What is a Certified Translation?

Understand the common uses and requirements of a certified translation and download sample statements.

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What are the basics of a certified translation?

In the United States, anyone can certify a translation. A translator does not need to be certified in order to provide a certified translation. The individual translator can certify their translations, as can an employee of a translation company.

A translator may also certify someone else's translation—as long as the translator has fully reviewed the translation for accuracy and completeness and the translation will not be changed after being certified. That is why translation companies can certify translations provided by their employees or freelance translators.

The certification statement must specify whether the signer has translated or reviewed the translation.

Review coordinated by Life Science Editors Foundation

Reviewed by: Dr. Angela Andersen, Life Science Editors Foundation & Life Science Editors. *Assisted by NotebookLM.

Potential Conflicts of Interest: None

Under review at Nature Portfolio

Punchline: Neurons under stress can locally synthesize Heat Shock Proteins (HSPs) in dendrites by increasing the transport of their mRNAs from the soma.

Why is this interesting? This is a previously unknown mechanism for locally synthesizing HSPs in neuronal dendrites in response to stress. It could shed light on therapeutic strategies for neurodegenerative diseases, which are characterized by a loss of proteostasis.

Background:

• • Maintaining proteostasis is difficult for neurons because of their complex polarized morphology and the need for constant remodeling of the synaptic proteome.
• • Local Translation in Neurons: The concept of local translation, particularly within neuronal dendrites, was already well-established. mRNA localization and local translation are fundamental processes in neurons, allowing for spatial and temporal control of protein synthesis. This is particularly crucial in dendrites, which are distant from the soma and require localized protein synthesis for synaptic plasticity and other functions.
• • HSPs and Proteostasis: The importance of heat shock proteins (HSPs) in maintaining cellular proteostasis was also well-understood. HSPs act as chaperones, assisting in the proper folding of proteins and preventing the formation of harmful aggregates.
• • RNA-Binding Proteins and mRNA Localization: RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) play a critical role in regulating mRNA localization and translation. These proteins often recognize mRNAs and direct their transport to specific subcellular locations.

Results: * • When hippocampal and spinal cord motor neurons are stressed, they increase the transport of HSP mRNAs to the dendrites. * • Used a variety of techniques to stress the neurons, including inhibiting the proteasome, hypoxia, and exposure to amyloid-beta peptides. * • All of these stresses led to an increase in the levels of HSP mRNAs in the dendrites. * • The increase in HSP mRNA levels in the dendrites was accompanied by an increase in the levels of HSP proteins in the dendrites. * • This suggests that the HSP mRNAs are being translated into proteins in the dendrites. * • Transport of HSP mRNAs to the dendrites was dependent on the microtubule motor protein dynein. * • Two RNA-binding proteins, FUS and HNRNPA2B1, regulate the transport of HSP mRNAs to dendrites. * • Depletion of FUS or expression of the ALS-associated HNRNPA2B1 D290V mutation impaired the dendritic localization of HSP mRNAs in mouse and human motor neurons.

Discussion: * • Stress-Responsive HSP mRNA Transport and Translation in Dendrites: While previous studies had identified local translation of some proteins in dendrites and recognized the role of HSPs in neurons, this paper specifically focuses on the regulated transport and localized translation of HSP mRNAs in dendrites as a key mechanism for responding to proteotoxic stress. This adds a new layer of understanding to neuronal stress responses. * • Identification of FUS and HNRNPA2B1 as Key Regulators: The study goes a step further by identifying and characterizing the specific roles of RNA-binding proteins FUS and HNRNPA2B1 in regulating HSP mRNA transport. This mechanistic insight into how HSP mRNA localization is controlled enhances our understanding of how neurons fine-tune proteostasis in a spatially defined manner. * • Linking HSP mRNA Localization to ALS: The study makes a significant connection between the dysregulation of HSP mRNA localization and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). By demonstrating that an ALS-associated mutation in HNRNPA2B1 (D290V) impairs HSPA8 mRNA localization and increases neuronal vulnerability, the study provides a potential molecular mechanism for this devastating neurodegenerative disease. This link between impaired local translation, proteostasis, and ALS opens up new avenues for research and potential therapeutic interventions.

Limitations: • Experiments conducted in cultured neurons.

Future work: * • Investigate the role of this mechanism in vivo. * • Determine whether this mechanism is impaired in other neurodegenerative diseases. * • Inform therapeutic strategies that can target this mechanism to treat or prevent neurodegenerative diseases.

Selected Reading 1. Bourke, Ashley M. et al. De-centralizing the Central Dogma: mRNA translation in space and time Molecular Cell, Volume 83, Issue 3, 452 – 468 (2023) 2. Davidson, Alexander et al. Localized Translation of gurken/TGF-α mRNA during Axis Specification Is Controlled by Access to Orb/CPEB on Processing Bodies Cell Reports, Volume 14, Issue 10, 2451 – 2462 (2016) 3. Gehrke, Stephan et al. PINK1 and Parkin Control Localized Translation of Respiratory Chain Component mRNAs on Mitochondria Outer Membrane Cell Metabolism, Volume 21, Issue 1, 95 – 108 (2015) 4. Hacisuleyman, E., Hale, C.R., Noble, N. et al. Neuronal activity rapidly reprograms dendritic translation via eIF4G2:uORF binding. Nat Neurosci 27, 822–835 (2024). 5. Höpfler, Markus et al. Control of mRNA fate by its encoded nascent polypeptide Molecular Cell, Volume 83, Issue 16, 2840 – 2855 (2023) 6. Park, Sungjin et al. The mammalian midbody and midbody remnant are assembly sites for RNA and localized translation Developmental Cell, Volume 58, Issue 19, 1917 - 1932.e6 (2023) 7. Lautier, Ophélie et al. Co-translational assembly and localized translation of nucleoporins in nuclear pore complex biogenesis Molecular Cell, Volume 81, Issue 11, 2417 - 2427.e5 (2021) 8. Ramat, A., Haidar, A., Garret, C. et al. Spatial organization of translation and translational repression in two phases of germ granules. Nat Commun 15, 8020 (2024).

After 24 Years, Scholar Completes 3,000-Page Translation Of The Hebrew Bible by [[Rachel Martin]]

for earth system boundary - biodiversity - human modified ecosystems - only local translation is possible

for - Earth system boundaries - importance of developing cross scale translation for cities and businesses as key actors

for - cross-scale translation - via transcription - allocation - adjustment

for - rapid whole system change - leverage point - cities - cross-scale translation

for - earth system boundaries - safe and just earth system boundaries - cross translated - to cities and business - planetary boundaries - downscaled planetary boundaries - urban planetary boundaries - Johan Rockstrom - Xuemei Bao - Lancet paper - just and safe earth system boundaries - Earth Commission report

paper details - title: A just world on a safe planet: a Lancet Planetary Health–Earth Commission report on Earth-system boundaries, translations, and transformations - authors: - Joyeeta Gupta - Xuemei Bao - Johan Rockstrom - Diana M Liverman <br /> - Dahe Qin - Ben Stewart-Koster - et al - publication: Lancet 2024, Sept 11

summary

for - Cities 1.5 podcast - guests - Xuemei Bai - earth system boundaries downscaled to cities - cross-scale translation of earth system boundaries

for - urban planetary boundaries - barriers to transition - downscaled planetary boundaries - barriers to transition - cross-scale translation of earth system boundaries - barriers to transition - question - retrofitting cities to stay within the doughnut - what are the challenges?

in the strange fields of this city

old ladies

apricot trees, cherry trees, walnut trees

hugs

The little houses

Google Translate as generative AI

Interesting, Luhmann recommends to know many languages so as to prevent the pitfalls of translational errors in conveying meaning when it is to read translated books. So read books in their original language.

There's got to be a great journal article on this!

Showing the parallel between him and other babies of his age, he describes that he did not shout "Miez, Miez, Miez, Miez", which translates to "no, no, no, no" in old germanic dialects like the other children. But instead, in a polar opposite manor, yelled "high, sturdy and big voice" shouted drink, drink, drink. Showing from an early age leadership, confidence, and "greatness".

[[Kate Brennan]] in Gen Z Beowulf at 2024-03-06 <br /> (accessed:: 2024-03-15 13:17:00)

which translations?

"iBridge People" https://www.ibridgepeople.com/en/

認真地對照原文看了，沒有發現意思上的問題。雖然試讀文不長，但從經驗看，沒有明顯的誤譯實爲難得。

中國版譯本，譯名： 医学名著系列--国际法医探案100例身体证据

其實這裡ChatGPT的直譯翻譯意思才對。

人工的翻譯版犯了一個錯，「超過三十天不去找用戶」，這個意思原文完全沒有。難道，只要29天趕快去找用戶溝通一天，就沒事？

原文是說，他們必須連續30天在外跟用戶溝通，才能成功。

原文：Thai and Burmese are alphasyllabaries, or abugidas.

