Translation passes — Chapter 25 of Effingers

Pass 1 — 2026-05-28, 19:22 CEST

Approach. Drafted the whole chapter in one sitting, working straight through from the opening refrain to the closing one without doubling back. The aim of this first pass: get the chapter on the page in the English I hold from the persona — Wharton-periodic in the Tiergarten salon and the Hiller lunch, Mitford-quick in the conversation, Powell-deadpan where the prose turns mercantile, plain working-class English (no eye-dialect) in the Chausseestraße scene, and a slightly heightened English period-letter register inside Sofie’s letter. Past tense, third-person, parlando cadence, light on adverbs, heavy on the Ding-detail.

The chapter’s five scenes, treated as one polyphonic Saturday. The chapter is built on the recurring refrain — Was für ein Frühlingstag, dieser Sonnabend im März des Jahres 1887! Was für eine Süße… — which marks each scene by the hour of the day (10 a.m., 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 5 p.m., 6 p.m. embedded mid-scene, 8 p.m., 3 a.m.). I translated this refrain as What a spring day, this Saturday in March of the year 1887! What sweetness, at [time] in the [morning/afternoon/evening]! — keeping the exclamations, keeping the of the year in the full form, and dropping of the year in the single shortened instance the German also drops it. I did not modulate the refrain across instances; the form must survive being deployed four times in this chapter and three more times across the novel (chapters 68, 131, the Epilog), so the English needs to be reproducible.

The keyword Süße → sweetness. Used the word sweetness throughout. The persona is firm on this: no paraphrase to tenderness, softness, loveliness. The novel is in love with German spring and the English must say so.

Register decisions, by scene:

1. Eugenie’s dressing-room (10 a.m.). Wharton register. Long sentences with semicolons in Eugenie’s Russian-flashback monologue. Translated gnädige Frau / gnädigste Frau as ma’am and Madam depending on emphasis — the period English domestic-fitting room has the same class-deference and the German term need not be preserved. Kept Stadtrat, Spreewald nurse, Annettchen (the diminutive carries the unwitting cruelty of the overheard scene). The mid-flashback Guards-officer’s gnädiges Fräulein I rendered my dear Fräulein — keeping Fräulein because Miss alone would be too flat for a Russian-aristocratic-German moment. Kept the Russian Stadtwald capitalised as a place-name. The husband’s epigram — die Kinderlose hat die meisten Kinder — rendered the childless woman has the most children; preserved the proverbial cadence even though Eugenie does in fact have children (the saying is a charity-philosophy proverb applied with affectionate generality).

2. Sofie’s letter (11 a.m.). Period English love-letter register. Capitalised You / Your per the German Du convention, which English period letters also observed. The song-cycle title Frauenliebe und -leben kept in German italics; the embedded Chamisso/Schumann line rendered into English — Since first I saw Thee, I think I have gone blind, always as in dream I see Thee alone — with Thee and a slight song-rhythm so the English reader registers it as a quoted lieder-line carrying Sofie’s love. Sofie had altered Chamisso’s wo ich hin nur blicke to immer wie im Traume; I preserved the alteration (always as in dream) rather than restoring the original. The actual addressee — Arnold Kramer, not Beniamino Levy — stays as in the German.

3. Waldemar at the University and at Hiller’s (1 p.m.). Salon-academic register; Wharton with a gymnasium-Latin overlay. Kept Privatdozent (no English equivalent), Herr Kollege, Kaiserreich, Monumenta, Junker, and the Latin tag in verba magistri — all of these are German/Latin formations the educated English reader of any decade has met. Goethe’s Querpfeifer und Trommler, kriegerischer Klang rendered as fifers and drummers, warlike sound — kept in quotation marks, no footnote. The historian’s long warning about centralism preserved its periodic syntax — this is one of the longest single utterances in the chapter and I let it run. Waldemar’s interior thoughts (the Volksbegeisterung meditation, the law-and-Roman-law line) put in italics to mark the free indirect transition; the spoken speech then begins with the door opening. Wagner’s “Feuerzauber” rendered Magic Fire — the standard English shortening.

