Speaking of matters Italian, this seems a good time to mention that thanks to the collaboration between Castalia House’s bestselling author and Signore Bonello, the Rathaverse has been unleashed upon an unsuspecting Italian market. I RAGAZZI NON PIANGONO by Tom Kratman is now available on Amazon. I can personally attest that the translation does justice to the original text even if the translation of the title is not quite literal. A more accurate translation would have been I GRANDI RAGAZZI NON PIANGONO or perhaps QUESTI RAGAZZONI NON PIANGERANNO, but in the interest of actually fitting the title on the cover, we modified that to the Italian equivalent of “The Boys Don’t Cry”.
Descrizione: I RAGAZZI NON PIANGONO è un romanzo breve dell’autore di fantascienza
militare Tom Kratman, famoso per Un deserto chiamato pace e per la sua
serie Carrera. La trama segue il ciclo di vita di un Ratha, un super
carro armato senziente del futuro, che combatte con senso del dovere le
battaglie dell’Uomo in decine di mondi alieni. La creatura saprà però
ancora grata ai suoi creatori una volta che scoprirà di avere una
coscienza? E per quanto tempo una macchina da guerra intelligente con
potenza di fuoco sufficiente per radere al suolo una città sarà
soddisfatta di rimanere uno schiavo obbediente?
One mildly amusing translation note: because Italians don’t have the letters “J” or “H” in their names, I took the liberty of changing the names of the Ratha developers to Italian names like “Giovanni” and “Loredana”. The translator objected to this on the basis of Italians being familiar with English names in their science fiction, and more importantly, because he felt the behavior of the characters was much more English than properly Italian.
I resisted the urge to ask if this was because the characters concerned were actually doing their jobs rather than sitting around drinking espresso, smoking cigarettes and reading La Gazzetta dello Sport and Chi; it turned out that he felt the problem was that no Italian superior would ever refer to a female employee by her first name unless he was romantically involved with her. And while there was a mild suggestion of this in the English text, he felt that it was the wrong way to go. So, we stuck with the English names.
Anche, stiamo cercando per ancora cinque lettori italiani per rivedere questo libro nuovo, quindi, se parle italiano e vuole leggerlo, spedirmi un email, per favore.
The German translation, GROßE JUNGS WEINEN NICHT will follow within a week or so. And on Monday, Castalia will announce a new release.
UPDATE: Apparently Italians are massive Tom Kratman fans. He’s already number one in fantascienza: #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Foreign Languages > Italian > Fantasy, Horror & Science Fiction