Post #734267 by Club Nouméa on Sat, Jan 3, 2015 7:54 PM

I finished reading Tiki Pop a while back and must say it is a splendid read. I liked the way the visuals integrated so smoothly with the text, and how you showed successive generations' graphical reinterpretations of great works of South Pacific literature (the covers of the works of Herman Melville and the like). Also the insights into the role that Hollywood played were fascinating. Choosing the images must have involved a lot of work - for example tracking down the photo of the first palm tree in California. Chapter 34 on Tiki Devolution was particularly striking and well put together.

I read both the French and English texts and thought that the French was a good rendering of the English, although it could have done with some tighter editing and more native English-speaker input. While the French text is generally cleverly idiomatic and very well translated, unfortunately a few clangers got through. Some examples:

p.124 "You're a sap. Mister Jap" is mistranslated as "Tu nous sapes le moral Monsieur le Jap" ("You are sapping our morale Mr Jap")

p.196 "held its own" does not mean "écrasé la concurrence" ("crushed the opposition")

p. 281 "get into a muu-muu" is translated as "savourez un muu-muu" (taste a muu-muu)

p. 323 "decor" translated as "décorum" (= decorum)

And there are occasional typos:

p. 311 "Pacique" should be "Pacifique"

p. 319 "Ouils" => "Outils"

I am happy to provide a full list should you be doing a second edition. Overall it is a good translation though.