One of the TWO SLEEPY MOMMIES writes:
Thank you for clarifying the Pope v. Potter mess.
You had expressed concern about the translations of the letters:
[Me writing:] You’ll note that there is a grammatical mistake in this sentence. We have a noun-pronoun agreement problem, because the apparent subject of "those" is "Harry Potter," but "Harry Potter" is singular, not plural as the word "those" would suggest.
It’s been a while since my two semesters of college German, but for what it’s worth, I don’t think the LifeSite translation is very good.
I tend to agree. I have spotted several issues with the translations, though my knowledge is too rudimentary at this point to assert them with confidence.
The original sentence is:
Es is gut, dass Sie in Sachen Harry Potter aufklaren, denn dies sind subtile Verfuhrungen….
My clumsy translation of this idiomatic sentence might run something like,
"It’s good that you clarify/explain these things/matters (Sachen) in Harry Potter, since these (diese) are subtle temptations…."
I just don’t know exactly how to read the expression in Sachen Harry Potter — whether it’s mean to mean "these matters [in] Harry Potter" or "these Harry Potter matters"
Thanks for the info! Perhaps other German-speakers, or even some of the readers from Germany (I know there are a few) could shed additional light on the matter.
I think it’d mean roughly: “that you clarify Harry Potter in [regard to some] things.”
I noticed the LifeSite article (as it is being run on Catholic Exchange) is now headlined “Pope Voiced Caution On Harry Potter Books”.
Still wrong, but better.
This sentence cannot be translated word-by-word. “In Sachen …” is a fixed expression and has little to do with the word “Sachen” (things). “In Sachen …” means “regarding”, e.g. that Harrison Ford flick “Regarding Henry” was called “In Sachen Henry” in Germany.
The singular “dies” combined with the plural “sind” gives the sentence a somewhat different meaning than the translation. “These temptations are subtle”, would translate to “Diese Verführungen sind subtil”. By shifting the word order and putting the “dies” in singular, the sentence points to the relative clause beforehand, indicating that the temptations are subtle (“subtil” having always a negative connotation in German that doesn’t exist in English, if I’m not mistaken), *because of* the reasons expressed in the relative clause.
German: Thanks for the explanation of “in Sachen” – I had forgotten about that. Another English translation could be “In the matter of.” But I’m not sure about what you say about “dies sind” – e.g., my big German dictionary translates “dies sind meine Schwestern” as “these are my sisters.” So it seems to me that “since/because these are subtle temptations” is a valid translation.
Hm, your dictionary is of course correct.
I was possibly over-explaining the feeling this sentence gives me, combined with the difference between “dies” and “diese”
These are my sisters – Dies sind meine Schwestern
These sisters are beautiful – Diese Schwestern sind schön.
These are temptations – Dies sind Verführungen
These temptations are subtle – Diese Verführungen sind subtil.
I can’t figure out my own language. 🙁
I saw another translation problem in those letters re: Msgr Fleedwood. The translation refers to “Mr.” Peter Fleedwood.
As a German-American with relatives who have followed their vocations back in the old country, I know that a priest in Germany is not referred to by the title “Vater”, but by the title “Herr” (I refer to my cousin, 3-4x removed, “Herr” Paul Stutz, Pastor (Pfarrer) of Deidenhofen, Baden). In this context, Msgr Fleedwood would be addressed in German as Herr Fleedwood, and somebody familiar with German idiom (and Vatican practice) would not have made the crass mis-translation of “Mr. Peter Fleedwood”.
So much mess from bad translations! Makes me think of the 1970’s when President Carter’s translated comments implied lust for the Polish people!
Personally, I think Harry Potter is a fun read; though I do prefer the world of Middle Earth–as I have since 1977.
I am just an amateur German speaker, but what I understood from the German was rather like what our friend A German said (if I understand him correctly). The word “dies” (these) does not refer to Harry Potter or even to the “Sachen,” but to the “seductions,” the ones, I suppose, which are described in Frau Kuby’s book. It’s written so as to set up a relative clause, introduced by the relative pronoun “die.” The sense of the sentence is that (unlike something bad that is blatant and obvious, and therefore easy to recognize and reject if one wishes) something bad (i.e. an assumption or habit of the mind contrary to Christianity) that is not consciously noticed (because the child is so engrossed in an excellent story that he forgets about critical thinking or because he hasn’t yet learned the right standards on which to judge things) can be for that reason more difficult to filter out and reject and therefore quite harmful, particularly if it gets in there first. That’s what I read.
Also, about “Sachen”, I think that whichever way you want to look at it, German’s or Kevin’s is acceptable. That just seems to be a normal way of saying things in German, though I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head. But they do it in other languages – how about “County Cork” or “Liber Iob”?
This gets confusing to a non German-speaker. Can anyone just give a more accurate translation?
First – Please put in the accents! “Aufklaren” isn’t exactly the same as “Aufklären”. The former is intransitive and the latter is transitive. It’s also, “Verführungen”. This actually isn’t nitpicking. See the fax; the accents are there. If you can’t make accents on your computer, put an ‘e’ after the vowel that should have an umlaut–e.g. ‘Aufklaeren’/’Verfuerungen’. This will help German speakers help you. 😉
I’ll try my best here to explain what I’ve come to be fairly certain of. What is necessary, is to let go of English grammar rules when reading German; they have their own style:
“Es is gut, dass Sie in Sachen Harry Potter aufklären, = It is good, that you clear up things regarding Harry Potter… Like A German said, ‘in Sachen’ is best translated as ‘things regarding’ On the surface it only looks like a preposition, ‘in Things’, but those two words put together have a whole new sense about them–more accurately, ‘things regarding’. ‘Things’ (Sachen) would be understood to be the direct object of ‘clear up’ (Aufklären). It’s one of those stylistic things that we don’t do in English in this case, so an understanding of how ‘in Sachen’ functions in a sentence is key to parsing it accurately.
The confusion with ‘dies’ lies in applying English grammar rules to German, and it doesn’t work.
…denn dies sind subtile Verführungen… = …since these are subtle seductions… ‘Dies’ is used instead of ‘diese’ because of the pronoun’s function, but it still translates to us as ‘these’. If he were to say instead, ‘These seductions are subtle’, on the other hand, he would have written, ‘Diese Verführungen sind subtil’. It’s just how the language is.
The antecedent of ‘these’ would be ‘things’.
So, all put together:
It is good, that you clear up things regarding Harry Potter, since these are subtle seductions…
Here’s a P.S. for the pedantic because I just had an a-ha! moment.
Don’t we also sometimes use phrasing like ‘in Sachen’ in English sometimes?
Examples:
“For the grace of faith illuminates greatly, as also do divine inspirations, not only in things spiritual, but in things corporeal …”
“He grew up with a German mother, and is familiar with all things German.”
“I’m disinterested in all things Harry Potter”
I think this is close to how the Germans use ‘in Sachen’.
As for pronoun agreement with its antecedent, as we see, ‘dies’, although regarded as ‘singular’ by grammar books for the English-speakers, is nevertheless used in this structure:
[Pronoun] [form of ‘to be’] [plural predicate nominative]. As A German wrote in his/her examples, it changes when necessary if there is a predicate adjective in order to agree with its antecedent. ‘Verführungen’, however, being a noun, is a predicate nominative, so ‘dies’ was used instead of ‘diese’.
That’s how it’s looking to me. 🙂