this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
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The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem.
A part of the translation into English:
That's not the whole story; along with this epic translated poem, there's this whole saga of (among other things) the two inventors trying to work on a thinking machine. This thing that makes the poem is one of the prototypes; one of them starts saying 2+2=7 and gets mad when one inventor starts yelling at it that it isn't, and chases them both up the hills and into a cave trying to kill them... it's just great. It's fantastic. The whole thing is great, and it's translated into English flawlessly.
I feel like whoever translated Lem's sillier works definitely deserves a massive hand because oh my god there is so much wordplay like this and it all carries over to english really well. Like all the drug names and made up words and Tarantoga's entire three page long ramble about 'futuology'/predictive etymology which I guess had to be entirely rewritten in order to work in English in The Futurlogical Congress
Yeah 100% agreed. It's crazy to me that it's a translation and not the original author's construction.