這翻譯犯了一種技術錯誤，即「或」字的使用。乍看之下，「or」翻成「或」顯得無懈可擊，但細究起來，中文單一的「或」字，加上句子裡提到兩個語言，有可能誤導讀者如此對號入座：以爲泰語是第一類，緬甸語是第二類。就算沒被誤導，也無法立即讀懂這個「或」。

其實，這「or」的意思是「或稱」，表示alphasyllabary 和 abugida 是一種東西的兩種稱法，中文可以翻成「，或稱」、「，又稱」、「，也叫做」，無論怎麼翻，都勝過一個單獨的、令人混淆的「或」字。注意，這種意思的 or，前面必定有一個逗號。

有點吹毛求疵了。中譯讀起來像是有兩個原因（「也非」後面帶出第二個原因），但原文表達的是一個原因： for one critical reason。「也非」後面闡述的是同一個原因（強勢語言的霸權）的進一步說明。

看到書名，很吸睛。從網路上找到對應的原文，讀了一下，覺得挺拗口，英文句子顯得冗長，不是很好讀，但不刁鑽。

幾小段試讀的翻譯看下來，這個譯本很忠於原文，亦步亦趨採取相對直譯的策略來行文。但以此句而言，遺漏了一些重要的表達程度和強調的字眼：nothing short of、once and for all，這些詞並非空虛無意義，作者的用心處，如果能譯出來，讀者更能體會何以這道難題必須儘快破解。

原文（強調部分是我加的）：This puzzle would have to be solved quickly, though, for it constituted nothing short of a civilizational trial by which to judge once and for all whether Chinese script was compatible with Modernity with a capital M.

此文旨在批評「直譯」是不佳的做法，但所舉三例中，較差的二例，並非是直譯造成的問題，而原po的翻譯較好，也並非因爲不直譯，其實，從句法看，直譯的程度：

張 > 毫末 > 宋

宋是最大程度打破原文的語法重新組織，但恰好也寫出最拗口賣弄的中文。

which所表的「運動」，意思在張的譯文中並未如所稱丟失，她明白寫出「那些運動」如何如何，只是如前述，「有助於」是多餘意思。

張後段並沒有搞錯，宋也沒有漏譯，只是各自的表達不同於毫末版。不過，我還是最欣賞毫末版，最符合原文的意思。

宋的「流變」在譯movements，「與聞其一」在譯take part in any one of，只是文字太高調、賣弄，裝高雅。張的「有助於」雖然不好，但沒有到搞錯的程度。

更開放的移民政策要以安全邊界為前提。

Sönke Ahrens' Concept of "Permanent Notes" in a Zettelkasten is Completely False

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6jt7SPbhMs

One snippet of brief insight which he could have built upon, but instead he sandwiches it in multiple shills for his book, shills for his newsletter, and several heaping servings of zettelkasten cultish religion.

sigh

Given the presentation here, one wonders how long Scott spent looking through the main portion of Luhmann's ZK to verify that, in fact, that section did not appear. It's nice that he found the bilbliography card related to the footnote, but I don't see enough evidence for deep search to indicate that it might not actually exist somewhere. I also know from experience that Scott doesn't have enough strength in German to potentially pull off such a search, particularly given two different translators of Luhmann's German into English. It may have been the case that Scott missed it.

The better example would have been to use Goitein whose writing output far exceeded that of Luhmann with a fraction of the cards.

Gilad, Elon. “In the Bigynnyng: A Brief History of the English Bible.” Haaretz, January 18, 2019. Https://web.archive.org/web/20220809202404/https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2019-01-18/ty-article-magazine/.premium/in-the-bigynnyng-a-brief-history-of-the-english-bible/0000017f-e5d2-dea7-adff-f5fbf0a70000. Internet Archive. https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2019-01-18/ty-article-magazine/.premium/in-the-bigynnyng-a-brief-history-of-the-english-bible/0000017f-e5d2-dea7-adff-f5fbf0a70000.

Steinberg, Avi. “After More Than Two Decades of Work, a New Hebrew Bible to Rival the King James.” The New York Times, December 20, 2018, sec. Magazine. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/magazine/hebrew-bible-translation.html.

translation of pakad, an administrative word literally translated as "took account of" as "took note of"

Extended discussion here of the decision to translate nefesh not as "soul" with various examples.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_H._Peterson

Shulevitz, Judith. “‘The Five Books of Moses’: From God’s Mouth to English.” Book Review of The Five Books of Moses: A Translation With Commentary by Robert Alter. The New York Times, October 17, 2004, sec. Books. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/books/review/the-five-books-of-moses-from-gods-mouth-to-english.html.

Goldfajn, Tal. “Thou Shalt Show: On Robert Alter’s Translation of the Hebrew Bible.” Book Review of The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter. Los Angeles Review of Books, June 2, 2020. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/thou-shalt-show-on-robert-alters-translation-of-the-hebrew-bible/.

Nice summary of various modern translations of the bible.

clever use of "faith" with respect to translation here

Bruce, James. “The Godless Bible.” Book Review of The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter. Law & Liberty, July 15, 2022. https://lawliberty.org/book-review/the-godless-bible/.

After such a scathing review, really?? I'd be interested to hear a few paragraphs about why.

Could it be edifying to the author who seems to have a set notion of how things should be in advance of the argument? One wonders what his translation would look like...

Of course Alter's alternate translation of "son of man" allows one a closer meaning of Jews prior to the first century and Jesus, which adds a lot of undue baggage which may be seen as retconning the Hebrew Bible. It is after all, titled The Hebrew Bible and specifically not The Old Testament, thus placing it into the tradition of Christianity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hebrew_Bible_(Alter)

• for: green city, living city, environmental justice, safe and just transition, safe and just boundaries earth system boundaries, just transition, climate justice, cross-scale translation of earth system boundaries
• title: Environmental justice in a very green city: Spatial inequality in exposure to urban nature, air pollution and heat in Oslo, Norway
• author: Zander S. Venter, Helene Figari, Olve Krange, Vegard Gundersen
• date: Feb. 2023
• source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896972207293X#f0005

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_Bible_Series

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/anchor-yale-bible-series/

Ran into a copy of the collection at Pasadena City College Shatford Library on Friday 2023-09-09.

• for: cross-scale translation of earth system boundaries, downscaled planetary boundaries, leverage point

• stats

  • 10000 to 1 million is optimum size
• question: investigate rationale

• for: cross-scale translation of earth system boundaries, downscaled planetary boundaries, leverage point
• key finding
  • suitable cohorts and cohort ranges for rapidly deploying climate and sustainability actions between a single individual and the globally projected ∼ 10 billion persons by 2050 is:
  • community scale between 10k and 100k

• for: cross-scale translation of earth system boundaries, downscaled planetary boundaries, leverage point
• title: Powers of 10: seeking 'sweet spots' for rapid climate and sustainability actions between individual and global scales

• for: smart cities, doughnut cities, cosmolocal, downscaled planetary boundaries, cross-scale translation of earth system boundaries, TPF, community data, local data, open data, community data ownership, quote, quote - Garth Graham, quote - community owned data
• quote
• paraphrase
  • Innovation in the creation and sustainability of social institutions acts predominantly at the local level.
  • In the Internet of Things, for those capacities to emerge in smart cities, communities need the capacity to own and analyse the data created that models what they are experiencing.
  • Local data needs to be seen as a common, pool resource.
  • Where that occurs, communities will have the capacity to learn or innovate their way forward.
  • So far, smart city systems are being set up to appropriate and commercialize individual and community data.
  • So far, communities are not waking up to the realization that a capacity they need is being stolen from them before they have it.
• author: Garth Graham
  • leader of Telecommunities Canada

• adjacency
  • ecology
  • Indra's net of jewels -translation
  • of Indra's Net story
  • “Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra,
    • there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer
    • in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions.
  • In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities,
    • the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each “eye” of the net,
    • and since the net itself is infinite in dimension,
      • the jewels are infinite in number.
  • There hang the jewels, glittering like stars in the first magnitude,
    • a wonderful sight to behold.
  • If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it,
    • we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number.
  • Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels,
    • so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring"
    • Author
      • Cook, F. H. (1977). Hua‐Yen Buddhism: The jewel net of Indra. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. [Google Scholar]

https://www.publishepp.com/

In Ukrainian, АЕС stands for Атомна електростанція, which would be widely recognized as standing for Atomic Energy Station. I translated this line into English as N.P.S. which stands for Nuclear Power Station. [1] Since English-language readers may not be familiar with this acronym, I wanted to explain it in this annotation.

Source:

[1] "Acronyms." Nuclear Energy Agency, https://www.oecd-nea.org/general/acronyms/.

The syntax of this section is strange in the original Spanish. While translating it, I endeavored to preserve as much of the sentence structure as possible while maximizing clarity.

"Sarcófago certero contra la radiación" could also be translated as a "sarcophagus well-aimed against radiation."

This line could also be translated as "From stress to stress."

The word "человек" in Russian has a variety of possible translations and meanings. On the one hand, the word refers to "mankind" or "humanity," while on the other it can describe an individual "person," "man," or "human." Throughout my translation, I have translated человек as "humanity" and "human," in order to make the word's meaning as inclusive as possible while maintaining consistency throughout the poem.

The word parsec is composed of the words parallax and arcsecond. Parsec is a unit used in astronomy to measure extraordinarily large spaces between astronomical objects outside of our Solar System. While the full explanation of this mathematical concept is beyond the scope of this project, a detailed description can be found in the source below. [1]

Sources:

[1] Bender, Stephanie. "What is a Parsec?" Universe Today, 14 November 2013, https://www.universetoday.com/32872/parsec/.

Morson, Gary Saul. “The Pevearsion of Russian Literature.” Commentary Magazine, July 1, 2010. https://www.commentary.org/articles/gary-morson/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/.

