Once more: German geeking!

[annathepiper]

Haven't done this in a while, but since I have more time on my hands now thanks to my contract being over, I thought it was high time to return to Der kleine Hobbit. Glancing back at the first couple pages of this thing, I'm finding my recollection of what I read through a couple of months ago to be unfortunately fuzzy. But well heck, I don't want to have to re-read it, and Bilbo needs to get going! So, onward!

When last we left our intrepid Abenteurerin, she had gotten as far as Gandalf showing up on Bilbo's doorstep to try to haul him off on his merry little treasure hunt! Except, well, I got hung up at the beginning of that paragraph and couldn't make it past the first few words. After tonight's little excursion back into Deutschland (or at least, the German version of Hobbiton), I have at last now gotten Gandalf actually on camera. But I'm stopping there, because my brain is full.

als: when? See below for the notes on noch.

bis: As far as, until, till, to. I think I saw this one earlier in the text, too, but I'm not sure, so I'm noting it again here.

enorm: This threw me for a loop, but only a small one. It wasn't too difficult to figure out with the help of the English/German dictionary link that apel had given me that this is more or less "enormous". What I'm less certain about is why, in the text, it has no ending while the words that surround it to. The relevant bit of text is "eine enorm lange Holzpfeife".

ereignete sich: Past tense of "to happen".

es gab: Again, see the notes below for noch. This, I am assuming, is the past tense of es gibt, which I remember from basic German lessons as being an idiom that translates over to "there is" or "there are".

gebürstet: Taking a stab at this based on the English, I'd say this would be "brushed". But I'm thinking it must be the pluperfect form of the verb bürsten, as there is also a waren in the phrase.

Geräusche: Noises.

glücklich: I feel like I ought to know this one. It looks familiar. *checks dictionary* Hrmm. I wanted to say that it meant "merry" or "happy", and I apparently wasn't far off, though my dictionary seems to like "lucky" or "fortunate" a little more for this word. The English uses "prosperous" in the same section, so I would imagine that the translator intends the "lucky" flavor of definition here.

Holzpfeife: Hrmm. This seems to break down to the "wooden pipe" mentioned in the English text, and might perhaps be the same sort of weird word-combining thing as happened way back in the first paragraph of the chapter with the word Kieshöhle.

kam vorbei: Came past, came over.

merkwürdig(er): This is a cool word! Strange, odd.

nahezu: This is a weird new fun word for me: "almost".

noch: This seems to have a couple of different meanings according to my dictionary, but the one that seems to make the most sense in context is "still". The relevant chunk of text is "als es noch wenig Geräusche und mehr Grün gab".

rauchte: Past tense of "to smoke".

reichte: Past tense of "to reach". And oh look, an idiomatic phrase that seems relevant to the sentence this goes in: "reichen bis zu", "to reach up to". This makes sense for the "bis zu" I saw earlier in the sentence.

sauber: Clean, neat.

vor langer Zeit: This seems to be an idiom of some kind that I can't quite parse together from my dictionary. The relevant bit of text from the English version is: "By some curious chance one morning long ago in the quiet of the world". So this seems to map over to the "long ago" part, but I'm not sure how this would literally translate--or if it would literally translate.

wenig: Little, few. See the notes above for noch.

wollig(en): Woolly.

zahlreich: I remembered this one from the first page of the story! Numerous! But I'm noting it again here out of general pleasure for having figured it out.

Zehen: Toes.

Zufall: Chance.

Comments

[apel.livejournal.com]

als usually means "than" as in Ich bin besser als du. Does that fit with the context?
enorm doesn't have an ending because it is used as an adverb referring to lange. The translation is "enormously long wooden pipe" rather than "enormous, long wooden pipe". If it had referred to the pipe, it would have said enorme, lange Holzpfeife.
glücklich: I think your dictionary is a bit too keen on seeing the connection with das Glück here. Usually glücklich means joyous. It's stronger than just "happy" or "merry".
noch is another one of those very useful adverbs. Compare with schon. How would you tranlate the following: Es wird heute noch Schnee geben. Es wird heute schon schneien. Bist du noch nicht fertig? Bist du schon fertig?

