I'm glad to hear about a translation of Season of Storms; I will see if I can help with your English Phrasing.
I will post questions about translation here - sometimes I have no clue how to convey this idea or that.
So I see this was taken under scrutiny earlier - with previous translations - but lets discuss this again.
In chapter one Geralt meets an official of the kingdom. He is titled "żupan gminny" it would be "ispan of the commune" but I had some problems with this translation. I chose "county administrator" as county is more in keeping with the older meaning of "gmina". In modern Poland county would be "powiat" that is the higher tier of administration, but old "gmina" was probably much larger than today. Besides "żupan" administered "żupa" which is more or less equivalent of today's "powiat". Castellan on the other hand would be harder to grasp. So would be comes.
Could the term you're looking for be something along the lines of Governor, Mayor, or Earl?
Then there a while later this exact official is compared to a bulb of "brukiew" (rutabaga or suede). No discussion over the internet would be complete without Hitler so here we go. Rutabaga/suede is almost completely unknown in Poland. First and foremost association that it brings forth is with watery thin rutabaga soup fed to prisoners of concentration camps. My grandparent's generation would not touch a rutabaga even if they would be dying of starvation. This generation is slowly dying away, so probably in a generation rutabaga will be once again just a vegetable. But today it's still instantly associated with concentration camps and thin soup that left you more hungry than before you ate it. So I had absolutely not a clue as to convey all this, and changed rutabaga into plain turnip that works well, but doesn't have this whole background that's unknown for most foreign people.
Wow; yeah, you're right. We don't have those associations with Rutabagas or Turnips. We have the concept of Gruel, but no association between any form of turnip and gruel. It's just a vegetable that's widely disliked.
Third chapter has major problem right now. Namely there is a honorific title that I can't really translate. First part of the problem shows itself earlier. There is problem with translating honorary forms like vocative "panie Geralcie", "mister Geralt" somehow sounds off to me, but there is not other way I think. "Sir Geralt" does not work either because he is not a noble (Or is he? He was given title at some point by queen Meve of Lyria I think. But as Geralt left her service in a hurry and without agreement he was probably stripped of rank.)
In the official translations, I believe they used his profession as an honorific. Several times I saw him referred to in formal situations as "Witcher Geralt".
But greater problem is honorific for an advocate. I Polish it's "mecenas". And we have "pani mecenas". This would be roughly "miss advocate" but it sounds weird. My translation is sketchy in this part.
It took some guessing to know what you meant by advocate. Eventually I put "mecenas" in google translate to check, and sure enough, you're referring to a lawyer. Advocate is not a common way to refer to a lawyer or attorney in English, and is usually used in other contexts. The problem you're running into is that lawyers don't typically get an honorific in English, nor are they generally referred to by their profession. Sometimes you might see a lawyer introduce themselves as Firstname Lastname Esquire, or see it written that way on letterhead or a business card, but it's not universal in that context, and it basically never appears outside that context.
The client addresses the attorney by name; no honorific. If talking to someone else, they might say "My Attorney" or "My Lawyer" if they've hired the lawyer, otherwise again; by name, no honorific. A judge doesn't usually refer to a lawyer by name, but if they do it's "Mr. Lastname". They do refer to the lawyer by their station, such as "The Prosecutor", or "The Defense". The Attorney tends to refer to their client most of the time as "My Client". Typically they refer to "The Defendant", and "The Plaintiff" for the one on trial, sometimes they include a name with honorifics. In Britain, at least some places say "The Accused" or "The Defender" depending on the type of court case. The judge is addressed as "Your Honor" and referred to as "The Honorable Firstname Lastname".
Next problem is - I'm not a lawyer. I don't know lawyer speech. I have not a single clue if my translation is even accurate here.
Not a lawyer, either, but court cases show up pretty frequently in television and movies, and I have taken some law classes, so I know some of the terminology.
Yet another - Sapkowski uses a ton of Latin phrases in law passages. I left them as they were, but it would be probably good to have their translation in some form or another. I can do it - I mean translation part, as I know a bit of Latin, but what form of translation would be proper in book? I'm not sure that I can make a proper footnote with epub format.
You could just put the translation beside it in square brackets. I'd like translations of the Elder Speech if possible, too; I've found it jarring when I can't figure out what the elder speech in the book says.
The most difficult idea here is "kłonica" it's part of joke here so it's quite important to convey proper idea. "Kłonica" is part of horse cart. To be precise of type that is called "wóz drabiniasty" in Polish. Drabina is ladder. And this kind of cart has ladders on it's sides that can be removed. The ladders are supported by four "kłonica"s. Now this was solid piece of wood. It's main use besides as a part of cart was for brawling.
This is tricky.
A Klonica is a Stanchion. The type of cart you're referring to is just called a "Ladder Wagon". You could probably also call it a "Ladder Cart". I did not know about these terms or objects until I looked them up, so I imagine many people won't get the joke, but those are the terms you're looking for.
First chapter has a reference of some monster killing villagers in Rogowizna. I left this name as it is. Previous translator rendered is as Horns, which isn't bad, but not that exact. Rogi would be horns. The word as is has no meaning but if fits the pattern of word creation. "Rogacizna" is collective name for all horned farm animals, or just cattle. "Głowizna" is meat from the head after eyes, ears, tongue and brain were extracted. So it would be something related to horns, but not horns themselves.
I'd probably go with something like "Horned Beast" or "Hornbeast", if there's not an official translation for the term in the context of the Witcher already available.