You have to love the reference to perversion of Pevear's name in the title! Wonder how they'd translate this into Russian...

Some authors who have written about translations.

Interlinguistic necessity. Although containing the record of a ‘lesson’ on Dante’s Inferno 26, the central experience recounted in this chapter is set in motion by linguistic rather than literary elements. Jean desires to learn a new language, Italian, and Primo’s teaching accordingly combines his intermittent recitation of Dante’s text in the original language with a hesitant French commentary on, often a paraphrase of, salient elements in it. At its core, thus, the chapter relates an attempt at interlinguistic mediation. The text’s emphasis on interlinguistic communication is projected against the backdrop of the Lager’s Babel-like dehumanising confusion of languages that Levi explored in other texts (SQ, I sommersi e i salvati). As such, the circumstances of the episode are exceptional.

Jean is an exceptional, and exceptionally positive, character in the universe of the book. He speaks and thinks in two languages: most importantly, he is native in both (‘Jean parlava correntemente francese e tedesco’). As established on the chance encounter with an SS, Rudi the Blockführer, bilingual utterances are for him the norm: ‘È indifferente, può pensare in entrambe le lingue’. The role he plays in the structure of the concentration camp, facilitated by the distinction of his bilingualism, however, is not what is at stake in the episode per se. While Jean certainly has acquired a linguistic capital of sorts, Levi’s narrative insists on what he decides to share of that privilege. His multilingualism is not associated with exclusionary practices, but with the work of intermediation it brings about and the community of intents it creates. The language learning situation is presented as a space in which the power dynamics of the Lager’s languages are suspended and ultimately refused.

(For more on this, go back here or forward here).

SM

The late Stuart Woolf (1936-2021) must have smiled to himself when he first translated these lines, as a young historian working on his PhD in 1950s Turin. Woolf is the only published English translator of SQ; his fluid and immediate rendering of Levi’s words remains the version known to millions of anglophone readers. While the task of a translator is never easy, it may be that the clarity and simplicity of Levi’s style lends itself to translation and grants his writing a certain universality - almost like a chemical formula.

‘The Canto of Ulysses’ can be read as an ode to translation, not just from one language to another, but in a metaphorical sense, in the repositioning of meaning between people and time. This goes back to the idea implied in the etymology of the word ‘translation’, which comes from the Latin translatio, to ‘carry over’, to ‘bring across’. In this chapter, instances of translation form a mise en abyme that ‘carries over’ from Homer to Virgil, Virgil to Dante, Dante to Levi, Levi to Pikolo, Italian to French, Italian to English, and text to reader.

This more conceptual idea of ‘translation’ has become a way of understanding the testimonial act, central to Holocaust studies (Insana 2009; Felman and Laub 1992). Witnesses ‘translate’ into words their experience and their trauma. This process is often thought of as entailing a loss: an ineffable residue that cannot be communicated through language. However, the exchange that takes place between Levi and Jean in ‘The Canto of Ulysses’ invites us to rethink translation in terms of expansion, with each new version becoming part of the original’s harvest. The non-Italian reader’s lack of familiarity with ‘Who Dante is’, ‘What the Comedy is’, may at first seem a disadvantage. And yet, this has the enriching effect of aligning us with Jean: the reader/Pikolo attempts to overcome a linguistic and cultural barrier, to be in communion with the narrator/Levi. Conversely, Italian readers are likely to identify more closely with Levi, as they try, with him, to remember lines learned in their schooldays.

The new interpretative perspectives created by the translated text respond to the original and form a polyphony. This polyphonic effect works on two different levels: first, just as a piece of music sounds different when sung by a different voice, a translation performs a text in another language, with another instrument. Second, by co-existing in the literary universe of the original text, the many translations of this chapter embody the multiple voices that have resonated from Levi’s writing. As Levi and Jean walk, we see the process of translation unfold. As they come to understand each other, communication through words falters, and another kind of translation begins to happen:

O forse è qualcosa di piú: forse, nonostante la traduzione scialba e il commento pedestre e frettoloso, ha ricevuto il messaggio, ha sentito che lo riguarda, che riguarda tutti gli uomini in travaglio

The ‘something more’ is in the polyphony of their exchange, where the ensemble is greater than any individual line. It takes on a special significance in Woolf’s translation - or in any translation of these lines, for it becomes another performance, or layer, of the initial translational act. The message of the original seems to swell, rather than subside. And, just as a melody transcends individual notes, the concern for individual words is eventually superseded by the harmony between Levi and Jean. Describing Dante’s approach to divine grace in Paradiso, George Steiner writes:

But as the poet draws near the Divine presence, the heart of the rose of fire, the labour of translation into speech grows ever more exacting. Words grow less and less adequate to the task of translating immediate revelation (Steiner 1967).

Levi draws us to a similar source, one that sounds ‘like the blast of a trumpet, like the voice of God’. This ‘something more’ that is not bound to language has the universality of music. It reaches towards an inexpressible goodness or enlightenment. This is in direct contrast to the negative ‘ineffability’ that is so often used to describe elements of testimony in Levi and others, in the challenge the Holocaust posed to language, in the impossibility of its translation. Here, language does not drift towards a void of suffering, but towards a chorus of joyful expression, a blast of trumpets. Unlike elsewhere in SQ, the ambiguity present in the meeting of languages is not represented as a chaotic and hellish Tower of Babel, but as a fecund, creative space. Translation is momentarily reclaimed, and acts as an implicit resistance to the obsessive uniformity of Nazi ideology. But their ‘canto’ is interrupted by the cacophony of Auschwitz, and this revelatory chink is closed with a tragic, symphonic surge:

Infin che ’l mar fu sopra noi rinchiuso.

RMur

The chapter ‘Il canto di Ulisse’ in SQ ends with a shipwreck. Levi closes the chapter with the same line that Dante uses to conclude Inferno 26, ‘Infin che ’l mar fu sopra noi rinchiuso’. (As Alberto Cavaglion has pointed out, the citation contains a significative lapsus: ‘rinchiuso’ instead of ‘richiuso’.) How should we interpret this ending? I would like to offer a creative reading that plays on the metaphorical meaning of navigation and shipwreck in Western culture.

In Shipwreck with Spectator, Hans Blumenberg argues that humans have sought to grasp the movement of their existence above all through the metaphor of the perilous sea voyage. As the reverberations of the Greek idea of the κυβερνήτης (governor) show, navigation is a widespread metaphor for politics, philosophy, and life itself. Among these reverberations we find an ancient motto that is particularly interesting for its ambivalence and paradoxical structure: naufragium feci, bene navigavi. This motto was first mentioned by Diogenes Laertius, but we find multiple versions of it throughout European culture. To cite a couple of examples from the Italian context, I would recall Leopardi’s ‘naufragar [...] dolce’ (‘L’infinito’) and Ungaretti’s Allegria di naufragi.

How can we interpret the seeming contradictoriness of this motto? The motto calls into question the idea that shipwreck is the sign of bad navigation. On the contrary, there is a mutual implication between good navigation and shipwrecking. This is made explicit by Erasmus in the Adagium 1878:

Nunc bene navigavi, cum naufragium feci (Now that I am shipwrecked, my navigation has gone well/I’ve learnt how to navigate)

Here shipwreck is not in contrast with navigation, but is rather a necessary passage, something without which we cannot have a full and proper ‘navigation’. To put it a different way, only when we have experienced shipwreck can we claim to have navigated well. On the one hand, ‘shipwreck’ is an enriching experience, a possibility that gives meaning to every metaphorical ‘navigation’. On the other hand, in our human existence, it is impossible to navigate without ever experiencing shipwreck. In our finite, imperfect world, shipwreck is ultimately unavoidable.

With this in mind, I would like to suggest that we could read ‘Il canto di Ulisse’ in SQ through the prism of the motto naufragium feci, bene navigavi. I am not arguing that this is what Levi intended to say, but simply that this is one of the ways of reading the text. If we see ‘texts and readers as co-creators of meaning […], [whereby] interpretation becomes a co-production between actors that brings new things to light rather than an endless rumination on a text’s hidden meaning or representational failures’ (Felski 2015, 173-74), ‘Il canto di Ulisse’ could be read as a (metaphorical) navigation on three levels. First, Levi and Pikolo’s journey to get the soup is a navigation through the camp that provides a ‘moment of reprieve’. Second, Levi’s translation of Dante is a metaphorical navigation in the labyrinth of memory, an attempt to trace a route through a sea of oblivion. Finally, Levi’s translation is also a ‘metanavigation’, for it concerns another navigation and shipwreck, that of Ulysses. By overlapping his navigation with that of Ulysses, Levi raises crucial questions regarding the human condition and the fate of the Häftlinge in the Lager.

As in the case of Ulysses, each of the three levels of navigation ends with a shipwreck. But is Levi’s translation of Dante really a failure, or could it be read as the sign of a good navigation? In the Preface to SQ, Levi argues that when the idea that ‘every stranger is an enemy’ becomes the ‘major premise in a syllogism, then, at the end of the chain, there is the Lager’. The whole Lager could indeed be read through the curse of the Tower of Babel (see ‘Una buona giornata’). Translation is therefore a way of countering this course, a way of reining in the effects of Babel by restoring the humanity of the stranger and building a bridge through language, as Levi argues in ‘Tradurre ed essere tradotti’. By translating Dante to Pikolo, then, Levi is not just recovering fragments of memory. He is countering the logic that lies at the root of the Lager and restoring – if temporarily – his and Pikolo’s humanity. The translation ends with a shipwreck, yes, but that experience – the attempt of ‘enacting’ the human through a navigation – is a good shipwreck: naufragium feci, bene navigavi.

