This Month's Installment
As always, the italicized parts are what I'm unsure about:She lost her parents early, so the two old folks brought her to them at Pronitten."
"Ah, I know already! The daughter of Theo, the
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doctor. He lost his wife to a lingering illness, accused himself that he had treated her wrongly, and then soon died himself. The old man had gotten over it with enough difficulty; only his childlike faith helpt him through it."
A short pause.
"But why do you call her the Little Red Riding Hood from Samaria?"
Fritz laughed. "Because I met her one afternoon here in our little village with a red cap on her blonde hair and a big basket in which she brought a bottle of wine and other tonic for old Karenke."
"Was he sick?"
"Yes, very sick. Quite often he lookt so deeply in the glass that Beelzebub and other devils raged in him."
"No, captain, you must always have your teasing!" said Hutemach, and to Hans, explaining: "The little Teichgräber child didn't want to go to him at all, but rather to his wife, who has been badly suffering for a long time and whom Pastor always visits when he comes to Bärwalde."
"But the bottle of wine should have been for him, with that he cured himself from the gutrot! That's a fact. By the way, the little one has caused something good with that because since then old Karenke has become distinguished and drinks only red wine. And he prefers Onkels Marke. Or am I speaking a falsehood again?" And with a triumphant look to Hutemach, whom, in all friendliness, he often gave a hard time: "Then why did you fire Marie, his daughter, who was so good a chambermaid, just like that one day? Because in the old man's parlor Mr. Borowski has found empty bottles of the brand that's there on the table. But
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it means nothing to the Samaritan service of young ladies."
Now even the old Bärwald resident laughed. And nothing pleased Hutemach more than when he did that. He could still laugh so heartily and with such childlike cheer.
In the arbor of the Pronitt parish garden, thickly overgrown with pipe-leaf, the coffee table was set. A bowl piled high with freshly baked [Glumse] cakes stood in the middle of the table, framed by two old-fashioned vases of autumnal flowers.
Grammatical Minutiae
My dictionary translates schleppend as sluggish, slow, labored, and various other similar words, but none of them fit the context in which it's used in the text: "einer schleppenden Krankheit." I translated this as "a lingering illness."Two months ago, when I ran across "Teichgräber," I translated it literally as "pond-digger," but after running into it again for this month's installment, I realized that it's actually a surname. It appears as "Die kleine Teichgräber," which is literally "the little Teichgräber" and which I've translated as "the little Teichgräber child."
I kept "Onkels Marke" in German because I'm pretty sure it's a specific type of wine. Translated, it's "uncle's brand."
I translated "Stubenmächen" as "chambermaid," although my dictionary notes that this is obsolete. I'm not sure if the "obsolete" qualification applies to the text I'm translating because it's from 1916. The rest of the sentence suggests that "Stubenmädchen" is an occupation from which Marie was fired, so "chambermaid" seems to make sense.
I took some liberties with the sentence "Er konnte noch so herzlich und kindlich froh lachen" because I couldn't really think of a way to render "kindlich froh" adverbially in English. Instead, I put that part as a prepositional phrase and added "such" to retain the "so" in the original, which I'm assuming modifies both "herzlich" and "kindlich froh." So I ended up with "He could still laugh so heartily and with such childlike cheer."
It occurred to me only after I'd pasted in this month's installment that I haven't been very consistent with place names. I have both "Pronitten" and "Pronitt," although it's the same place. I think I've been equally inconsistent with "Bärwald"/"Bärwalde."
