Monday, July 19, 2010

Killer Repertoire in French

I must admit I was surprised today to discover that "A Killer Chess Opening Repertoire" has been translated to French.

The new title is "Répertoire d'ouvertures efficace" which I assume must mean "An Efficient Opening Repertoire". The subtitle "pour joueur d'échecs paresseux" I think must mean "for lazy chessplayers". A little less bloodthirsty than the original English title.

As you can see, also the cover is a little less aggressive. I prefer Wolff Morrow's artwork, but the French one is quite nice too, in a very different way. Can anyone tell me the name of the artist (I assume his signature can be seen below the drawing, but I am unable to read it)?

I am proud to now have been translated to two major European languages, and hope Gambit Publishing or the French publisher Olibris will be kind enough to send me a few copies.

Update July 21st
I found this advertisment which includes a review. My French is quite poor but I will try to translate the conclusion:

Autre atout de l'ouvrage, le choix des parties illustratives, jouées par des joueurs qui ne sont pas des grands-maîtres. Une autre bonne idée car c'est bien ce qui se passe pour la majorité des tournois d'échecs pour nous autres amateurs. Avouons-le tout bonnement, c'est une idée géniale !


Another asset of  the work is the choice of illustrative games, played by players who are not Grandmasters. This is a good idea because for us amateurs this is what occurs in the majority of chess tournaments. Let us acknowledge that this simply is a brilliant idea!

Well, I hope that isn't too inaccurate. Please inform me if you can improve the translation. Anyway, "Chess & Strategy" appears to also be a chess vendor, so the 'review' cannot be expected to be very critical and I will not read too much into it.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your translation is very good.

What you see at the bottom of the drawing is not the artist s signature but the Olibris logo.

Anonymous said...

Francis Delivré is a cartoonist who worked on some other books for Olibris. Maybe he s the author of the cover.

Sverre Johnsen said...

Anonymous 1,

Glad to hear that, and yes I see now.

Thanks!

Sverre Johnsen said...

Anonymous 2,

Thanks for the tip. I also found another candidate - Cindy McCluskey - who made this illustration: http://www.librairiedialogues.fr/livre/1209455-les-echecs-un-jeu-d-enfant-initiation-au-pl--murray-chandler-helen-milligan-olibris.

I have so far been unable to find out whether the artist may be one of these two but I will try some more googling whenever I find the time.

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