Achtung! Quote Help Wanted

The "ubiquitous quote" seems to equal the top item at http://de.wikiquote.org/wiki/Schach

"Auf dem Schachbrett der Meister gilt Lüge und Heuchelei nicht lange. Sie werden vom Wetterstrahl der schöpferischen Kombination getroffen, irgendwann einmal, und können die Tatsache nicht wegdeuteln, wenigstens nicht für lange, und die Sonne der Gerechtigkeit leuchtet hell in den Kämpfen der Schachmeister." - Emanuel Lasker, Lehrbuch des Schachspiels, 1925

I would translate this as:

On the chessboard of a master, [the usual] lies and hypocrisy do not last long. They are met by the day-lightning of a creative combination, at some definite time, and cannot blur away his command of reality, yea not for long, as the sun of justice shines brightly in the battles of the chessmaster.

A good resolution for players to follow on the world board for 2007, I think!

A more literal translation would say "definitely at some time", "quibble" or "whittle" in place of "blur", and "at least" in place of "yea". Also simply "fact" or "hard reality" in place of my "command of reality", but I think my words there have the flow of intent.

Thanks Ken. As much as I'd like to trust wiki and other online sources, I'm hoping someone can now thumb through his German copy of Lehrbuch des Schachspiels to confirm it's exact. But that text is certainly a popular one online, sez Google.

And the literal plural gives both better poetry and better meaning for making it a 2007 resolution for the world of chess, so here's my final version (as I just finished more anti-cheating testing too---I will make contact with Bill G. and Jon J. and all for some give-and-take):

On the chessboard of the Masters, lies and hypocrisy do not last long. They are met by the day-lightning of a creative combination, at some definite time, and cannot quibble away the facts, yea not for long, as the sun of justice shines brightly in the battles of Chessmasters.

How about "Wetterstrahl" => "lightning strike"?

Traduttore, traditore. :-)

"Niemzowitsch hat eine ausgesprochene Vorliebe für häßliche Eröffnungszüge; ein Glück, daß er hier von Rubinstein, der stets geschmackvoll spielt, gründlich widerlegt wird, denn es wäre ja geradezu ein Skandal gewesen, wenn das unästhetische Spiel mit dem ersten Preise gekrönt worden wäre!" Tarrasch's comment on Black's second move in the game Rubinstein-Niemzowitsch, San Sebastian 1912, published in the Berliner Lokalanzeige 1912

"Der Mut, anders zu sein, von gewohnten Dingen loszukommen, ist die hervorragendste Voraussetzung zur kreativen Einstellung."

http://wwwu.uni-klu.ac.at/hstockha/neu/html/24.htm

I could not find the source, but it might be cited below:

Landau, E., Psychologie der Kreativität, München 1969, S. 28

I think the translations are well done. The Lasker text is hard to translate because even in German it sounds strange. Lasker was a master of chess but obviously not in writing ("Wetterstrahl" is lightning; "Wetterstrahl" is not even listed in the german main dictionary anymore; the word used now is "Blitz").

Wetterstrahl is not a common word in contemporary German; I'm guessing that it means rays of sunlight bursting through rainclouds, not lightning.

[Event "San Sebastian"]
[Site "San Sebastian"]
[Date "1912.??.??"]
[Round "22"]
[White "Rubinstein, Akiba"]
[Black "Nimzowitsch, Aaron"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "A55"]
[PlyCount "79"]
[EventDate "1912.??.??"]
[Source "ChessBase"]

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 d6 3. Nf3 Nbd7 4. Nc3 e5 5. e4 Be7 6. Be2 O-O 7. O-O Re8 8. Qc2
Bf8 9. b3 c6 10. Bb2 Nh5 11. g3 Nb8 12. Rad1 Qf6 13. Nb1 Bh3 14. Rfe1 Nf4 15.
dxe5 dxe5 16. Nxe5 Rxe5 17. Bf1 Nd7 18. Qd2 Bxf1 19. Rxf1 Nh3+ 20. Kg2 Ng5 21.
f4 Qg6 22. fxg5 Rxe4 23. Qxd7 Re2+ 24. Rf2 Qe4+ 25. Kg1 Bc5 26. Bd4 Bxd4 27.
Qxd4 Re1+ 28. Rf1 Rxf1+ 29. Kxf1 Qh1+ 30. Kf2 Qxh2+ 31. Kf3 f6 32. Qd2 Qh3 33.
Qd7 f5 34. Nc3 Qh5+ 35. Kg2 Qxg5 36. Qe6+ Kh8 37. Ne2 Qh5 38. Rd7 Re8 39. Nf4
Rxe6 40. Nxh5 1-0

