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I understand ein wenig, lol.

For giving orders and receiving reports on a u-boat, I do okay. :DL

Everything else, barring basic civilities, if it's written down I might make out a tiny bit and guess at a little bit more, but sit and read and understand without referring to an English translation or other such helper? No.

With the Mitchell books the original text is on one page and the English on the other page facing it. Going back and forth I can figure out which words in German correspond to which part of the translation - they are very similar languages in some respects, after all.

But that's not the same as being able to read it in German and comprehend it that way, and feel it that way, which with poetry is so important.

There are some excerpts on line here:

http://www.stephenmitchellbooks.com/...keExcerpt.html

and here:

http://www.stephenmitchellbooks.com/...ngExcerpt.html

The poem you mentioned is not included, but two of my favorites are:

ARCHAIC TORSO OF APOLLO

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

SONNETS TO ORPHEUS II, 13

Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it will your heart survive.

Be forever dead in Eurydice — more gladly arise
into the seamless life proclaimed in your song.
Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days,
be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang.

Be — and yet know the great void where all things begin,
the infinite source of your own most intense vibration,
so that, this once, you may give it your perfect assent.

To all that is used-up, and to all the muffled and dumb
creatures in the world’s full reserve, the unsayable sums,
joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.

Thanks for looking it up.

I admit the translations do not convince me, they neither transport the precise meaning of several German words (for which English has no exact translation), bor doe the translations carry the rythm and rhyme that is so very unique for the origial Rilke.

I know no rilke tranlsation sin book form. I just once looked it up on the web, and for example found the sites mentioned above, or these (with some really terrible translations)

http://picture-poems.com/rilke/new.html#Apollo

However, for whatever the reaosn may be, a small number of Rilke poems nevertheless seem to be more accissable for translation into English than most others. You then often do not deal with just one acceptable translation, but eventually with a whole lot of different ones that all neverthelss are acceptable. I do not know why this is so. The same person translating so well this one poem - neverthless may screw it up with the next 4 or 5 he/her tried. The Pnather is a good example, possibly no other rilke poems has seen so many translations. And many of them catch the rythm and rhyme and meldoy of atmopshere of the original. but with most Rilke poems I saw in translations, I must confess that they leave it to give the meaning of words, in the way a dictionary gives you a defintion of a term, but is no piece of art or literature in itself.

This is the Siren's Island in German, since I mentioned it. I love it. Kaleuns: beware and watch out! ;)

Die Insel der Sirenen

Wenn er denen, die ihm gastlich waren,
spät, nach ihrem Tage noch, da sie
fragten nach den Fahrten und Gefahren,
still berichtete: er wußte nie,

wie sie schrecken und mit welchem jähen
Wort sie wenden, daß sie so wie er
in dem blau gestillten Inselmeer
die Vergoldung jener Inseln sähen,

deren Anblick macht, daß die Gefahr
umschlägt; denn nun ist sie nicht im Tosen
und im Wüten, wo sie immer war:
Lautlos kommt sie über die Matrosen,

welche wissen, daß es dort auf jenen
goldnen Inseln manchmal singt -,
und sich blindlings in die Ruder lehnen,
wie umringt

von der Stille, die die ganze Weite
in sich hat und an die Ohren weht,
so als wäre ihre andre Seite
der Gesang, dem keiner widersteht.

Hey, I found a translation - and it even is an acceptable one!

Nightly, after all their day’s travail,
since his gracious hosts had asked about
his journeys and sojourns, he will regale
them softly with his yarns: and yet without

suspecting how they started, and at which
bold word they turned to see, like him, in those
calm, blue island-studded seas how rich
the golden shimmer of that island glows,

just the sight of which evokes the scent
of danger, well removed from far more common
rage and wrath, where it was often spent.
Soundlessly it overtakes the seamen,

who understand that sometimes song will soar
from that golden island’s boundary,
and who apply themselves now to the oars
as though surrounded

by the silence which within holds all
of that expanse, and at their ears insists,
as though its obverse were that very call
which no mere mortal ever can resist.

