Equal Rites (Terry David John Pratchett) читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги

9

Someone on alt.fan.pratchett pointed out that in our world, Gypsies were named because people thought they were Egyptians. Since the Discworld equivalent of Egypt is Djelibeybi, shouldn’t Hilta Goatfounder have been talking about, say, ‘Jellybabes’? Terry answered:

“Okay. Almost every word in the English language has a whole slew of historic associations. People on the Disc can’t possibly speak ‘English’ but I have to write in English. Some carefully-positioned ‘translations’ like ‘It’s all Klatchian to me’ can work, but if I went the whole hog and ‘discworlded’ every name and term, then the books would be even more impenetrable and would probably only be read by people who like learning Klingon. I do my best — French fries can’t exist on Discworld, for example — but I think ‘gypsies’ is allowable.”