[PW] German Translation of 'The Calf Path'

[Kevin O'Kelly]

Good question. I am going to contact the patron and ask. The question was forwarded to me from our Ask-A-Librarian email on the library's website. I just decided to shoot for optimum first--and from the relative silence in response to my query I get the impression that no one else can think of anything relatively obvious that I forgot to do.

I was half-hoping that John Dyson or Dennis Lien would know off the top of their heads about some Central European library that specializes in the work of third-rate American writers in translation :-)

Jeanne Schramm <jeanne.schramm at gmail.com> wrote: Does the patron want a pure translation of the entire poem?  Would a loose
translation which gives the general drift (for a German-speaking patron) be
O.K.?   I put the best-known part of the poem ...

For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf paths of the mind,
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done . . .
But how wise old wood-gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf . . .
For thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.

     ... into the Babelfish translator at altavista.com and translated it
from English to German.   Perhaps that approach for this part or for all of
the verses --  would suffice until a pure translation turns up (if that's
what is actually needed).
Jeanne Schramm, WLSC, W. Liberty, WV   26074

On 6/1/07, Kevin O'Kelly  wrote:
>
> Wombats:
>
> A patron has emailed wanting to know if I've any idea where she can get a
> German translation of the Sam Walter Foss poem, 'The Calf-Path,' which
> appears in his collection, "Whiffs from Wild Meadows."
>
> I have done an author search for Sam Walter Foss in OCLC limiting the
> language to German (nichts), and done a Google search for same specifying
> only German-language pages.
>
> I also did an author search in the catalog of the German National Library.
>
> Ideas, suggestions?
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Kevin
>
>
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