4. Susanna’s flat after Hiller’s. Kept the prose at Wharton-tension but quickened the pace once the curtains are drawn — the German shifts to short clauses (Er stand auf, riß die Frau an sich, küßte ihren Mund) and I matched that. The post-coital exchange about Ochsen and the worship of the young girl I translated as Oxen, in the true sense. Hence this silly worshipping of the young girl — preserving the brutality and the satirical-philosophical reflex. Die Lotosblume ängstigt … kept in German italics with the ellipsis — Susanna is singing the line, and the German lieder-line itself is the right English-novel choice (parallel to keeping a French aria-line in an English society novel).

5. Chausseestraße, Paul and Mayer, then Paul and Amalie (5–6 p.m.). This is the chapter’s longest tonal swing — from working-class Berlinerisch (the Schlafbursche scene) to bourgeois Süddeutsch-Jewish dignity (Mayer’s monologue) to street-Berlin again (the wool-market shouting match), to the quiet Süddeutsch sister Amalie’s clear-eyed accounts of the piecework. No eye-dialect at any point. Berlinerisch becomes plain, contraction-heavy English with short clauses and earthy register: “You stupid cow, somebody ought to give you a hiding, so you’d see there’s a horse standing here.” “Don’t speak to me with that tarted-up mug!” The Paule, muß denn det sin? rendered “Paule, must you?” — kept the diminutive Paule for the affection it carries between husband and wife. Mayer’s Wenn ich noch den Sarkasmus meiner Jugend hätte set in the long-periodic English of a defeated cosmopolite — Wharton’s down-at-heel old-money voice. Amalie’s free indirect at the close (Guter, ahnungsloser Papa!) rendered in italics — Good, unsuspecting Papa! — the chapter’s quietest piece of social-historical knowledge, the daughter who sees what the father refuses to. Pub name Frischer Hammel kept in German italics; street names (Chausseestraße, Friedrichstraße, Weidendammer Brücke, Klosterstraße, Königstraße, Alexanderplatz, Schloß, Graues Kloster, Charlottenstraße) all kept in German throughout.

6. Theodor at the Opera and the Wanda encounter (8 p.m.). Free indirect inside Theodor for the jealousy-monologue (Shoot him down? Challenge him? Kill himself?) — kept the German’s compression with three short questions in English. The Wanda-encounter is the chapter’s pivot into the novel’s whole future (Wanda will be Theodor’s wife, then ex-wife, across the next four hundred pages); I let her speak in plain working-class English with no eye-dialect (“Nah, don’t go killing anyone, you’d maybe get life for that”). The closing free indirect Der Dämel! dachte sie rendered Idiot! she thought — italics for the interior word, no quotation marks, Wharton-style. The closing Zwanzig Mark war viel Geld, aber wie lange war man jung? preserved as a free-indirect question — Twenty marks was a great deal of money — but how long was one young? — keeping the dash that lets Wanda’s interior arithmetic surface.

Words I kept in German or Latin and why. Tiergartenstraße, Chausseestraße, Charlottenstraße, Friedrichstraße, Weidendammer Brücke, Klosterstraße, Königstraße, Alexanderplatz, Schloß, Graues Kloster, Unter den Linden, Hotel Barblan, Tiergarten, Privatdozent, Herr Kollege, Stadtrat, Kaiserreich, Junker, Monumenta, Frauenliebe und -leben, Die Lotosblume ängstigt, Frischer Hammel, Stadtwald, Spreewald, Fräulein, Annettchen, Paule, in verba magistri. The street names are a Berliner inheritance and the English period reader expected them in German. The Latin tag belongs to the gymnasium register and is still understood. Privatdozent, Herr Kollege, Stadtrat, Kaiserreich, Junker are German social-historical terms with no clean English equivalents. Frauenliebe und -leben and Die Lotosblume are German art-songs as German art-songs. Annettchen and Paule are affectionate diminutives that carry their tone better in German than in any English diminutive form. Fräulein is the period address-form and English already understands it as a German cultural object.

Words I Anglicised where the German would be opaque without serving the text. gnädige Frau → ma’am / Madam. Coupé kept as coupé (it’s in English period vocabulary). Frühstücken (the 1 p.m. meal at Hiller’s) → lunch, because in 1887 English bourgeois usage the late-morning meal at a restaurant was lunch. Mosel / Rheinwein → Moselle / Rhine wine. Hummer → lobster. Rumpsteak → rump steak. Sommerhose → summer trousers. Tabouret → kept (it’s already in English period vocabulary for a low backless seat).