Heck, that guy is doing a pretty good job with some other poems, too:

http://www.germanic.ucla.edu/NGR/ngr13/trrilke.htm

After the poems, the tanslator added some notes:

Quote:

Translator’s Note: “Crossing the English Channel”

Partly thanks to a greater understanding of the creative process, partly thanks to the proliferation of inexact rhyme usage, we have come a long way from the days when Verlaine’s “Il pleure dans mon coeur” was ren�dered in English as “It cries in my heart.” Nevertheless, each translator, set�ting out to make the rough crossing from one language to another, is still taking chances when determining his priorities. At one end of the spectrum are those translators who would settle for transferring content; at the oppo�site end are the often monolingual poets translating “with” a native speaker. There the perils are dual: Inaccuracies arising from the middle-man, and the poet’s converting the original into one of his own creations.
C.f. MacIntyre, a pioneer translator of Rilke who, along with actress Luise Rainer, introduced me to the poet, appeared to have a simple formula to achieve transformation from German into English: He forced the con�tents of each poem into a rhyming entity by interspersing it with material not found in the original. Even in recent, more sophisticated translations, monstrosities occur. Walter Arndt, in comparing translations of Rilke’s famous “The Panther,” accuses J. B. Leishman of choices the “disqualify the whole enterprise” (159), and M. D. Herter Norton of “a failure to try” (160). Worse, in comparing versions of “Going Blind” (“Die Erblindende”; see “Woman Going Blind,” above) Arndt lashes out at Stephen Mitchell’s work, accusing him of ineffective rhyming (“table/painful”), of “idly” tam�pering with content, and of being insensitive to meter, among other things: “…Mitchell is constrained throughout by his equipment to rate the conven�ience of the prosodically untutored translator above the esthetic identity of the poem” (166).
Such a vituperative attack is wholly uncalled for. Translation is, at best, an imperfect art. Since the color of no two languages is the same, any effort is doomed to fall short from the start. Here is Mitchell’s final stanza of the poem:
She followed slowly, taking a long time,
As though there were some obstacle in the way;
and yet: as though, once it was overcome
she would be beyond walking and would fly. (166)
Yes, “taking a long time” is flabby for “und sie brauchte lang”; “some obstacle” for “etwas,” being gratuitous, poses some obstacle indeed-call it “inorganic language”; and “once it was overcome” for “nach einem �ber�gang” is merely clumsy. The final line evokes the unfortunate image of Mary Poppins sailing over the rooftops. Yet Arndt’s own translation is hardly unflawed. The very opening “Sie sass so wie die anderen beim Tee” becomes “She sat at tea just like the others. First”. Here the rhythm is im�mediately violated by the “First”-part of a new sentence that should not have begun until line two. The moral is that ultimately we must all fall short of perfection.
My own theory of translation derives from Verlaine’s dictum concern�ing all poetry: “De la musique avant toute chose.” The music of the poem (or, given that no two languages sound the same, the rhythm, at least) must remain intact. We can recognize a piece by Mozart or a poem by Rilke by its rhythms, and we should be able to do the same with a translation-that being the litmus test. As for the content-its language, in English, must be organic to the poem as a whole; “seamless is a term (from Rilke’s “The An�gels”) that might be apt. Lastly comes the rhyme, for Rilke’s lyric poetry without it ceases to be Rilke’s lyric poetry. Here is where the hard labor comes in: turning, molding, softening the lines until they acquiesce, until they become plastic and flowing, their syntax comfortable in their adopted new language.
These then, to recap, are the three magic wands of translation: Rhythm, meaning depicted faithfully in organic language, and rhyme capping a fluid syntax.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skybird (Post 1249299)

English may be the natural language of man, but German is its poetry. :O:

:rotfl2::rotfl2::rotfl2:

I love the German language. I love hearing it spoken and I love speaking it, but I would never describe it as poetry. :O::O:

There are a lot of good things to be said about the German language; it is functional and fairly simple, the syntax is fairly easy to master, and it uses a lot of hard consanants - which makes it easy to pick out words and syllables. German also includes a lot of compound words, so it is easy to decipher if one knows the root words. Ironically, there is no word to describe such a thing in the English language, but there is a German word that means "beautifully functional" or somesuch, which serves to adequately describe the language itself. Whatever that word is, that is how I would describe German.

