Animorphs in German

also crafterfive and madgirlfive I’m reading Animorphs translated into German, very slowly, as I study German.

[animorphsingerman]

You can find the Animorphs books in German here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Ux7SJfF2vbLm5RH0RPFkHFHE0za0Cv32?usp=sharing

It only has the first 30 or so; I don’t think the rest were translated?

Animorphs Deutsche Ebooks - Google Drive

There are some things I’m only noticing as I’m careful going through every word. And since there seems to be an Animorphs community on here, I want to share!

If you catch any differences between the translation and the original, let me know!

[animorphsingerman]

Her fingers crumpled and disappeared; now remained black stubby nails.

- book 3, Cassie first morphing a wolf

That’s a typo, right?

“stummei” keeps going back to “stumm” - dumb, mute. “stummeiförmige” - mute-shaped - doesn’t really even make sense as a word. “mute-shaped” nails?

“Stummel” - stump, stub - makes perfect sense. “Stummelförmige” - stub-shaped - stubby. Stubby nails makes perfect sense here, as a description for wolf claws.

Does “stummeiförmige” make sense in some way I’m missing, or is this just a typo? This whole book has had some weird errors in it.

[animorphsingerman]

<Until now,> I said, <until today only one of us has been hurt - me. But I’m not giving up. I don’t want to play the leader. But early in the morning I will make for the mountains. What you others do is your thing.>

- book 3

Huh. I didn’t notice as a kid, or even my adult reread, but… is Tobias a manipulative little fuck?

He doesn’t want to play leader - he ran to Jake in book 1 and talked HIM into that.

And I’ve been kicking around this headcanon that Tobias, probably subconsciously, got himself stuck in morph as a kind of hostage. “Oh, you want to give up the fight? I can’t do that, I’m TRAPPED AS A BIRD.” “Oh, this is making your life hard? Try being a BIRD, FOREVER.”

Tobias is the True Believer, from the start. He was most attached to Elfangor, he was most dedicated to the fight, he was the one who knew they had to team up and fight together, and Jake had to be the leader.

And we never see him directly try to guilt anyone into going. But he sure did bring it up here, right before insisting he’d go on his own, they can make their own decisions. No pressure from him.

Idk. It’s a datapoint for my headcanon.

[animorphsingerman]

“We can’t always get lucky. Do you not understand that? Sooner of later we will make a mistake. Sooner or later we will be standing around crying, because Jake or Rachel or Cassie or Tobias are dead.”

“You know what?” exploded Rachel. “I’ve had it with talking you into this, Marco. You want out? Well beautiful, you are OUT!”

- book 3, the usual argument

I’m in my feelings about Animorphs, as usual. This reminds me of a textpost thing I saw a while back:

It feels very Animorphs. This could be applied to any of them. They could stop any time. But again and again, they choose not to.

[animorphsingerman]

Marco rolled his eyes, “The mountains? Have you suburbanites ever been to the mountains? Oh, man, you have no idea! We’re talking about a really big area here. No matter how big that ship is, it could hide itself a thousand places in the mountains.”

- book 3, after Tobias tells the group about the invisible ship

Aw! Baby’s first out of town adventure!

I love rereading the early books. Being intimidated by the local mountains now really puts their later exploits into perspective.

[professorfoglio]

Book Chat for 7/18

books Today's non-fiction read is 'A City on Mars' by Kelly & Zach Weinersmith. Now, I love me some space exploration, and this is a very readable treatise on the feasibility of all those exciting space projects that we all desperately want and why you're going to have to wait awhile to see them (at best), and in many cases, should we even bother?

[animorphsingerman]

“Look,” said Marco thoughtfully. “The Yeerks must verfugen over some camouflage technology. Like a stealth bomber, only much better.”

- book 3, discussing the invisible ship

German question:

Is this meant to be verfügen?

verfugen - to regrout, to repoint (brickwork)

verfügen - to command (among other meanings)

Gotta be verfügen, right? Is there some sneaky extra meaning to verfugen that would make sense here?

[animorphsingerman]

I just finished Of Mice and Men, and when I searched for it on Tumblr I found 99% posts about Lennie being everyone’s favorite, 1% posts about George, and 0% about the woman we know only as “Curley’s wife”. Guess I gotta be the change I want to see in the world and write my own. So I’m gonna talk about “Curley’s wife”, and then I’m gonna talk about Lennie.

