It’s time for Sonderling Sunday! – That time of the week when I play with language by looking at the German translation of children’s books.
This week I’m back to the book that started it all, Der Orden der Seltsamen Sonderlinge, otherwise known as The Order of Odd-Fish, by James Kennedy.
Last time, we finished up Chapter 20. We are really making progress in this book! Tonight I’m not planning to spend a lot of time — but we will tackle the beginning of Kapitel 21
The first sentence is a good one to know:
“Rainy season struck hard.”
= Die Regenzeit schlug diesmal hart zu.
“flying ocean” = fliegender Ozean
Ha! This one’s shorter in German:
“Thunder banged and growled at all hours”
= Es donnerte unaufhörlich
(“It thundered incessantly.” Hmmm. Seems like the translator got a little lazy there.)
But this one’s not shorter:
“fog wrapped the mountain in an unbreakable cloud”
= Nebel hüllte den Berg in eine undurchdringliche Wolke
(“Fog shrouded the mountain in an impenetrable cloud”)
We’ve seen this before, but it’s still fun to say:
“muddy rivers” = schleimige Flüsse
“droned” = prasselte (“pattered”)
“leaky ceilings” = löchrigen Decken
“don’t worry about that” = machen Sie sich deshalb keine Sorgen
“enough fight” = genug Mumm
“pulled her jacket closer” = schmiegte sich in ihre Jacke
(“snuggled herself in her jacket”)
That’s the first section of Chapter 21. It’s short, but I’m going to call it a night and do some schmiegen.
Bis bald!