Even so, German is a far cry from poetry. (Sorry, Sky:DL) The language is simply too coarse to serve in such a capacity, especially in cases where poetry is most often applied.

Consider the following - In English, a common phrase is "I love you". It carries a lot of meaning, and it flows easily. The basic phonetic structure; "I lobyoo", is natural and easy for most speakers to pronounce.

Some languages are even better at this. In the case of Spanish the phrase would be te amo (tay-amo). The phrase literally means you, I love in English, but it sounds pretty good, and it is easily pronouncable, making it more aesthetically valuable in the verbal sense.

In German the phrase is "Ich liebe dich"(Ick(phlegm)-lee-ba-dick(phlegm), IIRC. Again, there is a kind of beauty hidden in the simplicity and easy distinction between words, but it still sounds lousy in any poetic context. You wouldn't charm a woman by coughing up phlegm, so why would you use a language that imitates such a sound on a regular basis through the use of overly-hard consonant sounds?

German has a beauty all its own, but it is not a "romantic" language.

The nice thing about English is the variety of languages from which it is comprised. Almost all of the vocabulary has some basis in another language or language group, so there are a lot of cognates for everyone in the western world. English shares some traits with German, as it is a Germanic language, but it rounds things out with a lot of words and syntax taken from other languages.
----------------------------------------------------------------

Back OT, I didn't have a great deal of difficulty understanding what Herr Oettinger was saying. His English needs some work, and he could slow down a bit between syllables, but I found the whole piece to be more or less decipherable.

I cannot condone his stance on mandating proficiency in English, however. While it is true that English has become the global language of trade and diplomacy, there is no reason to mandate English instruction.

Those who have a need to learn English should be allowed to do so. Those who have no need or desire should be allowed to forego the same. Just let the market do its work. If English proficiency is required we will find no shortage of willing students. If things change and we must all suddenly become proficient in Mandarin or any other language we will do so in short order. I see no benefit in the efforts of a state representative attemoting to predict the course of global linguistics based upon his observations of what is happening right now. At best he is mandating a course of action that has already been decided upon by those who care for such a thing and at worst he is imposing his own misguided will upon those who either do not care for or are not affected by such measures.

Quote:

I cannot condone his stance on mandating proficiency in English, however. While it is true that English has become the global language of trade and diplomacy, there is no reason to mandate English instruction.

Isn't there?
Instruction in languages is already mandated by each countries education department.
I think its English that is mandatory in German 2nd level education.

Quote:

Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl (Post 1250028)

:rotfl2::rotfl2::rotfl2:
Even so, German is a far cry from poetry. (Sorry, Sky:DL) The language is simply too coarse to serve in such a capacity, especially in cases where poetry is most often applied.

I wonder if you really can judge that, Lance. Are you fluent in German language, have you ever heared an actor reciting some prose? Do not make the mistake to think you know German from the typical German clichés Hollywood uses in films - the "ugly German", the man as well as the Nazi officer talking to the troops in the trenches, in that Hollywood-way of describing him, almost does not exist.

My mother made friendship with a younger woman, a Korean, who came to Germany to study Germanistik iover here. She speaks perfect, absolutely perfect language (more perfect than ost Germans). but she once told us how amazed she was and how surprised when she first heared the langauge spoken in this country. It was totally different to what she knew from movies, and different to what the (Korean) teachers spoke. She expected that barrack square-lkind of yelling you often hear in the movies. "but they all speak so very differently here!" and much, much softer, she said. She expeted Germans to snap and balk like angry dogs. she said she now knows why the Germans once were called a people of thinkers "and poets".

