Tuesday, 28 October 2008
Just the facts, please (continued)

For nearly a century, translators have wondered what to do with the word Ungeziefer in the opening line of Franz Kafka's Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis):

Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt.

Or:

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

Ungeziefer doesn't mean "insect", though. It means something like "vermin", but you can't talk about "a giant vermin" and even if you could, it isn't quite right. The monstrous creature that Gregor Samsa becomes is deliberately unspecified.

Dawkins and others, with their insistence on facts and only facts, have solved this problem at a stroke: it wouldn't happen. There's no such thing. Woke up as an Ungeziefer? A likely story. Found himself transformed? Pull the other one.

Posted on 10/28/2008 8:34 AM by Mary Jackson
Comments
28 Oct 2008
Send an emailHugh Fitzgerald

http://victorian.fortunecity.com/vermeer/287/nm.htm



28 Oct 2008
Mary Jackson

No, it's 3'6".



28 Oct 2008
Send an emailPaul Blaskowicz

I can't recall  the names of the respective translators, but one englished the  first sentence  of The Trial

Jemand musste Josef K. verleumdet haben

as "Someone must have traduced Joseph K." and the other one "Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K."

And I know which we all prefer.

I remember the Putzfrau at the house of German friends, saying ( when we were eating breakfast): Wir brauchen mehr Ungezieferbekaempfungsmittel gegen Kaefer in der Kueche. Wegen der Hitze vermehren sie sich wie die Fliegen..."

So etcht-deutsch.



28 Oct 2008
Send an emailPaul Blaskowicz

We just want to get the facts..."

A very clever video of Stan Freburg's St George & the Dragon Net

"He bweathed fire on me, he boirned me already..." (Freburg was not Jewish!)  "What's to descwibe? You seen one dwagon you seen 'em all..."