Translations of “The Stranger” by Albert Camus

Why does the header title on your page keep changing?
What on earth does “O XÉNOS” or “DER FREMDE” mean?

The titles are various translations of Albert Camus’ famous novel L’Étranger. I named my blog after one of the English translations, The Stranger. I also happened to lose my special copy of The Stranger on a cab ride to Lincoln Center during fashion week.

 

But  *!#((#@#$$9@@1*  doesn’t mean ”The Stranger“.
It means “The Alien” or “The Foreigner”! You ignorant fool!

Not all of these titles translate literally to “The Stranger”. In French, the term étranger has several connotations. For example, a variant translation of L’Étranger in English is The Outsider.

Come on. Mandarin is one of your native languages. Why have you written “JÚ WÀI RÉN” instead of “局外人”?

Several languages use their own unique alphabets and characters. I’ve represented them with their English phonetic equivalents simply because it is more aesthetically pleasing. The font that I use for my header only supports English phonetic characters. Being the pedantic fart I am when it comes to web design, I refuse to use alternating fonts for my header.

I’ve managed to gather the translations together in a list below. You can consult it whenever you’re curious as to what strange language you might be seeing. If I’ve misspelt anything, leave a note in the comments.

  • Cizinec - Czech
  • De Vreemdeling – Dutch
  • Den Fremmede – Danish
  • Der Fremde – German
  • El Extranjero – Spanish
  • Främlingen – Swedish
  • Ha Zar – Hebrew
  • I Bang In – Korean
  • I Hou Jin - Japanese
  • Jú Wài Rén – Chinese (Mandarin)
  • Közöny – Hungarian
  • L’Estrany – Catalan
  • L’Étranger – French
  • Lo Straniero – Italian
  • Neznaiomec – Ukranian
  • Nieznajomy – Polish (Thanks Patryk!)
  • O Estrangeiro – Portugese
  • O Xénos – Greek
  • Postorinii – Russian
  • Sivullinen – Finnish
  • Străinul - Romanian (Thanks Nora!)
  • Stranac - Croatian
  • Stranac – Serbian (Thanks Srdjan!)
  • Strannikut – Bulgarian
  • Võõras -Estonian (Thanks Mariliis!) 
  • Yabanci – Turkish

The list is incomplete, so contributions are welcome and highly recommended!