It is like with English, in a way. To hear a low-sounding bass-voice reading poetry, can be delightful. To hear a typical hysteric-soprano female american voice trying to scare the birds away with her high-pitched volume, is sheer cruelty! the type of vopices you often hear expressing emotions in some sit"com", you know! Terrible.

Or take the first album by Alan Parson, that is the Edgar Allan Poe Album, "Tales of mystery and imgination". The narration between the songs is done by Orson Welles, excerpts from the work of Poe. It sounds great!

But others speaking the language may sound like Donald Duck who just had his balls kicked between his ears. It depends on the voice, the was of speaking, and the text that is spoken. And it is not different in german.

Take a poet like Gottfried Benn. He wrote some of the most beautiful, soft-sounding poetry I know in German. And also some of the most ugly, modern pieces, filled with cynism, aggression - and the words he choosed give it all a different, hard, tough sound as well. It depends, obviously. Now take Rilke, whom I have mentioned above. There is a reason why he sometimes is referred to as a composer with the sound of words - if you read him correctly, you realise the flow, the rythm, the softness in his language that easily can rival the softest wording you can chose in English or French.

Quote:

Consider the following - In English, a common phrase is "I love you". It carries a lot of meaning, and it flows easily. The basic phonetic structure; "I lobyoo", is natural and easy for most speakers to pronounce.

Some languages are even better at this. In the case of Spanish the phrase would be te amo (tay-amo). The phrase literally means you, I love in English, but it sounds pretty good, and it is easily pronouncable, making it more aesthetically valuable in the verbal sense.

Okay, you like your language we understand, so do I, but your conclusions on other languages are heavily biased for that reason.

Quote:

In German the phrase is "Ich liebe dich"(Ick(phlegm)-lee-ba-dick(phlegm), IIRC.

Simply wrong, and here you show that you misperceive German because you do not know it good enough. You have two hard sounds, "ck", in your phonetic description that simply do not exist. There is no "k" in the pronounciation (we Germans often are amused to hear how terribly wrong or funny sometimes german names get pronounced by Americans, we hear it in sports, for example). The German "ch" is NOT pronounced as "k". I think there is no parallel to it in English.

And "phlegm", you said. Are you aware how absurd and funny the English "th" sounds for foreign people and how desparate it's pronounciation can drive young kids trying to learn the language at school? In first classes it easily results in a spitting competition. :DL

Quote:

Again, there is a kind of beauty hidden in the simplicity and easy distinction between words, but it still sounds lousy in any poetic context. You wouldn't charm a woman by coughing up phlegm, so why would you use a language that imitates such a sound on a regular basis through the use of overly-hard consonant sounds?

Now you talk nonsens. Like English, german can be very practical and extremely precise, and often it is more precise becasue it'S unique ability to precsiely describe a meaning by combning two words into one new word in a way it is not being done in English. However, and again like English, it also can be used as a very powerful emotional language. I think that is the reason why i likeEnglish quite much. There are so very plenty of similiarities. but there are some occasions of wanting to describe nuances of a meaning where English simply fails due to lacking vocabulary - at such occasions, I prefer German then.

Quote:

German has a beauty all its own, but it is not a "romantic" language.

Then you do not know it well enough, really. ;) And former generations throughout Europe also would disagree with you. The era of the European "Romantik" was heavily influenced not only by German thinking and arts, but the language itself as well.

Quote:

The nice thing about English is the variety of languages from which it is comprised. Almost all of the vocabulary has some basis in another language or language group, so there are a lot of cognates for everyone in the western world. English shares some traits with German, as it is a Germanic language, but it rounds things out with a lot of words and syntax taken from other languages.

