At the beginning of the month, I effected a slight change in my procedure. I'd been translating a sentence everyday, but since German sentences have a tendency to be rather long, I decided to start splitting them up into their constituent clauses if there's a colon or semi-colon. Eventually, I started doing this with dialogue and speech tags too, if the speech tags were lengthy.
Here's what I translated this month (as usual, italicized sections are things I'm unsure about):
And that is good; the permanently-at-home and native woman who is rooted in the home and active in it is for me the strongest and most efficient. We are glad that our youthful hostess found here in her beautiful, East Prussian home, which for a series of years I have also been proud and happy to call mine, a field of rich efficacy and abundance-bringing work on the clod of her ancestors. That she have her activity fulfilled - this that survives her together in those lucky narrow and width, as she fulfilled them to the welfare of her father, his righteous girl, and all people who work in Reckenstein, until now with her sense full of the joys of life: that is my wish for her birthdays. Then I ask you to raise your glasses with me and let them crash in a cheerful and strong huzzah for Miss Edith von Barrnhoff!”
---3---
“Huzzah, huzzah, huzzah!” it rang from against the company at the table. But it was a dull, almost distracted echo. Before the last saying of the speakers had found no more attention, a different sound had mixed itself into them, first from the distance, then coming closer and closer: the sound of horseshoes, that hit the road of the approach with a hurrying trot, and now - “That is really the limit!” shouted the Reckenstein citizen and with his face burning with anger jumped up from his chair. “They’re riding in my garden!”
“In our garden?” Edith now also asked. “That is outrageous!”
But before she or her father could step out into the open, over the small thorn-hedge, placed to separate the garden from the yard, in a short gallop, two horsemen in the smart officer’s uniform of the cuirassiers had galloped over the path, raked with more special care in honor of the present day, and suddenly stopped the horses, dropping with sweat, directly in front of the wood steps that lead up to the garden veranda. And still not enough, now with some doing they forced the well-practiced horses up the small steps, and before the society - who had without exception risen from the cosy evening table, recovered from their astonishment - they stood with their horses up on the veranda. “Huzzah, huzzah, huzzah!” they shouted, with the right arm raised, ten times as powerful than even the whole table company had first managed it, and once again: “Huzzah for the birthday girl!”
That all was the work of a moment; it had some so quickly and unexpectedly that no one knew how it actually happened and what this inexplicable invasion was supposed to mean.
---4---
“Fritz Warsow!” one heard Edith’s bright voice then, and, bursting out in a merry, happy laugh, she held out her hand toward one of the two riders. That one had already dismounted, greeted, and returned her heartfelt handshakes. Then he walked up to the old Reckenstein citizen: “Pardon this ambush, major, but I had to win my wager. And allow me to introduce to you and to the ladies and gentlemen, my comrade, Mr. von Uechteritz, who has accompanied me as a flawless witness and to whom I have often praised your hospitality.”
That one also had long since gotten out of the saddle; a stable boy, who came running up, received the steaming horses and led them into the stable. “However able to run down and to feed well, they have achieved something!” Fritz Warsow shouted after him and proceeded with his comrade to a room to let, in order to prepare himself for the table after the difficult ride.
Very soon they turned back and took the places cleared away for them, Mr. von Uechteritz between the two orphaned owner’s daughters, Fritz Warsow between Edith and Mrs. Stoltzmann.
“But your wager, captain!” shouted the Reckenstein citizen from the opposite side of the table. “Edith never told me a word about it.”
Fun German words and phrases I found (or at least those that I remember finding) while looking up other words:
- der Rösselsprung - knight’s move [in chess]
- der I-Punkt - dot over the i; bis auf den ~ - down to the last detail
- man kann nicht auf zwei Hochzeiten tanzen - you can’t be in more than once place at the same time [literally: one can’t dance at two weddings]
- kreiseln - to play with a top; to spin around [I found it interesting how this relates to der Kreis - circle]
In the English section of my German-English dictionary, I ran across setaceous, which I didn’t know. It means “set with or consisting of bristles”. In German, borstig.