SB

Levi and Jean’s fleeting Dantean reprieve is abruptly halted by the return to the ‘sordid, ragged crowd of the soup queue’. Standing in contrast with Dante’s majestic verses and Ulysses’ voyage of discovery is the cramped enclosure of the queue and the banality of the description of the day’s cabbage-and-turnip soup. But the contrast is also between Levi’s own Italian language and sense of cultural identity and the Babelic experience of the Lager. Linguistic chaos is a key component of Levi’s experience and subsequent description of the camp, and one to which he was unusually attentive. Early on in his testimony (and once again, Dante is an important model here), Levi designates the camp a ‘perpetua Babele’. He evokes the linguistic confusion of the camp by including in his account unfamiliar tongues. We see this here in the soup queue but also, for example, in his recollection of the distribution of bread (‘la distribuzione del pane, del pane-Brot-Broit-chleb-pain-lechem-kenyer’) and in his description of the industrial tower in the camp (‘i suoi mattoni sono stati chiamati Ziegel, briques, tegula, cegli, kamenny, bricks, teglak’). Linguistic chaos contributes acutely to the condition of extreme isolation associated with the Lager.

Levi’s most sustained meditation on language in Auschwitz comes in the essay ‘Comunicare’, found in the 1986 collection I sommersi e i salvati. Here he reflects not only upon the extreme linguistic isolation of the camp and the psychological damage this often wrought, but also upon the degradation of language he witnessed. Violence and brute force would often replace linguistic exchange as the ‘communicative’ medium between individuals. Levi describes how, for those who did not speak German, words were used not on account of their referential function but as blunt aural instruments that could elicit the desired response from the receiver. The linguistic interaction between guards and prisoners became more reminiscent of that between humans and working animals than that between human beings existing on the same level.

TK

Examples are everywhere in SQ, but this is arguably the most striking instance of how an elevated style and references taken from literary tradition clash continuously with plurilingualism in Levi’s writing; abstract concepts with harsh materiality; ‘destiny’ with ‘Kraut’. In this case, ‘cavoli e rape’ is repeated in four different languages. The harsh sound of these words in German, Italian, French, and Hungarian clashes with the philosophical reasoning of the vertiginous previous lines. Language underscores the tragic irony of the entire sequence (a tragic irony that was present even in Dante’s original treatment of Ulysses’ story, in his Inferno 26).

FB

‘Il canto di Ulisse’ describes a translation process like no other. Absent are the quiet room, the pen, paper, keyboard, screen, dictionary that nowadays usually accompany the translator’s work. Instead, there are two friends walking in the fresh air, momentarily released from labour. Absent, moreover, are the words on the page to be translated, that comforting object that is at once static and mutable, authoritative and open-ended. Instead, there is flawed memory, conversation, communion. The translation that happens in the canto (named for an act of song, a bodily, expressive, fleeting thing) has other priorities, other aims, other strengths at hand. It is first and foremost a translation between and of persons; a carrying across (trans-latio) of one self to another. Like the Dantean text it translates, it enacts a going-beyond the limits, a desperate striving for liberty and fully lived humanity, but it is a liberty of mind, of language, and not of body.

The impetus for the translation that takes place in the canto has desire at its core. A desire to learn, a desire to seize a moment of liberty, to communicate, to be understood, to go beyond the awful limits of the present time and place. The shared desiring of Primo and Jean (Jean who, unlike Ulysses, ‘non trascurava di mantenere rapporti umani’, as Levi comments earlier in the chapter) pushes the translation forwards despite its shortcomings in terms of accuracy or creativity (it is ‘scialba’, ‘pedestre’). Though words might be forgotten, something fundamental of the absent Dantean text is expressed in this urgent desiring – Ulysses’ narrative of unquenchable desire, striving, desperate: ‘il messaggio’ comes through.

Perhaps the translation is so full of feeling because the text to be translated is not on the page, an object, but is an integrated part of Primo’s memory. He is not translating Dante, he is translating his memory of Dante, Dante learned and remembered in who-knows-what circumstances - at home, at school - with who-knows-what feelings and associations. A text learned a world away from where he is. And yet his current situation makes the (memory) text take on meaning it did not have before. The gradually increasing pace of the narrative and the shift from past to present tense amplifies the sense of urgency; he is changing, the text is changing, everything is happening now, all made possible by the openhearted interlocutor Jean, who experiences with him. The intimacy of this translation act is breathtaking. Unlike other acts of translation that have an object which is (to varying degrees) fixed, external, safe, a book we can close at the end of the day, here the object is within, maddeningly intangible, bearing with itself not a third party’s words to be ‘interpreted’, but those words passed through the translator’s own living memory. The person of Primo through Dante is the source text.

As Alexander has pointed out in relation to this chapter, ‘all translations […] bear the imprint of the moment’ (Alexander 2007, 160). The physical circumstances of this act of translation are tangible (‘gradevole marcia’, ‘aria fresca’), manifesting the momentary liberty of the participants (‘mi sentivo insolitamente leggero’). I would add to this: not only is the moment imprinted on the translation but the persons involved in it. The canto manifests in an extreme way the fact that ‘translators are never […] neutral, impersonal transferring devices. Translators’ personal experiences – emotions, motivations, attitudes, association […] are indispensable’ (Robinson 1991, 260). In the canto, the personal experiences of the translator are not only indispensable, they are inescapable, they are the text itself.

The meaning of the text is generated in the willing coming together of the two friends, Primo and Jean. The text’s ‘message’ is not something external but emerges from their lives; meaning is found in the interpersonal act of translation itself, ‘at the heart of [which] is recovery’ (Woods 2014, 3). Primo and Jean are seeking to recover something of themselves in this stolen, fleeting translational exchange. Where words fail, Primo relies on Jean’s experience to fill in the gaps (‘Pikolo ha viaggiato per mare e sa cosa vuol dire’). But it is the present moment and the people they are now that makes possible a new reading, a new translation of the Dantean lines filled with revelation, empathy, resonance: ‘Dovevo venire in Lager per accorgermi’. It is their present state as ‘uomini in travaglio’ that enables Jean to ‘receive the message’ of the text, which is as much Primo’s life as it is Dante’s words.

We do not hear the ‘dull’ (‘scialba’) translation that is produced in this encounter between the friends. It does not exist, only their living of the process of translating is recorded. The production of an object was never the aim of the encounter or the subsequent narrative Levi weaves around it. We are left with a message which, though composed of words, expresses the ineffable.

RC

As in ‘Argon’ in Il sistema periodico, Levi here demonstrates a philologist’s interest in historical grammar. The grammatical difference that separates the marked ‘Ma misi me’ and its unmarked equivalent in Italian is not expressly stated (the French je me mis is the ordinary, unremarkable grammar, and hence can’t serve to illustrate it). Levi’s free indirect discourse here indicates how much store he put in this difference: he explains its effect in three different ways to Jean (as ‘audacious’, as a broken chain, as the other side of a barrier).

The expected fourteenth-century Italian syntax is Ma misimi. (It is unlikely to be Ma mi misi, as it would be today, because in old Italian ma frequently triggers the postposition of the pronoun). But Levi does not limit himself to describing impressionistically the effect of the marked grammar. Scientifically, he analyses the form of mettersi via comparison with other instances of the same lemma in the passage. Of si metta: ‘I had to come to the Lager to realise that it is the same expression as before’.

The difference between Ma misimi and Ma misi me is that the unaccented, enclitic pronoun mi has become the accented, separate word me. This completely changes the rhythm of the line: *Ma mísimi per l’álto máre apérto (accents on 2, 6 and 10) becomes Ma misi mé per l’álto máre etc. (with accents on 4, 6 and 10). A number of Commedia manuscripts, in fact, have misimi – another clue to precisely the ‘audacity’ that Levi detects in Dante’s rhythmical and grammatical usage here.

Dante’s me makes his reflexive pronoun mi into (almost) a transitive object – a distinct, real-existing entity, separate from the grammatical subject: ‘I’ act on a ‘me’, not just ‘myself’.

What Levi hears, via a kind of solecism, is a prominent, sticking-out me – ‘oggi mi sento da tanto’. This is a sense of self that grows – ‘Per un momento, ho dimenticato chi sono e dove sono’ – into almost an answer to his title’s question.

RP

Interlinguistic felicity. Passages addressing questions of communication, language acquisition, interlanguage connection and intercultural translation scattered throughout the text are constantly marked by a specific affective tonality: they are remembered and represented as successful. The situation at hand is exceptional. In both SQ and I sommersi e i salvati, linguistic plurality is often used to characterise the absurd chaos and linguistic cacophony that marked Häftling existence in the Lager, which is a temporary universe of linguistic dissension and violence. To the contrary, the exchange between Jean and Primo is not simply based on, and concerned with, translation. It also is utterly charitable, in a technical sense. It is based on a systematic practicing of interpretive benevolence. It is dominated, that is, by the desire to move beyond linguistic differences and find a common ground. Such desire is not simply posited: it is acted upon. When Primo stumbles or forgets, Jean encourages him to go on (“Ça ne fait rien, vas-y tout de même”). Similarly, when memory of Dante’s original fails Primo and something of the original text is admittedly lost, the text does not dwell on the loss, but it vindicates the eventual success of the mediation work: ‘nonostante la traduzione scialba e il commento pedestre e frettoloso, ha ricevuto il messaggio’.

