As promised, I've decided to do a loose translation of my previous post, a review of Das grössere Wunder. I haven't re-read my previous post yet so I'm sure I'll noticed plenty of problems but I'll try to ignore them for now or I'll spend my whole life correcting my past mistakes :-)
Before you read my translation, I thought I'd include this review of the book I found on youtube by a bookseller who considers it to have been the book of the year for 2013. I found her enthusiasm contagious and also her high speed speech a bit challenging, so I may include a transcribed and translated snippet at some stage in the future of the bit I found the hardest. Anyway, here's her review:
Enthusiastic review from a German bookseller
As a checkpoint update before my translated review, I'm up to page 218. I think that means my average is about 10 pages a day which is a pretty slow way to read a 526 page book, but considering my limited time and the fact that I read quite slowly in English often, it's not that bad :-) I wouldn't mind finding some time to read big chunks of it at once though! And besides, the on again, off again way I read Der Beobachter meant that it took me more than a year to finish, so 2 months for this doesn't seem all that bad!
What follows is my (rough) translation which also covers up some of the original's mistakes. Don't rely on my German too much for your own learning!
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Hello dear reader!
Today I'm trying out something new. I've decided that I have to spend more time "in German". The best place to start is here in my blog.
Well, as I mentioned earlier, I'm currently reading a very interesting and well-written book called "das grössere Wunder" (The Greater Wonder). I've only reached page 193, so this review has to be short.
On the whole the book is a story of a man and his youth. Right from the start we're in a chaotic scene at Mt Everest basecamp. The first two sentences set the mood for the first chapter:
"Yesterday stood clearly in front of him, the Present faded, dissolved, ethereal and consumed. The first corpse was carried past his tent, covered in a makeshift fashion with a tarpaulin which flapped in the wind."
I have to admit that already at this point I got a big shock because I didn't know two words in the first sentence! I was unclear about "Soeben" although it was obviously in contrast to "Yesterday". Also, the meaning of "zerfließen" wasn't coming to me. Terrible beginning! However, I just searched through a couple of word frequency lists and either haven't found the words, or [only] in the second half of a list containing 10,000 words. Here are a couple of word-frequency lists:
Taken from movie subtitles
Taken from who knows where
I read on anyway, and I'm really glad I did! In the early chapters I found everything to be a little improbably, and there were dialogues which didn't really ring true. I forgot to keep any examples, but it doesn't matter. The more I read the better I felt about it. The writing style is easy to read, even if I still lack a few words, and it is possessed [strange choice of phrase!] by a subtile, understated humour. And THANK GOD because there's also a lot of violence in it! In contrast to the things which I found improbable, I have kept a good example of the humour! On the 188th page can be found a scene in which the main character (named "Jonas") is recovering at basecamp after a health scare and his friend Marc takes him to a doctor who Marc recommends. The doctor has just taken blood from Jonas in order to check his "blood sats" [basically, to determine how well his body is absorbing oxygen at the high altitude] and is talking about the health risks at 7,000 metres, and whether people can recognise the signs [originally "Weise" here which makes no sense - hopefully "Zeichen" makes more sense now!] themselves:
"Two Australians arrived yesterday, who've already climbed up further today. Either they are lucky and notice it themselves in time, how lousy they're feeling - and by God will they feel lousy - or they spend the next thousand years up there. Now a band-aid so the kid doesn't have to cry. There. Be right back."
The doctor disappeared into the tent next door.
"Good guy", said Marc quietly. "A gifted doctor and a strange old codger. Even had the plague once."
"He doesn't appear to be so old."
"No, seriously."
"He had the plague?"
"Yeah, almost died from it."
"Where do you get the plague?"
"No idea. Some rats, perhaps??"
Don't know why I liked this scene so much. Just did.
That's it for today. I hope that I'll find the time to translate this post [I DID!].
In the meantime you can do it for yourselves!
I'm looking forward to your comments. Bye!
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