path_finder wrote:If for a single text so much different translation are available, what can we say on the original Bessler documents in old german?
I can see why you and others might think it isn't possible to get a good translation from Bessler's writings, but I think your assumptions are a result of a lack of knowledge and understanding of language in Bessler's time. It's very easy just to dismiss Bessler's writing with this excuse, and I often wonder whether people say this as a way of convincing themselves that it's not worth the effort of attempting to understand them, and so feel vindicated in their own minds that they can ignore the Bessler texts and carry out their non-Bessler influenced research with a clear conscience. There's nothing wrong with choosing to ignore Bessler's wheel and his writings, but please don't suggest that nothing useful or reliable can be gained from his writings and belittle the work of others in this area when you know nothing about it. In fact on the whole it's not as difficult as you might think but does require hard work and research in some areas.
Comparing Bessler's writing to The Bible is not a fair comparison - the Old Testatment dates back more than 2000 years and to stand any chance of getting a good translation you'd have to study the original documents in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek - something I've never tried and never intend to, but imagine it would be difficult. Bessler's writings date back less than 300 years - a very short space of time - and are written mainly in German which is a language still widely used today and that has changed very little in that time. Also there are many similarities between the German and English languages. One issue when translating old German documents is that sometimes you have to deal with different dialects and this can involve some more extensive research. Also as the subject matter is science and mechanics of the period, research into these areas is important as certain terms are not likely to appear in everyday language. The good news is there were thousands of science and mechanics related books and documents printed in German and Latin in Bessler's era which we can use for cross referencing.
The most difficult Bessler document to translate is his Poetic Apologia because of its poetic, rhyming nature. Most of the other documents cause very few problems. I've only been studying the Bessler texts and old German for a few years, and even so I feel confident that, given time, we can translate his writings accurately. Interpreting some of the things he writes is another matter altogether though. Anyway, I know that there's enough of importance in the documents (not just wheel information but also from a historical perspective) to make it worth my while continuing my research efforts and posting my findings. However, I would suggest to people that their PM research not be restricted to just the Bessler wheel and Bessler writings, but I'm pretty sure most people aren't anyway and like me view it as only one avenue of research.
As an example of how it can sometimes take time and research to figure out certain dialect terms, but that it's possible to get there in the end, take the following couplet from AP...
Die Kinder spielen auf den Säulgen
Mit lauter schweren Schniebe-Käulgen;
The word 'Schniebe-Käulgen' had bothered me for many years and was the only word I'd seen that I couldn't come up with anything at all for that made sense. In John Collins' AP book it is translated as:
"Children play with heavy clubs among the broken columns."
I could see how the translator had arrived at the word 'clubs' from the word 'Käulgen', but he was completely ignoring the prefix 'Schniebe' and so I've never been happy that it meant simply 'clubs'. However, I finally found the answer recently and can see now that this is a dialect spelling of 'Schnipp-Käulgen' or 'Schnippkäulchen' which means 'marbles' (the toy/game) - and it makes sense that children would be playing with a well known toy.
Stewart