So, “Curley’s wife”. No name. She’s described to us before we even meet her as a slut who wants to sleep with all the men on the ranch, and when we do meet her, she does seem to be there to flirt. This doesn’t seem to be entirely unreturned, as Slim greets her with “Hi, Good-lookin’.” This is the only positive treatment we see her get from anyone. Anyway, she acts a bit flirty with the men, and then off she goes. The men talk about her a bit, calling her a tramp, a bitch, a rat-trap, jail bait, and so on.

Next time we see her, she’s poking her head in on a talk between a few men. They’re immediately scowly, telling her to get lost, and she points out that men on their own are always very nice to her, it’s only when they have witnesses around that they can’t wait to get rid of her. She really doesn’t seem flirty in this scene, just looking for some company:

“Well, I ain’t giving you no trouble. Think I don’t like to talk to somebody ever’ once in a while? Think I like to stick in that house alla time?”

They tell her she’s got a husband, and has to leave. She says yes, her husband, who is off at a whore house, only ever wants to talk about how he’d beat up anyone who makes him mad, and she’s sick of him. She rambles a bit about how she could’ve been a movie star, but instead she’s out here talking to these losers who want nothing to do with her, because she’s literally got no one else to talk to. And sure enough, they reply by telling her again to get lost. No girls allowed.

“Curley’s wife” (wow I wish she had a name) is not a perfect person. When the black man in the group tries to pull patriarchy on her, and say he’ll go talk to the boss and get her in trouble, she snaps right back pulling race on him, saying she can get him lynched. But this is a racist book full of racist characters, and there isn’t a single one of them (except Lennie) who wouldn’t have gotten nasty just as quickly if the black man had given them any trouble. If we’re going to dismiss “Curley’s wife” at this point with a “fuck her, she’s racist”, we might as well just put the whole book down and move on.

From there the book moves back to Lennie, so let’s do so as well. Everyone’s favorite animal killer. We’re told over and over again that he doesn’t mean to hurt the animals, he just doesn’t know his own strength, he just pets them too hard and they die. Except any time we circle back to that, we get a different story.

First, the mice: He pets them until they try to bite him, then he squeezes their head, and they die.

Then the puppy. We get his own words on it:

“I was jus’ playin’ with him…. an’ he made like he’s gonna bite me…. an’ I made like I was gonna smack him…. an’…. an’ I done it. An’ then he was dead.”

Okay, those are not the same thing as just petting them and oops, they died, because he’s so strong. He kills them in anger when they resist his constant petting.

So, now we get “Curley’s wife” and Lennie in a conversation. She finds him in the barn, contemplating how he’s going to avoid getting in trouble for killing the puppy. Maybe her original intention was to flirt with him, but she seems to pick up pretty quickly that he’s mentally disabled and honestly, she just wants to talk to someone. She comforts him over the puppy, saying she’s sure he can get another one. She tells him a bit of her backstory, and how she’s not happy with her marriage. She’s just a young woman not happy with her life, wanting something more. When he says he just likes petting soft things, she reassures him that that’s not crazy behavior, she does too! Sometimes she just pets her own hair, to feel how soft it is! And then, kindly, she lets him pet her hair, with a “Don’t you muss it up”.

Well. He pets too hard. She tries to pull away. He won’t let her. She starts to yell. Everyone’s favorite character realizes he could get in trouble, and puts his hand over her face to keep her quiet. She keeps struggling. Everyone’s favorite character gets angry. She struggles. Everyone’s favorite character shakes her, angrily, and snaps her neck.

Sorry, mentally disabled or not, that is NOT an accident.

He was invited to touch her hair, wouldn’t let go, grabbed her face with the motive of keeping himself out of trouble, got angry, and shook her to death. I’m just not having it with this “it was an accident, he’s just a big dumb baby” reading that seems to be everyone’s take. It’s not that Lennie is just mentally disabled and doesn’t know his own strength. He shook her to death in anger, trying to keep himself out of trouble.

Look, I got teary at the end too, when George had to kill him. In a better world, Lennie would have been taught to control himself better, or kept somewhere where he wouldn’t hurt people and animals. But that was not an accident. That was part of a pattern of behavior, where he kills in anger.

