Today I Learned:

[theweaselking]

The German phrase for "based on the novel X by Y", in the context of a film, is "Ein Palimpsest von Y's X"

I love the word palimpsest. I love it even more when I know it's apparently used in *conversational* German.

(My German is not great. It's possible the film actually is saying "we scraped this novel empty and rewrote it" instead of "based on", but generally then they wouldn't credit it?)

Comments

[rbarclay.livejournal.com]

It might not be .. completely impossible to use Palimpsest in this context, but in my 37 years of having German as first language I've not heard it used that way. In fact, I'm not sure I've heard or read that word at all, and had to look it up.
I would suspect a pretty obscure joke in whatever film you saw.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

As I recall, the movie of The Name of the Rose calls itself a palimpsest of the novel.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

That was indeed the movie in question. My copy happens to be in German.

(English audio, though, so I just turn off the subtitles and then it's just like the English version except for the title and credits.)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Bah, that does appear to be the case. Which is sad, because I like that word and want it to be used more often.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

we scraped this novel empty and rewrote it

I thought this was what "based on" typically meant anyway.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

They're not usually nearly so open about it.