Customer Reviews

Romanian Fairy Tales and Legends (Forgotten Books)

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I'm familiar with Romanian fairy tales and I was happy when I've seen this book on amazon. But after I bought it, I had the unpleasant surprise to realize that the translation is awful (Romanian expressions, words, the order of the words in a sentence are translated carelessly, without paying attention to what an English / American who reads these tales for the first time would think or make of them) and the fairy tales and legends I used to know are chopped (their content is modified and made shorter), their outcome modified, their characters different just because somebody thought it's enough to write "Romanian Fairy Tales" on the cover and they're not responsible of how the book is "transferred" from a language (and culture) to another. To be honest, if I hadn't previously known the tales and the legends, I would have thought Romanian culture to be at least "strange" based on this book which doesn't make one familiar with it.
Seriously people, when you translate a book, you have to do it responsively!

I didn't even have to buy the book to realize how ankylosed the English employed in this translation was. After reading through it online I decided not to buy it. The author's effort and intentions are admirable (most of the stories are wonderful little gems), but I wish the book was translated by someone who's more familiar with spoken English. This book seems translated by someone who spent little to no time in an English speaking country and read little to no English literature. The grammar, choice of words and phrase construction vary from heavy handed to dowright laughable, making it hard for the readers to immerse themselves into the story and enjoy it.

I would have loved to see this book fly off its Amazon virtual shelves, but it's really not worth the money. The kids for whom I was going to buy this will be better served if I just try to remember the stories and tell them myself...

This Book was purchased as a Christmas gift for my daughter's friend. He came to the US when he was very young and doesn't remember any fairy tales. I quickly perused the book and I think he will be very pleased with this little piece of history.

I just wished there would have been more of the tales in a bigger and better version with more illustration .

This was not translated by a Romanian, definitely..the Romanian words just aren't right, they are spelled like someone knew only the spoken language and was trying now to write them..and overall, the writing is poor...Good try I guess, but it's not the best for what I intended (to introduce my children to the Romanian folk tales..). Maybe someone out there has better versions-I will keep looking.

I liked this book, but not the way it was translated to English. I understand the author did not want to change the tales because the translations did not match, but it was confusing at times to try and understand what the author meant in some of the fairy tales. You can definately see where some of the tales have resemblance to American tales. It was an interesting read.