Need help reaching Brierre & Vassal - it's important!

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marpessa
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Joined: Wed Feb 22, 2017 12:26 am

Need help reaching Brierre & Vassal - it's important!

Post by marpessa »

Hello everyone! Sorry to open a new thread but I really need help with something. It'd be very much appreciated if you could read the story below and help me out.

Jean-Dominique Brierre and Jacques Vassal's book on Cohen has been published in Turkey back in October. I've lately started reading the book and it officially has the worst translation I've ever had to read. I don't know French and the book's original language is French, however I do know Turkish of course and many of the sentences are very badly configured, most of them are grammatically wrong and some of them are so bad the meanings of them are completely off. (There's one sentence referring (i guess - from what I could understand) to a building built in early 1920s, however the subject is Leonard himself - I've read it to 5 different people today and what they all got is Leonard was born in 1920s...) Anyway, there are crucial mistakes in the book.

Not only the translation is awful, the editing is also crap. The very first page refers to Cohen's "famous songs" such as " 'So Long' and 'Marianne' "... Yes, they actually think these are 2 different songs!

Anyway, I feel it is such a shame that a book like this has been translated that way, it definitely deserves a better treatment. I've contacted the publishing house and they've deleted my comment on their Facebook page instead of answering. Once I've re-posted the comment, they told me that the book is very "poetic", thus the incomplete sentences etc...(Yes, as if I've never read anything poetic. I'm a Cohen fan, for God's sake!) When I insisted it was due to low quality translation - they told me "i could easily see that the original of the book has met the same criticism due to the 'poetic' language of the book" and that they had nothing else to do because "it's the way Cohen wrote the book and they had no way of changing it". So yes, they think it's Leonard Cohen himself who has written the book. Very, very sad.

Long story short, I really, really want to reach the authors of the book; namely Jean-Dominique Brierre and Jacques Vassal and warn them about it. I truly hope they revoke the publishing rights from this awful publishing house, Cohen is very much loved in Turkey and his fans here, as well as the book itself deserve a better translation.

Does anyone know of a way to reach Brierre or Vassal, or perhaps their agents / the company with the copyright of the book?

Any help would be very much appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
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jarkko
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Re: Need help reaching Brierre & Vassal - it's important!

Post by jarkko »

Check your emails, I sent you Vassal's email address
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marpessa
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Feb 22, 2017 12:26 am

Re: Need help reaching Brierre & Vassal - it's important!

Post by marpessa »

Thanks a lot! Very much appreciated. I hope they'll be able to fix this!
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