Gained in Translation: What are some works where the localized or translated version is almost insultingly better than the original?

I've never trusted my own or other's appraisals of media whose source or representation is in a non-native language, other than as a kind of "cover version", but a lot of covers are way better than the originals!

Which are the ones you can confirm -- "yes, child, spare yourself learning a whole language to experience this in its true glory, for its true glory was the completely unfaithful dub the entire time"?

I can't speak to this personally and I don't have a citation, but I've heard that Donald Duck comics were incredibly popular in Scandinavian countries thanks to quite literary translations that really elevated the material.

Ah, correction: I was thinking of the acclaimed Finnish translation of the Donald Duck comics, under the name Aku Ankka.

I believe you!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GebO43lFLg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TemPzi5pmis

Anthea Bell's translations of Asterix into English

shrimptin's translation of Tintin from English into English

https://64.media.tumblr.com/9dddb7fa064be4178f2dfe6a36cadad9/7aaedb8e93143cfd-54/s1280x1920/762775d77d8769199f678060d78cf0d3dea01422.png

LOL

“heroes” the Bowie song sounds better in German

Cannot confirm this but I was told that the English translations of Gabriel Garcia Marquez were better than the originals

I tried comparative reading Bolaño's 2666 and gave up after half a page.

I kinda preferred the American The Ring to the Japanese Ringu

Many American games are improved by switching to non-English audio tracks, but that's usually more of a dialog performance issue than a writing issue.

Apparently the person who translated Dracula into Icelandic basically rewrote the whole story so it was more exciting with a larger part of it set in Dracula's castle, and it was years until anyone noticed. It's now released as its own story called Powers Of Darkness

Xxp I prefer the American Grudge to the Japanese one, even if it is a shot for shot remake

The Magic Roundabout was originally a French animation with boilerplate kid-level dialogue. The guy who "translated" it didn't know any French, so he made up his own wry, surreal stories based on what was happening on screen

I’ve heard this was the case with Proust? I’ve read two translations of Swann’s Way but not the original French

“Let Me In” was equal to the original imo— both perfect films, great performances all round— and notably superior to the novel it was based on (the author wrote the screenplay himself and edited out a tonne, removed all the midichlorians)

Heresy maybe but I always loved M*A*S*H (the TV show) but haven’t been able to get through the movie despite its classic status

And sorry not sorry but I’ll take almost any Annie Lennox cover over the original (especially “No More I Love You’s”, less so “Wrap It Up”)

I thought Vanilla Sky was better than the Spanish film it was adapted from

Eeee idk if this is a bad/basic opinion but I love The Departed and was totally whatever about Infernal Affairs

Dunno about better, but somewhat of a difference: March of the Penguins

The style of the documentary differs considerably between the original French version and some of the international versions.

The original French-language release features a romanticized first-person narrative as if the story is being told by the penguins themselves.

As a Frenchman I have to say I find « My Way » much better than the original « Comme d’Habitude »… any English versions basically !

Which is kinda ironic since C. Francois was originally famous for his lousy covers of English/US hits. And his one original hit was better… in English.

Much prefer Ça Plein Pour Moi to Jet Boy, Jet Girl tho

xps I read powers of darkness the other year, this is what I posted at the time

chang.eng partition (wins) wrote this on thread Bonfires In The Sky: What Are You Reading, Winter 2021-22? on board I Love Books on Jan 31, 2022

Valdimar Ásmundsson, powers of darkness - this is the Icelandic “translation” of Dracula that was published just a few years after the original; almost a century passed before anyone realised it isn’t at all a translation in the usual sense but a completely rewritten novel, notably racier and bloodier than stoker’s, with added political intrigue - that’s the pitch anyway. The intro by the (re)translator is very keen to convince you that this version is somehow drawn from stoker’s notes for Dracula, making it semi-official, but the mystery of the artefact is the draw for me. Oh, there’s also a foreword by stoker himself… probably

Is it any good? It spends a LOT more time on harker at castle Dracula (as in, most of the book) and this stuff is quite good, especially the count’s extreme libertine rants, the blood cult and ghostly figures, none of which lead anywhere. The stuff in England (which weirdly ditches the epistolary mode in favour of standard 3rd person narrative) is disappointingly sketchy, the endgame across Europe absurdly truncated (& no renfield, fuck that). The most interesting change here is that while Dracula is mostly an unseen character in the second half of stoker’s novel, here he interacts with Mina & co. Interestingly the translation was done by committee, with the named translator really more of a project leader; it’s no doubt diligent but maybe missing the flair that would do justice to what halldór laxness apparently called one of the greatest works of Icelandic literature

~~~ok since writing the above I have read the Wikipedia entry and apparently it has since emerged that the Icelandic text is based on a previous Swedish translation, in which the second part is much longer? This is like borgesian soap opera

Reading the Wiki entries right now (there are separate ones for the Icelandic and Swedish editions) and yeah, this is pretty cool. Seems like the whole thing's still somewhat unresolved, e.g. the identity of "A—e", the author of the Swedish serialization.

The English translation of The Three-Body Problem changes the order of chapters, putting the Cultural Revolution scene first, and drops a bunch of sexist descriptions of the female characters (though obv impossible to excise all sexism in that series)

i want to know more about the added political intrigue in the icelandic drac

rabbit-holing after icelandic politics in the late 19th century i find that the town of gimli in manitoba is sometimes known as "new iceland" (bcz of icelanders emigrating there en masse) but i imagine this fact and location do not feature

It came to my attention some years ago that Paul Auster is extremely popular in continental Europe, particularly in Spain, and that has led me to wonder if his writing somehow reads better in Spanish than in English. Because I don’t mean to slag the guy but his writing has never really grabbed me in English.

Cannot confirm this but I was told that the English translations of Gabriel Garcia Marquez were better than the originals

The only one of his I've read in both languages is Love in the Time of Cholera, I definitely wouldn't say the English translation is "better," but . . . translation is really hard. Reading something, even something simple, in one language is not the same as reading the same sentence in another. The experience is qualitatively different, even if the translator makes only minimal efforts at rendering the prose in a fitting idiom. All of that is to say, the English renditions of his books (those that I've read) are quite good on their own terms, and hew pretty faithfully to the sense of the original, but it's hard to say they are "better."

xxp oh yeah, Guy Maddin's Tales from the Gimli Hospital is about that town. I saw him give a Q&A on it last year.

more adaptation than translation but re: paul auster, the city of glass comic is famously better than its source.

Oh weird, he just passed. You weren't kidding about being big in Europe!
https://archive.is/05j3s

He must translate really well to French! Auster also lived in my neighborhood and I would often see him dining in local restaurants, sometimes with his good pal Salman Rushdie! I think I've told the story here of one occasion when I eavesdropped on their highly entertaining dinner conversation, which was filled with talk of literature, with some Hollywood anecdotes mixed in. Rushdie seemed like quite a funny guy.

What a life - RIP