Felicity in interlingual communication is crucial for Levi to regain momentary existence as a human being in the violent linguistic landscape of the Lager. Accordingly, interlinguistic success is made the vehicle of interhuman connection. The exchange between Primo and Jean, in its translative quality, sheds light on an oppositional element in the language of the Lager, which Levi defines as ‘orts- und zeitgebunden', tied to that place and that time (I sommersi e i salvati, 1066; OC II, 1025). Levi draws his terminology from Victor Klemperer’s 1947 book Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist’s Notebook. Klemperer’s merciless diagnosis of the language of Nazi Germany as the product and the producer of a dehumanising regime is the foil for Levi’s momentarily but crucially successful act of communicating across different languages. In the chapter, the willingness and ability to free the most meaningful human exchange from the ties of a time- and place-bound language is the antidote to the isolating and dehumanising linguistics of the concentration camp.

(For more on this theme, see here.)

Linguistically categorised terms: * Vorarbeiter [German]

• Pikolo [KZGerman]

• Häftling [KZGerman]

• Kommando [KZGerman]

• Also, etc. [German]

• Qu’est-ce qu’il-y-a [French]

• Kapo [KZGerman]

• Ihr Doktoren! [German]

• Meister [KZGerman]

• Lager [KZGerman]

• Aujourd’hui [French]

• Essenholen [KZGerman]

• Corvée [French]

• Tu es fou de marcher [French]

• Blockführer [KZGerman]

• Sale brute [French]

• Ein ganz gemeiner Hund [German]

• Je me mis [French]

• Kraftwerk [German]

• Keine Ahnung [German]

• Ça ne fait rien [French]

• Kraut und Rüben [German]

• Choux et navets [French]

• Káposzta és répak [Other]

SM

Interlinguistic mutuality. Shuttling between recitation of Dante’s text in the Italian original and its hurried and utilitarian French prose version, the lesson Primo imparts to Jean is deeply interlinguistic. The exchange between Jean and Primo is also mutual, at the very basic level of collaboration that any linguistic exchange requires. In addition, Jean is not a passive learner. He takes part in the process of communication, which unfolds in a living dialogue and requires that dialogue to exist. The first words of Italian that Jean picks up and adopts emerge from the living context of a spoken exchange, by the ‘natural’ and immediate imitation of two native speakers. The syllabification of the initial vocabulary Jean apprehends (“zup-pa, cam-po, ac-qua”) from those exchanged between Primo and another prisoner from Rome, Limentani, is not a marker of alienness but of co-participation. More importantly, the learning process is from the start accompanied by a smile, a pre-linguistic sign of mutual understanding.

Levi’s insistence on the collaborative work that undergirds the acts of interlinguistic communication taking place in the episode resonates with Walter Benjamin’s notion that translation is the cultural practice which best captures the intrinsic drive of all languages to communicate through their apparent mutual exclusiveness: ‘All suprahistorical kinship between languages consists in this: in every one of them as a whole, one and the same thing is meant […]. Whereas all individual elements of foreign languages - words, sentences, associations - are mutually exclusive, these languages supplement one another in their intentions’ (‘The Translator’s Task’, 156). The experience of shared humanity, which Primo and Jean achieve within the Babel of the Lager, and notwithstanding its violence, relies on the same underlying philosophy of language as Benjamin’s.

(For more on this, go here next.)

SM

Interlinguistic felicity. Passages addressing questions of communication, language acquisition, interlanguage connection and intercultural translation scattered throughout the text are constantly marked by a specific affective tonality: they are remembered and represented as successful. The situation at hand is exceptional. In both SQ and I sommersi e i salvati, linguistic plurality is often used to characterise the absurd chaos and linguistic cacophony that marked Häftling existence in the Lager, which is a temporary universe of linguistic dissension and violence. To the contrary, the exchange between Jean and Primo is not simply based on, and concerned with, translation. It also is utterly charitable, in a technical sense. It is based on a systematic practicing of interpretive benevolence. It is dominated, that is, by the desire to move beyond linguistic differences and find a common ground. Such desire is not simply posited: it is acted upon. When Primo stumbles or forgets, Jean encourages him to go on (“Ça ne fait rien, vas-y tout de même”). Similarly, when memory of Dante’s original fails Primo and something of the original text is admittedly lost, the text does not dwell on the loss, but it vindicates the eventual success of the mediation work: ‘nonostante la traduzione scialba e il commento pedestre e frettoloso, ha ricevuto il messaggio’.

Felicity in interlingual communication is crucial for Levi to regain momentary existence as a human being in the violent linguistic landscape of the Lager. Accordingly, interlinguistic success is made the vehicle of interhuman connection. The exchange between Primo and Jean, in its translative quality, sheds light on an oppositional element in the language of the Lager, which Levi defines as ‘orts- und zeitgebunden', tied to that place and that time (I sommersi e i salvati, 1066; OC II, 1025). Levi draws his terminology from Victor Klemperer’s 1947 book Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist’s Notebook. Klemperer’s merciless diagnosis of the language of Nazi Germany as the product and the producer of a dehumanising regime is the foil for Levi’s momentarily but crucially successful act of communicating across different languages. In the chapter, the willingness and ability to free the most meaningful human exchange from the ties of a time- and place-bound language is the antidote to the isolating and dehumanising linguistics of the concentration camp.

Linguistically categorised terms: * Vorarbeiter [German]

• Pikolo [KZGerman]

• Häftling [KZGerman]

• Kommando [KZGerman]

• Also, etc. [German]

• Qu’est-ce qu’il-y-a [French]

• Kapo [KZGerman]

• Ihr Doktoren! [German]

• Meister [KZGerman]

• Lager [KZGerman]

• Aujourd’hui [French]

• Essenholen [KZGerman]

• Corvée [French]

• Tu es fou de marcher [French]

• Blockführer [KZGerman]

• Sale brute [French]

• Ein ganz gemeiner Hund [German]

• Je me mis [French]

• Kraftwerk [German]

• Keine Ahnung [German]

• Ça ne fait rien [French]

• Kraut und Rüben [German]

• Choux et navets [French]

• Káposzta és répak [Other]

SM

The chapter ‘Il canto di Ulisse’ in SQ ends with a shipwreck. Levi closes the chapter with the same line that Dante uses to conclude Inferno 26, ‘Infin che ’l mar fu sopra noi rinchiuso’. (As Alberto Cavaglion has pointed out, the citation contains a significative lapsus: ‘rinchiuso’ instead of ‘richiuso’.) How should we interpret this ending? I would like to offer a creative reading that plays on the metaphorical meaning of navigation and shipwreck in Western culture.

In Shipwreck with Spectator, Hans Blumenberg argues that humans have sought to grasp the movement of their existence above all through the metaphor of the perilous sea voyage. As the reverberations of the Greek idea of the κυβερνήτης (governor) show, navigation is a widespread metaphor for politics, philosophy, and life itself. Among these reverberations we find an ancient motto that is particularly interesting for its ambivalence and paradoxical structure: naufragium feci, bene navigavi. This motto was first mentioned by Diogenes Laertius, but we find multiple versions of it throughout European culture. To cite a couple of examples from the Italian context, I would recall Leopardi’s ‘naufragar [...] dolce’ (‘L’infinito’) and Ungaretti’s Allegria di naufragi.

How can we interpret the seeming contradictoriness of this motto? The motto calls into question the idea that shipwreck is the sign of bad navigation. On the contrary, there is a mutual implication between good navigation and shipwrecking. This is made explicit by Erasmus in the Adagium 1878:

Nunc bene navigavi, cum naufragium feci (Now that I am shipwrecked, my navigation has gone well/I’ve learnt how to navigate)

Here shipwreck is not in contrast with navigation, but is rather a necessary passage, something without which we cannot have a full and proper ‘navigation’. To put it a different way, only when we have experienced shipwreck can we claim to have navigated well. On the one hand, ‘shipwreck’ is an enriching experience, a possibility that gives meaning to every metaphorical ‘navigation’. On the other hand, in our human existence, it is impossible to navigate without ever experiencing shipwreck. In our finite, imperfect world, shipwreck is ultimately unavoidable.

With this in mind, I would like to suggest that we could read ‘Il canto di Ulisse’ in SQ through the prism of the motto naufragium feci, bene navigavi. I am not arguing that this is what Levi intended to say, but simply that this is one of the ways of reading the text. If we see ‘texts and readers as co-creators of meaning […], [whereby] interpretation becomes a co-production between actors that brings new things to light rather than an endless rumination on a text’s hidden meaning or representational failures’ (Felski 2015, 173-74), ‘Il canto di Ulisse’ could be read as a (metaphorical) navigation on three levels. First, Levi and Pikolo’s journey to get the soup is a navigation through the camp that provides a ‘moment of reprieve’. Second, Levi’s translation of Dante is a metaphorical navigation in the labyrinth of memory, an attempt to trace a route through a sea of oblivion. Finally, Levi’s translation is also a ‘metanavigation’, for it concerns another navigation and shipwreck, that of Ulysses. By overlapping his navigation with that of Ulysses, Levi raises crucial questions regarding the human condition and the fate of the Häftlinge in the Lager.

