This Week's Installment
The italicized parts are things I'm unsure about.
“He is however completely out of the question. He lives only in higher fields and is sincerely happy in his lecturer function. He writes one article after another; one can hardly open a newspaper or magazine without reading his name.”
“You have never thought very highly of his intellectual profession.”
She pursed her lips. “It is actually very far from us; it is
---11---
very far from you to all the Bärwald. It is something - I wouldn’t like to hurt you or him, but I can’t put it an-other way - something not completely manly in it. You, your ancestors, everything as you told me so often, cultivate your land or carry the sword. He studies theology and philosophy and who-knows-what-else and became a champion of the quill.”
“It was his hobby even in the first year of grammar school. And you cannot deny that he had brought it to something. His name has become widely well-known.”
“That may be. You, and especially you in your oversized modesty, have always made who-knows-what out of him. But to me your profession appears more valuable, and even if you become a countryman, under these circumstances, I can’t understand it any better.”
“Then I must venture it even without your kind approval.” A dismissive tone, such as she had never heard from him, was in his answer. “But as far as Hans is concerned, you do him wrong, have always done it. And that annoys me.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “What do I know of him? He is over fifteen years older than I and has never paid attention to me. You took yourself as the chivalrous boy of the small daughter next door and were later my dancer in Rodenburg and by the good men here. He was always the superior, always stood apart. He didn’t play as a boy and didn’t dance as a man. His books were the world for him and his ambition. What is Reckenstein worth to him, yes, even Bärwalde?”
“Every vacation, every simply conceivable free time he spent in Bärwalde.”
---12---
“Yes. He sat up in his room, at best sometimes in the garden and wrote his books!”
Interesting Words I Ran Across
- ätsch - see!; serves you right! [I love how there's just a single word for this.]
- der Geck - fop
- sich freuen wie ein Schneekönig - be tickled pink, be pleased as punch [literally: to be glad like a snow king]
- spuken - to haunt [I think I ran across this one other time, but it's more seasonally-appropriate now. Also, I like how it sounds similar to spook.]
Grammatical Minutiae/Commentary
I'm not sure if I have "Der kommt doch gar nicht in Betracht" translated strictly correctly, although I do have the same idea. "Nicht in Betracht kommen" means "to be out of the question," but I didn't know how to combine that with "gar nicht," which means "not at all." I went with "He is however completely out of the question." "Not at all" and "completely" are different, but they mean pretty much the same thing.
"Dozententätigkeit" isn't in my dictionary, but der Dozent (lecturer) and die Tätigkeit (action, function, etc.) are, so I translated it as "lecturer function."
I feel like I need a stronger word than just "open" for "aufschlagen" in "man kann kaum eine Zeitung oder Zeitschrift aufschlagen, ohne seinen Namen zu lesen" ("one can hardly open a newspaper or magazine without reading his name"). Edith seems to have a slight disdain for Hans' omnipresence, and "aufschlagen" seems to indicate that. In this context, it means just "open," but my dictionary also says it means "break open; crack egg," "cut one's knee," and some others. The verb "schlagen" is clearly visible, which by itself means "hit, beat, punch," etc., so clearly there's more force than "open" describes. It's more like: "you can hardly slap open a newspaper or magazine without having to read his name," but that changes the grammar of the sentence. I referenced my thesaurus and momentarily thought of employing "crack," as in "crack [open] a book," but a book is more substantial than a newspaper or magazine, and I don't think the same term could apply. "Crack [open] a newspaper" just sounds kind of ridiculous. So while I can't seem to find a word that has the same aggressive tone, I thought I would at least mention that there's a slight undertone of contempt there.
It took a bit of effort to correctly translate "Sie schürzte die Lippen." When I looked up schürzen in my dictionary, it gave me only to gather up. I was dubious about this because "She gathered up the lips" doesn't sound like anything a normal person would say. I typed "schürtze die Lippen" into Google Translation, and it gave me "pursed lips." I'm not completely confident in Google Translate though, so I looked up purse in the English section of my dictionary, and I did find schürzen. So I've sorted that, but I don't know why "purse s.o.'s lips" isn't included under schürzen in the German section.
"Ihr, eure Vorfahren, alle, wie du mir so oft erzählt, bebauten ihr Land oder führten das Schwert" seems odd to me because it introduces a 2nd person plural pronoun ("Ihr"), but that pronoun doesn't seem to have an antecedent.
In "Es war sein Steckenpferd schon auf der Prima," Warsow talks about Hans' schooling. My dictionary has some different definitions of "Prima" depending on the nationality of the education: "Brit. sixth form; Austrian first year (of grammar school)." Neither of these is German, but I went with the "first year of grammar school" because by the way Warsow explains it, this is something that's been Hans' hobby for a long time, and the first year of grammar school has some inherent primacy.
It's unfortunate that English doesn't have different words for singular you and plural you because "You (pl.), and especially you (sg.)..." is quite confusing. Also, that sentence and its various yous has made me realize that Edith and Warsow have a pretty close relationship because they use the familiar form of you (du) with each other, or at least Edith uses it with Warsow here.
