Summary
WhileThe Witcherseries has been a popular one for Netflix, the books on which it’s based haven’t been nearly as popular across the globe as they might have been thanks to one aspect being badly handled by publishers.The Witcherbooks by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowskihave grown into a sprawling multimedia franchise comprised of 15 short stories, six books, a video game series, comic books, tabletop RPGs, and more.Suffice it to say, it’s a wildly successful franchise, thanks largely to fans falling in love withThe Witcher’s characters.
Despite that success, however, there’s one area in which the books have really struggled until recently. The release of the NetflixThe Witcherseries, now heading to season 4, has somewhat rectified this issue,but the books still haven’t taken off with American audiences like they have in other countries.This sluggish adoption by English-speaking readers is all down to language.
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The Witcher English Translations Are Generally Regarded As Mediocre To Pretty Bad
Translations Across Language Families Can Be Tricky
While Reddit and other parts of the internet don’t speak for the whole, the consensus amongWitcherreaders on forums and in the wilds of social media is thatthe English translations ofThe Witcherbooks are, to say the least, not great.There’s always a tricky challenge in translating a book into another language, especially if the original language is quite different than the language into which it’s being translated. WithThe Witcher’s original language being Slavic-based Polish, there are bound to be some flaws in the translation to Germanic-based English.
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That said, the English translations ofThe Witcherare particularly bad,suffering from notable grammar mistakes and incorrect word choices.Beyond that, readers seem to be in agreement that the English translation ofThe Witcheris quite wooden and robotic, stripping out much of the wordplay and richness of Sapkowski’s original Polish passages. Sapkowski himself has strongly disavowed having any involvement in the English language translations, saying that the English translator “[was] polite enough, sometimes he asks me questions, sometimes he presents me with a fragment of the first page, but it is his own will – I have nothing to do with it.” (viaEurogamer) In other words, don’t blame him for the poor quality of the translation.
Beyond that, readers seem to be in agreement that the English translation ofThe Witcheris quite wooden and robotic, stripping out much of the wordplay and richness of Sapkowski’s original Polish passages.
The First Witcher Book, The Last Wish, Seems To Have Suffered The Most
There Could Be A Few Reasons For This
Similar to the overall consensus about the books' English translations, most readers, particularly multilingual readers, agree thatthe first book inThe Witcherseries,The Last Wish, suffers the most from the poor Polish-to-English translation.There are likely a few reasons for this. When a book is translated, it’s generally the foreign publishing company that picks up a book to sell in its own territory that does the translating into its own language. Currently, Orbit is the United States publisher of theWitcherseries, having announced it had acquired the rights in 2017 the same month that Netflix announced it was making a series based on theWitcherbooks.
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While there was some increase in demand for the books upon the announcement of the show,real demand didn’t increase until the first season of the Netflix series.It could be that Orbit didn’t want to commit too much to a huge initial print run, and that it wasn’t as invested in the quality of its translation until it saw just how successful the show would be. Once issues with the first translation were discovered, it could be that adjustments were made for the translation of the next books in the series; of course, this is all an educated guess.
It Has A Cult Following In Countries With Languages The Most Similar To Polish
Netflix’sThe Witcherhas undoubtedly helped with English language sales for Sapkowski’s series. Still, the books have been around for years, long before the series,the first story having been published in Poland in 1986 and the first full book in 1994.The Witchergames have also been around for quite some time, with the first game in CD Projekt Red’s series being released in 2007, which is, not coincidentally, when the very first English translations ofThe Witcherstarted to arrive.
Even though the English translations ofThe Witcherhave been available for 17 years at this point, they just didn’t take off as hoped, initially. It’s odd considering how hugeThe Witchergames are and were. While there’s no guarantee that video game or TV/movie adaptations will correlate to a big rise in book sales, that’s usually the case. That didn’t really happen withThe Witcher,however, until the Netflix series, despite the books having a huge cult following in countries like their native Poland and other Eastern and Central European countries–all Slavic-speaking countries.It’s hard not to think that the shoddy English translation has unfortunately heldThe Witcherbooks back from being as huge as they might have been much earlier.
The Witcher
The Witcher, released in 2019, follows Geralt of Rivia, a mutated monster hunter navigating a turbulent world where humanity’s darker nature often eclipses the monstrous.
