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mitkah16 t1_jebdxh9 wrote

I can’t stand Yen in ANY of the books. This kind of attitude from women in books written by men makes me very mad.

The mythology and fighting I love. New monsters I never heard about and stories from Poland, I loved that.

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DiagonallyStripedRat t1_jed71fb wrote

It's not doing justice to say it's inspired by Poland solely.... The author is Polish and Redania is an alegory for Polish-Lithuanian Republic of the 16th and 17th century, but there it ends (and some minor references).

The fantasy is inspired by Celtic, Nordic, Germanic and Slavic mythology, Slavic including other Slavic nations, mostly Czechia, Belarus, Ukraine and the Balkans. This is why the games are so praised in Poland, because they capture that the story is universal for so many people from different regions of Europe. For example the soundtrack are legit folk songs sung in Bulgarian, Slovenian (Witcher 3), Ukrainian (Witcher 2), Belarussian (Witcher 1). The name Novigrad is an existing city in Croatia and so on.

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mitkah16 t1_jedkepe wrote

Thank you for expanding my knowledge!

I remember googling for almost every monster and they were all from Polish folklore and Polish tales and mythology. But it could be that I really just googled few :)

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DiagonallyStripedRat t1_jegd433 wrote

Oh well, I take it You read in English, so it was a very direct translation from original (Polish) to English. So a lot of the words that don't have the counterpart in English may have been Polish. Other Slavic languages do have their own words for those creatures, so in translations those were used. In short, You googled the untranslated into English Polish names, so got results in Polish.

But I don't know. I read the books in a Slavic language and it all seemed familiar and well translated, never had my hands on the English localisation (:

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mitkah16 t1_jegfgz0 wrote

But then it is the translation that adapts it? I don’t get it. Not saying you are not right. Or that I am wrong. Just that with reading it in English and googling the names of the monsters, they all connected to polish folklore. Which was cool. I did not google every single one of them, just the ones with trickier descriptions. From there I found also their legends which were from polish myths and fables. Good that it is more diverse and not only Polish stuff is there.

Still hate Yennefer tho hahaha

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DiagonallyStripedRat t1_jeglt0w wrote

I don't know how they were translated to English. For example how is žmij? Or kelpi? Or striga?

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DiagonallyStripedRat t1_jegmoqg wrote

Or rusalka.... In English you could either just keep rusalka as in ,,The rusalka came from the water" or translate it as ,,water nymph" because that's ultimately what a rusalka is. Same with vila. You could keep vila (,,At noon in summer, vilas appear in the fields") or translate vila as ,,sun demon" or ,,wheat witch" or something. Do you understand what I mean? In original it's Wiedzmin, in English Witcher, in some other Slavic languages it's Vedmak. Still it's the same creature, but if You google Wiedzmin you'll get Polish result, if you google Witcher you'll get just the books :D

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