As in the case of Ulysses, each of the three levels of navigation ends with a shipwreck. But is Levi’s translation of Dante really a failure, or could it be read as the sign of a good navigation? In the Preface to SQ, Levi argues that when the idea that ‘every stranger is an enemy’ becomes the ‘major premise in a syllogism, then, at the end of the chain, there is the Lager’. The whole Lager could indeed be read through the curse of the Tower of Babel (see ‘Una buona giornata’). Translation is therefore a way of countering this course, a way of reining in the effects of Babel by restoring the humanity of the stranger and building a bridge through language, as Levi argues in ‘Tradurre ed essere tradotti’. By translating Dante to Pikolo, then, Levi is not just recovering fragments of memory. He is countering the logic that lies at the root of the Lager and restoring – if temporarily – his and Pikolo’s humanity. The translation ends with a shipwreck, yes, but that experience – the attempt of ‘enacting’ the human through a navigation – is a good shipwreck: naufragium feci, bene navigavi.

SB

As in ‘Argon’ in Il sistema periodico, Levi here demonstrates a philologist’s interest in historical grammar. The grammatical difference that separates the marked ‘Ma misi me’ and its unmarked equivalent in Italian is not expressly stated (the French je me mis is the ordinary, unremarkable grammar, and hence can’t serve to illustrate it). Levi’s free indirect discourse here indicates how much store he put in this difference: he explains its effect in three different ways to Jean (as ‘audacious’, as a broken chain, as the other side of a barrier).

The expected fourteenth-century Italian syntax is Ma misimi. (It is unlikely to be Ma mi misi, as it would be today, because in old Italian ma frequently triggers the postposition of the pronoun). But Levi does not limit himself to describing impressionistically the effect of the marked grammar. Scientifically, he analyses the form of mettersi via comparison with other instances of the same lemma in the passage. Of si metta: ‘I had to come to the Lager to realise that it is the same expression as before’.

The difference between Ma misimi and Ma misi me is that the unaccented, enclitic pronoun mi has become the accented, separate word me. This completely changes the rhythm of the line: *Ma mísimi per l’álto máre apérto (accents on 2, 6 and 10) becomes Ma misi mé per l’álto máre etc. (with accents on 4, 6 and 10). A number of Commedia manuscripts, in fact, have misimi – another clue to precisely the ‘audacity’ that Levi detects in Dante’s rhythmical and grammatical usage here.

Dante’s me makes his reflexive pronoun mi into (almost) a transitive object – a distinct, real-existing entity, separate from the grammatical subject: ‘I’ act on a ‘me’, not just ‘myself’.

What Levi hears, via a kind of solecism, is a prominent, sticking-out me – ‘oggi mi sento da tanto’. This is a sense of self that grows – ‘Per un momento, ho dimenticato chi sono e dove sono’ – into almost an answer to his title’s question.

RP

Examples are everywhere in SQ, but this is arguably the most striking instance of how an elevated style and references taken from literary tradition clash continuously with plurilingualism in Levi’s writing; abstract concepts with harsh materiality; ‘destiny’ with ‘Kraut’. In this case, ‘cavoli e rape’ is repeated in four different languages. The harsh sound of these words in German, Hungarian, French, and Italian clashes with the philosophical reasoning of the vertiginous previous lines. Language underscores the tragic irony of the entire sequence (a tragic irony that was present even in Dante’s original treatment of Ulysses’ story, in his Inferno 26).

FB

Interlinguistic mutuality. Shuttling between recitation of Dante’s text in the Italian original and its hurried and utilitarian French prose version, the lesson Primo imparts to Jean is deeply interlinguistic. The exchange between Jean and Primo is also mutual, at the very basic level of collaboration that any linguistic exchange requires. In addition, Jean is not a passive learner. He takes part in the process of communication, which unfolds in a living dialogue and requires that dialogue to exist. The first words of Italian that Jean picks up and adopts emerge from the living context of a spoken exchange, by the ‘natural’ and immediate imitation of two native speakers. The syllabification of the initial vocabulary Jean apprehends (“zup-pa, cam-po, ac-qua”) from those exchanged between Primo and another prisoner from Rome, Limentani, is not a marker of alienness but of co-participation. More importantly, the learning process is from the start accompanied by a smile, a pre-linguistic sign of mutual understanding.

Levi’s insistence on the collaborative work that undergirds the acts of interlinguistic communication taking place in the episode resonates with Walter Benjamin’s notion that translation is the cultural practice which best captures the intrinsic drive of all languages to communicate through their apparent mutual exclusiveness: ‘All suprahistorical kinship between languages consists in this: in every one of them as a whole, one and the same thing is meant […]. Whereas all individual elements of foreign languages - words, sentences, associations - are mutually exclusive, these languages supplement one another in their intentions’ (‘The Translator’s Task’, 156). The experience of shared humanity, which Primo and Jean achieve within the Babel of the Lager, and notwithstanding its violence, relies on the same underlying philosophy of language as Benjamin’s.

SM

Interlinguistic necessity. Although containing the record of a ‘lesson’ on Dante’s Inferno 26, the central experience recounted in this chapter is set in motion by linguistic rather than literary elements. Jean desires to learn a new language, Italian, and Primo’s teaching accordingly combines his intermittent recitation of Dante’s text in the original language with a hesitant French commentary on, often a paraphrase of, salient elements in it. At its core, thus, the chapter relates an attempt at interlinguistic mediation. The text’s emphasis on interlinguistic communication is projected against the backdrop of the Lager’s Babel-like dehumanising confusion of languages that Levi explored in other texts (SQ, I sommersi e i salvati). As such, the circumstances of the episode are exceptional.

Jean is an exceptional, and exceptionally positive, character in the universe of the book. He speaks and thinks in two languages: most importantly, he is native in both (‘Jean parlava correntemente francese e tedesco’). As established on the chance encounter with an SS, Rudi the Blockführer, bilingual utterances are for him the norm: ‘È indifferente, può pensare in entrambe le lingue’. The role he plays in the structure of the concentration camp, facilitated by the distinction of his bilingualism, however, is not what is at stake in the episode per se. While Jean certainly has acquired a linguistic capital of sorts, Levi’s narrative insists on what he decides to share of that privilege. His multilingualism is not associated with exclusionary practices, but with the work of intermediation it brings about and the community of intents it creates. The language learning situation is presented as a space in which the power dynamics of the Lager’s languages are suspended and ultimately refused.

SM

Levi and Jean’s fleeting Dantean reprieve is abruptly halted by the return to the ‘sordid, ragged crowd of the soup queue’. Standing in contrast with Dante’s majestic verses and Ulysses’ voyage of discovery is the cramped enclosure of the queue and the banality of the description of the day’s cabbage-and-turnip soup. But the contrast is also between Levi’s own Italian language and sense of cultural identity and the Babelic experience of the Lager. Linguistic chaos is a key component of Levi’s experience and subsequent description of the camp, and one to which he was unusually attentive. Early on in his testimony (and once again, Dante is an important model here), Levi designates the camp a ‘perpetua Babele’. He evokes the linguistic confusion of the camp by including in his account unfamiliar tongues. We see this here in the soup queue but also, for example, in his recollection of the distribution of bread (‘la distribuzione del pane, del pane-Brot-Broit-chleb-pain-lechem-kenyer’) and in his description of the industrial tower in the camp (‘i suoi mattoni sono stati chiamati Ziegel, briques, tegula, cegli, kamenny, bricks, teglak’). Linguistic chaos contributes acutely to the condition of extreme isolation associated with the Lager.

Levi’s most sustained meditation on language in Auschwitz comes in the essay ‘Comunicare’, found in the 1986 collection I sommersi e i salvati. Here he reflects not only upon the extreme linguistic isolation of the camp and the psychological damage this often wrought, but also upon the degradation of language he witnessed. Violence and brute force would often replace linguistic exchange as the ‘communicative’ medium between individuals. Levi describes how, for those who did not speak German, words were used not on account of their referential function but as blunt aural instruments that could elicit the desired response from the receiver. The linguistic interaction between guards and prisoners became more reminiscent of that between humans and working animals than that between human beings existing on the same level.

TK

translation of diderot's antistrophe by user xocet

• translation error
  • should be
    • Sam Bankman-Fried

• translation error
  • should be
    • ape-brained meat sack

• translation error

  • should be
    • ape-brained meat sack, taken from Elise's book

• comment

  • comparable to Ernest Becker's description of the human condition
  • in his book The Denial of Death
    • quote:
      • "Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever."

• comment

  • the comparison is apt as one of the goals of transhumanism is to use technology to conquer death
  • From this perspective, we might argue that transhumanist aspirations have been with humanity for as long as medicine has intervened to extend life and human wellbeing

• translation error
  • should be
    • aped-brained meat sack

• translation error
  • should be
    • ape-brained meat sack

The late Stuart Woolf (1936-2021) must have smiled to himself when he first translated these lines, as a young historian working on his PhD in 1950s Turin. Woolf is the only published English translator of SQ; his fluid and immediate rendering of Levi’s words remains the version known to millions of anglophone readers. While the task of a translator is never easy, it may be that the clarity and simplicity of Levi’s style lends itself to translation and grants his writing a certain universality - almost like a chemical formula.

