MARX TO WILHELM BRACKE 
IN BRUNSWICK 

{[London,] 26 May 1877 

Dear Bracke, 

What Miss Kurz has been awaiting has today gone off from 
London. In the course of next week she will (save, I think, for the 
appendix) be getting everything in the way of alterations which 
Lissagaray still has to send her.'™* 

For the rest I should like to point out that: 

1. La Kurz should have sent you, as a matter of course, anything 
in manuscript form she had received from Lissagaray, along with her 
own manuscript. Considering the masterly way she translates (see 
just a few recent examples overleaf), how can I keep a check on 
her without Lissagaray’s ms.? I am convinced that, because of this, 
all manner of infelicities have already crept in. 

2. She might very well have told herself that Lissagaray requires 
this ms. for his own second French edition. 

All in all, the translation, when not actually wrong, is often 
unhelpful, philistine and wooden. But this may, perhaps, to some 
extent correspond to German taste. 

With kind regards, 

Yours, 
K. M. 

I should be grateful if you would insist that the said Kurz 
should, firstly, send you (for return to Lissagaray) that part of 
Lissagaray’s ms. she has already translated (you can pass it on to 
me together with the proofs) and, secondly, always enclose with her 
own manuscript the manuscript she has just translated so that I 
may compare translation and original. All in all this additional 
manuscript does not amount to very much. 

The passage heavily scored by me on p. 73 should read thus: 

‘It (the people] looked for this emancipation to the autonomous Commune 
which, etc., etc., would conduct its administration independently, within the limits 
required to maintain national unity. Rather than the representative who may, etc., 
should, etc., it opposed to that monarchical excrescence of society, the “State”, 
which, etc., undermines, etc., represents particular class interests which, etc., the 
delegation of communes endowed with a life of their own which, etc., was to 
administer the general national interests.’ 

Examples 

p. 49 ‘A Vappel de son nom it a voulu répondre’ Miss Kurz 
translates as: ‘He wanted to respond to the summons issued to 
him.’ Sheer rubbish! It means: ‘He wished to answer when his 
name was Called, etc.’ 

{ditto ‘les yeux ... brillants de foi républicaine’; foi does not here 
mean ‘troth’—nor does it ever mean that, save in the sense of 
‘upon my troth!’ (ma foi)—but faith, conviction, etc. I have left it as 
it stands since I am generally averse to all such commonplaces in 
German; so what matter if she puts an X for a U.} 

p. 51 ‘des intrigants bourgeois qui couraient aprés la députation’. Kurz 
translates ‘who ran after the deputation’. A primary school child 
could hardly translate worse. 

p. 51 ‘pour statuer en cas de doubles nominations’ Kurz 
translates outrageously ‘so as, if need be,’ (what’s that supposed to 
mean?) ‘to decree double nominations’!!! Should read: ‘so as to 
decide in the case of double nominations’. 

232 169. Engels to Marx 27 May 1877 

p. 54 ‘une permanence’ is translated as ‘permanent session’ (what 
the devil is that?). Means ‘standing committee’. 

p. 59 instead of ‘expired bills of exchange’ she puts ‘expired 
merchandise’ (1!!). 

p. 70 Vintelligence etc. de la bourgeoisie de cette époque’ she 
translates as ‘the big bourgeois of this point of time’ (!). An epoch is 
no more a point of time than a line is a point in space. 

p. 75 ‘Crest que la premiére note est juste’ she translates as: “The 
reason was that the first account (!) was correct’, should read, that 
from the start they had struck or hit the right note. 

p. 90 ‘plumitifs’—‘quill-pushers’ she translates as legal records!!! 

First published, in Russian, in Marx- Printed according to the original 
Engels Archi Vol.I (VD, M , . : : ‘ 
ons Heeeee ye Sa a, Published in English for the first 
time 
169