In this case, I think I'll hold with my earlier reply: "If you ask me, the "best translation" isn't what's important - what's important is what the translation is. If you want to say "Lola rennt," that's your business, but the English title is "Run Lola Run," and it's a title just like everything else. If you're going to give the title in English, you shouldn't be allowed to deviate. Unless you've read/seen the work in its original language, you're giving the title of an English work, not your interpretation of how the title might be translated into English." Now, you might take issue with that last sentence, but if you've read/seen the work in its original language, you ought to be able to give its original title without much difficulty. <<If a person shows a clear knowledge of the answer, given that the original language does not have articles, I would be inclined to go so far as to even accept "The War and the Peace".>> I agree that the lack of articles in Russian make translations hazy, but the fact is that I don't think you'd find a single English translation of Tolstoy's work with the title "The War and the Peace." Unless the person read it in Russian and was making the translation themselves, what they're really giving, it seems to me, is someone else's (in this case, whoever the particular translator was) idea of the translation, which in most if not every case would be "War and Peace." But again, someone who read it in the original language might as well answer "Voyna i Mir" and remove all ambiguity. Clearly this can be argued to death. I'm inclined to waver a little more on translated titles that don't always come standard, which I think we can agree that "The War and the Peace" is not. If it demonstrated such clear knowledge, why doesn't this person know that the title is "War and Peace," particularly given the fame of the book? (Though I agree you'd probably never see anyone give it anyway.) I'm a lot less inclined to do it on the English translation of foreign film titles. Give the English title, or give the foreign title, but the fact is nobody saw a film called "Lola Runs" (or whatever the literal translation is); they either saw "Lola rennt" or "Run Lola Run." A lot of things demonstrate clear knowledge of the subject - that doesn't necessarily make them right as far as quiz bowl answers go. In most cases, yes, these sorts of answers are less right than would be variant translations, but that doesn't change the argument, in my opinion. I don't see why it's unreasonable to expect the *standard* English translation of a work's title. You didn't see "Lola Runs" and you sure didn't read "The War and the Peace." You read "Voyna i Mir" or you read "War and Peace." Of course, that's just my opinion; I could be wrong. Flax, 400 lb. gorilla NUQB
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