‘The Canto of Ulysses’ can be read as an ode to translation, not just from one language to another, but in a metaphorical sense, in the repositioning of meaning between people and time. This goes back to the idea implied in the etymology of the word ‘translation’, which comes from the Latin translatio, to ‘carry over’, to ‘bring across’. In this chapter, instances of translation form a mise en abyme that ‘carries over’ from Homer to Virgil, Virgil to Dante, Dante to Levi, Levi to Pikolo, Italian to French, Italian to English, and text to reader.

This more conceptual idea of ‘translation’ has become a way of understanding the testimonial act, central to Holocaust studies (Insana 2009; Felman and Laub 1992). Witnesses ‘translate’ into words their experience and their trauma. This process is often thought of as entailing a loss: an ineffable residue that cannot be communicated through language. However, the exchange that takes place between Levi and Jean in ‘The Canto of Ulysses’ invites us to rethink translation in terms of expansion, with each new version becoming part of the original’s harvest. The non-Italian reader’s lack of familiarity with ‘Who Dante is’, ‘What the Comedy is’, may at first seem a disadvantage. And yet, this has the enriching effect of aligning us with Jean: the reader/Pikolo attempts to overcome a linguistic and cultural barrier, to be in communion with the narrator/Levi. Conversely, Italian readers are likely to identify more closely with Levi, as they try, with him, to remember lines learned in their schooldays.

The new interpretative perspectives created by the translated text respond to the original and form a polyphony. This polyphonic effect works on two different levels: first, just as a piece of music sounds different when sung by a different voice, a translation performs a text in another language, with another instrument. Second, by co-existing in the literary universe of the original text, the many translations of this chapter embody the multiple voices that have resonated from Levi’s writing. As Levi and Jean walk, we see the process of translation unfold. As they come to understand each other, communication through words falters, and another kind of translation begins to happen:

O forse è qualcosa di piú: forse, nonostante la traduzione scialba e il commento pedestre e frettoloso, ha ricevuto il messaggio, ha sentito che lo riguarda, che riguarda tutti gli uomini in travaglio

The ‘something more’ is in the polyphony of their exchange, where the ensemble is greater than any individual line. It takes on a special significance in Woolf’s translation - or in any translation of these lines, for it becomes another performance, or layer, of the initial translational act. The message of the original seems to swell, rather than subside. And, just as a melody transcends individual notes, the concern for individual words is eventually superseded by the harmony between Levi and Jean. Describing Dante’s approach to divine grace in Paradiso, George Steiner writes:

But as the poet draws near the Divine presence, the heart of the rose of fire, the labour of translation into speech grows ever more exacting. Words grow less and less adequate to the task of translating immediate revelation (Steiner 1967).

Levi draws us to a similar source, one that sounds ‘like the blast of a trumpet, like the voice of God’. This ‘something more’ that is not bound to language has the universality of music. It reaches towards an inexpressible goodness or enlightenment. This is in direct contrast to the negative ‘ineffability’ that is so often used to describe elements of testimony in Levi and others, in the challenge the Holocaust posed to language, in the impossibility of its translation. Here, language does not drift towards a void of suffering, but towards a chorus of joyful expression, a blast of trumpets. Unlike elsewhere in SQ, the ambiguity present in the meeting of languages is not represented as a chaotic and hellish Tower of Babel, but as a fecund, creative space. Translation is momentarily reclaimed, and acts as an implicit resistance to the obsessive uniformity of Nazi ideology. But their ‘canto’ is interrupted by the cacophony of Auschwitz, and this revelatory chink is closed with a tragic, symphonic surge:

Infin che ’l mar fu sopra noi rinchiuso.

RMur

‘Il canto di Ulisse’ describes a translation process like no other. Absent are the quiet room, the pen, paper, keyboard, screen, dictionary that nowadays usually accompany the translator’s work. Instead, there are two friends walking in the fresh air, momentarily released from labour. Absent, moreover, are the words on the page to be translated, that comforting object that is at once static and mutable, authoritative and open-ended. Instead, there is flawed memory, conversation, communion. The translation that happens in the canto (named for an act of song, a bodily, expressive, fleeting thing) has other priorities, other aims, other strengths at hand. It is first and foremost a translation between and of persons; a carrying across (trans-latio) of one self to another. Like the Dantean text it translates, it enacts a going-beyond the limits, a desperate striving for liberty and fully lived humanity, but it is a liberty of mind, of language, and not of body.

The impetus for the translation that takes place in the canto has desire at its core. A desire to learn, a desire to seize a moment of liberty, to communicate, to be understood, to go beyond the awful limits of the present time and place. The shared desiring of Primo and Jean (Jean who, unlike Ulysses, ‘non trascurava di mantenere rapporti umani’, as Levi comments earlier in the chapter) pushes the translation forwards despite its shortcomings in terms of accuracy or creativity (it is ‘scialba’, ‘pedestre’). Though words might be forgotten, something fundamental of the absent Dantean text is expressed in this urgent desiring – Ulysses’ narrative of unquenchable desire, striving, desperate: ‘il messaggio’ comes through.

Perhaps the translation is so full of feeling because the text to be translated is not on the page, an object, but is an integrated part of Primo’s memory. He is not translating Dante, he is translating his memory of Dante, Dante learned and remembered in who-knows-what circumstances - at home, at school - with who-knows-what feelings and associations. A text learned a world away from where he is. And yet his current situation makes the (memory) text take on meaning it did not have before. The gradually increasing pace of the narrative and the shift from past to present tense amplifies the sense of urgency; he is changing, the text is changing, everything is happening now, all made possible by the openhearted interlocutor Jean, who experiences with him. The intimacy of this translation act is breathtaking. Unlike other acts of translation that have an object which is (to varying degrees) fixed, external, safe, a book we can close at the end of the day, here the object is within, maddeningly intangible, bearing with itself not a third party’s words to be ‘interpreted’, but those words passed through the translator’s own living memory. The person of Primo through Dante is the source text.

As Alexander has pointed out in relation to this chapter, ‘all translations […] bear the imprint of the moment’ (Alexander 2007, 160). The physical circumstances of this act of translation are tangible (‘gradevole marcia’, ‘aria fresca’), manifesting the momentary liberty of the participants (‘mi sentivo insolitamente leggero’). I would add to this: not only is the moment imprinted on the translation but the persons involved in it. The canto manifests in an extreme way the fact that ‘translators are never […] neutral, impersonal transferring devices. Translators’ personal experiences – emotions, motivations, attitudes, association […] are indispensable’ (Robinson 1991, 260). In the canto, the personal experiences of the translator are not only indispensable, they are inescapable, they are the text itself.

The meaning of the text is generated in the willing coming together of the two friends, Primo and Jean. The text’s ‘message’ is not something external but emerges from their lives; meaning is found in the interpersonal act of translation itself, ‘at the heart of [which] is recovery’ (Woods 2014, 3). Primo and Jean are seeking to recover something of themselves in this stolen, fleeting translational exchange. Where words fail, Primo relies on Jean’s experience to fill in the gaps (‘Pikolo ha viaggiato per mare e sa cosa vuol dire’). But it is the present moment and the people they are now that makes possible a new reading, a new translation of the Dantean lines filled with revelation, empathy, resonance: ‘Dovevo venire in Lager per accorgermi’. It is their present state as ‘uomini in travaglio’ that enables Jean to ‘receive the message’ of the text, which is as much Primo’s life as it is Dante’s words.

We do not hear the ‘dull’ (‘scialba’) translation that is produced in this encounter between the friends. It does not exist, only their living of the process of translating is recorded. The production of an object was never the aim of the encounter or the subsequent narrative Levi weaves around it. We are left with a message which, though composed of words, expresses the ineffable.

RC

2 -- Compare/Contrast Translation Choices

It is important to see that this translation mentions "the Lord" and some other translations say "God," specifically, however, other translations just note that the couple had "reason to believe their wish [in conceiving a child] was fulfilled." To consider Rapunzel as a genre is to examine for consistencies but the presence of religious factors (or lack thereof) makes it difficult to use as a signifier of Rapunzel as its own genre. It is such a small part of a few translations (this one included and usually no more than one line), so I believe the occurrence of God/the Lord is not significant in signifying the fairy tale genre or Rapunzel as its own genre.

2 -- Contrasting Translation Choice

This is the one of the only translations I've found where Gothel chooses to insult Rapunzel by calling her a "godless child." In almost all other translations, Gothel chooses to refer to Rapunzel as a wicked child. The other translation where Gothel calls Rapunzel childless also has Rapunzel ask Gothel about why her clothes suddenly don't fit anymore. I feel like the purpose in the difference of translation was to shame Rapunzel (and young girls reading), thus trying to teach these girls that they need to be chaste, or else they are godless. However, the existence of religion in Rapunzel is not consistent among all translations and is likely a product of cultural norms and expectations, especially when used as a tool to teach moral lessons about pregnancy and chastity.

