{"id":1539,"date":"2020-08-05T08:00:24","date_gmt":"2020-08-05T07:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whiteroseproject.org\/?p=1539"},"modified":"2023-06-21T22:42:22","modified_gmt":"2023-06-21T21:42:22","slug":"translating-sophie-scholl-and-alexander-schmorell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whiteroseproject.seh.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/2020\/08\/05\/translating-sophie-scholl-and-alexander-schmorell\/","title":{"rendered":"Translating Sophie Scholl and Alexander Schmorell"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Two of this year\u2019s White Rose Project translators, James Cutting and Amira Ramdani, talk about the experience of translating excerpts from the letters of White Rose members Sophie Scholl and Alexander Schmorell.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Why did you want to get involved in the project?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

James: Inge Scholl’s\u00a0Die wei\u00df\u200be Rose<\/em>\u00a0was one of the first German books I ever properly read and thoroughly moved me \u2014\u00a0I thought it would be a very worthwhile experience translating some of their letters into English to help spread awareness of their struggle.<\/p>\n

Amira: Having grown up in Germany, I had learnt about the White Rose in school, but I never really looked at any of their own writings. Since this year the project\u2019s aim was to translate excerpts from the members\u2019 diaries and letters, I thought this was a great opportunity to have a glimpse into their personal lives, something you don\u2019t typically read about in school books.<\/p>\n

What translation challenges did you encounter working on the texts?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

James: It was difficult to try to understand the tone at some points in the letters, whether they were being falsely optimistic, sarcastic or just fearful. Conveying these sorts of emotions was one of the more difficult aspects of translating the letters.<\/p>\n

Amira: I think the most challenging part was rendering the tone, the \u201cvoice\u201d of the person who had written these deeply personal texts \u2014 Sophie Scholl, in my case. In her later letters, she writes with a more mature style. This stylistic complexity is definitely something we wanted to express with our translations, but without making her writing sound antiquated or stilted.<\/p>\n

What impression did the letters, and the language used in the letters, make on you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Amira: I was most impressed by how, looking at Sophie\u2019s letters in chronological order, one can get a real feeling for how she matures intellectually throughout the years \u2014 how her convictions become more defined, more concrete, and how her need to play an active role in society grows stronger as she becomes older.<\/p>\n

James: The letters themselves were very much a rollercoaster of emotions, from the first few reciting amusing or touching anecdotes to the last ones being written in the face of their untimely deaths. It was very saddening to feel like you were getting to know them and to have them ripped away from you so suddenly and really brought home just how difficult it must have been to live in Nazi Germany during the Second World War, even if we only got a minute glimpse of it.<\/p>\n

Are there any solutions you are particularly proud of?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Amira: I can\u2019t pinpoint an exact bit of the translation, but what I am most proud of are the little changes in syntax or lexis that we came up with when we re-read our translation as a team \u2014 once you\u2019ve got different ideas going, it is a pretty amazing feeling to find a small word or a slight alteration in the phrase structure that just makes the text flow more naturally.<\/p>\n

James: Several more unfamiliar concepts were particularly troublesome, especially in letters sent from the Russian border where they mentioned particular traditions and items that required a little research.<\/p>\n

Are there any words\/phrases which proved \u2018untranslatable\u2019?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Amira: It\u2019s not quite untranslatable, but I wasn\u2019t aware of how difficult it would be to translate the tone of the syntagma\u00a0man<\/em>\u2026\u00a0eben<\/em>\u00a0(\u201cMan hat uns eben politisch erzogen\u201d) \u2014 it sounds\u00a0\u00a0very matter-of-fact, a bit dry, but also quite defiant \u2014 it sounds a lot like Sophie.<\/p>\n

Who do you hope reads your translations?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Amira: I hope that our translations will enable anglophone readers to not only get to know about the White Rose, but also to peak into the more \u201chidden\u201d parts of its members\u2019 lives: what kind of people they were, what motivated them, what spurned them on in life, what they valued, what distraught them\u2026<\/p>\n

James: I hope that our translations will be useful to anyone who is interested in studying German history of the mid-twentieth century, and that they will be able to help bring the thoughts and feelings of such an inspiring group to a new audience.<\/p>\n

Has anything changed in your understanding of or approach to the White Rose as a result of translating, or as a result of the project more broadly?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Amira: I think the close readings we did on the texts made me realise just how ordinary and also how very not ordinary the members of the White Rose were: Sophie likes to make little snide remarks, crack a joke here and there, talk about a powerful dream that she had, tell her boyfriend how much she misses him \u2014 but a lot of her insights prove that she was also extremely sensible and thoughtful; she analyses the world around her in a very perceptive manner.<\/p>\n

James: It has definitely deepened my understanding of the group to hear their thoughts in their own words, in particular their ties to each other and to their family and friends external to the group. It also has made me appreciate their dedication to their ideals, having been through so much and refused to submit to a ruthless government even in the face of death.<\/p>\n

What should the White Rose Project do in its future work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Amira: I think that exploring the personal writings of the White Rose members is really worthwhile \u2014\u00a0I ended up reading more of Sophie Scholl\u2019s diary and her letters, and I believe there\u2019s a lot there that could make\u00a0people reflect not only on life under the National Socialist regime, but also on more timeless questions: what\u00a0it\u00a0means to be political, to want to change the\u00a0status quo<\/em>, and to search for one\u2019s path in life.<\/p>\n

James: The White Rose Project is doing amazing work and should definitely keep up its translation of letters, diary entries and other documents of the White Rose, and maybe hold more concerts and public events to further make known the story behind the group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two of this year\u2019s White Rose Project translators, James Cutting and Amira Ramdani, talk about the experience of translating excerpts from the letters of White Rose members Sophie Scholl and Alexander Schmorell. Why did you want to get involved in the project?\u00a0 James: Inge Scholl’s\u00a0Die wei\u00df\u200be Rose\u00a0was one of the first German books I ever … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3715,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,20,73,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-performance","category-sophie-scholl","category-students","category-translation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/whiteroseproject.seh.ox.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/A1821997-DDF1-4ADC-A12E-DB61A770D007.heic","jetpack_sharing_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whiteroseproject.seh.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whiteroseproject.seh.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whiteroseproject.seh.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whiteroseproject.seh.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whiteroseproject.seh.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1539"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/whiteroseproject.seh.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3717,"href":"https:\/\/whiteroseproject.seh.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539\/revisions\/3717"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whiteroseproject.seh.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whiteroseproject.seh.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whiteroseproject.seh.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whiteroseproject.seh.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}