My calendar boy for the month of April is Philip Ardagh. Spent Monday’s dinner agonising over what I might do with April 1st, but luckily Philip is amusing enough for this tricky day. The calendar photo shows him clutching a Japanese translation of one of his books. I forget which one, as it just looks like Japanese to me.
At least it’s not the dead fox.
Serious blogging will, possibly, be resumed tomorrow.
2 responses so far ↓
Nick // April 1, 2008 at 8:22
Philip once told me an amusing tale about the Japanese translation of the Eddie Dickens books. The translator kept asking these impossibly earnest questions, inappropriate to the books’ tone. One passage described a man on tiptoe suffering from vertigo, who had to be ‘talked down’ by a group of passing philosophers.
‘Please,’ said the translator, ‘where were these philosophers passing to? Or passing from?’ Philip thought a moment. ‘From a picnic,’ he replied.
Later the translator came back to him. ‘I was translating this as if it were Charles Dickens,’ she confessed. ‘Now that I have met you, I will make it much more silly.’
bookwitch // April 4, 2008 at 21:50
Thanks a lot, Nick. I’d heard this from Philip, but had forgotten quite how it went.
And sorry that this comment disappeared in the spam. WordPress have just reorganised, so I found it languishing away.
Leave a Comment