Tarrasch is way too uptight about 2...d6. Ziggy "played it left hand / But made it too far"; Siggy played it right hand and didn't make it far enough. (Ahh for the days when GMs would feud over chess theory rather than personal hygiene....)

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:xLH8rwhLHZwJ:www.meteohistory.org/2004polling_preprints/docs/abstracts/winkler_abstract.pdf+Wetterstrahl&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=16

Physicists at that time [late 18c] had recognised the electrical activity during thunderstorms but they still distinguished between the flash as a pure light (spark) phenomenon and the “Wetterstrahl” (“weather stroke”) which was a cloud to ground
flash.

"Eher ist einem Meister das Einstellen einer Figur zu verzeihen, als eine solche Verkennung des Geistes der Partie" Tarrasch's comment to White's 8th move in Blackburne-Tarrasch, 6th DSB-Kongreß Breslau (Rd. 15, 25.07.1889). "Die nächsten schwachen Züge von Schwarz erklären sich aus der Verwirrung, in die mich das schlechte Spiel Blackburnes versetzt hatte." Tarrasch's comment to Black's 11th move. Both from "Dreihundert Schachpartien", Siegbert Tarrasch, G.B. van Goor Zonen, 3rd edition Gouda, 1925)

It's always impressive how much erudition resides in the readers of forum.

I must say I think the anonymous original translater of the Lasker quote did a pretty damned good job. It may just be familiarity (bit like the Authorised Version) but it sounds like the translation was pretty free and actually an improvement. I'm guessing it was the same guy who did the 'what is immobile must often suffer violence' bit.

(actually I'm sure he's not anonymous if I could be bothered to open my copy of the English version. But history doesn't pay him much heed, anyway.)

The translation is indeed poetically true, but I find the phrase "contradicts the hypocrite" unfortunate. I've lost many games, and I may have been a hypocrite on more than one occasion, but I'd like to think that I lose games because I'm a weakie, not because I'm a hypocrite.

This translation, immortalized by FischerEvans in MSMG, became a convenient rationalization for RJF's sulking in his tent from 1972 to present. (Who wants to play hypocrites?)

But how was the translator to know?

Perhaps, but it sounds as though the word 'hypocrisy' was in the original. It's a slightly slippery word anyway: in the context it think it's fairly clear what was meant and that it doesn't really have any moral dimension, rather referring to the sort of self-delusion we all go in for while erring.

Really?! (RJF, MSMG etc) Tell us more.

RJF = Robert James Fischer
MSMG = My 60 Memorable Games?

Indeed. But I meant the reference in that work to the Lasker quote and the suggestion that it upset RJF's delicate equilibrium.

For the Fromm quote, would this suffice?

http://www.quotationsbook.com/quotes/9017/view

freitag and Bill Brock are right: "Wetterstrahl" means lightning:
http://mdz.bib-bvb.de:80/digbib/lexika/adelung/text/band4/@Generic__BookTextView/118240;cs=default;ts=default;lang=de#X
The word seems to have been rather common in 19th century literature:
http://wortschatz.uni-leipzig.de/cgi-portal/de/wort_www?site=22&Wort_id=135112636
Obviously, Lasker tries to write like a poet ... "master" and "chessmaster" are both plurals, and I would rather translate "getroffen" to "hit" or "struck" than "met".

rdh, I've got a slight fever (that's why I was up at 4 a.m.) & indulging myself in the fantasies an overheated brain produces.