So what? Do you think that makes it the basis or the centre of all Germanic languages? The influence has been mutual and bi-directional for sure. The Western Germanic languages include English as well as German, Dutch, Jiddish, Friesisch, and Afrikaans. The Northern Germanic languages are the Scandinavian languages, maybe with the expection of Finnish, I am not sure on that right now. The East Germanic languages are no longer alive (it was Gothic). So you see, even here you already see a very close relation between English and German (and Dutch). You see it even clearer in this comparison if replacing German with Low German.

French on the other hand belongs to the romanic branch of the indogermanic languages, so does Spanish, Italian, Catalan, Portuegese, and Romanian language. The influence of Latin on them is more profound than on the Germanic languages - it affects structure and syntax and grammar more seriously, while in English and German it is more focussed on the inclusion of Latin terms that changed and then found entrance into English and German.

So when you think all english vocabulary is refering to "all other language families" as well, you describe it wrong as long as you do not mean the process of foreign language words being used in other languages as well, like German and French terms in english, and English terms in German. But the ammount to which this takes place today is a relatively modern phenomenon, owing to the the grown mutual international transaction in the globalised world.

Else the influence between the Germanic languages has been and still is mutual, and not running in one-way direction only. you will find more similiarities and closer ties between English and German than for example between English and French or Italian. Maybe that is why you said German is easy to learn (most people would disagree with that, though. french is more difficult than German, but German is more difficult than English. German grammar knows far more special cases and exceptions and typical rules, than English grammar.)

Both roman and germanic languages are part of the indogermanic family, which still makes them more familiar to each other than for example Spanish and Japanese or German and Chinese. That'S why it is relatively comfortable to translate most western languages into any other western language, almost linear. But it does not work that way with Chinese or Japanese.

Quote:

Back OT, I didn't have a great deal of difficulty understanding what Herr Oettinger was saying. His English needs some work, and he could slow down a bit between syllables, but I found the whole piece to be more or less decipherable.

I cannot condone his stance on mandating proficiency in English, however. While it is true that English has become the global language of trade and diplomacy, there is no reason to mandate English instruction.

That you say becasue you experience English of the language you are used to since your birth. You do not know to our degree how it is to need to adapt to a world that does not speak your native language. It is easier for British and americans to get along internationally with their native langauge, than it is for others. In principal you lucky dogs could have gotten along without ever learning a foreing language. This now changes, with China'S rise in the business world. but still today it is taken for granted that the traveller on an international trip will be met in - English.

So, in a way Oettinger has it right if he demands people to learn English. He just should not lecture about it if he cannot speak it himself.

anyhow, the importance of English is slowly decreasing, while the importance of Chinese language is growing. Especially in the business world.

Quote:

My mother made friendship with a younger woman, a Korean, who came to Germany to study Germanistik iover here. She speaks perfect, absolutely perfect language (more perfect than ost Germans). but she once told us how amazed she was and how surprised when she first heared the langauge spoken in this country. It was totally different to what she knew from movies,

Yeah I think there is definitely a notion that German is an "ugly" language because of the exposure non-German speakers get to it from various things that are intended for them and not for German speakers.

Having taken to watching some movies made in German by native German speakers, I find that for me it sounds neither ugly nor more harsh sounding than any other language does unless there is a reason for it to be spoken harshly - the situation, what is being said, why, the emotional state or intent of the speaker.

As for the "romance" thing - well, IMO romance is in the ear of the beholder. Or the behearer. Whatever, you know what I mean. If "I love you" is what you want to hear from a particular individual, it's good in any language. If it's the language you share with each other and in which you are accustomed to expressing yourself and everything you think and feel, why would any other language be preferable?

Honestly as a native English speaker, if some native English speaking guy tried to "romance" me by switching to French or Italian as some kind of presumed "smoove move"... well, he'd better have his tongue very obviously and firmly planted in cheek, otherwise I'd probably laugh in his face. :O:

Quote:

Originally Posted by frau kaleun (Post 1250361)

otherwise I'd probably laugh in his face. :O:

Charmed iam sure. :nope:

Quote:

Charmed iam sure. :nope:

Judging by your gentlemanly demeanor (as I have so far experienced it), it is unlikely that you would find me aiming such derision in your direction.

