Thursday, March 10, 2005

This cracked me up.

I went to Renaud-Bray (a large, French-language bookstore chain based in Quebec) this evening after work to pick up some manga, and while I was browsing the wall of new releases, I saw a new Craig Thompson book, translated into French.

I went 'Hmmm'.

It wasn't one I'd heard of (and full disclosure, I haven't actually read any of his works, but he is rather well-known), so I figured it was something old, released to take advantage of the popularity of Blankets (which was published in French with the supremely original title of 'Blankets').

I pick the book off the shelf, flip to the title page (laugh at the 'translated from the American' note), and scan down to see what it was originally called.

The English title? Carnet de Voyage.

Which is French. It means 'travel notebook'. And not what the book's French title was.

The translators/editors instead chose to call it something else entirely, Un Américain en balade (An American Goes For A Stroll), for no reason that I could see.

It's just bizarre. I had to laugh.