The Lasker quotation is the epigraph to MSMG. (But I bet you knew that, too.) As translated, it fits RJF's blame-the-cheating-Russkies mentality.

off the immediate subject, my favorite chess quotes are all Zuckertort's, I think: "chess is the struggle against error," "the mistakes are all there, waiting to be made" and "a chess game is won by the player who makes the next to the last mistake."

the german word "Wetterstrahl" can not simply be translated with "lightning" - it can be translated as "thunderbolt" - "the strike of a lightning ("Blitz") with thunder" or even better as "lightning strike / stroke".

in german the word for far away lighnings (without the hear of a thunder) is "Wetterleuchten" = "sheet lightning". in ancient times the escalation went "Wetterleuchten - Blitz - Wetterstrahl" = "sheet lightning - lightning - lightning stroke" - in nowadays german "Wetterstrahl" is usually replaced by the word "Blitzschlag" or the combination "Blitz Einschlag".

sincerly - and happy new year - Vohaul

btw - my english sucks, but my german is excellent ... ^^ hehe - and indeed - Lasker was a great chess player - but his german style of writing was at least shady - otherwise - the little word "wegdeuteln" can not be translated with "to gloss over" - it is an artifical word - artifical words are common in german - and it can not be translated with "to blur away" - i'm sure, it was meant as an cynical offense (somewone who "deutelt" is like someone who reads tea leaves - and someone who "wegdeutelt" is even less ...) i'm quite sure, he had Tarrasch in his mind, whilst Lasker was writing this sentence...

greetings from germany, Vohaul

This is great!---"mass Internet research collaboration" on a small translation! I'm now convinced that "Strahl" had more the sense of "stroke" or "death ray" than "beam". Nevertheless, my "day-lightning" had the flexibility of also being readable as "bolt-from-the-blue".

And I like "met" for "getroffen" both as idiomatic English in chess (e.g. meeting a threat) and as a pun on the Hebrew/Arabic root for "mate".

Mig, there's a typo in your headline you might want to sort out, it's "Achtung".

@KWR - is it possible - in english - to be "met by a lightning strike"? in german it is not ... you are always "hit" BUT - the german word for meeting is "Treffen" and "to meet someone" is "jemanden treffen" - just the same as to "hit someone" "jemanden schlagen / treffen" - so - germans are vicious batters, by language only, of course... hehe (btw english is a mixture of a saxonian dialect with latin appendices, isn't it?)

No offense! Vohaul

"Bolt" seems to be the correct translation. I guess you can say "hit by a bolt" but not "hit by a lightning", thus we are close to the truth ;)

"The following weak moves can only be explained by my confusion caused by Blackburne’s poor game."

Pretty lame I'd say unless the orignial German changes the meaning.

In english, I suppose you could be "met by lightning". However, no one says that. It's always either "struck by lightning" or, somewhat less often, "hit by lightning".

I think only a poet would use "met by lightning", if not "greeted by lightning".

@ross
a bit arrogant indeed; Tarrasch said he played bad because Blackburne was playing so bad

Vohaul---no offense, we are *doing deconstruction*! Getting Derrida picky-parsing here, to me it depends on whether the subject of the clause is "thunderbolt" or "combination". If the former, I'll go along with "hit" etc.; if the latter, I still like "met" as in chess.

I see moderation is by length---to forestall spamming---I had written a long reply this morning (pre-)acknowledging some points made before and after. I'll post the main pieces now---Mig, you can kill the long thing if you like. Thanks all!

just to add more deconstruction stuff - ^^ - the combination "Blitz - Einschlag" can also be written as a single word "Blitzeinschlag", i admit, german is a crazy language - but it is my mother tounge - so - i had no choice ... hehe

thx - and awaiting the "long reply" ...

My understanding of Derrida's method, e.g. for translation: So long as you stay with what's anchored in the text (il n'y a pas de hors-texte), you may extract meaning ad-lib by colliding the words against each other, even so vigorously as to break down standard dualistic categories and defer judgment on meaning at all (diffe'rance).

Thus the version given by Mig (used by Fischer et al.) is fair because the conclusion "...the merciless fact, culminating in a checkmate, contradicts the hypocrite" is anchored to earlier parts of the text, although I think it misses the positive intent of Lasker's conclusion. (I'm glad a native speaker also perceived Lasker's German here as clumsy; IMHO "wenigstens nicht fu"r lange" detracts from his point and I'd have cut it.)

