On 3/05/2012, at 5:18 AM, Brent Yorgey wrote:
I am curious how the title was translated. Of course, the English title "Learn You a Haskell for Great Good" uses intentionally ungrammatical/unidiomatic English for humorous effect. Is the Japanese title also ungrammatical/unidiomatic Japanese? Or do Japanese speakers not find that humorous?
This native speaker of English doesn't find the effect of the English title funny, despite finding practically everything in the world, up to and including a bout of kidney stones, funny. Humour styles really don't travel all that well. The Little Lisper (and the other books like The Little Schemer and The Seasoned Schemer) are presumably meant to be funny, but to me come across as offensively patronising (you are such a drooling idiot that if we didn't have this heavy laugh track you'd go to sleep or something). Such a pity, because they are such great books if you can refrain from throwing them out the window every few minutes. Now if the Japanese title were *perfect* Japanese, that *would* be funny, because it would be a case of a good translation being a bad translation. I did say that humour doesn't travel well...