The eudæmonist has a splendidly detailed post on what is to me (though not to my wife) an arcane subject:
Dino Buzzati’s short story ‘A Boring Letter’ – included in the recently translated collection The Bewitched Bourgeois – contains part of a knitting pattern for a three-color ‘Peruvian poncho’. The story takes the form of the letter, so the voice of the pattern is thus (hopefully) that of the letter writer, rather than Buzzati’s. The relevant passage is:
So pay attention: You’ll need about two balls of gray (or beige) Shetland wool, another ball of the same wool in black (or tobacco), just over half a ball of the same wool in white (or cream), and number 3 knitting needles. You work in two parts, decreasing one stitch per row for every plain-stitched row. […] For the first part: With the gray wool cast on 262 stitches and knit for ten rows in plain stitch; then, still with the grey wool, knit sixteen rows in purl stitch. […] The twenty-seventh row: * one stitch in white wool, three stitches in gray wool *; repeat from * to * until the end of the row, finishing with one stitch in white wool. The twenty-eighth row: * three stitches in white wool, one stitch in gray wool *, repeat from * to * until the end of the row, finishing with three stitches in white wool. […] The twenty-ninth to the thirty-second rows, in white wool. The thirty-third and thirty-fourth, in grey wool. The thirty-fifth to the thirty-eighth, in black wool. The thirty-ninth and fortieth, in grey wool. The forty-first and forty-second, in white wool. […] Thus you’ll have 226 stitches to a row. The forty-third and forty-fourth rows, in black wool. The forty-fifth… (p. 298)
The omissions leave out the spoilers, of course, but even allowing for the fragmentary nature of the pattern, there is something not quite right here. I will set aside the decrease instructions for the moment (they are odd, but not impossible). What is meant by working in ‘plain stitch’? Generally, plain knitting would refer to stockinette stitch, which is knit on the right side and purled on the wrong side, but that seems a bit odd for starting out, because it would curl up. What is meant by working in ‘purl stitch’? If you purl every row, then you just get garter stitch, but more annoying to knit. It could also mean reverse stockinette, which is purling on the right side and knitting on the wrong side, so some ambiguity remains (and doesn’t solve the mystery of the curling hem).
The row-by-row instructions are unobjectionable. But we can get back to those decrease instructions, because it is odd that thirty-six stitches have been decreased after forty-two rows, when the instructions state that one should decrease one stitch at the end of each ‘plain-stitched’ row. As only ten such rows have (apparently) been worked, this suggests either a relic of the ‘new math’ or some derangement on the part of the letter writer.
Now, Italian is not among the languages in which I have any kind of competence, but in the course of working with knitting patterns, I have had the opportunity to format pattern translations from English into a variety of languages, each of which has their own conventions for how the instructions are presented in terms of vocabulary, abbreviations, level of detail, and designer idiosyncrasy. So although my knowledge of Italian is pretty much nil, it still seemed worthwhile to look up the original […]
Click through for much more arcana, e.g. “‘Knit in two parts’ could also mean ‘worked back and forth’ here, and it is also possible that dritto here is ‘right side’ [of the work] so it could mean one stitch is decreased (although the patterns I’ve seen generally use diminuire/diminuendo rather than calando) at the end of each right-side row […].” I love this kind of thing, even when I have only the foggiest notion of what’s going on.
Although modern patterns tend to always say ‘knit’ and ‘purl’ so that they can abbreviate them to ‘k’ and ‘p’, I would still distinguish a ‘plain’ (i.e. knit) row from a purl row (e.g. in stocking stitch) – I’ve never heard of stocking stitch being called plain.
this suggests either a relic of the ‘new math’ or some derangement on the part of the letter writer.