What Derrida sought to constrain is the habit of judging "the author must have intended this" from outside the text. E.g. mixing a maxim by Tarrasch, or even a separate one by Lasker, into the translation would be no-go. But within the text, I read Derrida as permitting things like choosing "day-" to go with "sun" later on in the clause, as "unconscious intent one can *trace*", even if Lasker himself maybe wasn't consciously on that wavelength.

After "Salve!" and thanks to Bill Brock, I had my own expanded riff on the Italian idiom he gave:

La traduione puo' essere tradimento tra dizione, ma la tradizione permette trattimento dell'intenzione.

Meaning "Translation can be treason among diction, but tradition permits treatment of intent."

What Derrida sought to constrain is the habit of judging "the author must have intended this" from outside the text. E.g. mixing a maxim by Tarrasch, or even a separate one by Lasker, into the translation would be no-go. But within the text, I read Derrida as permitting things like choosing "day-" to go with "sun" later on in the clause, as "unconscious intent one can *trace*", even if Lasker himself maybe wasn't consciously on that wavelength.

After "Salve!" and thanks to Bill Brock, I had my own expanded riff on the Italian idiom he gave:

La traduzione puo' essere tradimento tra dizione, ma la tradizione permette trattimento dell'intenzione.

Meaning "Translation can be treason among diction, but tradition permits treatment of intent."

@KWR - and just to add more to your "deconstruction process", the "combination" Lasker talked of, has nothing to do with a chess combination - but - no offense - it has to do with the combination of creative elements in chess - but - of course - no offense - your english is better than mine ... but i'm quite sure, that my german is better than yours ... and Wetterstrahl = lightning stroke - whether you like it or not - it has nothing to do with "hit" or "met" - it is HIT.
your translation above is shady, but - no offense - i do not wanna bother you with my german any longer and you may have your deconstruction process with all the convinience you need ...

no offense! Vohaul

tztztz....

Sorry---tried to stop the first post in-flow on noticing the missing "z" in "traduzione". To Bill B. I continued: Your followup illustrations are great and both support and counter my reading. They clarify that Lasker had in mind a space-ray "zap!". I could compensate by strengthening "definitely" to the "finally" sense of "einmal". And perhaps "irgendwann einmal" is a recognized idiom like "once and for all"---?---that's where my foreign-language knowledge stops.

Last bit: I'd like to know to what extent Derrida appreciated in later years the significance of the Web for his methods. In place of writing 50 pages, an engineer could write 3 pages with links, and make the implicit statistical assertion that if you expand links and make connections anchored within the text, then with high probability what you get will match the "other 47 pages" quite well! This is demanding, but like how we have to quickly grab the heart of sci/math papers top-down, and may be generally expedient in an age when the Web is training people to read (impatiently, alas) in tree-form rather than linearly...

Actually, Vohaul, I think in the German grammar the subject is "bolt" and in the English the subject is "combination", as is clearer if I say "...a dilly of a combination"! So maybe we're *both right*, we have no clear resolution---an "impossible" translation problem!---and we must agree to "diffe'r" 8).

@KWRegan

The passive construction is also better in German; dunno why Lasker did not use it.

Thanks all. Much like the German group the Scorpions, you rock me like a hurricane. These will appear in the German version of Garry Kasparov's upcoming book in a few months. No, you will not be receiving any royalties. (German edition is first, in March. UK a month later. US and Russia in September-October. About two dozen others during the year and later.)

I've always been amused by those Tarrasch comments on the Blackburne game. He could be witty but often let his dour side come out. Nothing like blaming your opponent's bad play for your own, although there is something to it at that. Guys like Morozevich often make objectively dubious moves that inspire weak play by their opponents. That's why he's so deadly against guys rated 100 points below him but can't score consistently against his rating peers.

Eternal deferral of meaning--sign => signfier/signified & no transcendental signifier-- that you can get from Saussure.

The deconstructive moment comes when you realize that--setting aside the solution offered by Prof. S. Robinson & promulgated by Prof. D. Ruffin ( also see http://www.chessninja.com/dailydirt/2006/12/chess_whats_chess.htm --how does one get sunshine on a cloudy day, cumulonimbus-laden even?

Which is a fancy way of suggesting that sometimes the result of a chess game is sometimes chaotic, and that the better player doesn't always win because of a little trick beyond the abilities of eeither player to foresee. It's true for Rybka, too.

