Is there an english translation for Prien/Barbas/etc Books?

[Jim P.]

I have to say the question of 'English translations' of this or that book comes up often on this board - and I'm sure I'll get royally flamed for this response. Won't be the first time I've stepped in it. 2nd language education in the US sucks. Look at all these guys here from all over Europe and elsewhere where English is not their native language and how well they can converse in my/our language. I'm quite frankly in awe of them and applaud them. I took a semester or two of German when I first went to college some 30+ years ago. At the time we did a lot of weed and half the time when asked to respond to a query from the instructor I'd answer in my bad high-school French - really. It was not one of my better moments or grades. But as my interest in the Luftwaffe and other aspects of the continental air war grew it became obvious that to avail myself to the books, loss records, etc. I had to do the translation work, not somebody else. To this day if somebody asked me to recite some of this stuff out loud from these non-English sources it would sound like gibberish to the native speakers. But I can read most of it, at least with the help of a dictionary for German, French and the other romance languages. I can even figure out loss details in Finnish, some of the Eastern European languages and decipher some Japanese. Stop waiting for someone else to do it for you, get off your butt, buy a dictionary and work it out. It really isn't that difficult and if you're truly interested in this stuff it really is that bloody simple. End of speech.