All quiet on the Western Front?

[EastSurrey]

I am trying to date when a multi chapter account of personal experience, by an ordinary Tommy, that  I am editing, was written. Whilst many chapters are  clearly, by their dates,  all but contemporaneous- written within months of the events described, I am suspicious about one, which is not in the original handwriting. It has a reference to 'the official news  says "All quiet on the Western Front"'. This suggests to me that the part in question was rewritten in or after 1930 when the famous film appeared , especially as I think it was simply a German phrase originally, that would not have been known to ordinary British soldiers. What do you think?

Michael

[David Filsell]

It was certainly a contemporary German term, but I would a serving Tommy know that? I suspect not. The book was published in the UK in 1929

[Magnumbellum]

Some clarification is required. All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) was an anglicisation of the German title of Erich Maria Remarque's celebrated novel Im Westen Nichts Neues, which literally translates into English as "No news in the West".

 

It is a peculiarly German phrase, in the sense that as Germany was fighting on two fronts, news had to be made clear as to which front was being reported at any particular time. So far as Britain and ordinary British people were concerned, what the Germans called the Western Front was simply The Front, and geographically east of Britain, anyway. If a news topic arose from further east, then Eastern Front would be used.

 

I agree that the use of the phrase in the memoir in question indicates more or less certainly a borrowing from the English version of Remarque, and therefore not earlier than 1929, the date of the book's English publication.

[Guest]

Just out of interest.

 

 

Mike

[David Filsell]

MB,

You are quite correct - careless, I was forgetting the fact of the translation - although skipman's. Post does show an interesting earlier uk use!

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, David Filsell said:

 skipman's. Post does show an interesting earlier uk use!

 

The full article is here, and the phrase is mentioned a number of times. Worth a read. Click

 

Mike

[Guest]

The earliest use of the phrase appears to be a newspaper headline in March 1915 Click

 

 

Mike

[T8HANTS]

Would the use of the phrase have been influenced by the well known (at the time) song "All quite along the Potomac", and were similar phrases applied to previous wars post 1860's?

[Uncle George]

2 hours ago, Magnumbellum said:

Some clarification is required. All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) was an anglicisation of the German title of Erich Maria Remarque's celebrated novel Im Westen Nicht Neues, which literally translates into English as "No news in the West".

 

 

Would a better literal translation of ' ... nichts Neues' not be 'Nothing New ... '? - an ironic comment on the death of Paul.

[Guest]

Another early use of phrase Click

 

Mike

[depaor01]

22 minutes ago, Uncle George said:

 

Would a better literal translation of ' ... Nicht Neues' not be 'Nothing New ... '? - an ironic comment on the death of Paul.

I've always understood the original title to be "Nothing New" in translation.

 

Dave

[Magnumbellum]

1 hour ago, depaor01 said:

I've always understood the original title to be "Nothing New" in translation.

 

These exchanges have jogged my memory of some fifty years ago, when I first came across the book, and reading that an original translation of the title as Nothing New in the West had been superseded by All Quiet on the Western Front, the latter phrase allegedly being familiar to British potential readers,

 

it appears that there may have been something in that argument, although the reasoning is difficult to follow, as a number of links offered fr cited articles lead only to subscription invitations.

[Guest]

6 hours ago, Magnumbellum said:

 

 a number of links offered fr cited articles lead only to subscription invitations.

 

Yes, sorry, they are links to pages in the British Newspaper Library which require a subscription. The articles are a bit too long to transcribe. I wouldn't buy a subscription to see them. I imagine these pages will also be available on FindMyPast.

 

Mike

[spof]

If you go to Trove You can read Australian newspapers (available free online) which often reprinted many articles from British papers. Some examples:

 

A report about Pozieres 21 Oct 1916

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article86079176

(who needs the Times when you have The Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate)

 

19 Nov 1916

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article212408504

 

9 Jan 1917

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article146074133

 

Rather apt considering it was an ex-AIF man (2nd Lt Arthur Wesley Wheen MM and 2 Bars) who did the first English translation in 1929.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[brummell]

The 'all quiet' phrase does appeal to that particularly English love of mixed irony and understatement, so I can well see how it could make it from newspaper headlines to the national consciousness and become the best English title for Remarque's novel.

 

 

- brummell

[SiegeGunner]

In Ernst Jünger's 'Storm of Steel' there is a reference to a sign-board in a German trench that reads 'Zur Granatenecke'  ... which is rendered in the recent 'new' translation by Michael Hofmann as 'Ordnance this way'.  The correct translation, in my opinion, is 'Shellfire Corner', which has all the right resonances for the English reader.

 

'Im Westen nichts Neues' is a phrase that was used in high-level German communiqués on the state of the war, which usually began with reports of events on the Eastern Front.  It literally means 'In the West, nothing new (to report)'.  In its original context, the literal translation is fine, but it does not have the right resonances for the title of Remarque's novel, and it seems obvious to me that, as with the example above, someone who already knew the expression 'All Quiet on the Western Front' stepped in and proposed it.  It is not, as such, a translation of 'Im Westen nichts Neues', so I do not believe that it was an inspired translation devised in 1929  ...  it's a pre-existing phrase that someone knowledgeable realised was the perfect 'equivalent expression' in British parlance.

 

Mick

[Guest]

Might be worth looking at Wheen's papers. " This series covers the whole process of the translating of the famous novel by E.M. Remarque. It contains a bound typescript in German (1927), a printed German text, Wheen's manuscript in English, versions of the English typescript and galley proofs. " Click

 

Mike

[brummell]

1 hour ago, SiegeGunner said:

...it's a pre-existing phrase that someone knowledgeable realised was the perfect 'equivalent expression' in British parlance.

 

Exactly, and that is the art of good translation - more of a matter of 'what by these words does the author want me to feel' than 'what do these words mean in English'.

 

 

- brummell

[Uncle George]

27 minutes ago, brummell said:

 

Exactly, and that is the art of good translation - more of a matter of 'what by these words does the author want me to feel' than 'what do these words mean in English'.

 

 

- brummell

 

Well said. I have an edition of 'Under Fire', first published in 1926, which is almost unreadable due to what seems to be a literal translation. An example, taken at random:

 

"Their spiteful exasperation with the loiterers mounts higher and higher. Tirloir the Grumbler takes the lead and expands. This is where he comes in. With his little pointed gesticulations he goads and spurs the anger all around him."

 

So it grinds endlessly on. The translation is by one Fitzwater Wray.

 

[SiegeGunner]

Sometimes the 'perfect equivalent' translation is too good.  In my first job as a professional translator, I had to translate an article about paper recycling, which included a sentence saying that pulp and paper are finite resources 'weil Holz wächst nicht im Himmel', which I gleefully rendered as 'because wood does not grow on trees' ...

[EastSurrey]

Thank you, everybody, for your comments. I believed , initially, that the first part of the memoir must have been reworked some years after the War, but in the light of your comments, I may well have been wrong!

Michael

[David Filsell]

As I and others have frequently said on the forum, however feted Hoffman is as a translator, his version of Storm of Steel is a crock. By his own admission to me he does not understand German military terminology.