Bill B - actually I didn't know that. Strange to use his quote since Fischer didn't rate Lasker - or perhaps this before he analysed L's games and found out that he was a coffee-house player.

I was looking for the bonus quote, but Erich Fromm, but I can not find any source for it. I did find one site that just lists it as an "attributed quote".

http://www.bigpedia.com/quotes/Erich_Fromm

Nimzovich has a pronounced predilection for ugly opening moves. Happy it would have been here if he had been fundamentally refuted by Rubenstein, who always plays savory chess, because it would have been directly a scandal if his unaesthetic game had been crowned with the first [brilliancy] prize!

Sooner should a master be forgiven abandoning a piece, than such misunderstanding of the spirit of the game...The next poor moves by Black are explained by the confusion in which Blackburne's downright bad play had placed me.

The courage to be different, to get loose from accustomed things, is the salient prerequisite for the creative mindset.

My 3 cents, a Dreigroschenopfer :-)

The Fromm quote seems to present in a couple of the books that have been scanned at books.google.com
( http://books.google.com/books?lr=&q=Creativity+requires+the+courage+to+let+go+of+certainties&sa=N&start=0 )

... but I've not been able to determine where they took it from.

On page 199 of http://deposit.ddb.de/cgi-bin/dokserv?idn=973135050&dok_var=d1&dok_ext=pdf&filename=973135050.pdf (in German) the source of the Fromm quote is given as "Erich Fromm, Vom Haben zum Sein. Wege und Irrwege der Selbsterfahrung = Schriften aus dem Nachlaß, Bd. 1, hrsg. von Rainer Funk, Weinheim - Berlin, 1994, S. 155-157."

I have looked in my copy of Fromm's "To have or to be" (Haben oder Sein) but I could not find the quote.

I found however many other goods ones :
E.Fromm, Haben oder Sein :

"The causes of mankind's suffering are in the nature of capitalism and in the character of greediness and dependency generated by the capitalist system. This analysis of the causes of suffering of the working class (and not only) gave Marx's main work its force : the analysis of the capitalist economy...Communism is not a final goal but a stage in the historical evolution toward freeing the human beings from socio-economical and politcal conditions which make him slave of material goods..we should give up to all forms of "to have" for the goal of "to be" fully.." ....

To fully be what ? Destitute ? Fine, send me your credit card and I will free you quickly of your money burden.

Fromm's books are full of such gibberish. Suicidal nonsense which was fashionable, which passed as "deep thinking", for some (many ?) people in the West during late 1960/early 1970s.

It's very close to some things he says on creativity in "Man for Himself" so I wonder if it's a paraphrase that has become popular.

What exactly is the reference given by cb in German? Funk was close to Fromm and apart from the biography and editing, also wrote new intros to several of his books. Which English Fromm book is "Wege und Irrwege der Selbsterfahrung"? (The original was in English, this is a translation into German.) Amazon.de has it but doesn't mention the English title. (Appears to be a continuation of material in "Vom Haben zum Sein".)

Rainer Funk ist member of the Executive Board of The International Erich Fromm Society (http://www.erich-fromm.de/e/index.htm) so he might be able to help you further. email: frommfunk{at}aol.com

Perhaps the (ubiquitous) Fromm quote is a condensation or paraphrase of a long sentence in his article "The Creative Attitude", in Harold H. Anderson (ed.), _Creativity and Its Cultivation_, New York, Harper & Brothers, 1959, pp. 44-54. On p. 53 we read (on "the _willingness to be born every day_" as "the condition of creativeness"): "Every act of birth requires the courage to let go of something, to let go of the womb, to let go of the breast, to let go of the lap, to let go of the hand, to let go eventually of all certainties, and to rely only upon one thing: one's own powers to be aware and to respond; that is, one's own creativity."

And on the same page 53 in his article "The Creative Attitude" Fromm writes: "The willingness to be born - and this means the willingness to let go of all 'certainties' and illusions - requires _courage_ and _faith_. Courage to let go of certainties, courage to be different and to stand isolation; ..."

