Materials for the wertform project of parallel bilingual presentation and collective translation of works of Marx and German works of exegesis.
Errors and emendations can be pointed out at the corresponding github repository.
Please join the project to edit existing text and add new texts.
Ideally, such a site would also make available parallel German-English versions of existing translations such as those found on sites like marxists.org.
Marx, Capital, first edition 1867
One hope of the project, in addition to parallel representation, is to place the fundamental wissenschaftlich demand on new Marx-translation, of commitment to a glossary. A partial representation of the glossary used for Capital first edition ch. 1 is, for the moment, printed below. The reader of English should know, of a word on the right (and associated forms) that it is translating German on the left. Even if the reader knows no German, without such a glossary-commitment she cannot be confident she is not missing rational relations between sentences and across the text.
Thus the decisions made in the glossary are less important than the articulation of the glossary itself. An ideal internet arrangement would permit the student to replace these with German expressions as she learns them, and have done with the always difficult choices. Though disputes about new translations of Marx are often about the choices on the right - thus far never in any case stated in a glossary - but infinitely more important is the decision what should go on the left.
The glossary should respect the backward road for Marx’s German of terms from English political economy, as with Capital, Moore and Aveling, with Engels, did with a comprehension we would have difficulty acquiring. But also, where possible, it should respect what did not yet exist and is still under formation: the glossary-tradition of specifically philosophical translation of writers like Hegel and Kant into English. Thus the translation of terms like ‘verwirklichung’ as ‘actualization’, ‘Wirklichkeit’ as ‘actual’, ‘Vorstellung’ as ‘representation’, or of the Hegelian triad universal-particular-singular, etc. are basically already made and it is not up to us to decide the matter.
It is unlikely that a single such glossary could operate across works and periods of Marx; still less his later exegetes. It is thus as illustration that we give this fragment of the decisions temporarily made for the first edition ch. 1, all open to discussion:
| german | english |
|---|---|
| allgemein | universal (see einzeln, besondere) |
| anderer | other (see verscheiden, veränderen) |
| Art | type |
| Ausdruck | expression |
| ausdrucken | to express |
| Bedürfnis | need |
| befriedigen | to meet (needs, demands, etc) |
| besondere | particular (see einzeln, allgemein) |
| bestimmen | to determine |
| Bestimmung | determination |
| darstellen | to present |
| Darstellung | presentation |
| Ding | thing (see Sache, Gegenstand) |
| direkt | direct (see unmittelbar) |
| Einheit | unity (no attempt are made to detect the rare sense ‘unit’ ) |
| einzeln | single, singular (see individuell) |
| erscheinen | to appear (see scheinen) |
| Erscheinung | appearance (see Schein) |
| Gallerte | gelatin, gelatinization |
| Gebrauch | use (see nützlich) |
| Gebrauchswert | use value |
| Gegenstand | object (see Sache, Ding) |
| gelten | to figure (in preference to ‘count’) |
| Gleichung | equality (in preference to ‘equation’) |
| gleichsetzen | set equal (in preference to ‘equate’) |
| Grösse | magnitude (see Qualität, quantum) |
| individuell | individual (see einzeln) |
| Lebensmittel | means of life (see Produktionsmittel) |
| nützlich | useful (see Gebrauch) |
| Quantität | quantity (see Grösse, quantum) |
| quantum, quanta | quantum, quanta |
| real | real (see wirklich) |
| realisieren | to realize |
| reflektieren | to reflect (see mirror, spiegeln, widerspiegeln) |
| Produktionsmittel | means of production (see Lebensmittel) |
| Sache | thing_ (see Ding, Gegenstand) |
| sachlich | thingly_ |
| scheinen | to seem (see erscheinen) |
| Schein | semblance (see Erscheinung) |
| setzen | to set (in preference to posit, put, place, etc.; τίθημι) |
| spiegeln | to mirror (see reflect) |
| Substanz | substance |
| unmittelbar | immediate (see direkt) |
| Unterschied | distinction (see verschieden, Verscheidenheit) |
| unterscheidbar | distinguishable |
| unterscheiden | to distinguish |
| veränderen | to alter (see anderer, wechseln) |
| vermitteln | to mediate |
| verschieden | different (see unterschiedbar) |
| Verschiedenheit | difference (see Unterschied) |
| Verwirklichung | actualization (see realisieren, wirklich, real) |
| vorstellen | represent (see darstellen) |
| Vorstellung | representation (see Darstellung) |
| Warenkunde | merceology |
| wechseln | to change (see veränderen) |
| Werth | value |
| wirklich | actual (see real) |
| wirken | to act (upon) |
| zwieschlächtig | double-edged (as sword) |