The impossibility of translating Franz Kafka (1999) | Hacker News Reader

The impossibility of translating Franz Kafka (1999)

newyorker.com

69 pointspseudolus45 comments

Bizarre. Kafka wasn't engaged in Jewish politics in the 1900's. And that's not something lost in translation (he wasn't a Zionist). And when he wrote about his religion it was like this: "Prague. Religions get lost like people do" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Octavo_Notebooks). Article seemed like it was spiked with innuendo...And if you really want to understand the mystery of Kafka you really just need to read the thirty page letter to his abusive, surface-level father. That's a "dialectic fairy tale" and one of his best.

The letter: https://images.pcmac.org/Uploads/Bellevue/Bellevue/Departmen...

Not sure if this is a German thing or specific to my bubble, but I feel like at least my friends and I have a different interpretation of "kafkaesque" than the author of this article.

Usually kafkaesque situations have something to do with bureaucracy, politics or law. They contain some element of someone sticking to rules or procedures no matter how uncomfortable and useless they might be in the specific situation. You also don't know the procedure, you just try to follow along but keep getting it wrong while everyone else seems to assume that everyone would know how this works.

Peak Kafka is reached if these rules or procedures end up in a deadlock with other procedures or if you have two or more people sticking to the official process but they all have different versions of the process that don't work together. And you are just standing right in the middle, wondering how on earth you ended up here, you just wanted to get a license renewed.

Most of his short stories are not about bureaucracy at all, but are rather best described as mystical parables. Somewhat like Borges if Borges were less analytical and more I Ching-esque. The bureaucratic reputation comes more from The Castle and The Trial, I think.

A personal favorite example of such a mystical parable type work of his that comes to mind for anyone curious is "A Hunger Artist".

Yep that’s a good one. My personal favorite is The Great Wall of China, especially the parable within it, A Message from the Emperor.

https://www.plus.ac.at/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Kafka_AMes...

I think that what you describe is just one of many possible situations where that word can be used. Kafka had super weird stories, but not much about bureaucracy

That was my take on kafkaesque too and it seems the take The Onion has on it too for the most part[0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEyFH-a-XoQ

Whilst I agree with this, I'd take it further: engaging with a system (it could be a bureaucracy, office culture, a manipulative family) exactly as is expected will destroy a person as it did K.

It might have destroyed K, bug not Kafka himself. Kafka himself was an incredible successful lawyer, who won every single insurance case for his important employer. He was also a good sportsman, ate very healthy and had huge fun provoking his hated father. It's all a very elaborate dark comedy.

He was always on the winning side of the bureaucratic nightmares, that's why he had so much fun writing about it.

In German high school, I've studied Franz Kafka's works, focusing on literary analysis, historical context, and philosophical themes. We had to explore his narrative techniques and existential themes in texts like "The Metamorphosis" and "The Trial." Helpful to me were "Reclam Kommentare", commentaries accompanying Kafka's texts.

They provide insights into his language, themes and help with the text analysis. A general learning goal is to connect Kafka's life and works to broader historical and social issues.

So maybe translating the respective Reclam booklets will help non-native speakers, too. They for sure helped me.

“...historical context...philosophical themes...existential themes... broader historical and social issues...”

This dreary approach is likely to miss the point of Kafka’s art. I recommend Nabokov’s lecture on the Metamorphosis in his Lectures on Literature.

https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-1998-.... also very good.

Doesn't seem so impossible. https://youtu.be/8uaaF83eVig

It's the centenary of Kafka's death today. Remember him by doing something absurd and horrifying.

You mean, a normal day in the office? ;)

Not the worst way to celebrate Kafka considering he himself was working with an insurance company, giving inspiration to works of deep disconnect and inherent search for meaning such as Der Prozess.

Is Metamorphosis really about burnout?

https://howtolivetherestofyourlife.wordpress.com/2022/12/20/...

A better memorial might be to take some time to inspect your workspace for occupational safety hazards. Is that desk a sit-stand? Are people taking care to avoid RSI injuries? Is that monitor really high enough to look at without craning your neck? Is today the day you get a split ortholinear keyboard?

https://academic.oup.com/occmed/article/69/3/188/5498516

"Remember him by doing something absurd and horrifying."

The most absurd and horrifying thing I can think of, is everybody to just continue like everything is normal.

Yet another opportunity to do a Moore crossover:

"None of you gigantic vermin* understand. I'm not awaking from uneasy dreams transformed into you, you're awaking one morning from your chrysalis, transformed into me."

* It's the type system researcher life, baby: nothing but effects, bugs, and rock&roll!

