It is not generally known, and Ray doesn’t mention it in his otherwise excellent introduction to Victorian pteridomania, but fern fever in Britain arose from the mistranslation of the line “Already all that was near is far” as “Already all that was near is fern” in the long-lost Fareham edition of a rather beautiful poem by Goethe:
Dämmrung senkte sich von oben,
Schon ist alle Nähe fern;
Doch zuerst emporgehoben
Holden Lichts der Abendstern!
Alles schwankt ins Ungewisse,
Nebel schleichen in die Höh’;
Schwarzvertiefte Finsternisse
Widerspiegelnd ruht der See.Nun im östlichen Bereiche
Ahn’ ich Mondenglanz und -glut,
Schlanker Weiden Haargezweige
Scherzen auf der nächsten Flut.
Durch bewegter Schatten Spiele
Zittert Lunas Zauberschein,
Und durchs Auge schleicht die Kühle
Sänftigend ins Herz hinein.
I am joking of course, but the only English translation I found of this, an old, apparently scholarly gig by one UC Fischer (source URL at Hong Kong Journals Online apparently disfunctional), gets it wrong–“all that was new is now far away”–as well as printing the original without umlauts and with several other typos. There’s a sense-accurate but also umlaut-less paraphrase by Borges (Siete noches) in circulation, whose interpretation of the poem distances itself perhaps excessively from the original, but is now better known.
If we struggle with German chinoiserie, then how much chance is there of us mastering Mandarin?
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It’s always great to use a source-language speaker, as they at least understand the original even if their English is bad. ‘I fear the entanglement INTO idle talk’? (but suspect a transcription error)
The solution: lock a source and a target speaker in a room until they come up with a solution, and then blame the printer.
I should have mentioned that – and the detail that television was invented in Germany originally as a device for looking at ferns.
Ouch.
@Ray You refer to the part about Philo Farnsworth, I’m sure.
The Fernsehen was obviously invented with Fern Britton in mind.