Abstract
STUDENTS of physiology who find, as many do, their ignorance of German to be an embarrassing obstacle in their reading, ought to be grateful to Miss Welby for her skilful translation of Prof. Biedermann's “Electrophysiologie,” an account of which we gave some time ago to our readers. The value of the book consists chiefly in this—that it is a faithful record of the results yielded by the researches of the last half-century in the field of inquiry to which it relates. Some parts of this field are very unfamiliar to ordinary readers; consequently the difficulty of the translator's task has been considerably increased by the circumstance that many of the words used have as yet no recognised English equivalents. In such a case a choice has to be made between the method of introducing into an English book forms of expression obviously German, and that of devising new terms, whenever they are required for the exposition of new facts or new relations. Considering that the book is likely to be freely used as a source of information by the manufacturers of text-books, who often have no leisure to read original papers, at the same time that they desire to be up to date, it is well for their sakes, and still more for the students for whose use the boiled-down product is destined, that Miss Welby has succeeded in selecting short, simple, and expressive words. What could be better, for example, than her translation of “ueberwerthig” and “unterwerthig” by “above par” and “below par,” or of “abgeleitete Stelle” by “lead off.” On the whole Miss Welby has given the sense of her author with great care and accuracy, and writes, whenever the responsibilities of translation allow it, in good style. But in thus commending her work, we do not wish it to be understood that there may not be here and there slips to be put right in the second edition—such, for example, as the rendering of the German word Canüle by Canula (sic) (p. 80), or of “graphische Darstellung” by “graphic record”(p. 370), or, in the same paragraph, of “Boussole mit moglichst leichtem Magneten” by “galvanometer with a very free magnet”; but even such small errors as these are few and far between.
Biedermann's Electro-physiology.
Translated by Frances A. Welby. Vol. i. Pp. xii + 522. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1896.)
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Biedermann's Electro-physiology. Nature 55, 99 (1896). https://doi.org/10.1038/055099a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/055099a0