Translation II

There is a rotunda in the city of Thun is Switzerland that houses a panorama of the city. This was painted a couple of hundred years ago by Marquard Wocher — so it’s called the Wocher Panorama. And very impressive it is too. Panoramas and dioramas were common enough in the nineteenth century, but many of them have now disappeared, so they are relatively rare now.

There was a special exhibition a few years ago to celebrate the bicentenary, with the usual ‘merchandise’, including a book. This described the history of panoramas in general, and how this painting was done, where it had been and exhibited, and how it got back to Thun.

Reading the book, I discovered that these sorts of painters were called ‘little masters’. I didn’t realise at first what was meant by this — I didn’t imagine that whoever did the painting was a dwarf, nor did I think they were somehow second rate. Fortunately, the text was in both German and English, and I found that the ‘little master’ was a Kleinmeister. And yes, the literal word-for-word translation of Kleinmeister is little [or small] master. 

A Kleinmeister is a miniaturist in English, not a very common word. A miniaturist is someone who paints scenes on very small objects. A master or Meister is one who has been admitted to this grade in the guild; to do this, he produces his Meisterstuck or masterpiece to the Guild’s technical committee for inspection, assessment and approval. A masterpiece isn’t necessarily the best work the master will ever produce, even if this is the common meaning nowadays.

A quibble over a single word? Well, yes, but the translation had been done by a professional service, though clearly one without any special expertise in painting techniques. And it was a German service, so I don’t know whether they used a native English speaker for the translation. The rest of the translation conveyed the meaning adequately, even if the phraseology was a bit wooden and stilted at times.

There’s also a tendency to simplification in translations such as this, to leave out things that a German reader would immediately understand, but which an English reader probably would not. I’m thinking of references to things in German culture — the average English reader simply would not get the message in the way that a German reader would.