Just do it.
The End.
;-)
Seriously, though. There are some very, very strange translations out there. Admittedly, the language of some theologians takes quite some time to get used to, and might even be deemed inaccessible (Barth comes to mind...); nonetheless, there are some faux-pas out there which simply should not happen, as they are simply, well, wrong, but also distort the meaning. A few examples (all of them Barth....)
- The title of §17 in the CD: in the German, this is called "Die Aufhebung der Religion" - the traditional English translation of the word "Aufhebung" in the English CD speaks of "abolition". That might be an aspect of it, but it is not what Barth is talking about. People such as John Webster, and more recently, Garrett Green (who issued a much needed new, and better, translation of all of §17), replaced the word with "sublimation" - while this is not as common a word in English, it speaks much more closely to the meaning of Barth's "Aufhebung."
- Subsection 3 of §17 bears the title "Die wahre Religion" in German - the standard CD edition renders it as "True Religion" - completely ignoring the definite article (and it seems obvious what the difference in meaning is...).
- In one of Barth's later writings, "Die Menschlichkeit Gootes / The Humanity of God", there are some really awkward issues. e.g. Barth addresses his audience as "Ihr Menschen Gottes" - the English translation is "you men are gods." Leaving aside the inclusive language issue (the German "Menschen" does not have this problem...), this is just utterly wrong. First of all, it should actually be common sense that Barth would be very , very, very unlikely to say that at all. Secondly, there is no plural of god/God in the German, only a Genitive case. Thirdly, the sense in the german is possessive - humans belong to God. A proper translation of that phrase would, thus, be: "you people belonging to / are of God." Slight difference? Yeah, I thought so...
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