“Curley’s wife”’s corpse is then blamed for ruining the men’s plans to buy some land. Curley sees her death as nothing but an excuse to go and kill Lennie. “Curley’s wife”, unnamed, is dead for wanting to talk to people, and being nice to the wrong man.

I just thought there should be at least one post about her.

[animorphsingerman]

I missed school. Although I was constantly angemacht by any blowhard.

- book 3, Tobias having too much free time

Well, this is a fun translation!

My phone’s built in translator kept giving me “turned on” for angemacht. Which, you know, everyone giggle, this translates to “Tobias was turned on by bullies.”! lol, what a silly sentence! This is Animorphs! We’re here to confront war crimes, the food chain, and our own internal organs, not our sexuality!

So, I go to check a more reliable dictionary, and it turns out I was right, angemacht DOESN’T mean “turned on”.

It means “hit on”.

anmachen: to proposition somebody, to chat somebody up, to come on to somebody, to hit on somebody, to make a play for, to try to get off with, to turn on, to make a move on…

So… as far as I can tell, this is “Although I was constantly hit on by any blowhard.”

[animorphsingerman]

I could still hear Jake’s voice in my ear from that time on the beach, saying that I eat mice. Or ate from the street.

- book 3, Tobias having issues about eating as a hawk

Found a translation change!

The original English has a fairly different paragraph in this place:

Weird change, right? Why make Jake the bad guy? Seems out of character for him. And am I translating wrong, or is this phrased like it’s referencing a non-hypothetical past event?

Then I looked at the first book (only beach scene so far in the series), and found this:

I didn’t clock it at the time, but there’s Jake, making those exact comments!

I’m guessing the translator was outraged at the injustice of Marco getting the blame for hypothetic insults that Jake actually literally made, and changed this line to fix it! If that’s what happened, I actually kind of love that someone who cared enough to fix this was doing the translating.

(Especially compared to the comics not bothering to spell Ax’s full name right.)

[animorphsingerman]

^ The Laws of Robotics, from “Ich der Roboter”, the German translation of “I, Robot”, by Isaac Asimov

(Spoilers for “I, Robot” ahead.)

The German version has FOUR laws of robotics???

It took me a while to figure out the difference between the zeroth and first law. “Menschheit”, in the zeroth law, refers to all human kind, whereas “einem menschlichen Wesen” is “a human being”. So the first law of robotics says that a robot may not harm a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. So far so good; that’s just what the original English version says.

But then the German version goes on to say “unless that would violate the zeroth law.” The zeroth law, which isn’t in the English version at all, says that a robot may not harm human kind, or through inaction allow human kind to come to harm.

[insert some kind of ‘mind-blown’ gif here]

The zeroth law was NOT in the original! And since a lot of Asimov robot stories revolve around logically dissecting the laws of robotics, I’m really surprised they changed them!

It also casts the end of the book in a different light.

In the end, the giant thinking engines, running on the three(/four) laws operating system, gently begin taking over humanity for its own good, easily out-thinking those who rebel against machine rule. In the English version, this seemed to me like the result of all the developments in robotic technology that have built up throughout the five decades of the story. The robots have gotten more discerning and clever, and can think about the laws that govern them in new ways. The robots are able to start following their first rule - to allow no human to come to harm - in broader, more effective ways.

The robots were never tasked with the salvation of humanity, in the English version. Humanity built something it couldn’t fully understand.

The Zeroth Rule of Robotics tells robots they are responsible for humanity. The benign rule of the thinking engines becomes less a matter of unexpected results, and more a matter of obedience.

I don’t think it will change much in the details of the stories, really. But it sure does change the flavor.

[animorphsingerman]

But she didn’t really get it. I already didn’t have a home, since the death of my parents. I was used to being alone.

- book 3, Tobias doesn’t like Rachel feeling sorry for him

“Find a discontinuity.” Another bingo square!

I don’t remember if they ever mention what Tobias thinks the story with his dad is, but as far as he knows his mom up and abandoned him, not died.

[animorphsingerman]

Jake is a leader by nature. If you were ever locked in a burning house, you would turn to Jake and ask “What should we do?” And he would know the answer.

- book 3, Tobias describing Jake

No pressure, Jake.

