Is there by now 2019 a list of 'correct' quotes anywhere on this forum?

[JHB]

Hi

I have read through a lot of posts dealing with erroneous quotes. A few people have even opted to put it on their blog, but alas nothing has come of such blogs since 2017. They are all still under construction. Those busy writing revised books seem to not finish them.

As far as I can tell only Trevor has made a real attempt at being helpful regarding this matter, but his/her list is also flawed as pointed out by others whom only promise solutions that never arrive. I can only imagine that Trevor is as frustrated as I am by this state of affairs.

Is there honestly no hope for a proper translation of relevant documents to be placed on here as a sticky, which at least most people agree to be 'correct'? I have found that it is also very important to give a full document instead of simple short quotes to give context to what you are reading.

Can't we do that? For instance make a sticky post for say the 'so-and-so' document or letter or even book, and then place the German/Latin next to the best suited English translation? A kind of one-stop solution.

i.e:
This will be German text as it appears in the original on a certain line.
This is the translation as most people think it should be.

This will be German text as it appears in the original on the next line.
This is the translation as most people think it should be.

I am willing to pitch in, but lets first see what everyone thinks.

PS: I understand that those currently profiting from their books might object, but if it is a completely new translation made from scratch via the accumulated knowledge of members to this forum there should be no rights violations.

Kind Regards

Jayson

[John Collins]

Well I suppose I should respond as the author of several books, most of which are translations of the original German. I have no German and I was desperate to know what Bessler’s books said, so over a number of years I acquired copies and subsequently many documents associated with Bessler.

I could not afford the cost of professional translations and I advertised in the local paper for anyone interested in translating what was then, a few letters I had received in German plus some documents. I had about seven offers but in the end all but one gradually stopped work on the German, as it was 300 years old and in Fraktur font which people found difficult if not impossible to read.

To cut a long story short, one of the respondents was Mike Senior, a polymath with degrees in 18th C German history, maths, astrophysics and Botany! In the end he translated AP, DT, GB plus numerous documents.

There has been much discussion about the quality of his translations, but some of the blame lies with me. He asked me if I wanted a literal translation or his best attempt to say what he believed the writer wanted to say. I chose the latter, and it reads well, but some people have picked what they regard as errors, and of course there are some, but in general most people seem happy with his work.

He did not work on MT because that had already been done and I obtained permission from the author to use his translation.

It was a few years later that I decided to self-publish them all, including my own biography of Bessler.

There have been a number of threads trying sharpen some pieces of text which appear somewhat confusing and in the end, we all seek to improve the standard of the text. So any debate on the translations is highly desirable but as it has taken place piecemeal over a number of years, it is disorganised. If you were to read the posts by Stewart, number 10 in the membership list, you might find them helpful.

I hope this helps. It would be wonderful if the work on translating corrections could be organised.

One last thing, your suggestion that some people who are profiting from their books might object, looks like a dig at me, fine, but I just wish I had ever profited from the sale of the books, nothing could be further from the truth. Self-publishing is an expensive activity unless you can sell upwards of 50,000. I guess over the 23 years or so, I’ve sold around 1500 books, and those at barely breakeven prices. Also the very low cost of giving Mike Senior something for his trouble, about £500, over the years. Plus hundreds of letters to Germany, Italy, France, Russia and the USA, travelling to numerous libraries around the U.K. it all costs. I can’t prove it with receipts but my wife who was an accountant says if we were a business we’d have gone bust twenty years ago!

PS, as I sometimes do, I’m posting my latest blog to try and unravel a passage which is slightly confusing. It is deliberately so, by Bessler, but sense can be made of it if you know why he made it confusing

JC

[ME]

Emphasize like Boldface may get lost after a copy/paste to some eternal file.

I would like to propose another indicator for language because sometimes you want to talk about a the meaning of Words[EN], (Wörter[DE], Verborum[LA], Woorden[NL]) in a sentence.

[EN] Read all English sentences. (English sentence indicated with "EN");
[DE] Lesen Sie alle deutschen Sätze. (EN: German sentence indicated with "DE");
[LA] Omnes sententias Latine legit. (EN: Latin sentence indicated with "LA");
[NL] Lees alle Nederlandse zinnen. (EN: Dutch sentence indicated with "NL");
[FR] Lire toutes les phrases en français.. (EN: French sentence indicated with "FR")
etc.

Such also makes it easy to compare Bessler's German texts with his Latin texts and with some translation attempt in English, now with a means to specify things exactly when discussing the differences. Discussions already have the tendency to become confusing or complex.

A complete and perfect translations requires full-time attention. For the rest we have to do with snippets:
To see how such indicator works for (DE:"Ãœberwucht"): https://www.besslerwheel.com/forum/view ... 830#161830
Or some Dutch text translation: https://www.besslerwheel.com/forum/view ... 907#150907

[JHB]

@ME

Hi

Those are some great ideas ME. I will try to amend my original post to reflect your suggestions.

Kind Regards

Jayson

[Wubbly]

'correct' is subjective.

https://besslerwheel.com/wiki/index.php ... rtal:Clues

[WaltzCee]

You might consider buying the book, internet searching documents, doing your own
translations and making up your own mind.

