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....

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.

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...

Example of the difficulty of translating words when the underlying concepts don't exist in a culture.

There's a subtle sense of repetition here. She frames the result of the meeting in two different cultures: a Western-centric one and an Indigenous one. The Western result is a "scar", but it's retranslated into "echoes of our stories" from the indigenous perspective.

The Western word "ceremony" is certainly not the best word for describing these traditions. It has too much baggage and hidden meaning with religious overtones. It's a close-enough word to convey some meaning to those who don't have the cultural background to understand the underlying orality and memory culture. It is one of those words that gets "lost in translation" because of the dramatic differences in culture and contextual collapse.

Most Western-based anthropology presumes a Western idea of "religion" and impinges it upon oral cultures. I would maintain that what we would call their "religion" is really an oral-based mnemonic tradition that creates the power of their culture through knowledge. The West mistakes this for superstitious religious practices, but primarily because we can't see (or have never been shown) the larger structures behind what is going on. Our hubris and lack of respect (the evils of the scala naturae) has prevented us from listening and gaining entrance to this knowledge.

I think that the archaeological ideas of cultish practices or ritual and religion are all more likely better viewed as oral practices of mnemonic tradition. To see this more easily compare the Western idea of the memory palace with the Australian indigenous idea of songline.

Lost in Translation

In the film, Lost in Translation, Bob and Charlotte begin their conversation learning what each of them is doing in Tokyo.

Bob: What do you do?

Charlotte: I’m not sure yet, actually. I just graduated last spring.”

Bob: What did you study?

Charlotte: Philosophy.

Bob: Yeah, there’s a good buck in that racket.

Charlotte: (Laughs.) Yeah. Well, so far it’s pro bono.

(33:45)

Edge Effects

In ecology, edge effects are changes in population or community structures that occur at the boundary of two or more habitats. Areas with small habitat fragments exhibit especially pronounced edge effects that may extend throughout the range. As the edge effects increase, the boundary habitat allows for greater biodiversity.

Wikipedia: Edge effects