[HMN] SYCOSIS

[Lois Hoffer]

Hello Soroush, all

Finrod wrote:
I don't want to comment on the specific example you gave, but I agree
with you whole-heartedly about the problem in general. If I didn't, I
certainly wouldn't have spent four years, going on five now, on the
Hahnemaniacs group on Yahoo, re-translating the Organon carefully word
by word, with a view to making it as transparent as possible to
non-native speakers!
given his own personal quirks, on top of the differences in viewpoint
and vocabulary over the centuries...but if you don't speak German, you
are in addition constrained to rely on someone ELSE'S knowledge, and
something is always, inevitably, lost in translation, whoever is doing
it. Certain translators tend to "paraphrase" rather than translating
exactly (e.g. Kuenzli), while others alter the meaning slightly in order
to make it match *their* understanding of what Hahnemann "meant" to say,
sometimes consciously and purposely, other times unwittingly... The
original reason for my starting the Hahnemaniacs group was my discovery
that the "generative force" referred to by Stephen Decker and Rudy
Verspoor in their lectures ans books as the "Lebens-Erzeugungskraft",
and purportedly coming from their reading and understanding of
Hahnemann's works...actually doesn't appear anywhere in any of his texts
in German! They only "inferred" its existence, partly from other things
he wrote and partly because its existence was necessary to their
theories. If I hadn't gotten the idea to check in the original, and if
I weren't ABLE to read the original myself, I would have continued to
believe that the German word they always quoted was actually used by
Hahnemann.... And of course, some translators simply make mistakes, such
a exchanging a singular for a plural, although *usually* those aren't
too crucial to the meaning. (However, a missing negative CAN change the
meaning completely, and I've seen that happen, in an old translation of
the Chronic Diseases)

same can be said of learning homeopathy (or ANYthing for that matter...)
by only attending lectures or reading secondary sources (a very common
practise in France, where no one bothers to read Hahnemann anymore) such
as books by Kent or Vithoulkas or Sankaran, instead of reading the
Organon itself, in ANY translation. You are only getting the information
at second-hand, pre-digested by someone else's understanding (or
mis-understanding), filtered through their world-view and prejudices.
It's ALWAYS better to go back to the original and form your own opinion,
if possible, rather than taking someone else's word for it....just as
it's better to test a thing yourself rather than taking someone's word
for whether it WORKS or not. (Think how many people have rejected
homeopathy because they were told it was nonsense, whereas if they would
only try it once and see...!)
own, you ALWAYS have to take someone else's word for it at some point,
unfortunately, so what can you do? Read more than one translation and
compare, and know as much as you can about the German, so you can more
knowledgeably judge whose translation to trust, and where any possible
ambiguities may come from....

Lois