I walk into the space The faces buzz nondescript words Like insect masks Alien to me With lives and meaning Loves and fears There's an incandescent buzzing Under my skin My teeth ache like usual Gums bleed and remind me I am in the process of killing myself I walk down the aisle Grab a handle of vodka It whispers insults in my ears In the shaking voice of my father After his stroke The abuse slurring From the side of his mouth It always came from Now with drool Go home, pour out a cup Hands shaking, poison to lips Relief of a kind

They call me the liver failure kid Done things I wish I never did On the run from a crime I don't remember doing Images of the dead kid on the news Hit and run Any information on the suspect Is appreciated

I hate myself I hate myself I hate myself

God I wanna die

I think I should create a game where Skynet has won and Skynet is in the midst of creating its own Skynet. Ultimately, the grander narrative will be that it is Skynet all the way down

And funny: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18158436.

While it may be impossible to translate Kafka's work, looking up "Habsburg" definitely is.

Ironically, if you looked it up, you'd find out that both Habsburg and Hapsburg are correct, alternative spellings.

I should have added that I really dislike the usage of "the alternative form" in (US-?) english texts in general.

Having a preference is fine, but then I don't understand what you meant with looking up the word... You look it up, find out it's a valid spelling and then what?

You look it up and realise that the "official german" spelling of Habsburg is Habsburg since quite some time and usage of "Hapsburg" should have been corrected and obsoleted by now.

Which is interesting is

     The first known use of Hapsburg was circa 1861

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Hapsburg

It isn’t incorrect, it is just the US-English localization.

Names often get switched around a bit when translated into other languages. If the Hapsburgs wanted to enforce a different spelling, I guess they should have built a better empire, haha.

> Names often get switched around a bit when translated into other languages.

Actually, no, usually they don't get "translated" to english if the name isn't written in an alphabet that needs transcription, like Cyrillic, Chinese, ...

Are you writing Tokyo, or Toukyo, as the literal romanization from the Japanese word would be? Wait, why are you using the Latin alphabet at all, when the official Japanese spelling is 東京?

Just because English and German share a common spelling system (not completely, though), doesn’t mean words can’t be different. In English it’s still Cologne instead of Köln. In German it’s still Tokyo instead of 東京 or even just Toukyo.

I am German, by the way.

While it is true that city names (at least the bigger ones) have their english version, names (surnames and first names) are not "translated" into their english forms if the used alphabet is (more or less) the same. Now you could argue that the name of the dynasty isn't the same as the surname "Habsburg", so that the usual rule does not apply.

Do you write Iulius Caesar or Julius Caesar? Same writing system (or rather, it even originated there).

Generally, even without the counterexample, you just postulated an arbitrary, somewhat contrived rule. "Cities can have different names, people cannot, but only as long as the writing system matches". You can want this, but good luck with getting language to adhere to it.

If I'd correct Germans for all their "misuse", or at least idiosyncratic use, of English expressions (handy, public viewing, "learnings"...), it wouldn't make anybody happy. I put "misuse" in quotes deliberately, because German has just adopted these words into different meanings and connotations, just like Japanese did, and that's okay.

Language prescriptionism is not realistic.

If we are being pedantic, the correct romanization is Tōkyō.

Ugh, I mixed it up with Kyouto, thanks. (ou instead ō however is just as legal as oe is for ö in German.)

> and usage of "Hapsburg" should have been corrected and obsoleted by now.

Seems like a classic confusion about the difference between is and ought.

You believe that it should be obsoleted, but it is not obsoleted. Even the link you provided has no mention of the term Hapsburg being obsoleted, so I still have to wonder what you meant by "look it up".

Well, just from the Merriam-Webster entry linked above, plus Wikipedia: It's been spelled out as "Habsburg" since late 13th century. Just because around 1861 someone misspelled it as "Hapsburg" does not mean we should perpetually repeat this error.

You know how this works: human life is short, and our memory is even shorter, so it takes just one uneducated idiot to make a spelling mistake, then dozen of other idiots to repeat it, and after hundred years the mistake becomes a time-honored tradition.

As the purpose of communication is to communicate, language ends up being descriptive rather than prescriptive — as frustrating as that can be to the more precise among us (believe me I feel your pain).

Or to put it in tech terms: language is a blockchain.

Language in general: yes, you're right, it's about communication, so it can be a little fuzzy. But for family names it's all about unambiguously identifying a person. "Habsburg" and "Hapsburg" might as well have been two unrelated families, not different spellings of the same name. So, the precision matters here.

In the US… in the German speaking countries (where the term originates from), you never see the Hapsburg spelling.

Just like you never see the spelling "Germany" in Germany. It's not a German term, it's an English term referencing a German ruling family, similar to Charlemagne.

I see Made in Germany quite often around here actually.

In Japan, you never see the “Tokyo” spelling. And that’s not just because of romanization, the romanized word is “Toukyo”.

I’m German, by the way.

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