[Ads-l] (Request help with German) Joke: Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint

[Chris Waigl]

On Tue, Mar 14, 2023 at 5:38 PM ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Requesting help with one additional German citation. Below are
> translations from DeepL and Google.
>
> Here is the link for the DeepL translator which I have found useful:
> https://www.deepl.com/en/translator
>
> Are the metadata and text below correct? Any preference for translation?
>
> Date: 1838
> Book Title: Zur Diätetik der Seele
> Author: Ernst Freiherrn v. Feuchtersleben
> Quote Page 95
> Publisher: Verlag von Carl Armbruster, Wien (Vienna, Austria)
> Database: Google Books Full View
>

I'd write the author as "Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben" (Freiherr not
Freiherrn - you'd put it into the dative case if you say "by/von ...".)


> https://books.google.com/books?id=XhBYAAAAcAAJ&q=Druckfehler#v=snippet&
>
> [Begin excerpt - check for typos]
> . . . das sind jene freiwilligen Candidaten der Medizin, die sich in
> die ganze Krankheitslehre hinein lesen, die sich aus Büchern Recepte
> verschreiben; zu deren Einem Marcus Herz, der berühmt gewordene Feind
> alles Schwindels, einmal sagte: Lieber Freund! Sie werden noch einmal
> an einem Druckfehler sterben!
> [End excerpt]
>

This is considerably more archaic German than the first snippets, despite
being considerably later. I guess if you're a member of the nobility
writing a tome entitled "Zur Dietätik der Seele" (On the husbandry? living
condition? of the soul) you're bound to take the mantle of a sage, unlike
the little gossipy bits in hip new feuilleton magazines.

Both translations get some of it and miss some of it. Here's my stab:

""""
... they are those voluntary candidates of medicine, who read their way
into the entire scholarship on diseases(*), who prescribe themselves
recipes(**) out of books: to one of whom Marcus Herz, the famous enemy of
all fraud, once said: Dear Friend! One day you are going to die of a
printing error!
"""

(*) or "into all of pathology" is finde, too - a little less lyrical than
the German
(**) prescription is the Rezept in medicine, and recipe is usually the
Rezept from the kitchen. We can't say "prescribe themselves prescriptions"
for reasons of redundancy, and the meaning is that the people in question
just mix stuff together as if from a cookbook anyhow. I first wrote
"preparations", but went back and used "recipes".



>
> [Begin translated excerpt from DeepL]
> . . . these are those voluntary candidates of medicine, who read
> themselves into the whole doctrine of disease, who prescribe
> themselves recipes from books; to one of whom Marcus Herz, the famous
> enemy of all fraud, once said: Dear friend! You will die once again
> from a printing error!
> [End translated excerpt]
>
> [Begin translated excerpt from Google]
> . . . these are the voluntary medical candidates who read their way
> into the whole of pathology, who prescribe prescriptions from books;
> To one of them Marcus Herz, the famous enemy of all fraud, once said:
> Dear friend! You'll die from a misprint all over again!
> [End translated excerpt]
>
> With appreciation
> Garson
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


-- 
Chris Waigl . chris.waigl at gmail.com . chris at lascribe.net
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net . http://chryss.eu

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org