2 -- Contrast Translation Choices

This telling line differs among translations of the story. Each variation does its part to signify to Gothel that Rapunzel has no longer been shut out from the world, but the reason for changing the subject of the sentence may be due to cultural beliefs and norms as to what is appropriate to say to children (as well as how old the audience is). I have seen this line translated as "Gothel, why have my clothes suddenly gotten so small?" (meaning that she is pregnant with the Prince's child, which foreshadows Rapunzel having birthed twins when she finds the blind prince). The reason for this may be that the translator simply found it inappropriate for children to describe Rapunzel's pregnant body (though vague), and decided it would be better to make Rapunzel outright admit that she had been allowing the Prince into the tower. This, however, does not impact Rapunzel as a genre because even when this line doesn't mention Rapunzel's changing body, she is still sometimes seen with twin babies at the end, proving that she was still pregnant -- it just hadn't been explicitly discussed.

2 -- Consistency Among Translations

This line is used in every translation to describe Rapunzel's beauty. This is extremely significant to the genre because she is the beautiful damsel that finds herself in distress. It's imperative that she is portrayed as beautiful and feminine.

2 -- Consistency Among Translations

This exact line is used in most translations when the husband asks for forgiveness. It is used to characterize Gothel because she is merciful to the husband and shows her capability to be merciful. This line and instance is important to Rapunzel as a genre because it is pivotal for the plot needed to introduce Rapunzel while getting bith parents out of the way.

In re: Last lines of: https://www.nb.admin.ch/snl/en/home/about-us/sla/insights-outlooks/einsichten---aussichten-2012/aus-dem-nachlass-von-james-peter-zollinger.html

Google translate does a reasonable job on translating it as 'getting bogged down' but the original sich ‹verzettelt› would mean roughly to "get lost in the slips", perhaps in a way similar to Anatole France's novel Penguin Island (L’Île des Pingouins. Calmann-Lévy, 1908) but without the storm or the death.

A native and bi-lingual German speaker might be better at explaining it, but this is a useful explanation of the prefix (sich) ver- : https://yourdailygerman.com/german-prefix-ver-meaning/

The benefit of creating such a massive key word in context index for the Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache meant that instead of using an ad hoc translation method (guessing based on limited non-cultural context) for a language, which was passingly familiar, but not their mother tongue, Adolph Erman and others could consult a multitude of contexts for individual words and their various forms to provide more global context for better translations.

Other dictionaries like the Oxford English Dictionary attempt to help do this as well as provide the semantic shift of words over time because the examples used in creating the dictionary include historical examples from various contexts.

Seems like he's saying he developed the Zettelkasten Method... perhaps his version of the method based on Luhmann's? Commodifying the version "created" by Luhmann?

Credit here for native German speaker writing in English....

Google’s “the transformer”

One breakthrough was positional encoding versus having to handle the input in the order it was given. Second, using a matrix rather than vectors. This research came from Google Translate.

I have a commonplace-book for facts and another for poetry, but I find it difficult always to preserve the vague distinction which I had in my mind, for the most interesting and beautiful facts are so much the more poetry and that is their success. They are translated from earth

—Henry David Thoreau February 18, 1852

Rather than have two commonplaces, one for facts and one for poetry, if one can more carefully and successfully translate one's words and thoughts, they they might all be kept in the commonplace book of poetry.

Harm from Machine Translation (MT) models

MT models can create fluent and coherent blocks of text that mask the meaning in the original text and the intent of the original speaker.

!- challenges of : cross scale translation - spatial heterogeneity of pressures and impacts - value laden judgments in allocation of the targets

!- quotable statement : cross scale translation - Xuemei Bai is expert on cities and one of the co-leaders of the working group

!- key question : what are the challenges of translating global scale targets into concrete and actionable targets for local actors? - in other words, how do we downscale global indicators such as planetary boundaries?

!- title : New Earth Commission Working Group to Focus on the Challenges of Cross Scale Translation

https://youtu.be/r9idbh-U2kM?t=3544

Stefan Zweig (reference? his memoir?) apparently suggested that students translate authors as a means of becoming more intimately acquainted with their work. This is similar to restating an author in one's own words as a means of improving one's understanding. It's a lower level of processing that osculates on the idea of having a conversation with a text.

tk: track this reference down. appropriate context?

Have you thought about crowdsourcing localization via weblate? It includes DeepL and can also be a learning ground, such as Duolingo Immersion.

If I understand it correctly, with hyperaudio, one can also create transcription to somebody else's video or audio when embedded.

In that case, if you add to hyperaudio the annotation capablity of hypothes.is or docdrop, the vision outlined in the article on Global Knowledge Graph is already a reality.

the vault of the sky : FIRMAMENT

enter Beowulf; compare: "News went global. In Geatland, Hygelac's right-hand man / heard about Grendel. Bro, here was a warrior like no other: massive, mighty, born of noble / blood. He called for a ship to be readied / for his band, and boasted he'd try his teeth on this tale, / sail in as a savior over the swan-road, seek that king / and lend a hand as defender." (Headley lns. 193-199)

Alternative translation: "Grendel was the name of this woe-walker, / Unlucky, fucked by Fate. he'd been / living rough for years, ruling the wild: / the mere, the fen, and the fastness, / his kingdom. his creation was cursed / under the line of Cain, the kin-killer. / The Lord, long ago, had taken Abel's side. / Though none of that was Grendel's doing, / he'd descended from bloodstains. / From Cain had come a cruel kind, / seen by some as shadow-stalked: monsters, / elves, giants who'd ground against God, / and for that, been banished." (Headley lns. 101-113)

Grendel refuses to make peace or provide "money to settle." Heaney translates: "he would never / parley or make peace with any Dane / nor stop his death dealing not pay the man price" (lns. 154-156).

OE ellengaést (literally: ellen strong/powerful/vigorous and gaést enemy/stranger

Heaney trans.: "powerful demon"

from Heaney (1999): "And soon it stood there / finished and ready, in full view, / the hall of halls. Heorot was the name / he had settled on it, whose utterance was law. / Nor did he renege, but doled out rings / and torques at the table. / The hall towered, / its gables wide and high and awaiting / a barbarous burning. That doom abided, / but in time it would come: the killer instinct / unleashed among in-laws, the blood lust rampant" (lns 76-85).

from Headley (2020): "So it rose: a greater hall than any other! / Hrothgar filled it, blood-brother by blood-brother, / and named it Heorot. his words were heard and heralded, / and yes, yes, bro! The man was more than just talk: / he gave good gifts. His war-wedded wore kings' rings, / and drank their leader's mead. Nightly, he / feted his fight-family with fortunes. The hall loomed, golden towers antler-tipped; it was asking for burning, but that hadn't happened yet. / You know how it is: every castle wants invading, and every family / has enemies born within it. Old grudges / recrudesce." (lns 75-84)

OE: sceaþena þrēatum

Heaney translation; "scourge of many tribes"

Unsure what "scathers" means; cannot find a definition

Knowledge Translation in the Global South

Interesting choice of translation for "Die Kartei" by the translator. Some may have preferred the more direct "file".

Historically for this specific time period, while index cards were becoming more ubiquitous, most of the prior century researchers had been using larger sheets and frequently called them either slips or sheets based on their relative size.

Beatrice Webb in 1926 (in English) described her method and variously used the words “cards”, “slips”, “quarto”, and “sheets” to describe notes. Her preference was for quarto pages which were larger pages which were likely closer to our current 8.5 x 11” standard than they were to even larger index cards (like 4 x 6".

While I have some dissonance, this translation makes a lot of sense for the specific time period. I also tend to translate the contemporaneous French word “fiches” of that era as “sheets”.

See also: https://hypothes.is/a/OnCHRAexEe2MotOW5cjfwg https://hypothes.is/a/fb-5Ngn4Ee2uKUOwWugMGQ

He's railing against the loss of theory for use over time and translation.

similar to me and note taking...

HA!

can do the same but much faster

Information collected by Block, Inc.

オックスフォード英語辞典は、絵文字を2015年の流行語大賞に宣言した。これは多くの人にとって不可解なことでした。その絵文字は、笑っている黄色い顔が喜びの涙を流しているイメージで、多くの人の言葉の定義に当てはまらなかったのです。

If a user's behavior causes harm to another party, and that other party sues Motorsport.tv, the user will cover any losses incurred by Motorsport.tv as a result of the user's behavior.

The agreement is only between the user and Motorsport.tv.

Motorsport.tv may change the terms at any time.

Prior to concordances of the Christian Bible there are examples of Hebrew manuscripts in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that have lists of words and sentences or phrases in which they occurred. They didn't include exact locations with the presumption being that most scholars would know the texts well enough to quickly find them based on the phrases used.

Early concordances were later made unnecessary as tools as digital search could dramatically decrease the load. However these tools might miss the value found in the serendipity of searching through broad word lists.

Has anyone made a concordance search and display tool to automatically generate concordances of any particular texts? Do professional indexers use these? What might be the implications of overlapping concordances of seminal texts within the corpus linguistics space?

Fun tools like the Bible Munger now exist to play around with find and replace functionality. https://biblemunger.micahrl.com/munge

Online tools also have multi-translation versions that will show translational differences between the seemingly ever-growing number of English translations of the Bible.

A presented meaning can in many cases be attributed to these rational numbers, which at first appear as pure signs,

How we define the rules of purely formal operations (Verknüpfungen), i.e., of carrying out operations (Operationen) with mental objects, is our arbitrary choice, except that one essential condition must be adhered to: namely that no logical contradiction may be implied in these same rules.

one adds an inverse in thought to the given series of objects