They then began to look at one another, and much time passed, before they succeeded in doing so. Not that they looked at one another long, no, they had more sense than that. But when five men look at one another, though in theory only twenty looks are necessary, every man looking four times, yet in practice this number is seldom sufficient, on account of the multitude of looks that go astray. For example, Mr Fitzwein looked at Mr Magershon, on his right. But Mr Magershon is not looking at Mr Fitzwein, on his left, but at Mr O’Meldon, on his right. But Mr O’Meldon is not looking at Mr Magershon, on his left, but, craning forward, at Mr MacStern, on his left but three at the far end of the table. But Mr MacStern is not craning forward looking at Mr O’Meldon, on his right but three at the far end of the table, but is sitting bolt upright looking at Mr de Baker, on his right. […] Mr de Baker, tired of craning backward looking at Mr Magershon’s left ear, and having turned in vain to all the members of the committee with the exception of his left-hand neighbour, has sat forward and is now looking down the dingy corollae of Mr MacStern’s right ear. For Mr MacStern, sick and tired of Mr Magershon’s left ear, and having no other alternative, is now craning forward contemplating the disgusted, and indeed disgusting, right side of Mr O’Meldon’s face. For sure enough Mr O’Meldon, having eliminated all his colleagues with the exception of his immediate neighbour, has sat back and is now considering the boils, the pimples and the blackheads of Mr Magershon’s nape. For Mr Magershon, whom Mr de Baker’s left ear has ceased to interest, has sat back and is now benefiting, not indeed for the first time that afternoon, but with a new distinctness, by Mr Fitzwein’s lunch of kidneybeans. Thus of the five times four or twenty looks taken, no two have met, and all this craning forward and backward and looking to the right and to the left has led to nothing, and for all the progress made by the committee in this matter of looking at itself, its eyes might just as well have been closed, or turned towards heaven. Nor is this all. For now Mr Fitzwein will very likely say, It is a long time since I looked at Mr Magershon, let me look at him again now, perhaps who knows he is looking at me. But Mr Magershon, who it will be remembered has just been looking at Mr Fitzwein, will certainly have turned his head round the other way, to look at Mr O’Meldon, in the hope of finding Mr O’Meldon looking at him, for it is a long time since Mr Magershon looked at Mr O’Meldon.
Then it will be found that the committee has looked at itself in the shortest possible time, and with the minimum number of looks, that is to say x squared minus x looks if there are x members of the committee, and y squared minus y if there are y.
If each member had a compact mirror, the entire committee could look at itself with no more than x squared looks, or y squared as the case may be. And powder their noses in between.
Or knit, as the case may be.
Amy Hempel wrote a fine story that makes good use of knitting pattern code. The title is “Beg, Sl Tog, Inc, Cont, Rep”; it’s in the “Reasons to Live” (1985) collection.
I never progressed beyond knitting my brows in plain-stitch.
The headmaster at my primary school had splendidly bushy eyebrows, so luxurious that they could probably have been knitted together. By another person. I have never understood how one is supposed to be able to knit one’s own eyebrows.
I know zilch about knitting and am going to restrain myself from getting too deeply into this, since it’s a holiday weekend and I shouldn’t be on the computer. But from a quick search on “’si lavora in due parti’ + maglia”, which happens to bring up a lot of hits for ponchos, it looks to me like we’re talking about the part that hangs down a person’s front and the part that hangs down their back. As opposed to something made as a single flaired tube. Whereas “ferro dritto” might be “ferro dritto del lavoro,” which looks an awful lot like “right-side row” as opposed to “wrong-side row.” And although calare is not as common as scalare or diminuire, Zanichelli and De Mauro both give it as what looks to be “knit a decrease.”
I could be completely wrong, of course, not just because I’m researching this in five minutes but because, as I said, I know zilch about knitting. If this were my translation, I would post the problem in a professional forum with enough native Italian translators to have a good chance of there being more than a few knitters. First, to check whether the original makes sense, which is in no way guaranteed. (And the idea that it might be intentionally screwed up in order to convey the agitation of the letter writer is generous to Buzzati, but authors make mistakes with technical things all the time.) And second, of course, to work out the solution.
I have plenty of respect for Venuti, who really ought to have been named in the eudaemonist’s post, especially given the long quote. Not that I agree with him one bit when it comes to theory—well, okay, maybe half a bit—but he’s a good translator and I enjoyed his version of Il deserto dei Tartari (The Fortress). Mainly because it didn’t seem to apply his own theories that much, except for leaving some things in Italian that I found annoying, but which I guess mesh with his logic and his attempt to make it about Fascism. But jeez Louise, I wish that big-name literary translators were not, on the whole, so loth to engage with the general translation community that knows how to help with this stuff. Anglophone literary translators in particular. There often seems to be an attitude, and not just among the big names, of reluctance a) to admit you might not always be able to work things out on your own and b) to admit that “accuracy” (which often gets put in scare quotes) might matter. Might matter at all, as if that automatically meant downplaying the creative aspect of translation, or implying that it’s more important to avoid bloopers than to work on capturing the style.
I should now get off my hobby-horse, since I wasn’t going to spend much time on this. Not to mention that I’ll now look like a complete idiot if the passage turns out to be correct and I’m the arrogant one who thought she knew better after a five-minute search.
