman Bets and Wins! (Ein Gentleman Wagt — Und Gewinnt!)
And, yes, the exclamation point is in the German title — it wasn’t added by me!
I think the English title here is sharp — I love it — but I have to admit, the German title is fun.
LOUISE ALLEN:
The Marriage Debt
becomes
My Beloved Angel (Mein Geliebter Engel)
I think “The Marriage Debt” is an intriguing title, whereas “My Beloved Angel” seems a tad overdone to me… What do you think?
KATHRYN KIRKWOOD:
A Match for Melissa
becomes
Only a Long Waltz? (Nur Einen Walzer Lang?)
I think the English title is fine here, but the German title is really interesting, at least rendered in English! I’m guessing it means something like “Was it love…or was it only a long waltz?” 🙂
SUSANNAH CARLETON:
Twin Peril
becomes
With the Eye of Love (Mit Den Augen Der Liebe)
I’ve always liked the title “Twin Peril” — it’s fun, it’s unusual, and it actually tells you something about the book. “With the Eye of Love,” on the other hand? Not so much. (If a title can be used for any romance ever written, how can it not be boring?)
KATHLEEN BALDWIN:
Cut From the Same Cloth
becomes
Enchanting Lady Elizabeth (Zauberhafte Lady Elizabeth)
Here too, the English title is less generic than the German. Not that there’s anything particularly wrong with “Enchanting Lady Elizabeth” — but it doesn’t do anything. “Cut From the Same Cloth,” on the other hand, is unusual enough to make me curious.
MADELEINE CONWAY:
Rosamund’s Revenge
becomes
Secret Love Letters (Geheime Liebesbriefe)
To me, “Rosamund’s Revenge” has more oomph, but “Secret Love Letters” is definitely interesting. (I presume it sounds a little more poetic in German.)
So…what do you think? Which titles do you prefer in the original, and which in the German?
And the question of the day: what do you think they’ll call MY LADY GAMESTER? (Bizarre or random guesses heartily welcomed!)
Cara
Cara King, author of MY LADY GAMESTER (not to be confused with My Lady Hamster)
I prefer the originals. With a few exceptions, the translations are on the generic side and some of them border on the mawkish.
I hope you get something catchy. For fun I ran My Lady Gamester through a free online translator and got Meine Dame Gamester. Which made me wonder if the translator knew what to do with “gamester”. Substituting “gambler” I got Mein Damenspieler. I’m sorry but to someone completely ignorant of German this sounds like a rare dog breed!
Coming out of my lurkdom after enjoying this site for a long time in silence to correct people- what terribly manners and I do apologize in advance.
Sorry, I’m German 🙂 and as someone who does a bit of translating, I would have translated Nr 1 as “A Gentleman dares and wins”. ‘Wagt’ in everyday language is understood as ‘dare’. Sorry, Todd!
Nr 2: Ahem, the cover actually seems to say ‘Mein mutiger Engel’, which doesn’t translate as ‘beloved’, but ‘courageous’ or ‘brave’, so it’d be ‘My courageous angel’.
Sorry for nit-picking, I do love your guys’ posts and as the joke about Germans goes: up till now, everything has been satisfactory 🙂
I second Elena that the originals sound better though some like Nr 5. ‘Cut from the same Cloth’ would be difficult to translate meaningfully. The saying that springs to mind translates as ‘whittled from the same wood’- ahem, lumberjack romance anyone? I suppose ‘zauberhaft’ is such an old-fashioned word that it does evoke a rather different response.
Elena: Not so much a dog breed, but it did give me a good chuckle. The online translator came out with ‘My checkers player’ if it’s translated back! Depending on whether ‘My Lady Gamester’ is used in addressing someone it would roughly be: ‘Meine Dame Glückspielerin’ or if its in reference then it would be ‘Meine glückspielende Dame’. Both sound rather awkward in German.
Sorry for this rather long post and a nit-picking reply about translations. I love this site and always learn something new here- just had to add my two cents’ worth. Keep it up, ladies!
Cecille
Cecille, we always love it when people come out of lurkdom–welcome!
Cara, congrats! I can see a one-word, multisyllabic title in your future… the real question is what color polyester gown your heroine will wear on the cover.
But it’s mysterious how those titles end up sounding like entirely different books. Maybe they really do pick those titles by picking generic words out of a tub.
I don’t have a suggestion, alas, LOL but I do have a question. . . why the heck do they even change them? I get it if a word in English is actually a curse word or some other so called embarrasing word in another language, but overall, why do the titles change at all? Seems like if everyone went through the trouble of coming up with the original titles, why change them again for foreign publication?
