During the pandemic I started playing around with using DuoLingo which is a free online program to learn languages. I of course went straight for the Latin, which was a disappointingly short course. But have sense transitioned into German just because it makes me remember the distant summer I spent there before my senior year which is auspiciously where I met Jon. Clearly that’s another story for some late night fireside chat with some kind of alcohol involved, but what matters now is that I am surprised constantly how much German ‘stayed’ with me after all this time.
Lucky for me I was JUST in time for this translation.
This made me especially happy because I had just learned the word “Brauchen” which means “We NEED” in german. So I could almost completely translate the last line even if I didn’t know it by heart already! “Why we need them!” The fleisigen Nagitiere is the hard working rodent, of course.
Congratulations Ben on all your hard work that went into crafting a story worth telling and repeating and translating into other languages AND to beaver buddy Gerhard Schwab who likely made the appetite in the country for this book.
Now I just want to flip through the pages and find out if Martinez is still in it and if I am in fact translated as “offen und temperamentvoll” ?
At least one of which, of course, I usually still am.