Without that effort some have put to bring Bessler from an historical footnote to a subject
of worldwide discussion, we wouldn't be discussing it here today. Buying their book would
be a small way of saying thank you. Buying 10 books and giving them away for Christmas
would be an excellent thing to do.:-)

[JHB]

@Wubbly

Thank you for your view point and the link. Both unfortunately only serve to substantiate what I said.

Subjective can be handled in a mutable document without any reprint or lots of time lost and can even be stated for what it is i.e. under the mostly accepted translation it can be mentioned that there is disagreement, plus the reader does not have to scour the internet to find out there is disagreement.

Your link again contains random translations with no reference to context. This is what I am trying to address.

Kind Regards

Jayson

[JHB]

@WaltzCee

I could do as you so sternly suggest and buy every book written on the subject, but this is my current suggestion that I think will greatly enhance everyone in here's chance at solving this riddle. Trying to guilt me into buy a book out of some sense of duty is simply ridiculous. I wish them only the best in their efforts to recoup their losses, but I have studied Bessler for many years, even before there were so many books and will continue to do so until i die. Shooting down my suggestion in favor of buying a book does not make any sense and seems counter intuitive of the goal of this forum.

Kind Regards

[ME]

Unfortunately I agree with Walter that for the best part there already are books and translations that more or less paint Bessler's picture.
The rest are details, which, sure enough, may be important for all kinds of reasons.
I think the goal of this forum is about all that will lead to the discovery of Bessler's wheel. I think such has less to do with Bessler himself or some of his side hobbies. But there are strong reason to include some of them anyway because you don't know if it induces inspiration.
The reasons are diverse with opinions galore! Even physics gets subjected!

Chasing after the correct translation requires a lot of work that for some steals time from wheel discovery, and for others may actually be the only way to find the missing clue. But, as Wubbly stated, what's good and correct?

In my opinion, even an "objectively correct translation" could be a wrong translation as it requires to know intent.
One way or the other, things will always get lost in translation. Especially when you want to extract information but are not even sure if the information you seek is actually in there.
So, only to underline the enormous struggle of such exercise, maybe it is better to learn yourself how to decipher Fraktur script and Bessler's handwriting. Learn Latin, Bessler's variant of German and the local humor and idioms.
Bessler used a lot of Bible references, so then you may need to learn all about that too. - I found that the Lutheran Bible of 1545 seems to fit. But as far as I know we haven't had a discussion about that on this board, so consider it as my opinion.
Some others suggest you first need to learn to hunt for codes, or maybe become a member of some secret-mens-club only to learn more about codes and historic members.
Even with all that, there's still this room for interpretation were Bessler just may have written some metaphor in one of the key areas and not is always translatable in one specific way. Maybe to keep things secret, or maybe because he had a rough day, or maybe to show yet another bible reference, or maybe to hint to some secret number reference.

And then you have to find out which words and clues may be useful;
And then you need to build a couple of experiments to test things out;
And then you need to learn about physics to make your live easier;
And then you have to ignore just the right part;
And then you keep building;
And then you give up.

And then you may realize: What the translation should have been, or which bible text was the relevant one, or which clue was the best, or which encoded number revealed the missing link, or which physics law needed to be bend, can only be verified for sure in hindsight.
So you continue anyway, because Bessler's wheel just keeps you busy and you're still eager for gaining that hindsight :-)

Jayson, welcome to the club!


In the category: It-Would-Be-Really-Handy-If:

I will try to amend my original post to reflect your suggestions.

You can't... that's part of the fun.
As you probably noticed, there's a limited time span to edit your post. (I reread mine: oops, hope you don't mind my typos)

This makes it hard to transform the topic-opening-post into a summary or index (a local 'sticky') for the comments that follow.
It's basically impossible to apply some structure to a single topic, and sooner or later they tend to go off topic anyway.
Topics indeed also get all scrambled up in their order, but I'm not sure a sticky will ensure a good topic.
Thus better try to make a good topic. Maybe with a collection of lot of (subjectively) relevant and important translations and a lot references. And when it's perfect, then I bet Scott will consider its stickiness.

The summary of this, and all the other things you noticed to have stranded, is that all the options are basically more complex than initially thought, become more messy than it should be, and is very time consuming.
And that's exactly what you already observed.
If you're willing to do the administration you could ask Scott, the site-owner, for the conditions to run a private forum section that you can moderate as you see fit.

Shooting down my suggestion in favor of [-another suggestion-] does not make any sense and seems counter intuitive of the goal of this forum.

Perhaps that sums up the issue of non-ideal messy complexities of opinion much better.
Everyone simply has a slightly different focus and goal, for better or worse.

So I think that's why people usually just start discussing small paragraphs because that's easier to shape in their own context.


Good luck and kind regards,
Marchello E.