Also while in the English section, I discovered that in German rumrunner is das Alkoholschmuggler, which is not as much fun to say.
The mayor forces himself into the middle of his compliment to Edith. Between “her beautiful, East Prussian home” and “a field of rich efficacy,” he adds his own claim that “for a series of years I have also been proud and happy to call [it] mine.” It reminded me of Claudius’ speech in Hamlet when he announces his marriage to Gertrude:
Therefore our sometime sister, now our Queen,David Scott Kastan points out in "Words, Words, Words: Understanding Shakespeare's Language,” which is in most (if not all) of the Barnes & Noble editions of Shakespeare’s plays, that Claudius’ weird syntax demonstrates his discomfort. He doesn’t just say, “Our sometime sister… have we… taken to wife,” he goes on various tangents. I haven’t gotten far enough in Heimat yet to know the characters that well, but it seems like the mayor is doing a similar thing here: sticking himself into his compliment. Once I understand the characters more clearly, I might be able to shape their syntax to reflect their aims and personalities.
Th' imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we--as 'twere with a defeated joy,
With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dole in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole--
Taken to wife. (I.ii.8-14)
I’m confused by “zu ihrem Geburtstage.” “Zu ihrem” indicates that this is masculine and dative, but the “-e” ending of “Geburtstage” is indicative of a plural, which would change “ihrem” to “ihren.” This is all assuming that I’ve read the charts correctly (and remember my point correctly). I ran into a similar situation with “Hurra dem Geburtstagskinde!” I can’t make sense of that “-e” ending either. The singular is Geburtstagskind; the plural Geburtstagskinder.
I translated “Hurra” as huzzah. Huzzah wasn’t listed as a translation in the German section of my English-German dictionary (it gave only hooray), but working from the English section, both hooray and huzzah redirect to hurrah, which they translate as Hurra, so it all works out.
I found a missing quotation mark on page 4. Der Reckensteiner (I’ve been translating this as “the Reckenstein citizen,” which I’m not sure is the best translation) shouts, “In meinen Garten reiten sie!” but there’s no quotation mark preceding his dialogue. I’ve encountered this in other books, but it’s weird to see that it happened even in 1916.
“Was dieser unbegreifliche Einfall bedeuten sollte” had me confused for awhile because I couldn’t think of a way to put should (sollen) in past tense. At first, I tried “what this inexplicable invasion should have meant,” but then I realized that that was putting the infinitive (“bedeuten”) in past tense instead of “sollte” (also, that was present perfect instead of simple past). I put that part of the sentence through Google Translate (which I’ve been using only as a last resort), and it suggested “supposed to” instead of “should.” And “supposed to” is much easier to put in past tense (“was supposed to”). I’m not even sure now if there is a past tense of “should” in English.
I’m not sure if I was surprised by it, but I still found it interesting that in German, bright can be used metaphorically, in addition to purely visual things. This appears in the description of “Ediths helle Stimme” ("Edith’s bright voice"). I wouldn’t think twice about such an application in English, but I felt I’d better check it in the German.
I had a lot of problems with “ein herbeigeeilter Knecht,” specifically “herbeigeeilter.” (It was while writing about this point that I lost almost a month’s work of commentary, too.) It’s a participle from herbeieilen (“to come running up”), but it’s in past tense (herbegeeilt). The “-er” at the end is there because Knecht is a masculine word preceded by an article (a der word with “ein” in front of it). I can’t figure out a way to make “to come running up” into a past tense participle though. At first, I just made it a verb and made the other verbs in the sentence infinitives, but then I realized that I could put “herbegeeilter” in a relative clause (“who came running up”), which preserves the adjectival function of the participle. So, instead of my original “a stable boy came running up to receive the steaming horses and lead them into the stable,” I now have “a stable boy, who came running up, received the steaming horses and led them into the stable.” It’s better, but I’m still not completely satisfied with it. Hopefully, I’ll come back to it later with a solution.
