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Old 3rd March 2021, 21:41
rof120 rof120 is offline
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Adolf Galland's book in French translaiton

Please don’t jump to conclusions all too fast. You’ll find a world-wide challenge at the end but it’s the result of the preceding explanations.

Ed West wrote this on March 2 and he was damn right: (MY red colour)

#3
2nd March 2021, 18:47
edwest2
Alter Hase

Re: FOTO FLUGZEUG Messerschmitt Bf109 Me109 mit Zusatztank in JFS7 Nancy Essay #01
________________________________________
The reality is that (…) In one area where I have some expertise, I know it happens that some people assume something as opposed to doing their own research.
Best,
Ed
==================
Various accusations (let's face it: libelling) were posted HERE and never deleted, never banned so quite naturally a study of this topic is posted here too.

FalkeEins
4th September 2006, 11:41
Michelet's French edition/translation of Galland's memoir did contain much extra material...but most of it came directly from the 'translator' ..
(...)

#3
Message par CJE » dim. août 10, 2008 9:11 pm
Bonjour,

L'auteur a utilisé la version publiée par Schneekluth Verlag en 1953, ce qui explique qu'il peut y avoir des différences de traduction - le texte de l'édition "J'ai lu leur aventure" étant assez mal traduit.
La version de Michelet est truffée de considérations personnelles de l'éditeur qui en polluent la lecture.

CJE

ENGLISH TRANSLATION of the above:

The author (???) used the version (??) published 1953 by Schneekluth Verlag (= Publishers), which explains that there can be some differences in the translation – the text of “J’ai lu leur (I have read their) aventure” being rather poorly translated.
Michelet’s version is peppered with personal views of the publisher (i.e. Michelet) which pollute the reading.
CJE
==========================
This is quite an interesting story for it is quite typical and we all can learn a lot thanks to it. I think we all know Ed West as a serious, calm, reliable and wise person. This doesn’t make him infallible for he is human but in most cases his views are interesting, like in this case. What he wrote applies perfectly to what poorly-informed and ill-meaning people spread all over the Internet, whatever their reasons, for about 20 years (systematic libelling).
To sum up: FalkeEins wrote that the “translator” (in fact a master of this trade !) added most of the “new” text passages himself.

CJE, too, wrote this all over the place except at the very end of his activity, when he changed his message, stating that “Michelet’s version is the most comprehensive one but uninteresting” (the original German text too, because only Galland’s own, unpublished diary was interesting). He needed only 55 years to discover that. In the reproduced quotation he swaps “author” (this was Adolf Galland) and French translator (Yves Michelet). What’s more, the original publishers did not publish any “version” but simply Galland’s original, comprehensive text. I’ll explain everything in the following.

“Michelet’s version” is “peppered” with nothing at all.

He translated the original German text as it was, in a very exact translation, “the best of all translations” according to Galland, who sent him – about this – a letter so flattering that the addressee (Michelet) was embarrassed – he told me so. Galland, his German publishers and the former German fighter pilots had been very upset about the first French version, in which about 60 % of the text had vanished, so that the comprehensive text was 2.5 times longer (two and a half times longer), the surviving part being mostly wrong or ridiculous, or added by the 1954 “translator” although he had cut 60 %, like the mention of Salzburg, “a scenery in which Mozart’s delicate charm still was floating”. Adolf Galland, needless to say, never wrote such a horrible pink kitsch (French people have a strange, kitschy, nearly hysterical, relationship with Mozart’s memory). According to this great poet “Riehm” was a suburb of Salzburg, which was a rather small city contrary to Munich, one of Germany’s largest cities with about 1 million inhabitants (now 1.5 million) - twice “Riehm” instead of Riem, where Munich’s airport was situated for about 70 years, now simply part of Munich, as it already was before WW II. So a part of Munich is – according to the 1954 French “translation” – a suburb of Salzburg (today: 155,000 inhabitants), which is only 1/10 as large as Munich and at a distance of 100 km (60 miles), 140 km if you use the Autobahn (motorway, expressway, highway – well, everybody, it seems, understands “Autobahn”).

It is just incredible that any people could trust a “translator” who published such nonsense. In the 1954 version you can find ”the jammed ejection seat” and “my second parachute” (June 21, 1941). The whole thing is peppered with such gems. As a compensation this “translation” never mentioned that Galland was wounded and so NOT on Salzburg airfield when his deputy Heinz Bär, obeying orders, destroyed the Me 262s there.

1985 (32 years after the first, original German edition) Galland himself added a few pages about the 1940 French Campaign and the non-British fighter pilots (Poles, Czechs…) in the Battle of Britain, together about 4 pages among 500 (0.8 % pages added by Adolf Galland).

What such critics as CJE, “FalkeEins” (sic) and others wrote about “the new pages” (sic) in Michelet’s translation is pure nonsense. Not one single word is true. He only added a foreword written by a WW II-French fighter pilot (general Jacques Andrieux, who shot down at least 6 German fighters among the toughest – JG 2 and 26), a few necessary explanations (not in the main text but before it) and annexes (18 pages not 300…) at the end (see page 475), clearly signed by him (the translator) and separated from Galland’s text as well as a few dozen essential footnotes (would you know the meaning of KdF, Füherbefehl or KWK, hmmm?) and 100 more photographs. Michelet mentioned several times that all footnotes were added by himself and were necessary. The translation of Galland’s text is perfectly accurate and comprehensive including some jokes and humour (often the most difficult things to translate) and contains no “new” pages except the above-mentioned about 4 pages added by Adolf Galland himself.

The “new” pages were there already in the first 1953 German edition and later too, so they were not new at all when Michelet translated them (1985).