However there are some men who seek to impress or arouse the affections of naive young ladies by assuming a somewhat, shall we say, "continental" persona in which the use of various presumably more "romantic" languages often plays a large part.

When this is done in a lighthearted manner and all parties concerned are equally in on the joke, as it were, I have no objection to it.

When it is done to create the pretense of "romance" where none in fact exists (or where none would exist if the perpetrator did not stoop to such tactics), it is another matter entirely.

Just my opinion as a not-so-young lady who has already been to the rodeo on a few occasions. :O:

Quote:

Originally Posted by frau kaleun (Post 1250361)

:yep:

And since in earlier discussions people did not believe me that the vocabulary of German is bigger than that of English.

The university of Leipzig has a long-time project running, that is collecting and counting the number of German words.the project is called "Der deutsche Wortschatz". A comparable project for English is run by the Americans, the so-called Global Language Monitor in San Diego.

The German project has identified so far 2.5 million German words. This does not include regional idioms, and it is based on written sources only, it does not include spoken German in the count. If these would be counted too, then the number of existing German words is estimated to be in the range of 3-5 million.

The american project, last time I read about it, estimated the number of words in English vocabulary to be short of 1 million. However, they do not count lexemes, if they would, the gap between English and German would be closer. Also, I do not know if the fact that for many things English knows two words instead of one, that nevertheless mean completely the same, but are different by historic origin (the one deriving from the germanic language history, the other, due to the Norman history, from Romanic French), is taken into account by them.

And an estimation for size of vocabularies of Goethe and Shakespeare I have marked in a book on poetry that I have gotten from my mother, she excells in such things a bit. there they give Shakespeare 24000, and Goethe 90000 words.

However, one should not read too much into such bean-counting projects, even more so when one does not know what the criterions are for accepting a word in the count, and when not (when it is composed of two other, for example). The publisher of the Oxford dictionary for example still claims that not German but English has the biggest vocabulary, especially due to the "double-terming" caused by both Germanic and French words for ione and the same thing finding entrance into it. Omn the other hand, years ago a spoekesman for Langenscheidt, the leading German publisher for dictionaries who also cooperates with Harper-Collins, said that the difficulty in doing a new dictionary is that German has so much a bigger vocabulary than English. Stable pride, maybe...? Authors like Bradbury and Hemingway used a much smaller vocabulary than Shakespeare or Goethe, but in my perception express much more intense emotions and inner arousal of fantasy. Are they the better or the worse artists, compared to their historic colleagues? As Frau Kaleun indicated, what counts is how you use the language that is available to you, and in what context you say what things.

Quote:

Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl (Post 1250028)

:rotfl2::rotfl2::rotfl2:

In German the phrase is "Ich liebe dich"(Ick(phlegm)-lee-ba-dick(phlegm), IIRC. Again, there is a kind of beauty hidden in the simplicity and easy distinction between words, but it still sounds lousy in any poetic context. You wouldn't charm a woman by coughing up phlegm, so why would you use a language that imitates such a sound on a regular basis through the use of overly-hard consonant sounds?

http://text-to-speech.imtranslator.net/
Please, switch it to German and let it say "ich liebe dich". You will find it very different from your description.:damn:

Hello,
(also trying to be a smartass, if not yet professional)

Those who said "saechsisch" is bader than "schwaebisch" (which would translate as "saxon" is better than "sueban") are certainly right, but i learned to hate even "schwaebisch" when working at the Daimler-Benz works in Stuttgart. Gaawwwd.

But ... as you all know, the Saxons and the Angles (both german tribes)went to, and conquered, a land that was yet to be called Anglo-Saxony, or Angle-Land, which then became England. So i find that speaking saxon, or anglish in its original form, is indeed the badest of all accents :rotfl2:

Ahem.
Greetings,
Catfish