I should now get off my hobby-horse, since I wasn’t going to spend much time on this. Not to mention that I’ll now look like a complete idiot if the passage turns out to be correct and I’m the arrogant one who thought she knew better after a five-minute search.
It all made good sense. I like a ride on a properly cared-for hobby-horse.
Voi chi rantate, lasciate ogni riserbo.
reverse stockinette, which is purling on the right side and knitting on the wrong side
I just noticed this – can you also say “the left side” instead of “the wrong side” ?
in German the “sides” in knitting are called “rechte/linke Seite“. Independently of knitting, “auf links drehen” is “turn inside out”.
There is no right and wrong, no moral lesson in German knitwear. Embroidery is, of course, a different matter.
@Biscia: There often seems to be an attitude, and not just among the big names, of reluctance a) to admit you might not always be able to work things out on your own and b) to admit that “accuracy” (which often gets put in scare quotes) might matter.
I admit that I’m reluctant to admit in a translators’ forum that I can’t work something out for myself, though I’ve asked for help here and in other non-specialized forums. But can you recommend any good forums for translators?
(I’m also reluctant to brag that I think accuracy matters—there, I’ve done it!)
SERIOUSLY OFF-TOPIC BUT:
Surely some dubious subset of Hattics is the functional equivalent of a heavily annotated-edition of weirdo Frankfurt-School Marxists:
My 20-year-old is reading (in translation, for some college class) Walter Benjamin’s “The Life of Students,” which includes the assertion that “One of the most celebrated German university professors referred in a lecture to those ‘coffeehouse literati according to whom Christianity is finished.'” There are no doubt always nameless coffeehouse literati to be disdained, but she wants to know specifically which then-celebrated professor was being referenced. One of you must surely know?
The essay is here.
The passage is: Jene Verfälschung des Schöpfergeistes in Berufsgeist, die wir überall am Werke sehen, hat die Hochschule ganz ergriffen und sie vom unbeamteten schöpferischen Geistesleben isoliert. Die kastenhafte Verachtung des staatsfremden, oft staatsfeindlichen freien Gelehrten- und Künstlertums ist hiervon ein schmerzhaft deutliches Symptom. Einer der berühmtesten deutschen Hochschullehrer sprach vom Katheder über »die Caféhausliteraten, nach denen das Christentum schon lange abgewirtschaftet habe«.
At the end Benjamin gets all soppy and camp, with a quote from a damp George pome:
Ihre Statt hat die persönlich zugleich beschränkte und zügellose Verbrüderung, die sich gleich bleibt auf der Kneipe und bei der Vereinsgründung im Café. Diese Lebensinstitutionen alle sind ein Markt von Vorläufigem, wie das Treiben in Kollegien und Cafés, Ausfüllungen leerer Wartezeit, Ablenkung vom Ruf der Stimme, ihr Leben aus dem einigen Geiste von Schaffen, Eros, Jugend aufzubauen. Es gilt eine keusche und verzichtende Jugend, die von der Ehrfurcht vor den Nachfolgenden erfüllt ist, von der Georges Verse zeugen:
Yeah, “der Knaben Preis“, tell me about it: Little Joe never once gave it away, everybody had to pay and pay.
Factoid: Benjamin’s prose is almost as excruciating as George’s poetry.
The essay appeared in 1915. Would that help ?
Pretty sure on timeline grounds that “Little” Joe Dallesandro was not the berühmter Hochschullehrer to whom Benjamin was referring …
I wondered about Rudolf Bultmann, but he could scarcely have been described as a “celebrated German university professor” in 1915. I don’t know if he was given to such zingers in lectures, either. Overlapping circles though (e.g. Hannah Arendt.)
I’ve just now realised that he was professor at Marburg when my grandfather was a theology student there. My grandfather was much more into hippy-dippy Jung than all that demythologising stuff, though. Maybe Bultmann put him off it.
I admit that I’m reluctant to admit in a translators’ forum that I can’t work something out for myself, though I’ve asked for help here and in other non-specialized forums. But can you recommend any good forums for translators?
There’s an excellent forum for translators of Russian on Facebook that’s helped me more than once, but I don’t know about other languages.
When first published, in Der Neue Merkur, the essay used “Kaffeehausliteraten”, not “Caféhausliteraten”.
My grandfather was much more into hippy-dippy Jung than all that demythologising stuff, though.
Is he the one who furthered your Hebrew studies ? You once mentioned a grandfather in this connection, I think.
It was he.
Based on the quotes I am in full agreement.