Those who criticise the so-called “new” pages ought to have checked on this before they libelled a highly qualified, professional and conscientious translator who worked for 40 years, at such a high level that you can’t even imagine it, for the world headquarters of SIEMENS in Germany (“Ingenieur-Übersetzer” dealing with everything in electrical engineering, like whole power stations, 400,000 volt-power stations and everything else), for SAAB combat aircraft Draken and Viggen, Asea (the Swedish “General Electric”, now merged into the Swedish-German-Swiss firm ABB, ex- BBC or Brown Boveri), the world-famous German machine-tool firm Gildemeister, the French “aérospatiale”(now merged into Airbus), OCDE (OECD if you prefer), the main patent agencies in Paris, Stockholm and Bern (Swiss capital), the European Patent Office (3 years main French translator), the German makers of the best main battle tank in the world (Leopard and Leopard 2) and their French partners led by a general, and so on. You can add NATO but I can’t elaborate on this.

No they never made any comparison between his French translation and the original German text, “Die Ersten und die Letzten”, first published 1953 in Buenos Aires. This German text was never amended nor changed, it is still the same today including a few errors like “Midway seized by Japan”. In the meantime there were numerous, various editions even in German, some of which were shortened. Michelet translated the original, comprehensive German text. The terrible “translation” published 1954 by Robert Laffont, “Jusqu’au bout sur nos Messerschmitt” had so upset Galland and the German publishers – they were really furious – that they felt they had to check Michelet’s translation very thoroughly in Germany. Many people there including Galland and some of his WW II-comrades understood French very well (and many still do).

They never made ONE SINGLE REMARK, which means that Michelet’s “version” (rather a very exact and excellent translation) was accepted by Adolf Galland, his publishers and the surviving German fighter pilots (1985). According to Galland it is the best of all translations (English, Spanish, Portugese, Finnish etc.).

Before you spread such “accusations” and libel one of the very best translators in the world you’d better be absolutely sure and see to it that you don’t talk nonsense, which was the case, and how !

Simply purchase, or borrow, a copy of the 1985-1987 French edition (four batches; 27 000 copies were sold) and a copy of the comprehensive German text (of course there were numerous reprints after 1953). Beware for several shortened editions were printed too. I purchased two copies for 10 euros each at ebay (one copy for a friend).

Then put both books on a table or on your manager’s desk and compare both texts. You need not understand German at all. You’ll see immediately that the chapters and all their paragraphs are exactly the same, likewise all figures, names of persons or locations, quotations with quotation marks, etc. It is undisputable that both editions, German (COMPREHENSIVE 1953 text) and French (the 1987 printing batch is slightly better) match perfectly.

Those fellows who made themselves ridiculous with their systematic libelling were boys, aged about 10-15, when they read the terrible 1954 French edition and, “quite naturally”, they deeply loved this magic Galland-text, they thought it was the supreme, unequalled text on the Luftwaffe. Then, 32 years later, came that horrible, wholly unknown Yves Michelet with an entirely new, completely different French edition and, what beats all, he dared be a friend of Galland’s, who trusted him entirely (he put this in writing). These naïve people had not grown up, they were not able to think independently nor to see the very obvious: the “new” French edition was VERY OBVIOUSLY the only worthwhile one (see above), but they could never accept that the book they had been loving and worshiping for 20 to 30 years was worth nothing. “Ejection seat” ! “My second parachute” ! ”Mozart” !

No, the CJEs, the FalkeEins’ and the like could never accept that. Even the 1941 ejection seat in a Me 109 could not change their mind. They really were no aviation experts ! (The whole 1954 “translation”, “Jusqu’au bout sur nos Messerschmitt”, is of the same stunning quality but they never noticed – amateurs, really). Instead of amending their beliefs they chose to insult and libel the genuine, honest translator who dared be right (a terrible crime) and obviously knew air war etc., and had invested six months (6) of his life into the translation alone (approximately 700 typed pages), of course without any salary nor any other income.

CJE had one more reason for this behaviour: he happened to publish some aviation books himself from time to time and literally hated any competitor who possibly could be successful and “steal” some readers from him. On top of this he wanted any interesting aviation subject for himself only. This is why he sued the magazine “avions”, who wanted to publish a special issue on Pierre Clostermann. He asked the court to forbid “avions” to do it. Of course he failed. Having badly insulted Clostermann in one of his small books he was sued by him and sentenced to pay a high sum in compensation and pay for the publication of the court’s decision in 6 aviation reviews or magazines including his own, “dog-fight” I think. He appealed against this judgement and, of course, he lost again. After that he announced at TOCH that he would do it again after Clostermann’s death and he cried all over the Internet: “We really can’t say anything any more !”

I am just trying to find an explanation to this very bizarre behaviour.

Now, if you accuse me of “attacking a dead person who can’t defend himself any more”, this is an error. I am just defending a remarkable, unique translator who was libelled and insulted for about 20 years, and I am showing by whom. Don’t waste your time with such people, dead or alive. Check the French translation very exactly and tell us what you found out. Besides, criticizing dead people is permanent commonplace, every day. A few examples: I can't stand French "great men" Louis XIV and Napoléon nor Adolf Hitler (he's dead - is it forbidden to criticize him?) or Josef Stalin the mass murderer and idiot.

CHALLENGE: I herewith challenge anybody in the world to prove that “new” pages were added 1985 by the French translator into Adolf Galland’s book “Les premiers et les derniers” (The first and the last). Just come forward and show your evidence. This will be most exciting.

These so-called “new” pages would be quite numerous: 300 out of 500, so that it’s very easy to find out what pages are involved. You might check the translation at the same time. Not too soon: nobody ever made a remark on the translation (accurate or not so it’s perfectly accurate).

Last edited by rof120; 4th March 2021 at 03:22.
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