Speaking of translation of concepts, it is beyond surreal hearing an Eastern European call his provincial family "rednecks." :P
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Our Man in Iraq | 
Speaking of translation of concepts, it is beyond surreal hearing an Eastern European call his provincial family "rednecks." :P
I'm pretty sure the book was translated for publication in the UK, because the Croatian protagonist's provincial relatives' "dialect" is phoneticized as sounding very cockney, where for the US it would probably be phoneticized as a really thick southern or maybe midwestern accent. It's interesting to me how culturally specific things get "translated" too.
"It was interesting that we weren't able to tell them anything about our life as it really happened. When you looked at it, there was hardly anything to say. Our life barely existed, as if it had been left behind in some secret argot, where I had also left my real being, while this impostor sat at the table, enumerated bland facts, nattered about traffic, and introduced himself to her parents as me."