Dear KJR - No solution thus far? We both are right? NO, dear KJR, no… the opposite is true – we both were wrong…  and we both are blameworthy of superbia …
you wrote;
„Auf dem Schachbrett der Meister gilt Lüge und Heuchelei nicht lange. Sie werden vom Wetterstrahl der schöpferischen Kombination getroffen, irgendwann einmal, und können die Tatsache nicht wegdeuteln, wenigstens nicht für lange, und die Sonne der Gerechtigkeit leuchtet hell in den Kämpfen der Schachmeister." - Emanuel Lasker, Lehrbuch des Schachspiels, 1925
I would translate this as:
On the chessboard of a master, [the usual] lies and hypocrisy do not last long. They are met by the day-lightning of a creative combination, at some definite time, and cannot blur away his command of reality, yea not for long, as the sun of justice shines brightly in the battles of the chessmaster.” KJR
I did a long lasting analysis, which resulted in following translation:
On the chessboard of the masters lie and hypocrisy do not prevail for long. Finally they will be hit by the bolt of the creative combination, and can not obscure this fact, at least not for a long period, and [as we all know] the sun of justice is shining bright in the battles of chessmasters.

Smirkin’, Vohaul 8)

PS: (the grammatical subject in the german sentence is neither “wetterstrahl” =“bolt”, nor “combination”, but it is “Lüge und Heuchelei” (=Sie) = lie and hypocrisy). Why?

I’ll change the punctuation marks for you and the deconstruction process … maybe it helps your translation…:
„Auf dem Schachbrett der Meister gilt Lüge und Heuchelei nicht lange. Sie werden vom Wetterstrahl der schöpferischen Kombination getroffen - irgendwann einmal - und können die(se) Tatsache nicht wegdeuteln - wenigstens nicht für lange! Und [denn] die Sonne der Gerechtigkeit leuchtet hell in den Kämpfen der Schachmeister!"
greetings from Vohaul

PS2: the original translation:

On the chess board lies and hypocrisy do not survive long. The creative combination lays bare the presumption of a lie; the merciless fact, culminating in a checkmate, contradicts the hypocrite.

given by Mig in his header, is complete nonsense!

Dear KJR - No solution thus far? We both are right? NO, dear KJR, no… the opposite is true – we both were wrong…  and we both are blameworthy of superbia …
you wrote;
„Auf dem Schachbrett der Meister gilt Lüge und Heuchelei nicht lange. Sie werden vom Wetterstrahl der schöpferischen Kombination getroffen, irgendwann einmal, und können die Tatsache nicht wegdeuteln, wenigstens nicht für lange, und die Sonne der Gerechtigkeit leuchtet hell in den Kämpfen der Schachmeister." - Emanuel Lasker, Lehrbuch des Schachspiels, 1925
I would translate this as:
On the chessboard of a master, [the usual] lies and hypocrisy do not last long. They are met by the day-lightning of a creative combination, at some definite time, and cannot blur away his command of reality, yea not for long, as the sun of justice shines brightly in the battles of the chessmaster.” KJR
I did a long lasting analysis, which resulted in following translation:
On the chessboard of the masters lie and hypocrisy do not prevail for long. Finally they will be hit by the bolt of the creative combination, and can not obscure this fact, at least not for a long period, and [as we all know] the sun of justice is shining bright in the battles of chessmasters.

Smirkin’, Vohaul 8)

PS: (the grammatical subject in the german sentence is neither “wetterstrahl” =“bolt”, nor “combination”, but it is “Lüge und Heuchelei” (=Sie) = lie and hypocrisy). Why?

I’ll change the punctuation marks for you and the deconstruction process … maybe it helps your translation…:
„Auf dem Schachbrett der Meister gilt Lüge und Heuchelei nicht lange. Sie werden vom Wetterstrahl der schöpferischen Kombination getroffen - irgendwann einmal - und können die(se) Tatsache nicht wegdeuteln - wenigstens nicht für lange! Und [denn] die Sonne der Gerechtigkeit leuchtet hell in den Kämpfen der Schachmeister!"

greetings from Vohaul

PS2: the "translation" given in the header of this blog theme

"On the chess board lies and hypocrisy do not survive long. The creative combination lays bare the presumption of a lie; the merciless fact, culminating in a checkmate, contradicts the hypocrite."

is complete nonsense IMHO

Hey, Vohaul, I think a 3rd-party would say we're converging really well---and "superbia" is often needed to take a definite stand and be heard amid the din, which is OK provided one is flexible.