Tobias really has a leader-crush on Jake. In the first book, Jake is the one he tracks down first, to start the Animorphs. Tobias can’t hold the group together, but Jake can, and Tobias knows it. Then we get this description of Jake.

Tobias is really the true-believer from the start. He’s the most dedicated to the fight, he’s the most moved by Elfangor, and now we see, he really, honestly does believe Jake can get them through this.

[animorphsingerman]

Marco stayed very skeptical about the Animorphs. Although it was actually him that came up with the name Animorphs.

- book 3, the intro stuff

“They remind us that Marco named the Animorphs.” has got to be on Animorphs bingo.

[animorphsingerman]

Pearl’s anger stood in sharp contrast to the childish needling. “I know that you killed her. Everyone knows that it was your fault.”

Cinder stared at her, the sudden change to the serious tone shook her. “That’s not true. I was never sick.”

- Cinder, book 1 of the Lunar Chronicles

I don’t think Cinder ever really internalizes that… yeah, she probably killed Peony.

Like, she was right on top of the outbreak in the market. And for some reason she hides from and avoids the medical drones that show up (Scarlet does the same thing; do people not KNOW that testing for the plague takes thirty seconds and then you’re free to go??), and doesn’t get tested for the plague, and then GOES STRAIGHT HOME. Shortly thereafter, Peony’s got the plague.

At the time, she comes to the reasonable conclusion that since she doesn’t have the plague, she can’t be the one who infected Peony. There are not symptomless carriers among Earthens. But later she learns that she’s Lunar, and absolutely can be a carrier. For a moment, during the conversation about being a carrier, she even seems to accept that she probably infected Peony.

Despite this, she visits Peony in quarantine and then immediately runs her germ-carrying ass out into the public. The fact that she’s carrying the plague for a short period (hours!) doesn’t seem to even CROSS HER MIND. I mean, fuck, no wonder this world can’t get the plague under control, no one seems to have internalized germ theory in the slightest, or care if they unknowingly infect strangers.

I wish I’d taken screenshots of all these bits as I found them, but too late now, we’re relying on my memory. IIRC, there’s another scene where she doesn’t so much have personal guilt but a general Lunar guilt - “I didn’t cause the plague! Uh, well, Lunars coming to Earth did actually cause the plague, so… kinda?” sorta thing.

And then there’s this scene, above, where she denies that she infected Peony - even though at this point she knows it’s a serious possibility. Of course, she can’t say “You’re right, I’m secretly a Lunar, and can carry the plague.” But there’s no indication that she knows what she’s saying isn’t true. She’s not denying it to keep her secret. She just seems to have let herself forget that… yeah, she probably infected Peony.

It’s reasonable and realistic that she would have this little mental break - she’s got a lot going on being a protagonist, and can’t get bogged down in guilt! But it is interesting that it never really gets confronted or resolved, all through the series. This mental break just lives in Cinder’s head.

She probably killed her sister. She can’t have killed her sister because she wasn’t sick. She can be a symptomless carrier. She can’t have killed her sister, she wasn’t sick.

She can’t have killed her sister, she wasn’t sick.

She can’t have killed her sister, she wasn’t sick!

She can’t have killed her sister.

[animorphsingerman]

Highlighting all the words I look up for a page!

Honestly, the amount I look up doesn’t seem to be getting any smaller. But I’m certainly getting through the pages a lot faster! I guess the sentences are getting easier, and accumulating the vocabulary of a middle schooler is just going to take time. I feel like I’m so much better at German than I was a few months ago! But I did jump straight from barely-A1-duolingoing to reading books, so a weird progression is bound to happen.

I can still barely catch a few words of spoken German, but honestly, I barely want to talk to people in English, nevermind a second language. Giving myself permission to just learn what I actually want to do has been the real breakthrough, after trying and failing to learn a second language so many times!

[animorphsingerman]

I looked up again and saw how the sunlight through the red tail feathers shined, while he flew into the sunset.

- book 3, Tobias looking after the bird he freed from the used car salesman

German question:

Is ‘er’ right there?

Because the bird is definitely a she, and the book uses ‘sie’ to refer to her in other places: ‘sie erkannte einen Weg in die Freiheit’ and ‘sie schlug mit den Flügeln’.

Did the translator just make a mistake, or am I missing some grammar here?