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grind-the-rust In reply to HelixApothecari [2015-07-14 06:21:41 +0000 UTC]

*smiles* well, Nathaniel Garro consumes tea on two occasions in Flight of the Eisenstein - it doesn't really make me warm to him though, he's just so...indefatigable...
I've accidentally started keeping a list of instances of tea-drinking and other human behaviour in the Horus Heresy/40K novels, it seems.

*chuckles* Herbs for a salad. I suppose there isn't a lot that could actually poison an Astartes, so gathering herbs on a (presumably) unknown planet with reckless abandon is all fair and good. Then again, he's an apothecary, so he probably knows what he's doing.

And I fully encourage you to yield to the urge to make a cup of Earl Grey or whatever else you fancy at stupid hours after midnight - I've just recently discovered that squeezing a grapefruit into a pot of black tea, with a bit of sugar, results in a positively ambrosial drink. (and the waste of a grapefruit, some would say, but i regret nothing) Incidentally, this was one of those late night/early morning experiments. 

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HelixApothecari In reply to grind-the-rust [2015-07-15 23:12:13 +0000 UTC]

I would seriously love to read that list. And I'd love to read some more books to start my own mental list, but alas, money. A friend offered me access to his "about every 40k novel released in Germany" library, though... I think I'm going to pick up some of the newer books (the older translations are horrible, not kidding - ranging from 'this sentence no verb' to translating 40k-specific expression in the most absurd way possible).

Yeah, I might have some strange ideas about Astartes and their diet. I had a Deathwatch character who was somewhat addicted to chocolate bars. But you're right, as an Apothecary he is well versed at analyzing potential threats in his food Plus, he seriously enjoys cooking when he has the opportunity to do it.

Grapefruit in tea, now that's something! Unfortunately I can't have grapefruit, otherwise I would have tried this for sure.  When it comes to unusual food combinations, I'm about as curious as my Apothecary. (Peanut butter tomato sauce is one of my favourite discoveries... but the looks I get when I tell people... )

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grind-the-rust In reply to HelixApothecari [2015-07-16 05:42:56 +0000 UTC]

Peanut butter tomato sauce, eh? I used to love tomato sauce and white bread sandwiches as a kid...I still kinda do.

Some of the books aren't that great in English, either - Graeme McNeill has some really special moments. My favorites include these two examples from "A Thousand Sons":
"his eyes were hooded, like those of a cobra" - problematic, as cobras have no eyelids. I was stuck picturing the character with bulging, lidless eyes for the rest of the book.
or describing Hathor Maat's aura as "lugubrious and rigidly controlled" - something can't be extravagantly, demonstratively mournful and plaintive , yet simultaneously "rigidly controlled". My guess is, he was looking for synonyms for "melancholic" and then forgot to check the exact definitions for the ones he found.

And then there are descriptions where he's clearly just padding out the word count, and describing a "destructive storm of destruction" with lots of repetition. That guy needs an editor so badly. Or maybe he doesn't. I'm starting to actually look forward to finding the minor screw ups in any novel of his i pick up.

But yeah, i know what you mean about bad translations. It goes both ways. The English translation of the Russian novel Metro 2033 has some hilariously literal moments. Especially where it comes to the swearing.

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HelixApothecari In reply to grind-the-rust [2015-07-17 00:04:45 +0000 UTC]

Now I want to know more about the swearing and how they got it wrong...

Apparently the first Grey Knights novels had the verb issue, or that's what my husband told me. He said that for the first third of the book, he could hardly make sense of the story, as it sounded like something fresh out of Google Translate. It seems like it got better, but until a few years ago, German translations tended to be a bit iffy. German Lexicanum doesn't even accept them, they're _that_ off. I like some of the 'replacements' they make, like translating 'Librarian' as 'Scriptor' (it has a nice ring to it and fits with 40k's pseudo-Latin) or - see my nickname on here - the Helix Apothecari instead of Prime Helix. Well, I do have a thing for said pseudo-Latin, so maybe it's just me, heh. But earlier translators not only didn't have ANY idea of the setting, but also considered it necessary to translate chapter names, and came up with the oddest ideas: The Imperial Fists were called "Kaisergrenadiere" (Emperor's grenadiers), for example, and the Lamenters were suddenly "Fackelträger" (torch bearers). Well, I _do_ plan on using the 'torch bearers' in my Lamenters story, as a kind of "no one will ever read this, but it makes me chuckle" dig at early translations...

As a non-native speaker, I probably miss out on many of those problems you mentioned. I wouldn't even have known what 'lugubrious' means, and none of the online translations I found mention the demonstrative aspect. But the destructive storm of destruction is hilarious... I don't think he _literally_ wrote that, no? But the wording is just so... so 40k, I'm sure some people would use it unironically.

Word repetition is my nemesis. One day I will be crushed in an avalanche of duplicate words that slipped my guard. I still find them in one year old stuff I already double- and quadruple-checked, and yet they creep up on me like something that creeps up on people. (I love the Pratchett way of using metaphors. Metaphors? Parables? It's apparently rather 'Gleichnis' than 'Metapher' in German, but the translation for 'Gleichnis' is 'parable', and I'm not sure whether one can use that in a linguistical context. But I _do_ know that I just went off on a tangent.) I'm my own worst critic anyway - thus I rarely allow anyone else to read my drivel, I'm _that_ convinced they will utterly hate it. I have a whole 'novel' sitting on my hard drive, and I'm working on part 2, but... no, having two-and-a-half people read it means enough tension and moments of 'they will start to rip it to shreds every second now'. (Btw, it's 2 1/2 people since my brother reads it, but only a few pages a month, so he'll probably finish part 1 sometime in 2017 )

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grind-the-rust In reply to MasterAlighieri [2015-04-10 15:11:11 +0000 UTC]

*grins* the best thing is, this is a totally canon portrayal of that particular character.
Maybe if they had more tea breaks, things would have never gotten so bad.
Great to hear from you again, by the way!

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MasterAlighieri In reply to grind-the-rust [2015-05-06 12:12:37 +0000 UTC]

I seldom find the time to visit DA these these times - let alone posting own stuff. But it is alway a pleasure to find some new work from you especally since your artistic spectrum seems to know little boundaries, covering illustrations with a classic artistic tone (You did that Francesca di Rimini Scene from the commedia I think?) as well as delicate 40k Fanart. I will try to be around more often.       

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grind-the-rust In reply to MasterAlighieri [2015-05-07 12:37:03 +0000 UTC]

Heh, yup, the Paolo and Francesca scene was my doing. "Delicate" and "40K" aren't words that occur in the same sentence very often, but I'm flattered and pleased that that's how my fanart looks to you. There will be more - I definitely plan to do a few pictures for the early Horus Heresy books. It pleases me no end to know that somewhere out there, someone else enjoys things as seemingly disparate from each other as pulpy space-opera and deeply allegorical long-winded religious poetry. Granted, it seems tome that if a person has the patience to find pleasure in one of the above, they are on a good footing to enjoy the other, hehe. 

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grind-the-rust In reply to RecklessCharge [2015-04-10 15:12:54 +0000 UTC]

Thank you for the kind words. I'd been meaning to do some 40K fanart for yonks, and that scene finally pushed me over the edge - I just couldn't resist any longer.

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