Post #431790 by nuKKe on Sat, Jan 31, 2009 10:19 AM

In my spare time I do professional/ lectorial reading for one of Israel's major publishing houses. I read books and recommend whether to buy the translation rights or not. My latest reading was an American novel titled "Singer", by Ira Sher, to be published in the States in March. I recommended not to translate it for various reasons, mainly cultural nuances that just couldn't pass without too many footnotes that should be avoidable. One of the cultural nuances that local readers wouldn't get is the following:

"This was, at least the last time I came through, a Chinese restaurant," Charles told me, no less unilluminatingly. "You know, with a tiki-bar thing." It wasn't a great leap of the imagination: the tables were partitioned from each other by fish tanks containing gigantic, solitary carp, the walls were papered in black and gold, and the man who approached us for an order was Chinese, though he wore his hair in a Mullet."
(p.75)

Considering that the narrative takes place in the early 1980's, the scenario makes sense, I guess.