Introduction/first post

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alphawell
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Introduction/first post

Postby alphawell » 2019-01-27, 5:42

Greetings, respectable community, nice to meet you all, and thanks a lot for the attention to this post, where I'd like to introduce myself and, in order to use it purposefully, ask a couple of questions that perplex me.
My name is Igor, I'm mechanical design engineer from Russia, and I ardent fan of the German scientific and, particularly, philosophic literature (at least of those specimens, translated in Russian and English), and self-evidentely I'm extremely fond of German language.
Now I'm reading two books: the first, "vom Faustkeil zum Röntgenstahl" (Istvan Benedek) is a history of science book, and the second one, "Deutsch für Techniker" is sort of adopted technical brochure for foreign students. Second book is much easier, it's intended to be used by beginners, on the contrary, the first one include some complicated and sometimes intimidating statements.
As far as I figured out, hunting high and low through this marvelous forum for some time, there is no one certain dedicated place for posting the translation-related questions, so what I really was wondering is should I create the new one (called, say, "all translation-related questions to be posted here"), or use one of the previously created by other participants?
The second issue I'd like to beg your help with is the translation of the sentence in the above mentioned book. So, it concerns to the first discovery of the prehistoric human leftovers in the cave in Spain (the italics sentence is that I cannot translate, and the rest is given here for the sake of a context):
[...] In der zweiten Hälfte des vergangenen Jahrhunderts hatten fortschrittlich gesinnte Fossilienforscher sich bereits der Darwinschen Lehre angenommen. Sie waren deshalb nicht erstaunt, auf urmenschliche Spuren zu stoßen. Es stimmt zwar, dass das erste Skelett eines Neandertalers, das im Jahre 1856 von Karl Fuhlrott bei Düsseldorf entdeckt wurde, nicht als autentischer Urmensch anerkannt worden war, sondern erst ein halbes Jahrhundert später. [...]
I'd be very grateful for help on translation of this sentence.
And, once again, very nice to meet you all.
Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie
und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.

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linguoboy
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Re: Introduction/first post

Postby linguoboy » 2019-02-06, 21:27

alphawell wrote:As far as I figured out, hunting high and low through this marvelous forum for some time, there is no one certain dedicated place for posting the translation-related questions, so what I really was wondering is should I create the new one (called, say, "all translation-related questions to be posted here"), or use one of the previously created by other participants?

I think it depends what you plan to post. It sounds like you're looking for help making sense of what you're reading in German. My suggestion is to create a personal learning thread in the German forum. Then you can post to it not only requests for translation help but any questions you have about German.

alphawell wrote:The second issue I'd like to beg your help with is the translation of the sentence in the above mentioned book. So, it concerns to the first discovery of the prehistoric human leftovers in the cave in Spain (the italics sentence is that I cannot translate, and the rest is given here for the sake of a context):
[...] In der zweiten Hälfte des vergangenen Jahrhunderts hatten fortschrittlich gesinnte Fossilienforscher sich bereits der Darwinschen Lehre angenommen. Sie waren deshalb nicht erstaunt, auf urmenschliche Spuren zu stoßen. Es stimmt zwar, dass das erste Skelett eines Neandertalers, das im Jahre 1856 von Karl Fuhlrott bei Düsseldorf entdeckt wurde, nicht als autentischer Urmensch anerkannt worden war, sondern erst ein halbes Jahrhundert später. [...]

Es stimmt zwar can usually be translated as "It is indeed true". The zwar adds a certain note of "contrary to what you might have thought". It sets up a contrast to what comes before, in this case the fact that 19th-century palaeontologists were familiar with Darwin's theory of evolution. I think "nevertheless" fits this context better.

"Nevertheless, the first Neanderthal skeleton, which was discovered by Karl Fuhlrott near Düsseldorf in 1856, wasn't recognised as an authentic prehistoric man until half a century later."
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

kevin
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Re: Introduction/first post

Postby kevin » 2019-02-06, 22:25

The "zwar" sets up a contrast to what follows, really. It makes me expect that the next sentence contains an "aber" or something similar. So I don't think "nevertheless" is a good translation for it.

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alphawell
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Re: Introduction/first post

Postby alphawell » 2019-02-28, 1:36

Thanks, guys, now that makes a perfect sense.
Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie
und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.


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