From: werner@cs.utexas.edu (Werner Uhrig)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german
Subject: Re: Translation help, bitte.
Date: 11 Nov 1992 23:22:42 -0600
Organization: CS Dept, University of Texas at Austin
NNTP-Posting-Host: dimebox.cs.utexas.edu

rjv@a2.cim.cdc.com (Rene Valdes) writes:
|
||>     Das deutsche Ziel w\"urde dann lediglich die Vernichtung des 
||>     im arabischen Raum unter der Protektion der britischen Macht 
||>     lebenden Judentums sein.
||> 
||> I have two professional translations, namely:
||> 
||> (a) Germany's only objective would then be solely the destruction 
||>     of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the
||>     protection of British power.
||> (b) Thereafter, Germany's only remaining objective in the region 
||>     would be limited to the annihilation of the Jews living under
||>     British protection in Arab lands.
||> 
||> My knowledge of German is insufficient to choose between "destruction 
||> of the Jewish element" and "annihilation of the Jews", even though
||> those phrases could perhaps have substantially different meaning.
|
> As a former professional translator (mostly German-Spanish) and 
> throwing a grain of salt as inspired by the Italian wisdom expressed
> in "Traduttore. tradittore"

	cute!  valid!!  :-))


> I would suggest that b) is a better translation.

	agreed  ("annihilation" is the most important term to get right)


> As someone suggested in another comment, "Judentum" is best rendered as
> "Jewry", which is in fact a collective term for "the Jews" or "all Jews".
> In addition "annihilation" appears, in my opinion, to be closer to
> "Vernichtung" than "destruction", given that both convey the idea of
> reducing to "nothing".

	given the indicated origin, I would judge that "the Jewish
	element" is more likely hitting the note of "diplomatic speak"
	to be suspected present in this communication.
	
> An interesting observation is that both translations are redundant
> with respect to the idea rendered in German by the word "lediglich".
> In a) we find "only" and "solely"; in b), "only " and "limited".

	I don't think of this as "redundant" but rather result of the
	lack of "context" of the phrase.  I missed having been provided
	with "context", some paragraphs before and after the sentence
	in question, as without context any translation must be questioned
	(and questionable).

	when I read "lediglich" immediately the question came to mind
	(for proper interpretation of meaning):  "what was this message
	directed to?  and by whom?  what were the prior communications
	on this topic between the parties?"


		"The (total) annihilation of the Jewish element living
		 under British protection on Arab lands would consequently
		 be the only German objective."

	this would be MY translation, given my assumptions on "context".

	btw, I judge "deficient" (many such) translations (I sometimes get
	to proof-read) where the translator tries to stick to sentence
	structure and word order of the original, and thus misses some of
	"the sentiment" which would be much better brought ought by
	rearranging the sentence components.

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