The fourth chapter has Geralt drinking "siwucha". I went with moonshine here, but not every moonshine is siwucha. Name derives from word "siwy" that has few related meanings. Grey haired is one of them, grey is the other. It could be used in terms like "siwy dym" - grey smoke. Light grey with a hint of blue to be precise. Now siwucha is cloudy. And has this exact color and tint. Siwucha is quite crude so maybe rot-gut could be used. But not every siwucha is a rot-gut. It may be quite crude, but not necessarily nasty. Of course as murkiness is a result of siwucha containing fusel oils, it will give you the grandfather of all hangovers.
If it's not meant to be foul, I would not use Rot-Gut. Your other two options are Moonshine and Hooch.
I think I left a word for "tur" translated as aurox, while it should be aurochs. Aurochs is extinct predecessor of modern cattle. Maybe bison would work here better?
Google Translate tells me Tur just means Aurochs. Is it supposed to be an Aurochs? If so, I'd just say Aurochs. The Aurochs didn't go extinct until 1627, according to wikipedia, so it's probably appropriate to just call it an Aurochs; rather than assuming it's some other form of wild bovine.
I spotted quite bad translation stemming from the fact that luck and happiness are both "szczęście". This got me thinking and I've put wrong word there. And thus whole grandmas sign was off. Not that much, but still. It's fixed. Then I spotted 15 or so places with no space after period. This are fixed now too. There are a few other minor problems, but I will look into them with fresh eye on Monday.
In English, "Good Fortune" can efer both to good luck, and reasons for you to be happy. Perhaps that would work for you? Otherwise you could choose one or the other, as situation dictates.
I'll need some advice on translation soon. I will hit one of the worst spots soon. We are getting close to meeting an old legendary mage - Ortolan. He has very specific way of speaking. I'm unable to come up with idea how to convey it. He uses macaronic language full of polonized (or whatever is proper single word for "made Polish") Latin terms. This will not play out as English has much larger Latin influence, and idea how unnatural Ortolan's language is will be lost. For example in Polish "experience" is "doświadczenie", but Ortolan would use baroque "eksperiencja" that is understandable for educated people, but not used anymore. And there is a ton of such terms that are understandable in Ortolan's speech but are extremely unnatural.
Hmm. Tricky. You could have him speak in Shakespearean english, or possibly make up skakespeareanesque sounding words with meanings that would still be clear to someone with an education.
I admit that I flattened language so far. Peasants are using more archaic language than clerks do, and mages still another. My knowledge of English is lacking as how to convey it.
There are several English regional and class-based dialects, with differences that are evident in word-choice, word order, use of grammar, use of some verbs, and unusual expressions.
Here are a list of english dialects . I would probably try to assign dialects to things and try to stick to them, choosing dialects with similar preconceived notions to the dialects of polish used. Not an easy task, to be sure. But for instance, Hiberno English (Ireland) sounds quite different from north american or British English, in part because of heavy grammatical influences from Gaelic.
Sapkowski uses dirty tricks. Peasants are using regional words, or words from other Slavic languages. And there is no such liberty in English. If you drop a word from different language it's going to cause trouble with understanding. Slavic languages are closer, so such mixing works better. (I'm not objective being of mixed heritage. I think I know more Slavic languages than regular Pole).
For example in first chapter Albert Smulka says "My ninie tu w Ansegis bezpieczni" "We today [are] safe here in Ansegis". "Ninie" is a old word no longer used in Polish, but still used in Ukrainian (as нині nyni), meaning today, but used here figuratively to mean "now" or "at the moment".
Even word order is different for different social groups. But losing it is not as important to story as is telling just how strangely Ortolan speaks. My translation lacks something of course, but it's not about story, it's about how it's told
Yeah; you could use existing English dialects; or even make up unusual dialects to fit your translation. Word orders could be unusual but still clear (ideally in a consistent way); you could use antiquated words; you could anglicize or lift words from french or latin - you could check other germanic languages such as german, and use the german word if it is close to the english one (would not be reliable, but you might get some that way); perhaps some peculiar spellings. Maybe some Farmer doesn't say Peculiar when trying to sound intelligent, but instead Peculer. You could also take normal english words, and play them up as though they were more foreign. Peculiar could be Peculiere to sound faux-french or Peculiaris(the actual latin sourceword), or Peculiarri for faux-italian. The more you know about the languages you're going toward/the better your research on the matter, the better your altered words would come out. I wouldn't hesitate to use thesaurus or thesaurus.com or google a word + synonym and see what it gives you. As a bonus, when you look up synonyms on google and click more info, you get the word history including where the word came from, such as I just did for Peculiar. Perhaps instead of Peculiar you start with Anomalous which has a very similar meaning but is less used. Anomalous came to English through the late latin Anomalos from greek. You could put a french twist on it and go Anomaleux/Anomaleuse.
I think altering a word to make it seem foreign might work better than using a foreign word in many cases; unless the language you're borrowing from is French, or Latin. But Dialectal words could work. Foreign words CAN work; but should be used sparingly.
I wish history's "Vikings" used Jarl instead of Earl, for instance, because they're very different things.
But say you're doing the text for a Nilfgaardian speaking common. Nilfgaardian is supposed to have evolved from the Elder Speech (IIRC) so you might use the occasional
Elder Speech/Gaelic/Scottish/Welsh words, or spell things as though they're being pronounced with a heavy Irish accent; and use Hiberno-English grammar as your standard rather than North-American or "The Queen's" English.