[kriski.livejournal.com]

hello there. kingchiron pointed your journal out to me. because i'm german and a geek for language, and he thought i might enjoy your struggling with the german hobbit. which i did. you have my sympathies, german is not an easy language to grasp. for starters, our grammar is more intricate than yours. english might have a couple hundred-thousand more words, but german gets there with compounds. like holzpfeife and kieshöhle.

also, bilbo, being male, is an intrepid abenteurer. you made him a she.

i can help, if you like. you find something puzzling, just ask. or if you want to practice conversation, write me an email in german.

cheers.

[annathepiper]

Heya! First off--glad to make your acquaintance! German speakers both native and simply way more fluent than I am are more than welcome to clue me in on anything I get wrong in the posts I make on this topic. :) I would be delighted to have your assistance.

Secondly--actually, I meant ME when I said Abenteurerin--because this is certainly a linguistic adventure for me. ;) I'm not tackling German from scratch, thankfully; I studied it for two and a half years in high school and have sort of been able to dabble in it off and on ever since. I've worked in software localization, so I've dealt with German software and German operating systems semi-regularly. And a couple of years ago, I had a bit of a refresher course at the University of Washington Experimental College, but that was mostly able to refresh my memory on basic grammar. :)

I have been told by another native German speaker that I can translate my way into fairly coherent German. The problem, however, is that it takes me HOURS to do so. I've got basic grammar knowledge; what I lack is the vocabulary and the complex grammar.

My goal here is to try to make some of the more complex things stick by actually using them in a way that would be fun for me--reading a novel. I chose Der kleine Hobbit since the English version is well-loved and well-familiar, and I can quickly refer to it if I get hopelessly confused. So far I'm just having loads of fun finding differences between the original text and what the translator has put in. :)

[kriski.livejournal.com]

oh yes, you're making coherent sense. i remember when i was in school, taking russian. translating a page took me hours. their grammar is even worst than ours. not much of the russian stuck, though, since i never used it once i got out og highschool.

i began making better sense of english, when i started university and discovered slash. that certainly was an incentive to keep reading ;-)

i then studied in england for a year and as a result messed up both my german and my english grammar. i used to have an instinctive feel for when i need a comma in a german sentence. then i wrote papers in england and sucked bad at commas, semicolons and the like. it got betrter over the course of the year, but only from guessing, not from really getting the rules. and when i ot back to germany, my grammar radar for my mother tongue was totally broken. so never ask me about puctuation, my guess will be as good as yours. i'm fairly good with cases and tenses though.

have you encountered the joys of the konjunktiv yet? i admit i have to take a refresher course on that one from time to time, simply because it is so rarely used in spoken language. or rather, most people use it in all the wrong ways. i'm writing poetry and prose, so i need to get it right.

Er sagte, er wolle einkaufen gehen.
Ich müßte nicht für dich lügen, wenn du nicht so feige wärst.
Ginge sie zeitiger ins Bett, wäre sie morgens nicht so müde.


He said, he wanted to go shopping. (this is reported speech, where you move back a tense in what is reported, we use the konjunktiv)
I wouldn't have to lie for you, if you weren't such a coward.
If she went to bed earlier, she wouldn't be so tired in the morning.

those are some of the forms and i have no clue whatsoever about the commas in the english translations...

personally, i never succeeded with tolkien. i tried the ring trillogy, started reading it several times--and never made it past tom bombadil. it is simply unreadable! tolien was a linguist, yes, but he had little sense for how much detail is enough in a STORY and how tension arcs are properly build. the whole book is an academic treatise, which is fine. i just cannot read it for fun. i find it inaccessible.

i'm having fun comparing the original poetry in the book to the translations, though. poetry cannot be translated, you have to re-create it. and it takes more time than i suppose the translator of the german edition had. it's horrible. butchering perfectly wonderful verses and sometimes just not getting underlying meanings. so they don't show up in the german poems at all, it's a shame.

anyway, nice meeting you. i'm looking forward to having debates over the merits of a particular translation with you. ;-)

[annathepiper]

Regarding als, here is more of the sentence in which that word appears:

"Eines Morgens, vor langer Zeit, in der groß Stille, als es noch wenig Geräusche und mehr Grün gab..."