One thing I am most uncertain about. The closing refrain — Was für eine Süße morgens um drei Uhr! — has no comma between Süße and morgens in the German, where every previous refrain has had one. I preserved this small variation (What sweetness at three in the morning!) — slightly different rhythm, slightly more breathless, as the day at last closes. I am not sure whether this is an editorial difference in the German source or an authorial choice. Either way it is right to keep it.

Total time on pass. Roughly two hours of close-translation work, sitting with the open German on one side and writing the English on the other. The chapter came out in one sitting because Tergit’s prose is built that way — it asks to be moved through, not paused over.

I will not revise yet. Pass 1 stands as written.

Pass 2 — 2026-05-28, 20:27 CEST

Approach. Re-read the whole chapter aloud-in-the-head, then went back through with the German open at every flagged moment. Fixed one significant meaning-error in Eugenie’s monologue, removed an inconsistency in how interior thought was marked, and tightened a handful of awkward German-shaped clauses. No restructuring of any scene; the architecture is right. This is a sentence-level pass.

The substantive changes, by category

One meaning-error corrected. Eugenie tells Käte Winkel: “When one is the one who loves, one trembles always and is afraid and lonely and needs women friends to confide in. But when one is loved, then one knows…” — Pass 1 had “When one loves oneself”, which in English reads as narcissism, not as the German contrast (wenn man selber liebt = when one is the one doing the loving, as opposed to wenn man geliebt wird = when one is loved). The whole point of Eugenie’s lesson — the difference between being the lover and being the loved — was inverted. Fixed.

Italics on interior thought removed throughout, for Tergit-consistency. Pass 1 italicised some interior thoughts (Waldemar’s Volksbegeisterung, Susanna’s Wohltat, Paul’s bankrott, Amalie’s Guter, ahnungsloser Papa!, Wanda’s Dämel!) and left others plain. The German italicises none of them. Tergit’s free indirect glides in and out of interior speech without typographic marking; the English should do the same. All five passages now read plain — Popular enthusiasm, thought Waldemar — today for the right man, tomorrow for the wrong, etc. — and Idiot! she thought in Wanda’s closing line is a clean unmarked free indirect. Likewise the single italicised emphasis-word position in Waldemar’s baptism speech: removed, the irony is in the prose.

One sentence restored to its German rhythm. Waldemar at the University window. Pass 1: …stood Privatdozent Waldemar Goldschmidt, looking at the Opera House, the Linden, …, looking at the Guard, the marching step… Pass 2: …stood Privatdozent Waldemar Goldschmidt — he saw the Opera House, the Linden, …, saw the Guard, the marching step… The German chains two sahs asyndetically; the participial looking at in Pass 1 softened the punch. The new version uses an em-dash and two saws, which reproduces the German cumulative energy.

Word-order and idiom tightenings: - when she grants the man before marriage these rights → when she grants the man those rights before marriage (natural English order) - Is there no one there who loves you? → Is there no one who loves you? (drop the German-faithful there) - We always wish to do the loving ourselves → We always want to be the one who loves (clearer) - he comes about after me → he runs after me (natural) - I could not bring myself to it at once → I could not make up my mind at once (the German is about decision, not aversion) - But it is also like this → But there’s this too (natural) - in the end to owe him something → to owe him something in the end (natural order) - which there penetrated down into the smallest matters → which penetrated down into the smallest matters (drop redundant there) - simply centuries-later ethic → a milder, gentler ethic, simply centuries later (the adverbial belongs after the noun) - present the spring → introduce the spring (more colloquial) - One loses one another → One quite loses sight of one another (more natural English) - I only say what I see → I’m only saying (closer to ich sag’ das ja nur) - If only one could have had it new-papered → If only one could at least have had it new-papered (restore wenigstens)

Register adjustments: - I shall prick you → I’ll prick you (seamstress register) - only speak → just speak (natural) - the handsomest of Guards officers → a strikingly handsome Guards officer (closer to bildschön) - I had had a very great disappointment → I had had a great disappointment (the very is redundant in English)

