theaug37 wrote: For example, the first time I ever buzzed in on "Romance of the Three Kingdoms," I received a neg by mistranslating as "Story of the Three Kingdoms," which, although a legitimate translation, is not accepted in standard quizbowl play as it was, not a standard English way of translating the work. Those who don't like my long rantings should delete this one now. Fair warning. This is quite a common problem, especially with packet submission. People write about a title without bothering to check its original language title. Even worse, British sources may translate a title one way, where American sources will translate something entirely differently. Consider Sillanpaa's masterwork, _Silja, nuorena nukkunnut_, which translates to "Silja, Fallen Asleep While Young." Yet other sources simply translate it to "The Maid Silja." If people aren't extremely careful, someone who answers one of these when a packet author hasn't done a good job checking other sources could actually have their knowledge punished, which can be crushing to someone who's been waiting awhile for one of these kinds of questions, which can even arise outside of literature (Sri _Harimandir_ Sahib is Punjabi for _Golden Temple_, and should be accepted as such). On the national epics issue (of rising popularity), there are several translations for Georgia's national epic, _Vepxistqaosani_ (for example, people, I know this will never come up), translations include the Russian _Vityaz v tirgurye shkurye_ (The Knight in Tiger's Skin), The Lord of the Panther's Skin, and the most popular English translation, The Knight in Panther's Skin. Arguably, all of these should be accepted. It depends on which translation people have read, all really the same work, simply translated differently. As the canon expands, this inevitably will pose greater and greater problems (in the case of Georgian epic poetry, maybe 20 years from now). --Wesley
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