Glossary entry

German term or phrase:

Heisenberg quote

English translation:

suggest paraphrase + quote approach

Added to glossary by Brie Vernier
Jan 26, 2006 21:01
18 yrs ago
German term

Heisenberg quote

German to English Science Poetry & Literature Heisenberg quote
Any Heisenberg fans out there this evening? I have the following excerpt from something Heisenberg wrote - as far as I can tell, it is from "Physics and Beyond" (New York: Harper and Row, 1971). My problem is that I have found much of the quote in English on the web, but a few parts are missing, like the first sentence of the following excerpt, as well as several segments later on.

So my question is this: Does anyone just happen to have this book lying around and can look up the part I need? And barring that, how is such a situation usually handled? I.e. using the original source to the extent it is available, of course, but I can't really pass off my own translation of any "gaps" as part of the accepted (published) translation. This is for a magazine article, so footnotes are not really an option. Could it be as simple as putting my "filler" in square brackets?

TIA

„Einige Tage genügten, um den am Anfang in solchen Fällen immer auftretenden mathematischen Ballast abzuwerfen und eine einfache mathematische Formulierung meiner Frage zu finden. In einigen weiteren Tagen wurde mir klar, was in einer solchen Physik, in der nur die beobachtbaren Größen eine Rolle spielen sollten, an die Stelle der [alten] Quantenbedingungen zu treten hätte. Es war auch deutlich zu spüren, daß mit dieser Zusatzbedingung ein zentraler Punkt der Theorie formuliert war, daß von da ab keine weitere Freiheit mehr blieb.
Proposed translations (English)
4 +2 suggest paraphrase + quote approach

Proposed translations

+2
1 hr
Selected

suggest paraphrase + quote approach

Hi Brie, in the circumstances (effectively a back translation?) I'd be inclined to put the parts I could definitely verify in quotes, and paraphrase the gist of the rest in keeping with the style of the main article. If that made the quote unsatisfactory in some way, I'd paraphrase more and quote less, I think.

Let's see if an afficionado comes to the rescue though ;-)
Peer comment(s):

agree Ken Cox : Sounds like good advice. Incidentally, I found 'jettison all the mathematical ballast' as a quote in an e-book on physicists, but that's probably not much help unless Brie wants to make a complete patchwork of the quotation.
10 hrs
but that line is irresistably quotable ;-)
agree Anne Schulz : Yes, it does sound like a sort of backtranslation, so there's probably no other choice.
2 days 12 hrs
Something went wrong...
4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Thanks a lot, Deborah. I ended up contacting my niece who is doing a master's degree at a US univ. She was able to get the book from their physics library and e-mail me the missing passages : ) Had that not worked, I would have followed your advice. Thanks also to Ken and Anne; yes, Ken, I'd found that bit, too, and it is indeed what the original text says, but I was still missing the beginning and end of that sentence (plus several other bits)!"
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