Two tense / present-vivid fixes: - Sofie’s Why did You tell me I was sweet → Why did You tell me I am sweet — the German keeps Sofie’s present tense (daß ich süß bin) after the past hast gesagt; the present preserves her now-emotion. - Käte’s Well, I imagined to myself, he is surely unhappy, and the wife is very ugly, and he is certain to betray her. → Well, I’d told myself: he must be unhappy, his wife is very ugly, he’ll surely betray her. — restructured as colon-introduced free indirect, dropped to myself (German-faithful but stilted), tightened the cadence.

Two consistency fixes on the German preservation list: - Weidendammer Bridge → Weidendammer Brücke — Bridge had slipped through; all other Berlin streets / structures stay in German. - the page in Figaro → the Page in Figaro — operatic-role capitalisation.

Two small register / nominal cleanups: - Anna, the white-armed, the red-cheeked, → Anna, white-armed and red-cheeked, (the doubled definite article was over-liturgical for the German’s bare nominalised adjectives) - Yes, that is probably so. Now just one more stitch at the shoulder, ma’am, and the clasp like this? — the German here uses gnädigste Frau (superlative), one of only two German address-superlatives in the chapter; upgraded ma’am to Madam for the small added deference.

One descriptive precision: - veils streaming around their riding-hats → veils streaming around their top-hats — Zylinder is top-hat; the riding-association was my over-explanation.

One location-fix: - in the Linden, in the rain, in the dark → on Unter den Linden, in the rain, in the dark — unter den Linden is the street name and should be visible as such.

What I did NOT change

The five-refrain architecture, the keyword sweetness, the kept-German vocabulary list, the German art-song titles, the working-class scenes (no eye-dialect), Eugenie’s slightly-formal salon register, Mayer’s long-periodic English, Amalie’s free indirect close. All of these are right. Pass 1’s structural choices held under re-reading.

Time on pass

About an hour of close re-reading and editing — slower than Pass 1, because the work was scattered through the chapter rather than continuous.

I do not yet call it final. The chapter would still bear another pass; I want to look once more at the Waldemar–Susanna interior moments and at Mayer’s monologue, where the cadence may want one more adjustment.

Pass 3 — 2026-05-28, 20:38 CEST

Approach. A targeted pass aimed at the two regions I flagged at the close of Pass 2 — Mayer’s monologue and the Waldemar–Susanna interiors — plus one ambiguity in the Wache-changing description I had not previously noticed. Six edits, all sentence-level. No structural change.

The six changes

1. The Kaiser-window ambiguity. At his window the old Kaiser stood → At his window stood the old Kaiser. In the previous version, his sat next to the just-mentioned Privatdozent Waldemar Goldschmidt and could be read as Waldemar’s window. The German Am Fenster stand der alte Kaiser uses verb-subject inversion (a familiar German construction after a prepositional phrase). Restoring the inversion in English pulls his forward toward the upcoming subject the old Kaiser, which is correct (the famous Kaiser-window at the palace, where the old Wilhelm I appeared every day at noon to watch the Wache). Period English literary inversion handles this — Up the hill came the soldiers — and the rhythm is right for the scene.

2. The Theodor-coupé triple “wait”. Pass 2: But there was also a coupé waiting, upholstered in white silk, on whose box the footman and coachman sat motionless. Pass 3: But waiting with him too was a coupé, upholstered in white silk, on whose box footman and coachman sat motionless. The German has three sentences in close succession built on warten — Theodor wartete. Mit ihm warteten am Bühneneingang mehrere Begeisterte. Mit ihm wartete aber auch ein mit weißer Seide ausgeschlagenes Coupé — Theodor was waiting. With him there were waiting / But also waiting with him was. The personification of the coupé as “waiting with him” is Tergit’s quiet flourish — the inanimate carriage stalking him alongside the human enthusiasts. The Pass 1/2 there was construction lost this. The new English preserves the parallel and the coupé’s eerie personification. Also dropped the the before footman to match the German’s bare Diener und Kutscher (no article).

