# Dracula-to-English Translation, Anyone? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 20, 2005, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-to-english-translation-anyone/285805 "2005-01-20T22:25:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-to-english-translation-anyone/285805/21 "2005-01-23T16:23:56Z")
I just wanted to second what **WotNot** said. If sentence construction in 19th-century English literature sounds Latinate, it’s probably because most men who completed a secondary education, and virtually all who had a college education, studied Latin. Latin verse and prose were held up as models. ---
**Author:** ![Zabali\_Clawbane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/ecd19e/32.png) [@Zabali\_Clawbane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zabali_Clawbane)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-to-english-translation-anyone/285805/22 "2005-01-23T19:40:29Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Thanks for all your responses! > > Any idea what “I lack belly-timber sairly by the clock” mean? If “belly-timber” is food, what is “sairly”, and what does a clock have to do with it? > > Regards, > Shodan Sairly is “surely” said with a Yorkshire/Scottish accent. 😉 I’d say he’s saying, “Well, the clock says it’s lunch time and I need to eat.” Unspoken is the thought that he wouldn’t know it was lunch time without a clock, because he didn’t feel hungry. I think it’s a rougish compliment to the lady. “Your company is so wondrous you make me forget food exists.” That fits the Victorian way. You have to read between the lines a lot, and look at what hasn’t quite been said. ---
**Author:** ![Zabali\_Clawbane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/ecd19e/32.png) [@Zabali\_Clawbane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zabali_Clawbane)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-to-english-translation-anyone/285805/23 "2005-01-23T19:54:39Z")
Amending. (I did actually realize this, just spazzed out and posted incorrectly.) I remember reading a translation of “[Tam O’ Shanter](http://www.kennedym.demon.co.uk/tamoshanter.htm)” in which sair is “sore”. My re-phrasing still fits, he didn’t say he felt hungry, and implied the only way he knew it was past his meal time was by the clock. ---
**Author:** ![Asashouryuu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/48db29/32.png) [@Asashouryuu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asashouryuu)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2012, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-to-english-translation-anyone/285805/24 "2012-03-02T20:30:57Z")
> [@Mirror\_Image\_egamI\_rorriM](#): > > Seriously, there were some odd bits of grammar in there that I’ve only ever seen or used in Latin translations. One of of the things that continued to fascinate me throughout the book was Stoker’s regular use of the present subjunctive, a mood which, though paralleled in Latin, is all English. Today its use has almost entirely disappeared, if a few idioms, rarities, and pedants be excepted 😉 . ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2012, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-to-english-translation-anyone/285805/25 "2012-03-02T20:38:57Z")
> [@FriarTed](#): > > I’d bet Leonard Wolf’s THE ANNOTATED DRACULA has a full translation. It was republished under a slightly altered title a few years ago when the Coppola film came out (he was technical advisor- btw, social commentator & author Naomi Wolf is his daughter). You can’t really call this a Zombie Thread – it’s about Dracula, so it has to be a Vampire thread – it’s Undead! Actually, Wolf’s _The Essential Dracula_ doesn’t add much that wasn’t in _The Annotated Dracula_, and it doesn’t have a lot of reproductions that the earlier book had. But since thuis thread appeared _Thre New Annotated Dracula_ by Leslie Klinger has come out, and it’s much longer than either of Wolf’s volumes (and corrects some of his errors). My copy’s at home, but I think it pretty completely annotates that speech from the OP. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2012, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-to-english-translation-anyone/285805/26 "2012-03-02T20:51:32Z")
> [@](#): > > “Barguest” and “bohghost” look to me like alternative transcriptions of the same word – it may seem strange to Americans, but in England there can easily be that much variation in pronunciation within five miles (or even less). I wonder if “bohghost” might also be a corruption of “bog ghost”, presumably meaning a will-o’-the-wisp. And a barghest is what the Hound of the Baskervilles was purported to be. ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2012, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-to-english-translation-anyone/285805/27 "2012-03-02T21:20:06Z")
With regards to “railway touters”, I thought he meant people who organize railway excursions for people from the city (Thomas Cook got his start doing this, for instance). So in this case, the guy is saying that tour promoters try to entice clients to purchase vacation packages by telling them ghost stories and local legends. I figured boh-ghost just meant “ghost that says ‘boh’=‘boo’”. And any D&D player worth his salt has heard of a bar-guest (a.k.a. barghest). 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2012, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-to-english-translation-anyone/285805/28 "2012-03-02T22:37:24Z")
