• Winnie-the-Pooh in Albanian A Translation of A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-P

    From samhsloan@gmail.com@21:1/5 to All on Wed Oct 18 06:26:06 2017
    Winnie-the-Pooh in Albanian A Translation of A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh Translated by Mimoza Sofroni
    Winnie-the-Pooh is the most popular children's book in the world. Albanian is a language read and spoken by seven million people. Albanian is the official language of Albania and Kosovo and is spoken fluently by the majority of the countries' populations.
    Albanian is a recognized minority language in Croatia, Italy, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania and in Serbia. Albanian is also spoken in the Thesprotia and Preveza regional units and in a few villages in Ioannina and Florina regional units in Greece.
    Albanian is the second most spoken language in Greece (Arvanitika and Cham), Macedonia and the third most spoken language in Italy. Italy has a historical Albanian minority of about 500,000 which are scattered across southern Italy known as Arbëreshë.
    Approximately 1 million Albanians from Kosovo are dispersed throughout Germany, Switzerland and Austria. These are mainly refugees from Kosovo that migrated during the Kosovo War. In Switzerland, the Albanian language is the seventh most spoken language
    with two hunderd thousand native speakers. There are large numbers of Albanian speakers in the United States, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Canada. Some of the first ethnic Albanians to arrive in the United States were Arbëreshë. Arbëreshe have a
    strong sense of identity, and are unique in that they speak an archaic dialect of Tosk Albanian called Arbëreshë.
    In North America (United States and Canada) there are approximately 250,000 Albanian speakers. It is spoken in the eastern area of the United States in cities like New York City, New Jersey, Boston, Philadelphia, Ohio and Detroit. Greater New Orleans has
    a large Arbëresh community. In Argentina there are nearly 40,000 Albanian speakers mostly in Buenos Aires. Approximately 1.3 million people of Albanian ancestry live in Turkey.
    My next-door neighbor in Bronx New York is from Tirana Albania. He fixed my air-conditioner. His daughter is outstandingly beautiful with blond hair and blue eyes. He recently held a wedding reception for his daughter and Albanians came from all over for
    the event.
    Albanian is an Indo-European Language with its own branch.
    During the rule of Enver Hoxha from 1945 to 1985, Albania became the only fully Communist country in the world and the only completely Athiest country of the world. Albania was completely cut off from the rest of the countries of the world. Nobody could
    get in and nobody could get out. During the 1988 World Chess Olympiad in Thessaloniki Greece, the Albanian Chess Team was in the rooms next to mine and ate their dinners at the table next to mine. I tried repeatedly to talk to them and to make friends
    with them but they would not talk to me. Albania was a self-imposed isolationist country, with diplomatic relations only with Communist China. The only Abanian Embassy in the world was in Beijing, China. Albania was by far the poorist country of Europe.
    The most famus Albanian by far was Mother Teresa.
    Now the situation is completely different with the United States even having a military base in Albania.
    This translation of Winnie-the-Pooh was first published in Tiranë, Plejad. Tirana is the Capital of Albania. I have not been able to find out what Plejad is. It might be a province or a district of Albania.
    This translation of this book into Albanian is by Mimoza Sofroni. We do not know much about her except she was on the staff of a film festival in Tirana in 2002.
    This translation of Winnie-the-Pooh follows the original book closely, but does add the translator's own minor variations.
    The purpose of this book is to help Albanian speakers learn English and to help English speakers learn Albanian. To have a translation as close as possible to the original is the most useful. The name for Winnie-the-Pooh in Albanian is Uini Pu or Pu for
    short. The Rabbit is Lepurushi. Christopher Robin is Kristoft Robin.
    Ishi Press has reprinted translations of Winnie-the-Pooh into 35 languages thus far. We have published it in Afrikaans, Albanian, Armenian, Bengali, Bulgarian, Cebuano, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Finnish, French, German, Greek,
    Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Persian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Yiddish, Hindi, Urdu, Khowar, Kalasha and Latin. We have six more languages lined up.
    This translation into Albanian is part of project to translate Winnie-the-Pooh into other languages. The idea is children need to learn to read at an early age and the best way to teach them to read is to provide reading materials that they find
    interesting. Children around the world laugh when they see Winnie-the-Pooh saying and doing silly things. Since Winnie-the-Pooh is the most popular children's book world-wide, translating this book into the different languages of the world will be
    conducive to teaching children to read in those languages.
    Translations are always difficult. A word in any language will almost never have exactly the same meaning in another language. For example, at the beginning of the English Language original of Winnie-the-Pooh, on the third page there is the following
    sentence, “He came to a sandy bank and in the bank was a large hole.”
    Now you may be wondering, “Was that because somebody has robbed the bank?” Of course, you know the answer. The bank has not been robbed. But if your translator is somebody not familiar with the banking system, he may not provide the proper
    translation to this sentence.
    We are not translating the entire book. We are only translating Chapter 2, which is the most interesting, most popular and shortest chapter. Winnie-the-Pooh is based on the most popular children's character in the world. Part of the reason for this is
    Winnie-the-Pooh was based on an actual living bear in the London Zoo named Winnie. Christopher Robin is the name of a real person who was the son of the original author, A. A. Milne. The son had a teddy bear he liked to carry around with him he named
    Winnie-the-Pooh.
    Winnie-the-Pooh is perhaps unique for a children's book in that it is based on real people and historical events. Christopher Robin was a real person. As a child, he had a teddy bear he named “Winnie-the-Pooh”. The bear was named after a real bear in
    the London Zoo named Winnie. Winnie had been found in the forest near Winnipeg, Canada. His owner had brought him to England and eventually had donated him to the London Zoo.
    Because this book is about real people and events, this places the book in a different legal position than other children's books with cartoon characters such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck which are purely the inventions of their creators. The real
    original Winnie-the-Pooh teddy bear is now on display at the New York Public Library Children's Room on 42nd Street at Fifth Avenue. Elvis cannot be copyrighted because Elvis was a real person, so anybody can write their own stories about Elvis, although
    you cannot copy somebody else's story. This has helped spread the popularity of Winnie-the-Pooh.

    Sam Sloan
    Bronx, New York

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