From: Gints Rasa <gintsr@yahoo.com>
To: "smsiinc@ix.netcom.com" <smsiinc@ix.netcom.com>
Cc: "info@zvaigzne.lv" <info@zvaigzne.lv>
Sent: Saturday, February 25, 2012 12:32 PM
Subject: "How life imitates chess" translation

Hi,

There are two news - one good and one not so good. The good news is translation and publishing of Kasparov's "How life imitates chess" in Latvian. The bad news is awfulness of translation. Translation is made like it could be the first text about chess in Latvian absolutely ignoring exsistent chess terminology and looks like translating of chess terminology is made by Google translating tool. As a result book is not only unreadable for anyone who read at least one chess-based text in Latvian but also gives new (and wrong) meaning of text. Maybe the most typical example is fragment from chapter three about tournament in Sarajevo where English term "round" is translated as "aplis" (means that any of n participants have to play n-1 games; correct term is "kārta") and even worst part is that from the following text it's clear that topic is about one (and last) game of tournament.

But the most arrogance from publishing house "Zvaigzne ABC" was shown when chief of Riga Chess Federation read manuscript and gave input about wrongness of translation but publishers ignored it.

If there is possibility for some sanctions against "Zvaigzne ABC" - too low quality of translation or something like that, it is perfect opportunity to use them. I hope "Zvaigzne ABC" will have to pay for their low standards of QA and arrogance.

Best wishes,
Gints Rasa