And, once upon a time I did take German, but it was so long ago. Same with Latin. But I still remember my numbers. 😉
Lois
Congrats on the sale to Germany, Cara! Interesting to see how the titles change. I particularly like “Only a waltz?”. There’s something a bit poignant and mysterious about it that would make me pick it up. “Daughter of the Game” which is now “Secrets of a Lady” in English was “Der Mantel des Schweigens” in German, which I think (Cecille?) means something like “The Cloak of Silence”. And “Beneath a Silent Moon” was “Die Verschwörung im Hause Frazer”. Someone did a rough translation of it for me, but I’m forgetting–“The Unrest in the House of Fraser”? Cecille, forgive me for mangling the language!
LOL, Elena! “Is that a rottweiler?” “Oh no, that’s a damenspieler!” 🙂
Thank you, Cecille! Todd knows a smidgen of German, and was kind enough to help me, but we both are delighted to have a more accurate translation!
So…”A Gentleman Dares and Wins!” — not quite as unusual as the title I thought it was, but still fun!
As for “Mutiger Engel” vs “Geliebter Engel” — that error is actually due to the Cora website. I just checked, and though their graphic of the cover does say “Mutiger Engel”, they list it everywhere else as “Geliebter”!
Cora page
(Perhaps they were so used to typing versions of the word “love” — which occur frequently in their titles — and they got carried away???) 🙂
Anyway, so it’s “My Courageous Angel” — well, I do like it better than “Beloved.” It actually means something!
“Whittled From the Same Wood” — I like it! I know right away what it means, but for an English-language romance title, it would never pass, which is interesting…I suspect someone somewhere has decreed that “cloth” has a feminine connotation, and “wood” a masculine one… (Vulgar jokes aside, of course.)
Glad to have to here, Cecille, and delighted you’ve been enjoying the site!
Cara
Thanks for the warm welcome! (And congratulations on your sale, Cara- forgot to mention that earlier. )
Tracy, ‘Verschwörung im Hause Frazer’ means ‘Conspiracy in the house of Frazer’, and I do wonder why they didn’t simply translate the original title. I suppose in some cases it’s difficult or doesn’t make much sense, but with that particular one, I don’t really see the logic.
Generally the German titles, I have to admit, leave me with a bit of an icky feeling as for some reason it seems that whoever makes up those titles just goes wild with a thesaurus and – agreeing with Cara on getting used to using ‘love’- tries to put in the word ‘love’ once too often to make absolutely sure that everyone gets the idea that this is a romance, set in another century. I generally prefer the original titles, which usually aren’t so in your face.
Cara, I liked ‘Whittled from the same wood’ as well, and juvenile creature that I am, it kept me chuckling all day. I am rather intrigued about the sort of story that would come under that title, just because it does sound so immediately vulgar. Or perhaps that’s just me regressing back to school…
Cecille
Thanks, Cecile! I quite like “The Conspiracy in the House of Fraser” and it definitley fits the story. I think they often change titles because alliteration or connotations wouldn’t work in translation (for instance “Daughter of the Game” was quote from “Troilus & Cressida”; I’m not sure what the German translation of the quote would be, and it plays off multiple meanings of “game” in English which might be not be the same in German). It seems as though “My Lady Gamester” would work though, if there’s a good way to translate “gamester”.
p.s.
Sorry I spelled your name wrong, Cecille–typing too fast.
Cecille, no worries about correcting the translations…I only did it after many, many caveats which Cara didn’t quite include in her post. 🙂 Actually, it seems like I only muffed one, which is better than I had feared. (Considering that I’ve never taken a single class in German–all self-taught from books and tapes.)
As for a title for My Lady Gamester…if my original translation had been correct, a reasonable one might have been Eine Dame Wagt–Und Gewinnt! But it might sound a bit too much like a sequel. 🙂
It should certainly NOT be translated, however, as Meine Dame Hamster.
Vielen Dank!
Todd-who-spricht-kein-Deutsch
Congrats on getting published in German. Those are some interesting titles. It just makes me wonder if the translations of the book follow literal lines or not. That may be a sticky wicket in some cases.
And just a quick side note: I miss Suzanne Carleton and hope she’s finishes that delightful series and finds a publisher or makes them into ebooks. Any news of her and her work?
Thanks for letting me post that.
Santa, I’ll drop her an email and ask! (BTW, no biggie, but it’s spelled Susannnah Carleton — I only mention it in case you try searching on it or something.) 🙂
Cara
Thanks Cara. I’m always mispelling her first name. I can’t wait to hear more.