More new books: June

Today I received some proof copies from KPG. The first one is of Jared Diamond’s Why Is Sex Fun? (the result of a teamwork and a lot of editing, I bet). The book actually has been published sometime before. And also… of Larry Gonick’s History of the Modern World I (published here in Indonesia under the title ‘Kartun Riwayat Peradaban Modern Jilid I’, not ‘Kartun Riwayat Peradaban Jilid IV’ like I mentioned before).

I really enjoyed working on Gonick’s book, and although my editor naturally edited my translation here and there to make it even more funny, lively, and correct, I’m glad that some of the jokes I translated were accepted. Well, you can’t find a perfect translation for ‘It’s heretic clobbering time!’, bless The Thing, but there are jokes that can be adapted, such as:

p.35: “Yo, piye kabare, Malinche?”

p123: “Beritahu rajamu aku akan dengan senang hati menghidung – maksudku menghadang – si anak orang gila dengan resimen tentara bersenjata betet – maksudku berat – dan kekuatan angkatan laut Venesia…”

p213: “Raja! Raja! Tak ada artinya! Royal! Royal! Cuma bikin pantat gat—”

p224: “Sial, Locke, nama Whig ini terdengar seperti wig…”

“Lho, wig itu kan obat ganteng kita, yang mulia!”
(The original text mentions about ’whig’ sounds like a cross between ’a whale’ and ’a pig’.”)

In some parts, the Indonesian version is more animated, because we incorporate the ‘stereotyped’ way of speaking of some nations. For instance, we make all French speak ‘s’ and ‘j’ as ‘z,’, so instead of ‘jangan’ they say ‘zangan’. And the Dutch say ‘ik’ and ‘jej’ instead of ‘I’ and ‘you’, while figures of English literature and aristocracy use ‘daku’ and ‘dikau’.

I even make a Scot speak like this (with apology to every Scot in the world):

“Auch… sepertinye adhe sosis Skotlandie kluuuar dari mate Paduke…”

I have an extra copy of History of the Modern World… I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. Hold a competition with the book as a prize? (But what kind of competition?) Give it away to a friend? I’m still considering things…

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