Didn’t know that. However, *heimdrehen [ˈhãmd̥ran], literally “turn home”, is “murder” in Viennese dialect. Knit & purl = glatt & verkehrt, literally “smooth” & “inverse, inverted, reverse, wrong way around” (adjectives applied to Masche “stitch”).
There’s an excellent forum for translators of Russian on Facebook that’s helped me more than once, but I don’t know about other languages.
Thanks, I’ll see what they’ve got for Spanish.
Didn’t know that.
How then do you yourself say “turn inside out”, as with a jacket for the washing machine ? I sometimes wonder if there is something other than auf links drehen, which may be Rheinland dialect.
It’s possible that there are people who can turn something inside out, but never had occasion to describe that activity, and might not have suitable words at the ready ! As I remember Ryle pointing out in The Concept of Mind, those are different, unrelated skills. [I may have added “unrelated”, but it’s how I myself see it.]
I don’t know art, but I know what I like. Mute, inglorious Miltons need a manager.
Norw. vrang “inside out”. vrenge “turn inside out”, på vranga “turned inside out” (lit. “on the inside-out”. In knitting: rett “right, straight” vs. vrang.
Other meanings of vrang:
“stuck” -> vranglås “stuck in a locked position”, vrangknute “messed-up knot that won’t be untied”
“difficult, obstinate, pigheaded” -> vrangpeis “pigheaded person”, vrangvilje “stubborn contrariness”
“false” -> vrangstrupe “craw”; sette i vrangstrupen “get (something) stuck in the craw”; vrangforestilling “delusion”
I sometimes wonder if there is something other than auf links drehen, which may be Rheinland dialect.
I don’t know any other expression, and judging from a quick Google search, it’s used by sources all over Germany, not just from the Rhineland. But it’s the kind of word one mostly uses in household situations, so it’s possible that there are alternatives from family to family.
@trond
I don’t really get the semantic connection with wring or wrong. Was the original sense of the corresponding verb “to twist”?
I’d resort to the very vague umdrehen “turn around”; if pressed, I’d add mit der Innenseite nach außen “with the inside toward outside”…
Like Biscia I don’t knit, but a quick online search seems to confirm that Italian knitters read the instructions as I also would.
The translation trap is that the same word intuitively has two different meanings in the opening statement: “Si lavora in due parti calando una maglia per parte ad ogni ferro dritto.” Si lavora in due parti ought to mean the poncho is knitted in two pieces, but calando una maglia per parte ad ogni ferro dritto ought to mean decreasing one stitch per extremity in each right-side row, i.e., one stitch at the beginning and another at the end of the row.
Starting out on the wrong side, you can then execute the pattern in rows 27 and 28. Row 27 is on the wrong side and has the required 4n+1 stitches. Row 28 is on the right side and decreases to the required 4n-1 stitches.
Needless to say, the number of stitches should then be odd throughout, starting out with 4n+27 and reaching 4n-15 at the end of row 42. In particular, if you pick n = 60 you’ll be starting out with 267 stitches and end up with 225. That pair of figures doesn’t seem to hard to misread as 262 and 226.
A chastening thought for those who professionally search for words:
Includes champions of AI.
I’d resort to the very vague umdrehen “turn around”
Also wenden? „auf Links waschen“ seems to be pretty standard if you google instructions for washing T-shirts and such. Having an English speaking mother and an English speaking wife has probably limited my washing vocabulary in German, I‘ll have to be a better example to my sons.
PP: Was the original sense of the corresponding verb “to twist”?
Yes, Gmc. *wrengan- “twist, turn”. Bjorvand & Lindeman says the English adjective was borrowed from Norse, apparently in a narrower metaphorical sense.
The -ng- makes it a candidate for my speculative progressive/iterative/whatever affix.
Also wenden?
Good too.
When someone has their T-shirt on backwards, you can say: “du hast dein T-Shirt verkehrt herum an“. You say that, of course, with the expectation that they will take it off and put it back on the right way, but you don’t actually say that’s what needs to be done.
“du hast dein T-Shirt falsch an” oder “dein T-Shirt ist auf links” means it’s inside-out.
Odd: “du hast dein T-Shirt verkehrt an“ could reasonably be understood as either one. The addition of “herum” implies a simple rotation (“wrong way round”), so probably backwards, not inside-out.
This is not an infallible guide to disembodied T-shirt discourse. You have to roll with the adverbs in situ. In case of uncertainty, look at the damn T-shirt, not the words.
Supposedly, the wring word and the writhe word were already a doublet in Proto-Germanic.
Available; synonym of umdrehen in all its meanings, so just as vague.
(I didn’t think of it because it’s absent in my dialect.)
