ABSTRACT

The poor reception of the English translation has been put down to Sofie Delffs's 'painfully literal translation' of the German source text as well as to the many misprints which it contained. Delffs was certainly highly conscious of her role as translator, as the prefaces to her translations demonstrate. Delffs was the daughter of Friedrich Wilhelm Hermann Delffs, Ordinarius and later Professor of Chemistry at Heidelberg in the period from 1843 to 1889. His wife, learn from the Times of 23 July 1866, was an 'English lady'. The asterisked footnote to the English translation read, ' "To receive a basket," means to be refused by a lady, in Germany'. Quite clearly Delffs had difficulties in weaving an appropriate English idiom into the translation and made the footnote carry the key information vital to understanding the word play of the passage. Delffs dealt with Wilhelm Raabe's playful use of sayings and idiomatic expressions on a number of occasions through the means of footnoting.