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The Maniacal Pursuit

For those who know me, it is no secret that I love ferreting out those really weird non-English translations of the Canon. It is also know that I have been rather successful in this pursuit. Through my own personal research which is build upon the original hard work of Ronald Burt De Waal, I have defined the number of non-English translations at 77 or 78 depending on weather or not there actually exists a Flemish translation. My sources in The Netherlands say there is one and my sources in The Netherlands say there is not one. Different sources different results.

Trying to understand the great world of foreign languages reminds me of one of my favorite jokes.

What do you call a person who speaks 2 languages?

Bilingual.

What do you call a person who speaks many languages?

Multilingual.

What do you call a person who speaks only one language?

An American.

My sources do agree that Flemish and Dutch are very similar. They have different words for different things. Geez, isn't that the difference between all languages? If "dog" in Spanish or in French were "dog", would it be a lot simpler. But if that were the case, what would folks like me collect?

In early 2001, in a span of a few weeks, I was able to add several languages to my collection that I was lacking. I found Burmese, Croatian, Farsi, Gujarati, Slovak, Slovenian, and Urdu. I have a friend in Estonia who works in a bookshop there and he found most of these. I did find the Farsi, Gujarati, and Urdu on the Internet.

I have these bursts of activity where I search website in a specific country. It seems that nothing will ever pan out and then it is like a shark attack.

Over the next year, I found a Romanian edition and two Armenian editions. It looks like the feeding frenzy has started again. The recent additions of Basque, Friulan, Hindi, Malayalam, and Rumantsch have inflated my number of non-English translation to a whopping 65. If that ever-elusive Urdu copy would ever arrive I would extremely pleased.

Hindi is the official language of India but this book proved to one of the most difficult to find. Searching for a Hindi translation on web pages in India, I was able to find Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam, Marathi, and Tamil before I could find Hindi. The book that finally arrived last week was published by Hind Pocket Books in Delhi, India in 2000. The title is Sherlock Holmes Ki Jasoosi. This is a small paperback that includes: ILLU, BLAN, and DEVI. Devendra Kumar translated the stories. ISBN 81-216-0880-5. Even with all of this information, the publisher informed me they were sold out. I contacted several Indian booksellers and was told the same thing.

Then one day I had an e-mail from Bibla Impex PVT. Ltd. They actually had several copies. I ordered 5 copies and they arrived on the same day as Sherlock Holmes Sampoorna Kruthikal. This is a Malayalam translation published by Kairali Mudralayam in 2001. This is very thick edition that includes all 60 tales. Translated by Adhyaksha Samaresh Maitra and Prafulla Kumar Patra this boo measures more than 4 inches thick.

Malayalam (/malayALam/) is the principal language of the South Indian state of Kerala and also of the Lakshadweep Islands (Laccadives) of the west coast of India. Malayalis (speakers of Malayalam) constitute 4 percent of the population of India and 96 percent of the population of Kerala (29.01 million in 1991). In terms of the number of speakers Malayalam ranks eighth among the fifteen major languages of India. The word /malayALam/ originally meant mountainous country) (/mala/- mountain + /aLam/-place). Tamil is its neighbor on the south and east and Kannada on the north and east.

I am still searching for translations in Kanarese, the language of Kannada. As I mentioned earlier, I already have Tamil. Most of the languages I am still trying to collect are from India. I still seek Kanarese, Oriya, Sindhi, Sinhalese, and Telugu. Who knows what the next flurry will bring?

Happy collecting!