Mein Kampf (The Ford Translation) Review

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Mein Kampf (The Ford Translation) Review
Before I get into my review I should say that translation is a very special skill. Taking German in high school or even advanced languages in college does not make a person into a translator. Translation is a skill that is taught by experienced translators and is not something someone can 'just do' because he knows the language and it is not something someone can 'pick up'.
When I saw this new translation I was concerned because I was unsure if this new version was well made or poorly made and I really did not want to see this work mangled.
I have worked as a translator for over 15 years and routinely receive offers from people who want to take on my excess workload. They speak fluent German and English, but when I give them a simple paragraph to translate they seem to forget how people speak and produce a translation that is terrible. They lack the necessary skills. They know the languages, but they do not know how to translate. When I first saw a new translation was out I had images in my head of one of these unqualified people hacking out a translation in their spare time. You must preserve the meaning of the original document plus make it readable and understandable by your audience as well as be accurate to produce a good translation.
Since no one else offering an analysis of this translation has as of yet provided any qualifications I feel compelled to do so. I lived in Germany for 7 years and during that time I spent 14 months as a translator for the US Embassy in Berlin. I have a number of translation certifications in two other languages plus English, but German is my primary focus. Unlike other reviewers, I do have experience in translating German and English. I also have first hand experience translating documents from WWII. There are many people researching WWII events and records who need them translated into English. Before I left Germany I had to help someone research the history of a specific Panzer tank using the serial number which involved a great deal of translation including obscure German terms and technical words. Today there are still rooms filled with untranslated records from the Hitler era. I have translated many documents which detailed the movement of trains to concentration camps, the officer reports on problems encountered, arrest reports and interrogation results, reports by citizens against other citizens, and other more mundane day to day records. My point is that I do have experience translating modern and WWII documents and am quite familiar with the language differences.
I have to say I am suspicious of the criticisms made against this translation because many are quite silly. It makes me question their real motivation. None of the criticisms I have seen in other reviews appear to be honest evaluations and none of those making the criticisms have cited any credentials or translation experience themselves. I question whether some of those making critical statements have even read the book. Not one has the verified buyer icon! My review should show the verified buyer icon at the top because I have purchased the book and read it. In one of these questionable reviews it says Vereinsabende should not be translated as "night clubs", but as Manheim does, "club evenings" and this would be true if we were translating only that word, however this ignores its meaning in the sentence. The sentence is talking about officials sitting in a club, at night, talking business there and making their deals. It is silly to say an evening in a club is not talking about someone in a night club. It is night, they are in a club, that is a night club or at least close to it with no other contradicting information so the translation is clear and fits the sentence meaning even if it is not a word for word translation. In context it fits and the reader understands what is being discussed plus it does not alter the meaning of the passage so it is a valid translation which would be acceptable by any experienced translator. Would I have translated it this way? Maybe not, but that does not make it an invalid translation. I might have said "evenings in a club", but the difference is nit-picking.
Those criticizing this edition keep recommending Manheim and then claiming it is the recognized standard are clearly ignorant of the book's history. Manheim is not any sort of standard. There is no standard. The only reason Manheim is so common is because, until the Ford translation, it was the only American English translation still published. The Murphy edition was never published in the US because it was written in British English. The fact Manheim is so common has to do with the American market and royalties and nothing to do with any academic acceptance or its quality. Real academics recognize Manheim's version is filled with errors and poor style. Until now, it was all we had.
Manheim may have been acceptable in his day, but by today's translation standards, the Manheim version would be considered a C+ grade work.
In truth, the Murphy edition was better than Manheim so I again question the motives of those who suggest Manheim over the Ford translation when it is clearly not as well written as the Ford translation and the Manheim edition is not even as well written as Murphy's British English translation. To claim that any edition is a "standard" is misleading. They all have their advantages and drawbacks. Murphy gives an understandable translation true to the meaning at least most of the time, Manheim is a technical word for word translation, and the Ford translation is easier to read than Manheim and more true to the meaning with fewer questionable translations than Murphy.
I have checked the Ford translation against the original German as well as Manheim and Murphy in several places. My German edition is an original 1935 too. Contrary to popular belief, they are still common in second hand shops in Germany because so many were printed during and before the war. I found the Ford translation to be a good combination of accuracy and readability. Usually translators lean too much one way or the other and end up with an accurate translation that is hard to read(like Manheim) or an easy to read translation that does not always have exactly the same meaning(like Murphy). The Ford translation is obviously translated in a style that is meant to be readable by the average English speaker while maintaining accuracy. Manheim's translation was much more terse and difficult to read which is why it was also considered accurate by some people(with some exceptions as Ford has noted in his other book which details errors in the Manheim edition).
That said, the Ford translation is not perfect. But then neither are any of the past translations. I would characterize Manheim as only decent and the Ford translation as noticeably better than Manheim. I say this because Ford's translation is much easier to read and it preserves the intent and meaning. When Manheim's translation was first released, it also met a great deal of criticism for years. Over time the criticisms against Manheim's version were simply forgotten because it was the only edition published in the US. I have no doubt the Ford translation may take some time for evaluation and acceptance too.
In the chapters I compared, I saw a few translations that I would have made different choices for, however there was nothing that truly changed the meaning of the original German. Some passages, like the first line which adds "northern Austria" cited by another reviewer, were obviously added to make the passage clearer to English speakers who were not familiar with European cities. It probably should have been put in brackets or parentheses, but again that is just a matter of translator's choice. It is still correct. I find it inappropriate to criticize a translation for making the translation clear to the intended audience. Such criticism only reveals the person making the criticism is looking for a reason to attack the work and not making a fair evaluation.
I have translated more pages from German to English or English to German than I care to think about over the years and when I compare Ford's translation to the original German and Manheim, I find it obvious that the Ford translation is better than Manheim and it is true to the original German language Mein Kampf. As I have said, I would have translated some parts differently but so would any translator and there were a few minor errors. It does not make a translation choice wrong just because I would have done it differently. I did not find any gross errors or anything that truly altered the meaning of the original German. I actually found several places that were better written in the Ford translation and easier to understand than the original German. The Ford translation clearly demonstrates an unusual understanding of the material which is absent from the Manheim translation.
I suggest if you are unsure about the quality of the Ford translation read any two pages of Manheim's and the same two pages of Ford's translation and you will quickly see the Ford translation is the easier book to read and understand and is at least as accurate as Manheim, and I believe more so. Then you can decide which you want to invest your time reading.
Mein Kampf (The Ford Translation) Overview

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