Underminers in German

With very little effort from me, and a huge amount from a fellow traveller, the German translation (I think of it as a “translocation”) of Underminers is now available from http://wuestenzeitung.blogspot.co.uk/2018/05/underminers-in-german.html thanks to the incredible efforts of Jürgen.

It is entitled “Radikaler Wandel: Anleitung zur praktischen Untergrabung der Maschine” which makes me very happy, especially from a cultural point of view. The idea of my work being translocated is important, as stories are the root of all culture, and thus it is imperative that any “translation” takes serious account of the culture in which that work is part of. As well as this, had I just put the book through Google Translate, then it would have ended up a rough copy that in some places made little sense, and as a whole was not true to the source.

On page 11 is a Foreword, which very much comes from the heart:

Foreword

I was contacted by Jürgen in the summer of 2017 with a generous offer to make a full translation of the original, author’s edit of “Underminers : A Practical Guide for Radical Change” which I first released online in 2012. As with all texts intended for use on the edges of society, I have no way of telling what impact this version, or the subsequent New Society (2013) edition have had. I could hope, but that would be as good as praying, and I neither pray nor hope – as an Underminer myself, I try and live by the words I have written. This German-language version, so lovingly translated, translocated and updated for 2018, carries its own weight of words, which are now as much Jürgen’s as mine, and as much yours, dear reader, as the authors’. You are the Underminers, and this is your time.

Keith Farnish
Scotland, May 2018.