WEIT: now in Ukrainian!

August 21, 2013 • 12:57 pm

I doubt that this will excite many readers, given that over the last 365 days there were only about 3,500 views from Ukraine, but, unaccountably, WEIT is to be published in Ukrainian—by NashFormat Publishers. I am pleased, though, because that makes a round total of 15 languages (besides English) into which the book’s been translated.

Checking the stats from Ukraine, I saw this chart on yearly viewership of this site. There have been two views from North Korea (KP on the map below), where Internet access is prohibited! Can the Dear Leader have been reading?

Picture 3I’m still working on Arabic, and Egypt promised to come through. Given what’s going on there now, though, there may be a slight delay. . .

41 thoughts on “WEIT: now in Ukrainian!”

  2. I have a friend in Nigeria at the moment. I’ll see if I can convince her to go over into Chad (had to look it up) and visit here.

  3. Congratulations, or, as they say in Ukraine, Граталюю!

    Like almost all other Eastern European countries, Ukraine is steeped in religion. Your book will help bring my ancestral home closer to modernity.

    1. I don’t think Ukraine is steeped in religion more than most Western European countries, and probably much less so than Italy, Portugal or Ireland. You may confuse it with Poland.

  4. Congratulations. But I think the differences between Ukrainian and Russian are somewhat less than those between Glaswegian and London versions of English. Apart from spelling, which was simplified in Russian (but not Ukrainian) after the revolution.

    A language is a dialect with an army. Otherwise, the moment languages split would be as ill-defined as the moment species split.

    1. Sorry Paul, but you’re very wrong about ukrainian. It’s definitely a language in its own right, very different from russian. They diverged at most as lately as in 15th century (and the dialects did quite differ as early as in 12-13th centuries).

      By the time the russian spelling was simplified, ukrainian already had long been quite simplified, so it wasn’t affected by the soviet reform. It was, however, somewhat refined later, in an attempt to bring it closer to russian spelling, I believe.

      We russians usually do vaguely understand what ukranians are saying (or, rather, what they’re talking about, approximately :). Also, like in scandinavian languages, countless amalgamated ukro-russian mini-dialects exist here and there across Ukraine and adjacent parts of russia, but literary russian and literary ukrainian “are two big differences”, as they say in Odessa 🙂

    2. The similarities between biological evolution and the evolution of languages are amazing. However, this would reincforce by creationists the believe that the tower of babel has to be true, despite all evindence (skyscrapers and space/air travel) suggest this story is plain nuts.

      1. The Babel story might be ‘true’ in the sense of being plausible in reverse: a polyglot assemblage of guest workers on a large and long-running construction project could be expected to end up with a single shared pidgin (or creole, if it ran a few years more). A strong negative correlation with a plausible reality is about as good as you’re going to get with biblical history.

  6. Needs to be required textbook for high school freshmen. All countries. Wish I would have been able to get it then, but I preceded the publication by several years.

  7. Maybe it would more helpful to translate your book into Southern English.

    Why Evolution is True, Y’All

    2. A worthy endeavor, no doubt! But please, gratuitous use of y’all is a dead giveaway that either a non-Southerner is doin’ the translation or a Southerner is stretchin’…

      Anyway, I’m fixin’ to do a few other things, otherwise, I’d jump on the translation project like a duck on a june bug.

      1. I just read an article about how people don’t do a southern dialect correctly and it is easy to spot because all dialects have rules. Crap, I wish I could find it!

    2. Dead yes, but he was declared ‘eternal leader’ a month later, when they announced his body would be preserved and put on display. Shortly after that he was promoted to the highest military rank in the country.

      It’s a leadership cult with many overtones of divinity, including immortality.

      1. Maybe Kim Jong-Il has been reading WEIT in death. Maybe the two true Gods are Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il! I don’t think the current guy has a fun nickname yet.

  11. And my usual comment – firstly congratulations and secondly I still can’t buy it on the Kindle app for Australians. Sigh!

      1. Thanks so much Jerry! Usually, its the publisher who organises this – may be a few more dollars. I’ve been reading generally on an iPad for 3yrs now.

        I appreciate your effort.

        1. Can I suggest to your publisher, that they organise world wide rights to the eBook eg as on the Kindle app – will save lots of nonsense. Why pay for books to be flown from country to country when it could be downloaded. I appreciate that you have tried.

          It isn’t available on iBooks for Australians either. This is about money – which will be recouped in a year or so. This is a book which should have a wide distribution, especially among young people who will be more familiar with digital formats.

          I don’t know if you have seen Dawkins book on evolution for children on the iPad – its gorgeous. As I remember you don’t have an iPad.

          Thanks again from an ardent fan.

          1. PS – I used to be a science teacher many, many years ago, and used to help young people understand that we weren’t going to worry about the general story of Genesis; however, as far as geology was concerned, it all took a much longer time than the Genesis writers could comprehend. They had no problem understanding that that it was a fable which didn’t understand geology – this was Australia in the 1960s. These kids were 12yrs when they were first introduced to the concept. And then we used it as a theme over the next 6yrs of high school. I retrained…..however, at my core is a science teacher……

  14. I once reviewed a paper for Ukrainskii Biokhimicheskii Zhurnal (Ukranian Biochemical Journal – est 1926!). It was in English, but still fun to say that I did that.

  15. Mr. Coyne, dare I ask how’s the russian translation going? You wrote way back in 2011 that some publishing house had secured the rights. Any news since then? Is the translation actually under way?

  16. I have friends who were working in the Central African Republic until recently and are hoping to get back behind the wheel of CAR soon. I’ll make sure they visit WEIT when they do.

  17. Great spread of a sensible book. But my beef is with your map. How come our chums in Canada claim so much of the earth? The distance from New York to Toronto is about 500 miles. Same distance from London to me in Burgundy, only, here, you need to time-travel; go back 137 years! WEIT will arrive in my local library soon; about 2096 is their estimate. Darwin is due soon, and meanwhile we have some school textbooks of Neo-Lamarckism from the fifties.Doctors still treat ancient maladies such as ‘Heavy Legs’ and ‘Sour Liver’. The speed of modern knowledge in this internet age is quite breath-taking! PS. My local Mairie was using a type-writer till three years ago.

  18. You should take into account, however, that about half of Ukrainians speak Russian at home, and most of the other half are fluent in Russian too, so I doubt there is a big necessity to have a Ukrainian version if there is already one in Russian. I mean why not, but I guess there are languages that would be more in demand.

    1. There is no russian translation yet. Well, even if there is, it’s not published yet 🙂

      I asked Jerry (see above) for updates about the current state of the russian translation, but received no answer so far (Mr. Coyne, are you reading this?! 🙂 )…

  19. There is no russian translation yet. Well, even if there is, it’s not published yet 🙂

    I asked Jerry (see above) for updates about the current state of the russian translation, but received no answer so far (Mr. Coyne, are you reading this? ! 🙂 )…

    (sorry if this comment is posted twice. not sure it worked the first time)

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