I did modify my first effort already in the *4th* item---it's hard to spot---after Mig's comment---and you confirm my later reaction (to Bill et-al.'s earlier criticism) that "einmal" needs to be finally. Nice to lead with "Finally" and thereby eliminate a clause-between-commas (they cost more in English than in German!?). And I guess you're right that "die Tatsache" needs to be this fact rather than "the facts" in general. Overall, Derrida would say we're "right enough", while helping us finger other things as "einmal falsch".

(Mig---ignore moderation queue of two too-long 1-piece replies.)

Now, bitte what can you tell me about "einstellen/Einstellung"? Tricky word---even simply relating to employment/jobs, it can mean either "hire" (like "install") or "quit"! I tried "abandon" and "mindset" respectively in my Jan 4 01:12 effort above (search "Dreigroschenopfer") at the other translations, but have no certainty. The closest flexible English idiom I see is "pack in/pack it in".

In general, for short standalone items and for technical writing where accuracy trumps having a personal style, I think farming paragraphs out to Netters like us (individually but with as-needed context) is better than having one person try to come up with it all at a desk!

Hi Mig,

Speaking about "My Great Predecessors": I have the first 5 volumes in English, and someone told me other editions (perhaps the Rusian one?) had many photographs, which are missing in the books I have.
Any idea why?

Thanks!

Pedro (a.k.a. Kogi Kaishakunin)

"On the chessboard of the masters lie and hypocrisy do not prevail for long. Finally they will be hit by the bolt of the creative combination, a fact which can not be obscured, at least not for a long period - for the sun of justice is shining bright in the battles of chessmasters."

my last - and combined with other translation - best one...

at KJR - "einmal falsch" is not the right term here - your translation is simply - hmmm - worth to try to get to the bottom of the jar, isn't it?

sorry, 'ur Vohaul

einstellen = to blunder ...

Einsteller = the blunder

simple, isn't it?

I'm liking it more and more---let me just adjust a little:

"On the chessboard of the masters lies and hypocrisy do not prevail for long. Finally they will be hit by the thunderbolt of a creative combination, a fact they cannot obscure, at least not for a long period - as the sun of justice shines brightly in the battles of chessmasters."

() "lie/s/" is a category singular in English (admittedly, plurals are bad OOP class naming style)
() "of a" [noun] is stylistic when the noun is general---hard to explain---"of the" would be like "of this" (similar issue to die/diese).
() I kept your earlier non-passive "obscure".
() "is ---ing" in English connotes temporary, not permanent, action.

*Editing Lasker*, I would have simply "...a fact they cannot obscure for long -..." as a poetic parallel to "...do not prevail for long", but that's too much improving, not translating :-).

Ken --

I visited your website, and was very interested in your recent work on complexity theory. We actually played chess against each other a long time ago in a New York area tournament -- probably 1972. I later went into econometrics, and also deal with complex systems quite often. The tendency of telecommunications networks, internet traffic and server use to exhibit chaotic behavior has to be seen to be believed. One suspects however that this is due to the interaction of multiple stochastic processes, rather than originating in a deterministic system.

Rather than get too far afield, is it possible to post your articles in PDF files? For some reason, the network security at my office is preventing me from downloading anything in a Postscript format. I don't know if anyone else has run into this problem. If not, I can always just find hard copies of your papers in the library.

For anyone else here who is interested in complex systems, Ken Regan has written some exceptionally fine papers on this topic.

I find the original English translation of Lasker, quoted in the main article, to be better focused and more memorable than the more literal translations that have been offered here. Just MHO as a writer (of English).

Better focused yes, but it misses Lasker's *main point* from the first 5 words to the whole conclusion he drives at. It is not giving individual checkmates of poor hypocrites that matters, but the *quality of the master's game*.

This is totally the point of my comment in http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=13118012&postID=116804895829859152

Dave50: thanks! and done!