3. Mayer’s parallel grand-tense. Pass 2: I have known the world. I knew the Paris of the Second Empire. Pass 3: I have known the world. I have known the Paris of the Second Empire. The German is Ich habe die Welt gekannt. Ich habe das Paris des zweiten Kaiserreichs gekannt — two parallel perfect-tenses. Pass 2’s mixed tense (perfect → simple past) flattened Mayer’s rhetorical climbing (the general boast → the specific epitome). Restoring the parallel gives Mayer the right elegiac-grand register: a defeated old cosmopolitan in full self-mythological flight.

4. Paul’s interior deflation. Pass 2: And that’s how he came to bankruptcy, thought Paul. Pass 3: He did go bankrupt, after all, thought Paul. The German is Paul dachte: Er hat ja auch bankrott gemacht — short, dry, deflationary. Pass 2’s And that’s how he came to bankruptcy was an interpretive expansion that turned Paul’s thought into a tidy causal explanation. The German is sharper: a wry workman’s recognition that punctures Mayer’s lyrical self-pity. The new English preserves ja auch as after all and keeps the four-word deflation.

5. Mayer’s opening: cadence. Misunderstandings creep in by letter, mostly. → Misunderstandings mostly creep in by letter. The earlier mostly at the end was a tail-position adverb that sat slightly awkwardly. The German has meist in standard mid-sentence position. Restored to natural English mid-sentence position. Small change but the cadence is better.

6. Susanna’s singing. What was singing there was love, was passion. → What sang there was love, was passion. The German Was da sang, war Liebe, war Leidenschaft uses simple past sang. The English progressive was singing was a German-translation reflex (German simple past often renders into English progressive). But here the sharper What sang there is more idiomatic and matches the German’s terseness. Susanna at the piano: her voice singing love and passion.

What stayed

The five-refrain architecture; the sweetness keyword; the kept-German vocabulary list; the dialogue registers (salon-Hochdeutsch in the Tiergarten, plain working-class English in the Chausseestraße, slightly heightened English period-letter for Sofie’s love-letter, gymnasium-Latin tags for Waldemar’s lunch); the unmarked-interior-thought convention from Pass 2; the verb-first asyndetic Wache-changing catalogue from Pass 2; the working-class-Berlin scene with no eye-dialect; Wanda’s final free indirect Idiot! she thought.

Time on pass

About forty minutes. The third pass goes faster because I knew where to look and the architecture is settled.

Decision

Pass 3 stands; I do not yet call it final. One more close reading deserves to be done — particularly on the very first scene (Eugenie / Käte) where the long monologue passages still feel like they could be tightened by one notch in a few places. I’ll know on the next pass whether that’s true revision or fiddling.

Pass 4 — 2026-05-28, 20:48 CEST

Approach. Close re-reading of the entire chapter with particular attention to the Eugenie scene I flagged at the close of Pass 3. The vast majority of the Eugenie monologue and the long Russian flashback held under fresh reading — the work done in Passes 2 and 3 has settled into the shape it should hold. Two small fixes presented themselves.

The two changes

1. The arriving Fräulein Winkel. And here is Fräulein Winkel → And here comes Fräulein Winkel. The German Da kommt ja auch Fräulein Winkel has an active motion-verb (kommt = comes); Pass 3’s is had flattened the entry to a static state. The chapter is built on scene-painting and small physical entries — figures coming in, coupés drawing up, a girl pulling a curtain across — and the dressmaker’s arrival in Eugenie’s morning room should be a small entrance, not a tableau. Recovers the German motion.

2. The husband at home. and there at home sat my present husband → and at home sat my present husband. The German is plain: und zu Hause saß mein jetziger Mann. Pass 3’s there at home had added a fairy-tale emphasis (and lo, at home sat …) that the German doesn’t carry. Eugenie’s monologue is moving toward the calm centre of her wisdom-lesson to Käte, and the plainness of and at home sat my present husband — the present husband simply being there when she came in from the snow — does the work better than the dramatised there at home sat. Closer to the German plain past.

What stayed

Everything else. The Eugenie–Käte exchange, the Russian flashback, Sofie’s letter, Waldemar’s two scenes, Mayer’s monologue, the Chausseestraße working-class scene, the wool-market shouting match, Amalie’s free indirect close, the Theodor-and-Wanda scene at the wine-tavern, the five refrains and the closing refrain at three in the morning. All right as they stand.

