More of interest to this newsgroup is how does one show accents, regionalisms, and common expressions in a foreign world? Steve uses English language expressions - he really doesn't have much choice, as lots of expressions aren't immediately obvious to someone who doesn't know the language - if he wanted to realistically make up new expressions, it would hurt the flow of the book. He often does change a bit to make one of our expressions fit. Besides the criticism of Costner's Robin Hood accent I mentioned, there is another accent which I have read people were bothered by - that is Sean Connery's accent in _Hunt for Red October_. I thought that couldn't have been more appropriate, as he was *not* as the critics claim, portraying a Russian. He was a soviet - the same way as Connery is a Brit. (I forget - was he Ukraine?) Still, many fans were put off by his entirely appropriate translated accent (when other Russians were speaking Russian in English with American and English accents, he spoke Russian in English with a Scottish accent - not a strong Scottish accent, but that of someone who has lived most of his life outside of Scotland). Translators often have to not translate words - but find comparable expressions to translate the meaning of the original author. Jokes and puns sometimes are simply replaced - especially in movies (I heard the Italian version of _Young Frankenstein_ had a funny replacement for the "where wolf" pun - an Italian mentioned it on the web when trying to find out the English version which he knew his version didn't translate).