I'm not very happy with my translation of "But to me your profession appears more valuable, and even if you become a countryman, under these circumstances, I can’t understand it any better." I think it provides the same sense as the original, but I had to change a lot of things from the original to make it sound a little better (and I don't think it even sounds that good).
I've translated "auf den Gütern" as "by the good men," although I took some liberties with it. The "Gütern" was the difficult part. As a preposition, "auf" could take either accusative or dative case. Because there isn't movement here, I think it's dative. As a result, the "den" is plural. I couldn't find the same form of "Gütern" in my dictionary, but there is an entry for "der Gute," a substantive adjective of "good" for "good [man]." I can't account for the umlaut over the u or the -n ending however.
I can understand the idea behind "jede nur erdenklich freie Zeit," but I can't seem to find a good English translation for it, at least not one that's faithful to the original text. Currently, I have "every simply conceivable free time," which is comprehensible if not very fluid.
My dictionary gave me a few translations for erdenklich ("imaginable, conceivable, possible"), and conceivable seemed to fit the best. The "denk" part of erdenklich comes from denken (to think), so possible seemed too different, and since Hans is earlier described as a sort of stodgy academic, I thought conceivable was better suited than imaginable. So I went with the most straight-forward word that also had cerebral connections.
"Dozententätigkeit" isn't in my dictionary, but der Dozent (lecturer) and die Tätigkeit (action, function, etc.) are, so I translated it as "lecturer function."
I feel like I need a stronger word than just "open" for "aufschlagen" in "man kann kaum eine Zeitung oder Zeitschrift aufschlagen, ohne seinen Namen zu lesen" ("one can hardly open a newspaper or magazine without reading his name"). Edith seems to have a slight disdain for Hans' omnipresence, and "aufschlagen" seems to indicate that. In this context, it means just "open," but my dictionary also says it means "break open; crack egg," "cut one's knee," and some others. The verb "schlagen" is clearly visible, which by itself means "hit, beat, punch," etc., so clearly there's more force than "open" describes. It's more like: "you can hardly slap open a newspaper or magazine without having to read his name," but that changes the grammar of the sentence. I referenced my thesaurus and momentarily thought of employing "crack," as in "crack [open] a book," but a book is more substantial than a newspaper or magazine, and I don't think the same term could apply. "Crack [open] a newspaper" just sounds kind of ridiculous. So while I can't seem to find a word that has the same aggressive tone, I thought I would at least mention that there's a slight undertone of contempt there.
It took a bit of effort to correctly translate "Sie schürzte die Lippen." When I looked up schürzen in my dictionary, it gave me only to gather up. I was dubious about this because "She gathered up the lips" doesn't sound like anything a normal person would say. I typed "schürtze die Lippen" into Google Translation, and it gave me "pursed lips." I'm not completely confident in Google Translate though, so I looked up purse in the English section of my dictionary, and I did find schürzen. So I've sorted that, but I don't know why "purse s.o.'s lips" isn't included under schürzen in the German section.
"Ihr, eure Vorfahren, alle, wie du mir so oft erzählt, bebauten ihr Land oder führten das Schwert" seems odd to me because it introduces a 2nd person plural pronoun ("Ihr"), but that pronoun doesn't seem to have an antecedent.
In "Es war sein Steckenpferd schon auf der Prima," Warsow talks about Hans' schooling. My dictionary has some different definitions of "Prima" depending on the nationality of the education: "Brit. sixth form; Austrian first year (of grammar school)." Neither of these is German, but I went with the "first year of grammar school" because by the way Warsow explains it, this is something that's been Hans' hobby for a long time, and the first year of grammar school has some inherent primacy.
It's unfortunate that English doesn't have different words for singular you and plural you because "You (pl.), and especially you (sg.)..." is quite confusing. Also, that sentence and its various yous has made me realize that Edith and Warsow have a pretty close relationship because they use the familiar form of you (du) with each other, or at least Edith uses it with Warsow here.
I'm not very happy with my translation of "But to me your profession appears more valuable, and even if you become a countryman, under these circumstances, I can’t understand it any better." I think it provides the same sense as the original, but I had to change a lot of things from the original to make it sound a little better (and I don't think it even sounds that good).
I've translated "auf den Gütern" as "by the good men," although I took some liberties with it. The "Gütern" was the difficult part. As a preposition, "auf" could take either accusative or dative case. Because there isn't movement here, I think it's dative. As a result, the "den" is plural. I couldn't find the same form of "Gütern" in my dictionary, but there is an entry for "der Gute," a substantive adjective of "good" for "good [man]." I can't account for the umlaut over the u or the -n ending however.
I can understand the idea behind "jede nur erdenklich freie Zeit," but I can't seem to find a good English translation for it, at least not one that's faithful to the original text. Currently, I have "every simply conceivable free time," which is comprehensible if not very fluid.
My dictionary gave me a few translations for erdenklich ("imaginable, conceivable, possible"), and conceivable seemed to fit the best. The "denk" part of erdenklich comes from denken (to think), so possible seemed too different, and since Hans is earlier described as a sort of stodgy academic, I thought conceivable was better suited than imaginable. So I went with the most straight-forward word that also had cerebral connections.
