Forgot about this in all the excitement! I am delighted to announce that Best Served Cold is now out in a most handsome hardcover French translation from those wonderful people at Bragelonne, under the title Servir Froid:
Bearing a strong similarity to the award winning UK cover art by Didier Graffet and Dave Senior, and why the hell not? It’s brilliant. Here’s the wraparound:
Further details over here. I understand the Heroes will be following in due course…
10 comments so far
As a francophone, this title sounds kinda dumb to my ears… 😐 I guess “Mangé froid” would sound even worse, though…
I’m curious if you have any way of ensuring that you get a good translation?
You look suspiciously like a Frenchman on that wraparound . . .
Sword,
I can be whoever you want me to be…
Pirate. I want you to be a pirate. Can’t explain it, I just want you looking like a pirate for the Somali edition of BSC.
What’s the German version called? Essen Kalt, or similar?
[If memory serves the German word for ‘cold’ can also be used as slang for ‘impotent/sterile’, which might lead to an interesting euphemism].
Your covers do tend to be rather good.
Ted,
Unless you speak the language extremely well, it’s very hard to have much impact on the translation. You really have to trust the publisher.
That’s what I kind of expected, though it has to be a lousy feeling to find out one day that the translation is terrible! I’m mostly worried about it because my thriller WIP is set mainly in Russia, and my Russian is too weak to know how good or bad the translation is. Hope yours is great.
It doesn’t sound more dumb than the original title, it’s just that it’s rather unexpected for a novel of this genre. The original title sounded strange at first too, now we’re just used to it.
Being a froggy meself, I have recommended your work to a few French friends and one has actually bought the First Law trilogy, translated.
I’d be curious to read it, just to compare, but also I’d be surprised if it was as good as the original text.
I guess French readers wouldn’t have a realistic idea of what your exact style is, but more the one of the translator.
Coming back to the original thread, I think the title in French sounds kinda weird…
But hey, I’m not a publisher!