> [@Zabali\_Clawbane](#): > > Amending. (I did actually realize this, just spazzed out and posted incorrectly.) I remember reading a translation of “[Tam O’ Shanter](http://www.kennedym.demon.co.uk/tamoshanter.htm)” in which sair is “sore”. My re-phrasing still fits, he didn’t say he felt hungry, and implied the only way he knew it was past his meal time was by the clock. As someone who lived in Yorkshire aged 2-9 years (and visited Whitby during that period), I think “sairly” is “sorely” and not “surely”. OED gives “sairly” as a variant spelling of “sorely”, not of “surely”. In the context it means “very” – the word “sore” or “sorely” with this meaning is cognate with the German “sehr”, but has been displaced in standard modern English by the word derived from Anglo-Norman French “very”. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2012, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-to-english-translation-anyone/285805/29 "2012-03-03T03:05:15Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > As someone who lived in Yorkshire aged 2-9 years (and visited Whitby during that period), I think “sairly” is “sorely” and not “surely”. OED gives “sairly” as a variant spelling of “sorely”, not of “surely”. In the context it means “very” – the word “sore” or “sorely” with this meaning is cognate with the German “sehr”, but has been displaced in standard modern English by the word derived from Anglo-Norman French “very”. A few years back I was thinking that most short and common words in German have English cognates, and was trying to think of what the cognate for “sehr” would be. After a bit, I thought of “sore” as used in the King James version of the Christmas story - “then an angel of the Lord appeared and they were sore afraid.” ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2012, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-to-english-translation-anyone/285805/30 "2012-03-03T13:04:09Z")
I see Dracula has risen from the grave. Thanks to all for your thoughts. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2012, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-to-english-translation-anyone/285805/31 "2012-03-03T13:39:19Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I see Dracula has risen from the grave. Thanks to all for your thoughts. > > Regards, > Shodan He does tend to do that. I wonder if there’s a movie with that title? Maybe by Hammer Films? ---
**Author:** ![Candyman74](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ad7895/32.png) [@Candyman74](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Candyman74)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2012, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-to-english-translation-anyone/285805/32 "2012-03-03T15:58:58Z")
I wouldn’t fash masel’ about them, miss. Them things be all wore out. Mind, I don’t say that they never was, but I do say that they wasn’t in my time. They be all very well for comers and trippers, an’ the like, but not for a nice young lady like you. Them feet-folks from York and Leeds that be always eatin’cured herrin’s and drinkin’ tea an’ lookin’ out to buy cheap jet would creed aught. I wonder masel’ who’d be bothered tellin’ lies to them, even the newspapers, which is full of fool-talk." I wouldn’t fuss [bother] myself about them, miss. Those things are all worn out. Eck. I started, but didn’t realise there was so much of it. No time! It’s easier if you say it aloud in a Scottish accent a few times. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2012, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-to-english-translation-anyone/285805/33 "2012-03-03T16:29:31Z")
I just dug out my copy of Klinger’s _New Annotated Draclua_ and, indeed, it gives the original speech, a “ttanslation”, and explanations of some of the words on pp. 124-5. The translation reads: > [@](#): > > It’s all nonsense. These ghosts and spirits are fit tales only to make children and foolish women cry. They’re nothing but phantoms, invented by preachers and evil-minded scholars and promoters, and used by them to scare people. They’re not content with printing or preaching their stories, either; they’ve put them on the tombstones! All these jumbled stones are covered with lies. Half of them cover empty tombs, and no one cares about them. It’ll be something to see on Judgement Day when the dead show up in their shrouds, with their hands shrivelled up from being in the sea, trying to carry their tombstones with them as proof of their worth. If you _really_ want the ultimate annotated Dracula, apparently the book to go to is Clive Leatherdale’s immense 1998 _Bram Soker’s Dracula Unearthed_ If you want an exercise in translating dialect, have a look at Robert Louis Stevenson’s _Thrawn Janet_: > **[Classic Reader | Ponly](https://ponly.com/hobbies/classic-reader/)** > > Classic Reader has now merged with Ponly. For a very different impenetrable dialect, try Joel Chandler Harris’ _Uncle Remus_ stories: > **[Read Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit by Joel Chandler Harris, Read free on...](https://www.readcentral.com/bookchapters.aspx?author=Joel-Chandler-Harris&book=Uncle-Remus-and-Brer-Rabbit&id=002)** > > Read THE CREETURS GO TO THE BARBECUE of Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit > > by Joel Chandler Harris free of charge on ReadCentral. More than 5000 books to choose from. No need to sign-up or to download. [http://www.en.utexas.edu/amlit/amlitprivate/texts/remus.htm](http://www.en.utexas.edu/amlit/amlitprivate/texts/remus.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2012, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-to-english-translation-anyone/285805/34 "2012-03-03T17:01:24Z")
Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak? Or Scottish, whatever. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2012, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-to-english-translation-anyone/285805/35 "2012-03-03T17:26:15Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak? > Or Scottish, whatever. As I have mentioned many times on the board, the English invented a language they cannot speak. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2012, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-to-english-translation-anyone/285805/36 "2012-03-03T19:35:57Z")
I checked my copies of Leonard Wold’s _The Annotated Dracula_ (1973, 1976) and _The Essential Dracula_ (1993). Both contain the same “translation” of the speech, which is more literal than Klinger’s: > [@](#): > > It is all fool’s talk, lock, stock, and barrel; that’s what it is, and nothing else. These curses and ghosts and apparitions and spirits and bogies and all such things are only fit to set children and dizzy women to wailing, They are nothing but air bubbles! They, and all ghosts and signs and warnings, are invented by parsons and ill-mannered pedants and railway touts to scare and disgust young boys, and to get folks to do something that they don’t otherwise want to. It makes me angry to think of them. Why, it’s they who, not content with printing lies on paper and peaching them out of the pulpit, cut them on tombstones. Look here all around you wherever you choose, all those stones, holding up their heads as well as they can out of their pride leaning to one side – simply tumbling down with the weight of the lies written on them, ‘Here lies the body’ or ‘Sacred to the memory’ written on all of them, and yet in nearly half of them there are no bodies at all; and the memories of them aren’t cared for them so much as a pinch of snuff, much less being [held] sacred. Lies, all of them, nothing but lies of one kind or another! My God, but it’ll be a strange turmoil at the Day of Judgement when they come tubling up here in their death robes, all splashing about and trying to drag their tombstones with them to prove how good they were, some of them trembling and dithering, with their hands so withered and slippery from lying in the sea that they can’t even keep their grip on them. ---
**Author:** ![pabloo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/87869e/32.png) [@pabloo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pabloo)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-to-english-translation-anyone/285805/37 "2014-08-04T21:02:41Z")
Bram Stoker learnt phrases such as Boh-Ghost/ bar-guest at Whitby Museum, Subscription Library and Philosophical Society which, along with stuffed curiosities kept a copy of F K Robinson’s glossary of local words. Boh ghost/ bar guest are included in this book the definition for both being “terrifying apparitions taking shape human or animal”. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2014, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-to-english-translation-anyone/285805/38 "2014-08-09T03:59:46Z")
> [@Asashouryuu](#): > > One of of the things that continued to fascinate me throughout the book was Stoker’s regular use of the present subjunctive, a mood which, though paralleled in Latin, is all English. Today its use has almost entirely disappeared, if a few idioms, rarities, and pedants be excepted 😉 . Examples, please? :dubious: (FWIW, I currently work in publishing and am a certified EFL teacher.) ---
**Author:** ![Lasciel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e79b87/32.png) [@Lasciel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lasciel)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2014, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-to-english-translation-anyone/285805/39 "2014-08-09T04:24:23Z")
Don’t think you’re going to get that cite, mate. Asashouryuu was a drive-by revivicator from the previous rising of this particular undead in 2012. I doubt they’ll come back over two years later just to defend their offhanded pedantry. On the other hand, good to see this thread again. ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2014, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-to-english-translation-anyone/285805/40 "2014-08-09T04:42:59Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > Examples, please? :dubious: You mean examples from the novel, or of modern sayings that use the mood in question? The last sentence you quoted is an example of the mood itself, if I’m not mistaken. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-to-english-translation-anyone/285805.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dracula-to-english-translation-anyone/285805.md?page=3)