[John Collins]

I agree with Marchello and Waltzcee, and following on from Marchello’s point about learning the language so you can translate everything to your satisfaction, I will repeat my advice to look at Stewart’s work. When he first came to see me, many years ago, I gave him digital copies of all Bessler’s texts. He did not know any German then, but in order to discover exactly what Bessler wrote, he taught himself German and became something of an expert on 18th C German and the fraktur type. He published a number of corrections on this forum and is regarded as a reliable source of accurate translations.

If you need to find out which translation is correct then perhaps you need to do as Stewart did? Just a suggestion without animosity.

JC

[Fletcher]

Hi JHB .. ME summed it up very well. It used to frustrate me no end. And JC showed what lengths some have gone to to get access to 'more correct' information (which I've always appreciated). Stewart and his collaborating partner Ed (also a long time member) afaik never managed to crack the nut of Bessler's true mechanical PM principle. So there are no guarantee's that any investigative path is superior to another. Also an old time member Ralph Lortie, who drops in from time to time, took the polar opposite view. He paid no regard to Bessler's 'clues' at all, for all the reasons given in ME's post. He said he relied solely on his mechanical aptitude gained from a life time of experience.

ATEOTD I think we each play to our strengths, tho it can't hurt to know some basic physics and mechanics and build from that. And ultimately imo success will depend on either extreme luck, extreme critical thinking and analytical skills, or just plain mechanical aptitude built up from experience leading to an epiphany moment, hopefully ;7)

Best of luck.

[raj]

A quote I read somewhere, maybe on this forum, some 10/15 years ago, which I am following all through my wheel concepts presented here in my album is:

" An intricate system of strings and weights..."

Raj

[JHB]

@ME @John Collins @Fletcher

You are all saying that I should go and study like so-and-so did or do the thing that so-and-so did for many years. That is exactly what is wrong with all the translations in books. They are the view of one person and his/her translator. Hence the outcry in this forum by Steward and others.

If we could start what I suggest the wealth of experience of all the above people you mentioned that worked so hard will already be available, so I don't need to go and do all that. Provided of course they are actually here to help others as I am sure the original creator of this forum intended. This will allow me to concentrate on my area of expertise that took me also years to perfect, and share my findings here. Now everyone is benefiting from everyone in here. Those good at translation do their bit, those good at building do their bit, those good at math do their bit, etc.

I get it: Baby did some work and now he/she is kicking and screaming on the ground whenever the bad man tries to explore/scrutinize his/her work without a due reward. Newborns cannot see cooperation as a solution, but we are all grownups in here right. If you are here to help this will be a great step towards information structuring, but if you are here to get recognition for the great person you are you will always be a stumble block in the path to a solution and walk the same path Bessler did.

The main thing I take from your answers is that there is a general unwillingness to help in this way, as to not step on the toes of those that feel they have certain rights due to their hard work. Though not my area of expertise, I have translations of documents that are also different than most on here that I paid for long ago. Now instead of expecting some kind of reimbursement I will gladly bring them forth for such a venture to be scrutinized by the experts.

Having also studied Bessler for a long time I make no claims on my knowledge. If someone else can take my body of work and complete the task then I am happy.

Even the fact that this forum is broken is not an excuse. Everything digital can be updated/fixed to serve a better purpose. As a computer specialist I will even offer my services free of charge towards this goal, but as has been shown by your response to my suggestion you will only see the negative in that too.

Kind Regards

Jayson

[justsomeone]

Welcome to the forum Jayson!

I look forward to your future posts. Sounds like you will be a great addition here.

Just curious, what took you so long to join? Have you been reading the forum for a while?

[ME]

I can only speak for myself...
It's not unwillingness, it's a piece of realism and experience why huge projects usually strand...
There's just too much stuff, not always relevant, and doubtful if a rework really adds information.
When you investigate Perpetual Motion such is extremely important to keep in mind.
The odds are that you'll Never find it. You can only persist when you're able to overcome, avoid, or handle constant disappointment.
It's not Pessimism or Unwillingness, but it is Patience that is key!

My rough estimate for myself:
I think my current speed of reading printed Fractur-script is about 1 page a day. I did some recent translation attempt, I suspect I'm now much faster, but that tires me immensely.
I tried OCR, but then, even after cleaned-up pages, you also need to check every word.
Translations takes more time, unless you are satisfied with the outcome of an online-translator.
Translating it correctly And transforming it in the assumed context takes a lot more time and effort.
I never tried such process, but I estimate I could translate Apologia Poetica within two years. Thus three years is more likely.
We can discuss every page on this forum, and it will only take longer. One weeks per page on average?

Similar to translation is the Maschinen Tractate book.
I think Ovyyus did a great job recreating the MT's.
But sometimes I take an image from the MT's and start to clean it up myself.
When I'm finished I replace that new image in my binder.
When I look for MT's I can manually thumb through the page, or take them all out and physically reorder them ...
As nice as a complete translation, it would be equally nice when I would clean up all the MT's. I'll likely not. I think Ovyyus's work does a good enough job for the ones I skip.
I would rather spend my time learning how to read Bessler's handwriting next to the MT's, so I can translate that to my own satisfaction. etc...
But I babble...

I sure see your point too!
And in that case, what are we talking about here?
Please start a new topic where we all can just begin.
It's your idea, so you take the lead.