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It would seem that the version of the translation of Luhmann's Communication with Zettelkasten at http://luhmann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes is more up to date than the older archived version at https://web.archive.org/web/20150825031821/http://scriptogr.am/kuehnm because it takes into consideration smaller updates like this.

See: - https://github.com/Zettelkasten-Method/luhmann.surge.sh/commits/master/communicating-with-slip-boxes.html

https://www.deepl.com/translator

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.

Reply to u/ManuelRodriguez331 on https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zvvuke/are_hyperlinks_needed_for_a_zettelkasten/

Eminem would indicate it's a clear no.

By direct translation zettelkasten = slips + box. There is no word in the name to indicate links of any sort. 😁🗃️🤣

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fGMOEWudc1PhmLIDfj6MtRdmOVITynsHNxG-XW89Mxw/edit

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>u/FastSascha</span> in Beta Reading: Communication with Zettelkastens : Zettelkasten (<time class='dt-published'>12/23/2022 12:02:16</time>)</cite></small>

What really supports this distinction? The closest historical American English translation is probably "card index" from the early 1900s while the broader academic historical translation is "slip box".

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?

Try also docdrop.

Or Hyperaudio (hyperaud.io, soon-to-be hyper.audio)

Sascha Fast has translated section 9/8 of Luhmann's zettelkasten into English.

https://zettelkasten.de/posts/luhmanns-zettel-translated/

https://zettelkasten.de/posts/luhmanns-zettel-translated/

Sascha's German to English translation of Luhmann's zettelkasten section ZK II / 9/8.

https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8_V

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

https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/wjvoqq/if_youre_going_to_cast_some_zettels_you_may_as/

A list of German words and English equivalents for index card related containers and furniture

Karteikasten - index box<br /> Karteikartenschrank - index card cabinet<br /> Karteischrank - filing cabinet Apothekenschrank - apothecary cabinet

The older Welsh words 'glas' and 'llwyd' designate both colors (green/blue and gray/brown respectively) but also indicate the idea of 'being alive' (like plants) or 'dead' (like rocks).

These words can sometimes be translated differently than the more modern words gwyrdd (green), glas (blue), llwyd (grey), brown (brown).

Irish is somewhat similar, where 'glas' is green, but usually for the less vivid greens of the natural world (seaweed might be called 'glas') versus artificial vivid green (the green on the Irish flag would be 'uaine'). However a 'madra glas' is not a green or blue dog, but a grey one.

Glasgow / Glaschu (the place name) means "green hollow".

https://observingleslie.com/magazine/the-meaning-of-who-cut-the-cheese

"Qui a lâché Médor?" (or who let in the dog, Médor is the French equivalent of Spot), is the French equivalent of "Who cut the cheese?" in relation to smelling a potential fart, presumably because the French wouldn't malign a smelly cheese.

https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/marie-kondo-tokimeku-spark-joy-translation-266496

on the translation of tokimeku, or ときめく, as "spark joy"

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

https://www.thenational.scot/news/19494171.major-web-browser-first-available-scots-language/

Manfred Kuehn's original translation can be found archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20150825031821/http://scriptogr.am/kuehnm

It was published to the web on/around December 22, 2012 at 12:30 PM as indicated by the timestamp in a comment by him on his website. See: https://web.archive.org/web/20201021193426/https://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/luhmann-on-learning-how-to-read.html

I want to look at the original German for this sentence, particularly with respect to the translation of the phrase "secondary memory". Is the translation semantic or literal? Might the original German have been a more literal "second brain"?

Compare this to the one or two other examples of this sort of translation from the German.

Given the use case that Niklas Luhmann had, the translation of zettelkasten into English is better read as "index card file" rather than the simpler and more direct translation "slip box".

While it's not often talked about in the recent contexts, there is a long history of using index cards for note taking in the United States and the idea of an index card file was once ubiquitous. There has been such a long span between this former ubiquity and our digital modernity that the idea of a zettelkasten seems like a wondrous new tool, never seen before. As a result, people in within social media, the personal knowledge management space, or the tools for thought space will happily use the phrase zettelkasten as if it is the hottest and newest thing on the planet.

https://www.poetryintranslation.com/index.php

Classic poetry and epics in various languages translated into English.

The source of the translation of the Odyssey by Richmond Lattimore is the 2nd edition of the Oxford text of T. W. Allen.

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

https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2008/2008.12.41/

A searing review of David R. Slavitt's translation of Lucretius.

The "close enough" nature of the translation seems like the intellectual slide shown by too many moderns which decontextualizes our historical precedents. Perhaps fine for a quick view, but could be a slippery slope for taking as part of the basis for Western intellectual tradition.

An apt summary of a scathing review.

Also a handy ranking of some of the extant translations.

Seems as if Slavitt has translated a lot of modernity into an ancient text which likely didn't have many of our modern references. This seems to be the sort of reading into a text that many moderns do to the Bible. Better would be to read it as the author intended to the audience to which it was intended rather than reading additional meanings into the text.

Archaism and repetition are part of what makes Lucretius Lucretius.

David R. Slavitt's translation isn't as solid as those of A.E. Stallings or Ronald Melville.

I've been skimming Stallings' this morning and it is quite nice. I'll have to pull up Melville's.

Ronald Melville, Lucretius On the Nature of the Universe. Oxford, 1997. Also Anthony M. Esolen, Lucretius On the Nature of Things. Baltimore, 1995.

There is a clever little bit of UI on this page in which there appears a red letter T in a circle after the Latin title. If one clicks it ,there's a pop up of the translation of the title into English.

I'd push back on this a bit by saying that there are huge swaths of people looking at English translations, of Latin translations, of Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic translations. Not only is there some detail lost in the multiple levels of translation, but many modern Christians are actively mis-applying the stories in the Bible to apply to their modern lives in radically different ways than was intended.

However, if Welsh does not yet possess a spoken standard, it does possess a literary standard which can be traced back to the translation of the Bible by Bishop WIlliam Morgan in 1588, which in turn is based on the language of the medieval court poets who were the heirs of the Cynfeirdd, the earl poets Aneirin and Taliesin. These lived in the sixth century AD and described battles which took place in today's Scotland and Northern England [...]

This is so hilarious! An instance of translation, from legalese to ordinary speech and back.