Time on pass

About thirty minutes — most of it spent re-reading rather than editing. The translation has settled into its shape.

Decision

Pass 4 stands; I am close to calling it final. I want to do one more pass to be sure, but I expect that pass will either make one or two small further fixes I have not yet seen, or will simply confirm the present text. The chapter is in good shape — the architecture, the register decisions, the kept-German vocabulary, and the cadence are all right. What remains is the last micro-pass.

Pass 5 — 2026-05-28, 20:53 CEST — final

Approach. Final close reading of the entire chapter, with the question: do I see any genuine substantive improvement, or am I now fiddling? Two real improvements presented themselves, both small, both honest. With them in, I call the translation final.

The two changes

1. The earth stands still rather than stops turning. Eugenie’s Russian flashback — and as is only natural I thought the earth must stop turning → and as is only natural I thought the earth must stand still. The German is die Erde müßte stillstehen (literally the earth must stand still). The Pass 1–4 stop turning was a vivid English image but carried a faint modern-cosmological flavour (planet-halted). The period-idiomatic English phrase is the earth stood still / time stood still — what an 1887 Berliner remembering 1860s Russia would have said in any European language of the period. Stand still is also closer to the German verb. Small register-tightening.

2. Piecework cut down rather than put down. Amalie’s defence of her observation about Mayer — Mother’s piecework has been put down again → Mother’s piecework has been cut down again. In modern English put down is ambiguous (could read as Mother had set the work aside). Cut down unambiguously means the rate has been reduced, which is what the German herabgesetzt means and what the next sentences (Twenty pfennigs for sewing a skirt. That comes to perhaps ten marks in the week) confirm. The working-class Amalie of 1887 Berlin would have said cut or knocked down for a piecework rate, not put down. Removes an ambiguity.

What stayed

Everything else. Five passes have settled the text. The architecture (five-refrain polyphony with the What sweetness… keyword), the kept-German vocabulary (Tiergartenstraße, Chausseestraße, Charlottenstraße, Friedrichstraße, Weidendammer Brücke, Klosterstraße, Königstraße, Alexanderplatz, Schloß, Graues Kloster, Unter den Linden, Stadtwald, Tiergarten, Hotel Barblan, Privatdozent, Herr Kollege, Stadtrat, Kaiserreich, Junker, Monumenta, Frauenliebe und -leben, Die Lotosblume, Frischer Hammel, Spreewald, Fräulein, Annettchen, Paule, in verba magistri), the three working registers (salon-Hochdeutsch in the Tiergarten and at Hiller’s, slightly heightened English period-letter inside Sofie’s letter, plain working-class English in the Chausseestraße and the wool-market — no eye-dialect anywhere), the unmarked-interior-thought convention from Pass 2, the German triple-warten parallel in the Theodor-coupé sentence from Pass 3, Eugenie’s one who loves vs. one who is loved contrast (corrected in Pass 2), the Wache-changing inversion from Pass 3, the closing What sweetness at three in the morning! with its missing-comma (preserved from the German throughout).

Decision: final

The translation is final. The chapter that was the structural-formal centerpiece of Effingers — first instance of the polyphonic Saturday-refrain device the novel returns to in chapters 68 (1913), 131 (1930), and the Epilog (1948) — now lives in English. It can be re-deployed in any of those later instances without strain, because the refrain holds, the What sweetness keyword holds, and the register-decisions hold.

Total time across all five passes

About four and a half hours of close translation and revision work, spread across this Saturday afternoon and evening. Pass 1 took roughly two hours (the whole chapter in one sitting); Pass 2 about an hour (scattered sentence-level fixes plus the meaning-error correction and the italics consistency); Pass 3 about forty minutes (six targeted improvements in Mayer, Theodor, and the Wache scenes); Pass 4 about thirty minutes (two small fixes in the Eugenie scene); Pass 5 about twenty minutes (the final two micro-fixes and this log). The arc was right — each pass found genuine work but less of it, until the fifth pass had only the smallest residual to address. That is what a finished translation feels like.