Yes, and it’s the only one I’d normally use for either 🙂
(…if I remember not to say Leiberl, which wouldn’t be understood in Berlin.)
(…if I remember not to say Leiberl, which wouldn’t be understood in Berlin.)
At the very least it would be unpronounceable. How do you guys manage that “-rl” ?? Not by “just dropping the r”. But not by just flowing from “r” to “l” either, which I find impossible.
I got not a single chuckle out of my initial Rousseau out-take, so I’ll have to repeat it until someone provides one: L’homme est né libre et partout il est dans les fers phonotactiques.
We don’t, we’re fully non-rhotic. The r is entirely fake etymologically, too; there’s just no other way to write [ɐ]. The word is [ˈlɛɪ̯ṽɐl], or -[b̥]- sometimes in Viennese mesolect.
Leibchen seems to have been more widespread once, but referred to various unspecific upper-body undergarments.
we’re fully non-rhotic … [ˈlɛɪ̯ṽɐl] or -[b̥]- sometimes in Viennese mesolect
Day saved. Just ask on the internet. I suspected that “r” was probably Bauernfängerei.
Odd: “du hast dein T-Shirt verkehrt an“ could reasonably be understood as either one.
Those who remember overhead projectors might remember “Your transparency’s upside-down,” which could refer to any of three incorrect placements. (Or “Your slide”.)
I’m happy to be corrected in my belief that Spanish has only al revés for all spatial inversions.
I was about to mention al revés, which seems to cover inside-out, backward, and upside-down (the last of which doesn’t come up as often with clothing).
@Jerry Friedman: I only translate from Italian, and the forums that I find useful are the ones that are language-specific, so I don’t think they’d be much help (you work with Spanish, right?). Most of the people there are primarily translators INTO Italian, and since I’ve always had the opportunity to help answer far more questions than I ask, the embarrassment factor isn’t there at all. Another forum I’ve found useful is, again, specific to Italian, but mainly anglophone commercial translators. Who tend to have good research skills, and are also sitting alone in front of their computers all day and love an excuse to get distracted. I definitely see a more guarded attitude on US-based, English-centered forums, perhaps because there tends to be more of an academic vibe.
I suspect that every language combination has its own translation culture, and as a much more multinational language with many more bilinguals, the Spanish one is likely to be quite different. But if you haven’t already, I’d suggest searching for >ES literary translator hangouts and also the technical/commercial folks.
[quote]I wish that big-name literary translators were not, on the whole, so loth to engage with the general translation community that knows how to help with this stuff. Anglophone literary translators in particular. There often seems to be an attitude, and not just among the big names, of reluctance a) to admit you might not always be able to work things out on your own and b) to admit that “accuracy” (which often gets put in scare quotes) might matter. Might matter at all, as if that automatically meant downplaying the creative aspect of translation, or implying that it’s more important to avoid bloopers than to work on capturing the style.[/quote]
Preach it, Biscia!
@Keith: al revés, which seems to cover inside-out, backward, and upside-down
Also having your shoes on the wrong feet, right? Though I haven’t done that for a while.
@Biscia: Thanks. So far I haven’t found anything for Spanish, but the Internet turns out to be a big place.
@Jerry Friedman: you might try asking in the “Literary Translation” group on Facebook if anyone has recs for Spanish-specific forums. Another lead might be ACE Traductores in Spain? I don’t mean joining them, since I’m sure their mailing list is mostly about contracts with Spanish publishers and so on, but if they’re anything like the translators’ union in Italy they might well be able to point you to a good place. Sometimes things aren’t obvious from the general Internet; two of the most useful groups I belong to wouldn’t really turn up anywhere, they just acquire members by word of mouth.
ChatGPT:
Walter Benjamin’s quote refers to the German philosopher and university professor Heinrich Rickert. He was known for his views on the relationship between academia and the creative spirit, particularly in the context of German intellectual life in the early 20th century. Rickert’s remarks about “Caféhausliteraten” reflect a broader critique of certain literary and artistic figures who were perceived as disconnected from serious academic discourse.
@Biscia: Thanks again!
@Michael Gierhake: ChatGPT: Walter Benjamin’s quote refers to …
What was your prompt ? I’d like to see what comes out the next time.
@Keith Ivey:
I think the best way to translate al revés (also del revés in the European dialects) is ‘wrong way round‘: the axis is not relevant.
My native Rioplatense has dado vuelta with an equally broad meaning: un auto dado vuelta is upside-down, while una camiseta dada vuelta could be inside-out or backwards.