| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Open Letter on Translating by Dr. Martin Luther: not sound as full and clear as if I were to say, "the farmer
brings allein grain and kein money." Here the word "allein" helps
the word "kein" so much that it becomes a clear and complete
German expression.
We do not have to ask about the literal Latin or how we are to
speak German - as these asses do. Rather we must ask the mother
in the home, the children on the street, the common person in the
market about this. We must be guided by their tongue, the manner
of their speech, and do our translating accordingly. Then they
will understand it and recognize that we are speaking German to
them.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: timbered upper stories--form round this unkempt, shadowed
green a sort of village, with a communal individuality of its own.
A glance shows its feudal relation to, and dependence
upon, the great house behind which it nestles;
some of the back-kitchens and offices of this
great house, indeed, straggle out till they meet and
merge themselves into this quadrangle. None the less,
it presents to the enquiring gaze a specific character,
of as old a growth, one might think, as the oak itself.
Here servants have lived, it may be, since man first learned
the trick of setting his foot on his brother's neck.
The Market-Place |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: and the boys and girls tramped and tramped the board sidewalks--
northward to the edge of the open prairie, south to the depot, then back
again to the post-office, the ice-cream parlour, the butcher shop.
Now there was a place where the girls could wear their new dresses,
and where one could laugh aloud without being reproved by the
ensuing silence. That silence seemed to ooze out of the ground,
to hang under the foliage of the black maple trees with the bats
and shadows. Now it was broken by lighthearted sounds.
First the deep purring of Mr. Vanni's harp came in silvery ripples
through the blackness of the dusty-smelling night; then the violins
fell in--one of them was almost like a flute. They called so archly,
My Antonia |
