PREFACE
The present volume
provides
a
translation of all the documents
contained
in Volume
1
of The Collected Papers of Albert
Einstein, all
but
two
of which
were
originally written in German. The
volume
is not
self-contained and should be read
only
in
conjunction
with the
documentary
edition. Most of the
introductory
matter, and all of the
editorial headnotes,
footnotes,
and footnote numbers have been
omitted,
as
have the
figures, illustrations,
biographical
sketches,
appendixes,
bibliography,
and
index,
most of which
are
already
presented
in English in the documentary
edition.
The
purpose
of the
translation,
in accordance with the agreement
between Princeton
University
Press and the
National Science
Foundation,
is to
provide
"a
careful,
accurate translation that is
as
close to the German
as
possible
while still
producing
readable
English,"
rather than "a
'literary'
translation." This type of
translation
should allow readers who
are
not fluent in German to make
a
scholarly
evaluation of the content of the documents
as
well
as
obtain
an
appreciation
of their
flavor,
in
particular
that of the
correspondence.
If
some
of the
passages
sound
awkward,
it is
usually
because the
original
passages were
awkward
-
both because
many
of the
letters and notes
were
obviously
written in
haste,
and because the
writers
(especially
Mileva Maric, whose native language
was
not
German) did not
always
express
themselves in
correct, not to
say
literary,
German.
Of note
are some
particular
problems that
arose
in
translating
the
correspondence.
For
example
there is
no way
to render the
distinction
between the formal "Sie" and the informal "Du" (for
"you")
in
modern
English,
and for
this the
original
documents should be
consulted. Similarly,
for certain salutations there is
no
satisfactory
English
translation, and
we
have thus rendered "Sehr geehrter
Herr
Professor,"
for example,
as
"Esteemed Herr Professor." Whenever
dialect expressions
(as distinct from
colloquial
ones)
were
used
-
usually humorously
-
these
are
rendered in
proper
English,
with the
result, however,
that the humor is often lost.
Both Einstein and Mileva Maric used diminutives to
excess.
Since
there is
no
proper
English
equivalent for them, they
are
usually
rendered
as
"little...", producing
an
awkwardness
not
present in the
original, and
hence
are
occasionally
omitted in the translation.
A
similar problem
arose
concerning
the
numerous
terms
of endearment.
We
left "Dockerl"
or
"Doxerl" (little doll),
a
term
frequently
used
by
Einstein for
Mileva,
untranslated.
"Miezchen"
may
or
may
not have its
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