Patrick Murtha
Reader
I know there are a number of examples of this. A few that come to mind:
(1) Arthur Koestler’s The Gladiators, written in German, was published first in Hungarian, then in English. The manuscript was lost, so when it did appear in German, it was a re-translation from the English (!).
(2) Similar situation for Koestler's Darkness at Noon, published in English translation first. The German manuscript was eventually recovered, but the published German version before that was a re-translation from the English.
(3) Since everything else about B. Traven is confusing, it stands to reason that the language he wrote in is disputed, too. I have seen references to German first, and also to English first. The translations of the books between the two languages are generally credited to the author himself, but honestly, who the hell knows? ? The German publications preceded the English in every case that I am aware of (which would seem odd if Traven was an American born in San Francisco, as he consistently maintained).
(4) Gayl Jones’ third novel The Birdcatcher was first published in German in 1986, and only recently appeared in its original English. Jones was in self-exile from the US at the time, on the run with her fugitive boyfriend Robert Higgins. (Long story, check her Wikipedia profile.)
(5) C.P. Rodocanachi’s Forever Ulysses aka No Innocent Abroad (1937) “was never published in Greek. [Patrick] Leigh Fermor seems to have translated it for practice.”
(6) After he lost his English-language publishers, Harry Stephen Keeler wrote his bizarre “webwork” mystery novels directly for translation into Spanish and Portuguese.
(1) Arthur Koestler’s The Gladiators, written in German, was published first in Hungarian, then in English. The manuscript was lost, so when it did appear in German, it was a re-translation from the English (!).
(2) Similar situation for Koestler's Darkness at Noon, published in English translation first. The German manuscript was eventually recovered, but the published German version before that was a re-translation from the English.
(3) Since everything else about B. Traven is confusing, it stands to reason that the language he wrote in is disputed, too. I have seen references to German first, and also to English first. The translations of the books between the two languages are generally credited to the author himself, but honestly, who the hell knows? ? The German publications preceded the English in every case that I am aware of (which would seem odd if Traven was an American born in San Francisco, as he consistently maintained).
(4) Gayl Jones’ third novel The Birdcatcher was first published in German in 1986, and only recently appeared in its original English. Jones was in self-exile from the US at the time, on the run with her fugitive boyfriend Robert Higgins. (Long story, check her Wikipedia profile.)
(5) C.P. Rodocanachi’s Forever Ulysses aka No Innocent Abroad (1937) “was never published in Greek. [Patrick] Leigh Fermor seems to have translated it for practice.”
(6) After he lost his English-language publishers, Harry Stephen Keeler wrote his bizarre “webwork” mystery novels directly for translation into Spanish and Portuguese.
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