Talk:Franz Kafka

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Featured articleFranz Kafka is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on July 3, 2013.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
April 15, 2006Good article nomineeNot listed
August 27, 2012Good article nomineeListed
September 23, 2012Peer reviewReviewed
October 14, 2012Featured article candidatePromoted
Current status: Featured article

Translation difficulties exaggerated, not unusual, irrelevant, let's delete[edit]

Absurd. When is translation easy? Whenever one has to deal with colloquialisms, or with poetry of any sort, when the meaning of words is vague or multifaceted, there's difficulty. We're here describing most of the world's literature. That's a universal translation problem, not something unique to "translating Kafka into English." Want something you can translate universally? I give you Euclid's "Elements."

As for the other specific "difficulty" mentioned here, the sentence construction with the verb at the end, there are at least two problems with this complaint. One is that, were it true, it wouldn't matter, because understanding a text isn't a matter of the psychological impact of your first reading of a sentence. As in, "oh, THAT's the verb, how that changes the experience of the story!" It might be true for inexperienced readers, middle schoolers for example, and it's certainly a problem with comedy because it messes up the timing, but that's it. The second problem (see my use of the subjunctive, above) is that it's not true. English is flexible enough for the verb to come at the end. See Shakespeare for a thousand examples. Yes, in the hands of most translators it will sound awkward, but that just means you need a better translation or a more intelligent reader. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.232.191.16 (talkcontribs) November 18, 2014

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Franz Kafka. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

As of February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete the "External links modified" sections if they want, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{sourcecheck}} (last update: 15 July 2018).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.


Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 18:49, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Was K a civil servant?[edit]

I self-reverted an edit which removed "Austrian Civil servants". But just as a point of clarification. His employment with the workers accident insurance bureau, was this an arm of local government or was it a private company which had been contracted to do this by the Kingdom of Bohemia? Do we have any information on this? The passage is uncited. Irondome (talk) 16:44, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
I belatedly realized that he was employed not only by Generali but also by the "Arbeiter-Unfall-Versicherungs-Anstalt für das Königreich Böhmen" - though it's not all clear to me to whether this was a public institution or another private insurance workers' compensation insurace (or underwriter) company.--2A00:1028:83BE:4392:FC27:ED7D:844B:6E89 (talk) 17:02, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
Indeed. Irondome (talk) 19:56, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
Exactly. Assicurazioni Generali was/still is quite clearly a private insurance company, the Arbeiter-Unfall-Versicherungs-Anstalt für das Königreich Böhmen (i.e. - roughly translated - "Workers' compensation insurance institute/establishment for the Kingdom of Bohemia") certainly sounds quite official-like. Again, I was not aware about the latter when I made my previous edit, otherwise I hadn't made it.--2A00:1028:83BE:4392:FC27:ED7D:844B:6E89 (talk) 20:21, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
(e/c)It is just not made clear in mainspace. I am assuming that K's latter job at the Arbeiter-Unfall-Versicherungs-Anstalt für das Königreich Böhmen was part of a public-private partnership. Insurance-related matters are almost invariably handled by the private sectors of most non-communist states as far as I am aware. So was FK part of an outsource? In which case what was his status? Seconded to the Bavarian state? We should have a dig around sources on this. Very specialised stuff but it would improve the article. Irondome (talk) 20:35, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
this source calls it a "government-supported insurance agency". – filelakeshoe (t / c) 20:29, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
Which does not make the whole thing anything easier, at all - term "government-supported insurance agency" still does not make it much clearer if its clerks/officials were considered being 'civil servants' by the Austria-Hungary.-2A00:1028:83BE:4392:FC27:ED7D:844B:6E89 (talk) 21:23, 10 October 2017 (UTC)