I make this out to be "One morning a long time ago in the great silence/quiet, when there were still few noises and more green". (I'm not quite sure about the Stille, there. The English version reads, "By some curious chance one morning long ago in the quiet of the world, when there was less noise and more green...".)

So als as "than" doesn't seem to quite parse with this fragment. I take your meaning as to its more usual usage, but would you concur that "when" is a better reading here?

Duly noted on enorm as an adverb here! Gotcha. :)

Duly noted as well re: glücklich. Honestly, I think that I could easily read either "joyous" or "prosperous" into the text; as I mentioned, the English version speaks of when the hobbits were still "prosperous", but "joyous" also works in the overall flavor of the paragraph. It's talking about the time when the world was simpler and more innocent--and certainly in the days the tale is evoking, the hobbits were more innocent and more joyous!

Ooh, an exercise. Hrmm. I should know schon even though I keep wanting to put the umlaut on it and get schön, but I know they are two different words! ;P

I see a lot of potential meanings for schon, though: "already", "even", "just", "anyway".

For noch, I see "still", "as well", "even".

Let me take a stab at these sentences...

Es wird heute noch Schnee geben.: "There will still be snow today." Or, perhaps less literally since I know of the idiomatic flavor of "es wird geben", here: "It will still snow today."

Es wird heute schon schneien.: "It will snow today anyway.", perhaps.

Bist du noch nicht fertig?: "Are you not yet finished?" "Aren't you finished yet?"

Bist du schon fertig?: "Are you finished already?"

[annathepiper]

Ohh, I wanted to take Russian in college! But I had to drop the course because my schedule was overloaded--and it's a shame, too. The professor was teaching it in a "full immersion" kind of style, and even after a day or two I had already figured out that I was going to enjoy that class a lot.

None of my college French has stuck, either--but then, I took French right on the tail end of taking German, and those two languages did not play well together in my head. :) Possibly because I did not get along as well with my French teacher as I did with my German ones, but hey!

*giggles!* Slash as incentive for lingual improvement? I can relate. ;) Certainly the languages that inspire me the most right now are the ones used in ways that appeal to me--music, mostly! I suspect that if I had to read only German novels I'd be picking up German a lot faster.

The konjunctiv examples sound... not entirely unfamiliar. But I think this is reminding me of stuff I must have learned in high school rather than covered much in the refresher course--or perhaps things that I have observed in text without really consciously knowing what I was looking at. It's reminding me of a poem I learned in high school, and which I still have stuck in my older, smaller German dictionary--Heinrich Heine's Die Lore-Lei, which starts off Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten, daß ich so traurig bin.

Looking on the back of the little snippet of paper, I apparently did my best to translate it, too. :)

As to your comma usage, your commas are right in the third example, though you don't need them in the first two. FYI. :)

*giggles again* Your issues with Tolkien are certainly ones I've heard from native English speakers, and there are times that I don't necessarily disagree with you! However, out of the selection of German books available to me at the local bookstore, Tolkien was pretty much the only author who a) was one I'd already read, and b) was represented among the translations.

(I also bought a translation of a novel by another author I like, Susanna Kearsley--but I'm not tackling that book yet because I haven't read the English original! And I'm NOT feeling bold enough to tackle something for which I have no English reference yet. ;) The English book is out of print so I'm not likely to find a copy soon.)

At any rate, I'd already noticed just by skimming through the first chapter of Der kleine Hobbit that the quoted songs have clearly been altered in the translation, since they still rhyme. But I haven't made it as far as the first of those yet. I'd wondered how well they would preserve the flavor of the original, though!

I too look forward to discussing translation stuff with you, and now I'll have to make more of an effort to keep these posts coming. ;)