@KJR - i'm nearly fully satisfied with your last version:

"On the chessboard of the masters lies and hypocrisy do not prevail for long. Finally they will be hit by the thunderbolt of a creative combination, a fact they cannot obscure, at least not for a long period - as the sun of justice shines brightly in the battles of chessmasters."

there is nothing to add, nothing to change, unless ... hmmm - you wrote: "...of A creative combination..." (to me, as a german, this sounds like chess combination - a combination of chess moves) i'd prefer the term: "of THE creative combination" (to me, as a german again, a combination of tactical, strategical, intellectual etc. properties of a real chess master).

we converged to "A" or "THE" - we did a memorable job, didn't we ^^

wish you all the best and a happy new 2007, your Vohaul

Indeed! Schliesslich!

"On the chessboard of the masters lies and hypocrisy do not prevail for long. Finally they will be hit by the thunderbolt of the creative combination, a fact they cannot obscure, at least not for a long period - as the sun of justice shines brightly in the battles of chessmasters."

Your last change *also* converged what Tarrasch said in contrast to forgiving "einstellen" together with what Fromm said about "Einstellung"!

A couple suggestions to make the English more idiomatic:

"Finally..." > "Ultimately..."

"a fact they cannot obscure" > "the fact they cannot conceal"

"not for a long period" > "not for long"

I would like to say "for the sun" etc., but then "for" gets repeated.

The original translation is kinda catchy-- "merciless fact" is brilliant!

(Fromm sounds better in English, too.)

***

"On the chessboard of the masters lies and hypocrisy do not prevail for long. Ultimately they will be hit by the thunderbolt of the creative combination, the fact they cannot conceal, at least not for long - as the sun of justice shines brightly in the battles of chessmasters."

Well, Babelfish online translator gives this

- On the chessboard of the masters lie and Heuchelei apply not for a long time. They are met by the weather jet of the creative combination, sometime once, and cannot the fact not wegdeuteln, at least not for for a long time, and the sun of the justice shines brightly in the fights of the chess masters -

This is not far off the carefully crafted result of all that human exchange of viewpoints.

The problem with the Regan-Vohaul effort is that is bad English. OK for translating iPod instructions but its not very literary. Bill Brock has smoothed some of the more glaring problems.

@gg - to be honest - the original text by Lasker is also bad german ^^ - so we are back at which point?

btw: "wegdeuteln" does not mean "kaschieren" = "conceal" - if so, Lasker would have used "kaschieren" - but he did not. why? maybe he had some other intensions - maybe, as i pointed out in a previous posting, he had Tarrasch and his principles in mind. wegdeuteln sounds very cynic and/or snide.

"Wegdeuteln" adds an "l" to "deuten" (bedeuten = to mean, signify) in a linguistic formation which I think indicates subversive intent, like in English words tattle, quibble, whittle, prattle, (to) riddle, muddle, peddle, meddle, fiddle, drip/dribble, wheedle, many more? Deep etymology may be "to shave away meaning", but that's close to what my pocket dictionary gives: "quibble, split-hairs". And "obscure" and "blur" are also faithful, directly to Lasker's picture of not-long-evading clarity, in a way "conceal" is not.

"Merciless", however catchy, is /hors-texte/ and detracts from Lasker's conclusion----which note Babelfish gets almost perfectly, IMHO indicating greatest clarity of purpose there.

It's not that the translator wants to lie; she *has* to. It's part of the job description.

Our Derridean ;-) now wants fidelity to the text. I heard Jacques lecture a couple times, and realized that he'd stumbled upon a way of meeting endless numbers of attractive young graduate students over departmental wine & cheese. (Marxist that I am, I turned theory into praxis.) Besides, one shows fidelity to the text by ravishing it--flexibility is an asset :-)

http://phare.univ-paris1.fr/pdf/LeonardChesstoCatastrophe.pdf

Interesting paper that I don't have time to read now. Note Lasker's embrace of chaos theory avant la lettre (page 20 of the paper; page 24 of the pdf).

dear bill - i'll give you an other, may be more striking example of the use of the word "wegdeuteln" in german (no matter, whether it is bad english or not):

Topalov ist wohl ein schlechter Verlierer, eine Tatsache, die auch ein Danailov nicht wegdeuteln kann.

would you translate "wegdeuteln" in the given sentence with "conceal" ???

hopefully not ... ^^

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